Chapter 17

“Fighting eidolons and the undead, to a lesser extent, results in a very diverse collection of individual foes for the Ardent. In turn, this makes practical training exercises in preparation to face them difficult. It is for this reason that trainees of the Ardent so often find themselves tested against one another. Just as an eidolon can be anything, so too can a mage. In finding solutions to the magic and ingenuity of each other, we hope to prepare them for the chaos of real combat with real stakes.”

—Welcome to Strife: Ardent Recruit Guide

On the morning of the tournament, Sylvas woke in his own bed, gathered his sparse belongings and cycled his mana. He took a jog around the campus before anyone else had time to stir, while the suns were still setting on the horizon, and on arriving at the makeshift gymnasium that had been set up behind the outbuildings, he went through more stretches than any hard exercise. To complete this routine and wake up fully, he took a brief dip into null-space, teleporting back to the Blackhall, before retrieving his eye-slate from his satchel and slotting it into place.

“The attendance of all recruits to the Crucible is required on the first day. After elimination, recruits will have the option to attend or remain on campus and resume regular training. On days where recruits do not have a match, they will be informed ahead of time, and may choose to continue personal progression work, or observe, as they see fit. Maintain a decree of decorum when meeting recruits from the other campuses. The competition is one between individuals, not teams. There is no special reward or treatment for the campus that plays host to the winner of the eliminations.”

Sylvas could almost hear Instructor Aurea’s tired voice speaking aloud as he read those final lines. He knew that his friends would be cheering him on, and he’d be cheering them on too, regardless of whether there were prizes for bunking in the same place as them or not.

The plans for transporting more or less the entire campus across to the arena followed the note about decorum, but it was all as expected. Shuttles would be provided, competitors would present themselves ten minutes ahead of their scheduled duels. Sylvas had two duels scheduled for the day, spaced out quite nicely so that he would have plenty of recovery time, but there were no hints as to who his opponents might be. As the fighting went on, and competitors were eliminated by a single loss, it would become easier to narrow down who he was going to be going up against, but as it stood, each match up was anyone’s guess.

There was a period of two hours before he’d have to go and register, and while he was sure some of the other competitors would be putting in some last minute pushes to achieve their next circle, or master some new spell he had weighed the value of it and decided that getting a sneak preview of what he was going to be up against in the later rounds was a better use of the time. It was what Bael would do, so Sylvas was using that as his metric for making the correct decisions.

“Ready for me to kick your ass?” Kaya quipped as she emerged out into the dying light.

“I can’t imagine we’ll be fighting each other today.” Sylvas replied with a smile. “The odds are pretty slim.”

Kaya cocked her head as she considered that, eventually shrugging. “The odds of me kicking your ass every day are always slim, but never zero.”

Bael and Gharia emerged from the tower next, with Ironeyes trailing behind them looking either glum or still half-asleep. “I could calculate the probability of any of us matching in any given pairing, if you wish. Though I do not have a perfect accounting of the Greyhall’s current student population, nor if any of the other campuses have withdrawn candidates or had the usual degree of attrition over the course of—”

Gharia gave him a playful shove. “Hope I get to kick your ass in the first round. Maybe you’ll shut up for a whole minute.”

“Charming.” The elf’s lips narrowed but Sylvas didn’t think that he was actually all that offended.

“Doesn’t matter who we fight.” Ironeyes grimaced as he stretched. “We’ll take them apart, business as usual.”

On that happy note, they departed.

The arena was even bigger from the ground than it had looked from the shuttles. Vast natural formations of stone smoothed by the constant sandstorms and pared back into the required shapes, capped off with the shiny white plastic coating the Ardent seemed to use to mark their territory. Kaya looked up at it all approvingly. “Shouldn’t fall down for a few days at least.”

Bael had eyes only for the other students as they were decanted from their own portals to file inside. Malachai spotted Sylvas and raised a hand to wave, before remembering himself and instead giving an ominous nod. Sylvas didn’t feel like he had any dignity left to preserve at this point in his career, so he did wave back, with a tentative smile. Only remembering afterwards that technically he had just waved at royalty. 

That going to take some getting used to. 

As they moved into the building surrounding the arena, it all started feeling more familiar, the rough sanded stone outside giving away to the arched passageways that characterized the cliff-complex back on campus. Sylvas had been working off some incorrect assumptions about this place if the natives of Strife had been the ones to construct it. The passageways were far wider and taller than back at the Blackhall, but the construction was definitely the same. They headed straight on through towards the arena, emerging back into the starlight just in time to see where the duels would be fought. Sylvas had grossly underestimated just how big the actual battlefield would be. It stretched out in front of them, enclosed in some sort of domed protective barrier that he let his eidetic memory copy down the spell-forms for. The whole of the Blackhall campus could have settled comfortably on the red sand down there without any crowding of the usual layout. It was set slightly lower than the level of the first row of seating, but some feature of the curvature of the dome gave a view as though it were level despite the wall being visible around the base of the stands, he imagined the optical effect would be the same as you climbed higher amongst the stone benches lining the place.

A horn sounded somewhere, and startled Sylvas. He knew that the Ardent ran a fairly tight schedule, but he was surprised they were already summoning the first fighters when they’d only just arrived. Students were beginning to file in, pushing past to find their preferred seating in the stands. With the size of the place, Sylvas doubted even all the students of the three halls would manage to fill out more than a quarter of it, but even so he could see some jostling as people hurried. 

He fell into step with Bael, who’d seen this all before, and presumably knew where best to view it from, and he was utterly unsurprised to see Kaya on his other side. Gharia, Ironeyes and the rest had managed to get lost in the crowd already, but he was sure that they’d all reunite later to go through a blow by blow account of each fight that they saw. He didn’t envy whoever had to go out first to fight. The combat was a normal part of everyone’s day by now, but the staring eyes of a whole planet watching your every move and judging you, looking for holes in your defense, that was a new experience that he wasn’t much looking forward to.

Settled a few rows back from the dome, he was surprised to find nobody filling in the seats in front of them. He’d have thought the front rows would have been the most contested, but all around the arena they seemed to be abandoned. “Are people scared the barrier won’t work?”

Bael managed a thin-lipped smile. “The optical manipulation can be a little unsettling from lower down, and when there are many spells in the air, it can become a little tricky to see what is happening.”

“So… no worries about the barrier then?” He was sure the Ardent had taken all due precautions, but he was also very aware of the unbound destructive power that some of the students were capable of unleashing.

“It was never disrupted during my last crucible, nor have I heard of it being disrupted from any of the older, outgoing recruits.” Bael’s eyes were darting around across the red sand of the arena, as if he were already watching a fight in progress. Perhaps he was reliving a memory, or simply excited for the event to begin.

“Do you reckon we should have brought popcorn?” Kaya piped up from the other side.

“It may be considered in poor taste,” Bael opined snidely. “But I do not believe that there is any specific rule against it.”

“Poor taste?” Kaya asked in a confused tone. “You mean all smothered in salty butter?”

Bael wisely chose not to rise to the bait and correct her misunderstanding.

The horn sounded again and all of the chatter that had grown to a deafening hubbub around the arena fell silent. On opposite sides of the arena, the stonework of the walls warped, creating a passage, and from them emerged a dwarf on one end, and a human on the other. Sylvas leaned forward in his seat, trying to focus on each of them. Both wore their ardent uniforms, but the human’s was lined with grey, while the dwarf was wearing the black of their own campus. At this distance, more details were a little hard to parse, which was why it took them all a moment to realize that their contender was Ironeyes.

Kaya seemed to click first. “Is that—”

“Ironeyes, Blackhall, Dwarf, 4^th Circle, Lightning Affinity, Paradigm one; Stormsight. Paradigm two; Conductive Reasoning. Paradigm three; unknown. Paradigm four; unknown. Embodiment one—” Bael began rattling off all the information he’d amassed about their friend in a steady monotone until Kaya hushed him.

“Shut it, elf. They’re starting.”

Both the human and Ironeyes had progressed a short distance out into the arena before bowing politely to one another across the vast expanse between them. For a moment, you could almost hear their breathing, then the first spell fired off.

The human had started casting first, but Ironeyes had honed his spells down to the shortest form imaginable. A bolt of lightning leapt from his hand, snapping across the field faster than the eye could follow, but somehow, not faster than the human could react to. Abandoning her spell, she flung herself aside, rolling back to her feet and resuming casting with a fluidity that Sylvas envied.

“What do we know about her?”

“Nice rack.” Kaya grinned.

Bael cast her a contemptuous glance. “I have limited sources in the Greyhall, but I suspect that this is Bella Shivas, Greyhall, Human, 4^th Circle, Magic Affinity.”

“Magic affinity?” Sylvas repeated back. He supposed it made sense, as it was an element of the universe like any other, but it hadn’t occurred to him that you could have an affinity for raw magic alone.

“Much like our instructor Vaelith.” Bael confirmed. “Though perhaps without her focus on constructs.”

Down in the arena, she’d managed to get a shield up ahead of the next lightning bolt, but the yellowish web of magic that she’d raised didn’t seem up to the task of deflecting it. The electricity arced around the circular shield to scorch the sand around her, and while he couldn’t make out her features at this distance, she’d lost some of the fluidity in her movements and now looked jerky and panicked to Sylvas eye.

Pressing his advantage, Ironeyes marched on towards her, raining down bolts of lightning in rapid succession. Sylvas knew he had more in his repertoire than just that one spell, but the closer to his chest he played his cards, the better his odds would be in later fights in the crucible against those who didn’t know his magic well.

The bolts continued to strike against Bella’s shield, making her stagger and hold her position and her concentration on what was happening in front of her. She swung her arms out wider, and the shield expanded to match, keeping the overflowing lightning from striking her, but still keeping her from firing anything back.

“Doesn’t look like she’s going to last long.” Kaya grunted.

Sylvas was withholding judgement for now. They were just getting warmed up, and while he probably would have gone for a less reactive approach, that didn’t mean that she was out of the fight just yet.

Bael didn’t seem to have an opinion either, but he was frantically scribbling notes on his slate.

With the shield guaranteeing he couldn’t land a hit, Ironeyes stopped the torrent of lightning bolts and switched tactics. Normally this would have been the moment for Belle to drop her shield and try and launch her own offensive, but instead she stepped in closer to her yellow web and heaved, pivoting the shield up into a dome over her. She must have seen a recording of Ironeyes fighting, because as she’d predicted, he called a bolt of lightning straight down on top of her. Usually it came from the sky, but now it arched down from the top of the barrier dome to collide with her own barrier. The reek of ozone washed out over them all, but once the afterimages of the bolt had faded, she was still standing.

Ironeyes had stopped pressing forward. He was at his most effective making use of his spells at a range, so he wasn’t giving up that advantage just because he wanted an easier shot at his opponent. She was casting a second spell while holding the first one still in place, to Sylvas surprise. There was a perfect blackened circle around her where the current shield stood. Then as abruptly as the lightning bolts before, she leapt into motion.

The shield that had been held above her pivoted down and she stepped over the rim to walk into it, her second spell snapped into place behind her, another perfect half-sphere shield, fully encompassing her now in a glowing meshwork of magic. With a twist of her wrists, both sides locked together, and she began to run.

As she started to climb the inside of the sphere, it began to roll forward, returning her to the bottom. The faster she ran, the faster it spun her back down. The massive glowing sphere of magic moved from standing to firing off across the battlefield far faster than anyone could have guessed. Her embodiment must have had something to do with speed.

It closed the distance with Ironeyes so quickly that the dwarf barely had the time to understand what was happening, let alone respond. Even if he flung himself aside, the sphere was big enough that he was liable to be crushed. He launched one last hopeless bolt of lightning at her, and it deflected off to the side.

Sylvas blinked, sure his eyes were deceiving him. The ball rolled right through where Ironeyes had been standing, but the dwarf was gone. There was no way that he could have mustered up the power to cast a teleportation spell at the fourth circle. Not without the luxury of Sylvas’ affinity at least.

The lightning bolt that had deflected off the shield reformed from a crackling mass into a solid dwarf once more. A trick that none of them had ever seen Ironeyes pull before, and one that was paying off massively now. With all that momentum, Belle couldn’t stop her sphere, she went flying onwards towards the now solid wall where Ironeyes had entered. The impact of his lightning hadn’t been enough to shatter her defenses, but all of the force that she’d generated rolling across the arena now smashed into that solid object. The two halves of the spell shattered apart, and through the opening, Ironeyes was ready to deliver a killing blow. The same simple lightning bolt he’d been casting all along slipped between the shattered halves of her shield, striking her between the shoulder blades and dropping her in a single thunderous blow.

Her magic dissipated. The shield sphere coming entirely apart as her body hit the sand, then the horn was blown and the fight was over. Belle lay in the usual dim glow of the Crest’s protection, and Ironeyes stood off in the middle of the ring looking almost confused that it was all over. A cheer went up from in the stands, and Sylvas and Kaya were swept up in it. The first victory of the crucible went to the Blackhall. And more importantly, to their friend. As if realizing that there were other people there for the first time, Ironeyes looked around the cheering crowd and gave an awkward wave. The dwarf may not have been built for stardom, but there was no doubting his effectiveness on the battlefield.

As a medic came out to collect the loser, Ironeyes headed for the exit that had just opened out. Sylvas couldn’t really remember ever seeing the dwarf run before, so it was vaguely comical now to see him sprinting away from the cheering as quickly as he could.

“Good on him.” Kaya nodded firmly as she flopped back into her seat.

Bael met Sylvas gaze, “An interesting maneuver, becoming the lightning.”

Sylvas weighed his next words carefully. “More like flying than teleportation, easy enough to intercept.”

“If one is capable of seizing hold of a lightning bolt, yes.” There was a hint of amusement in Bael’s tone that didn’t make it to his face.

The horn sounded again and Kaya rose to her feet clapping, “here comes the next one! Come on, get ready!”