Chapter 19

“In magic we find the contradiction that proves all rules. Where belief and power are exerted against what we know to be true of the universe, the truth falters. Where mana is shaped and Aion words are spoken, those structures from which the universe are formed can be transcended, bypassed or entirely ignored. Who is the master when a lightning bolt is cast? The electrons agitated into a churn, or the mage directing a bolt of electric death at their foes? The answer should be obvious, the fundamental truths of how forces and particles interact should be consistent regardless of who directs it, but we find this to be untrue. Just as an amateur artist can produce incredible feats of creativity despite ignorance about the materials in use, so too can the master who understands the materials well enough that they can be manipulated to the same effect. Ignorance is not bliss, but it can shape reality just as surely as knowledge. Will and certainty are the defining characteristics. A stubborn belief that the universe works in a certain way, backed up by enough arcane might, becomes the truth. At least within the limited sphere of the mage.

—On Thought Forms, Albrecht Magnus

“Oh what in the glashkaghrahkan did you do to yerself while I was gone?!” The dwarf had returned as promised with the requested materials to find a lot more blood outside of Sylvas than there had been when he’d departed. It was streaming from his nose, his ears, from the open wounds on the palms of his hands, and from the long incisions running alongside his spine.

“Don’t worry about it.” Sylvas’ voice came out in almost a whisper. “This is just part of…fixing the embodiment.”

The dwarf rushed over with gauze in hand to try and staunch the worst of what Sylvas had done. “Hells it is, you’re bleeding everywhere!”

“Better than having slag metal where it shouldn’t be.” Sylvas managed a smile, even as the embodiment spell that he had modified continued its otherwise painful work.

“Don’t think yer the one qualified to make that assessment.” With the worst of the blood scrubbed away, the medic had readied a healing potion to try and stop the bleeding from getting worse, but let out a grunt when he saw there was no more blood coming. Only what had already left.

“Like I said, nothing to worry about.” 

“I…uh, what? How did you…” the dwarf started to say very visibly confused as to what Sylvas had done and how’d managed to do it. But even so, that only lasted for a moment before he roughly shook his head. “Ain’t got the wits or time for this. Dunno how ye fixed yerself, but fixed you are. This enough to sort whatever else you need sortin?”

He held up a bag covered in a variety of medical symbols.

Sylvas extended his senses in the direction of the pouch and felt the gravitational vibration of the various materials, eventually nodding. “Perfect, thank you.”

“Good, then I’m gone.” He said before leaving so fast that Sylvas wasn’t sure if he’d used magic to do so.

Shrugging at the departure, Sylvas didn’t waste any time in turning his attention back to work, knowing full well how much he still had left to do. Absorbing the metal and crystal into himself through his stomach had been enough to get the ball rolling, but now that he’d had success with replicating his staff, he felt he was ready increase his pace. As it was, even if he had all day and all the materials he needed, he still wouldn’t be able to come close to finishing the new embodiment, not that doing so would be all that useful without his matching Paradigm to accompany it. 

Still, an hour saved now is an hour I can use later, he thought while pressing a rod of gleaming metal against his arm and weaving another quick cast of the embodiment spell. In a blink the rod crumbled apart as it flowed into his arm, it staining his skin sooty and black as it passed through. At least for a short while until there was only a silvery sheen left behind, everything the rod had contained dispersed to where he wanted it to go. 

A moment later, the bones of his hands and arms found their fractures filled, and then the bone itself began to change and harden into something more substantial. Everywhere that he had broken himself, he now made himself stronger. Harder. More difficult to ever hurt again. Just as he’d taken the shattered remains of his psyche and made it into something new and dangerous, now he was doing the same with his body. Making himself more than whole again. Remaking himself to his own design.

The next time he was disturbed from his work, it wasn’t by a medic, or anything external. The message on his slate, alerting him that he had five minutes before his next match was blinking. And because he had now rebuilt a slate to be inside his eye, rather than clipped onto it, he saw it directly in the eye’s vision.

He acknowledged the alert and then opened his eyes, discovering that the world waiting for him appeared strange. The nerves that he was working on were not yet enchanted properly, so the information that usually flooded in so readily came in bursts and sputters. Like static in a signal. When he blinked, his other senses seemed to rush in to fill in for the absent data. A projection of gravity lines stretching from every solid object were painted over the darkness, the glow of colors from his second sight, and even the simple echo of sounds, all gave the world around him form when he had his eyes closed. 

Now that they were open, he could see most things with an acuity that he’d never experienced in his life, the enchantment upon the lens of eyes now fully adjustable under his control. Parts of his vision were blurred, parts masked by glittering particulates of metal floating through his eyes, but the parts that he could see, he could see better than ever before, and the parts that he couldn’t see, his other senses quickly mapped out. 

Truthfully it was a confusing chaotic mess that made him realize how far yet he still had to go. 

That just means I need to find more time to finish it all, he thought with a sigh, knowing how impossible that simple feat would likely prove to be. Once the embodiment was complete, all of this madness would disappear and he would be perfected, or at least as perfected as he could make himself. But for now he would be working at as much of disadvantage with enhanced senses as they otherwise proved to be an advantage.

Checking himself quickly before he left, he was relieved to see that from the outside, he didn’t look so different. His still skin showed an odd sheen or shimmer here and there, the places where the underlying spell forms where still working on his body, but he didn’t think it was so stark that people would delve too deeply into it. 

For now at least, he could continue deflecting questions about it, or perhaps simply say it was a natural thing amongst his branch of humanity. It wasn’t like someone was about to hunt down one of the few Croesians still remaining to check if he was telling the truth. That and the fact that nobody questioned the changes that mages underwent as they started to reach the later circles, he certainly hadn’t heard any comments about Fahred’s appearance and watery halo around his head. Change was simply the nature of mages. 

Slipping carefully off the slab and onto his feet, there was a moment of instability before his balance kicked in. There had been too many changes for his body to get used to everything he’d done today, as such he was having to divide far too much of his attention to pay attention to things that would have otherwise been automatic. Things such as breathing, bending, and walking. The changes to his body had not yet been reflected in his mind, and until they were, he’d have to be extra careful how much speed and strength he applied to any of his movements.

Fortunately the one thing he didn’t need to worry about were his mana channels, which he’d taken the pains to reinforce with the powered crystal he’d been consuming. It had the mana feeling smooth he cycled through his body, flowing into and out of his core without much as a tithe of resistance. Yet as easy as it was, he cast nothing as he walked to where he needed to be for his match, just letting the once-sluggish gravity mana fill his channels and flow out around him in a steady stream. Everything was working with his body as he’d planned it. 

Now he just had to see how far he could push it.

Blinking hard against the sudden light of the stars above, Sylvas stepped back out into the arena with a roar of applause rising up, not just from his own campus, as he’d quietly hoped, but from all around him. There had obviously been some doubt about whether he’d be out of the competition after that lightning strike. He looked around and despite there being no good reason for it, he found himself smiling. Whatever else happened in his life, he’d be able to remember this moment. An arena of people calling his name, just because he took the field and was willing to fight.

One person in the arena did not look so pleased to see him. Sylvas vaguely recognized her as one of the hangers on from Malachai’s clique, one that had been eliminated before he encountered her up on the Mournhold. He wasn’t familiar with her affinity, her spells, or anything else that might help. He was going into this fight blind.

It was all very well saying that he was the strongest contender from the Blackhall, just as Malachai was the strongest from the Whitehall, but such abstracts didn’t hold up in the face of reality. She knew him, knew everything that he had done on the Mournhold, everything that he was capable of. She’d had plenty of time to come up with a solution to the magic he’d shown off before, and even the newer manipulations of magic that he’d used to beat Ironeyes earlier. His part-built embodiment was a minor edge, but the more he revealed of what it did for him, the more likely it was that would be exploited later. Fighting as a mage was always about restraint. Holding back as much mana as possible so that the opponent couldn’t outlast you. Casting only what you had to, not what you could.

At about half way to his opponent, he stopped walking and allowed himself to become aware of everything around him. He let all of his senses speak, and all of the parts of himself that he’d shut down in an act of self-preservation in the midst of the last fight come back to life. Immediately he felt the weight of his new body pulling down at him and had to adjust his personal gravity. That was a side effect he really should have considered. There was also the matter of balance. The bag of holding slung on his left side, holding his orbitals, was usually balanced by the staff in his right hand. It was a minute adjustment, making one side a little lighter than the other, but still necessary. Once he felt sure on his feet and as confident as he was liable to get, he bowed.

The woman across the sand from him returned the courtesy with a smile that it was difficult not to read as cruel. She obviously believed that she had some advantage over him, giving her that confidence. He’d assumed that she’d have some trick up her sleeve, given that she was a trainee of the Ardent, but she’d just given away that she intended to trigger whatever trap it was immediately. She took off running as she rose from her bow, and Sylvas matched her, sprinting off in the opposite direction so that they circled the point between them. She was already casting as she went, and he spoke his own spells just as swiftly. Throwing up a Gravity Shear between them before whatever she meant to trigger could go off, and readying himself to dodge anything that might have come at him from any other angle.

When she cast, fire leapt from her hands, burning first red as it burst from her, then blue and then vanishing from sight altogether. Only the dim light of Strife’s night let him make out the vague shape of the burning bar being cast straight at him. A ripple of heat more than a beam of white. Despite the shield between them, he felt uneasy. She was still smiling over there. He flung himself aside as the invisible ray punched through his shield as though it weren’t there. If he hadn’t he would have been reduced to molten slag in much the same way that the wall behind him was before the beam struck the shield dome enclosing them.

She was a fire mage, but somehow she’d worked out a way to raise the heat of her spells so high that they became pure heat instead of any physical object. Gravity could pull flames aside as easily as stone, light or anything else, but that pure heat was beyond its ability to deflect. The beam had warped a little off course as it passed through, but it was so minimal a redirection that it didn’t matter, particularly when the spell was wide enough to have encompassed his whole body with a direct hit. The only saving grace was that it clearly took a toll on her reserves. If he could stay out of the line of fire, he could outlast her.

Letting the Shear fall, since it served no useful purpose, Sylvas stood his ground, readying his own return volley and keeping watch for the next attack. The orbitals jostled in his bag, but he left them where they were. Flinging them out was just going to result in him having a sack of molten metal to carry home after they fighting was done.

He twisted his wrist just as her spell went off again, and it was only that lucky timing that saved him. She was launched up into the air and the beam passed over his head to strike the dome. Even through its protection, he could see the crowd scampering back to higher ground. He could feel the scorching heat radiating down on him from the beam even if it hadn’t touched him, his hair had crispened, just from a near miss. She could redirect the beam as it was being cast. As she was jerked up into the sky by his Inversion she had flicked her wrist and it had swept sideways. Dodging around it was not going to be an easy proposition without flight.

Simple trigonometry came into play. If he was closer to her, the distance he’d have to dodge would be lessened. He sprinted forward towards where the Inversion spell held, and at the same moment as he released it, he began part-casting spells. Snapping off fragments of his psyche to hold them as he went. She fell the distance back to the sand without any sign of injury or upheaval. Landing with a catlike grace on barely bent knees. Some sort of physical enhancement there. Another advantage she had to help get her sweeping beams of radiant death closer to her target. He couldn’t rely on being faster than her.

She cast again. This time without any fear or hesitation. He was running straight at her and she swept her beam from her left to her right, obliterating everything in front of her in one furious roar of heat. The crowds fell silent as the shimmering afterimages of the bar vanished and the smear of sand beneath turned to glass. 

Sylvas was gone.