Chapter 28

“Darkness is not all that blinds. Those so obsessed with their own moral superiority overlook that their conscience is a shackle keeping them from greatness. More importantly, it is a shackle that renders them inherently immoral. If you care more for the manner in which lives are saved than actually saving those lives, you are a coward.”

—The Necessity, Valtoris Blackstar

As there were fewer contestants to get through, the gap between each recruit’s matches seemed to be stretching out to give them more recovery time, but without any injuries, all that Sylvas really had to do was keep on cycling his mana the way that he did constantly. It had become like breathing at this point, completely habit unless he concentrated on it too much. By the time he was back in the stands to watch Malachai’s match, he was back in prime condition.

Malachai predictably destroyed the next mage that he was up against. Death affinity spells could penetrate through most other elemental defenses, even Sylvas own Gravity Shear would be mostly ineffective against direct attacks like Malachai was showing off now. As for Malachai himself, he seemed to be mostly bored with proceedings. Hungry for a challenge that he just wasn’t finding. His affinity gave him a natural advantage in most fights, even if he hadn’t trained as hard as Sylvas had and optimized his abilities. But to be fair with the combination of his natural affinity and his talents, nobody was coming close to scratching him. 

If he was frustrated, he certainly wasn’t letting it show, but Sylvas supposed that this was the position that the prince had been in the whole time he was training, so far ahead of his peers that it felt like he’d never have a challenge at all. If he was going to give in to frustration, he would have done so long ago.

Sylvas wondered how he could maintain his cool, despite the obvious drive inside him, but eventually just put it down to his upbringing. On his own world, Sylvas had some minor dealings with the nobility, particularly those funding the Heralds, and they’d always presented the same polite lack of expression that the elves seemed to favor. Mira had once explained it as some facet of their training as children. Displays of emotion of any kind were considered uncouth.

As he entered the arena again, he was immediately accosted by a shrill whine so high pitched that it set his teeth rattling. It didn’t take more than a fraction of a moment to realize who he was up against. Vel, the fiend with the sonic affinity who’d once been part of Bael and Hammerheart’s little consortium. Before anything else, he dumped as much weight and mass into his eardrums as he could without knocking himself over. They’d be too solid for him to hear a thing. A deathly silence fell over the arena, a silence that he alone could enjoy as everyone in the stands clapped their hands to their ears.

She launched a blast at him that ran the full length of the arena, throwing up a cloud of dust. Even throwing himself aside, he still got caught by the edge of it, was flung back and battered off the wall. With his unenchanted body, that might have been the end of the fight, all the air knocked out of him, all his bones broken. But he was quite literally made of stronger stuff now. He was back up and running before she let out her next scream. With enough time to think, he was able to cast a Gravity Shear, it bloomed out in front of him, between him and the sonic blast, and it did nothing. The sound carried on right through it, thumping into him and smashing him off the wall again, pinning him there, the way he’d pinned Gert earlier.

Finally someone who can give you the telling off that you really need.

Both his flesh and bones vibrated with the force being exerted on him, and as she continued her advance, it only grew worse. She wasn’t even casting, this was just a focused application of whatever embodiment she had taken on that let her unleash her terrible banshee screams. In none of her previous bouts had she shown any capability like this, it was a card she’d kept close to her chest, saved just for him.

The more time she had him pinned, the less likely it was he’d ever break free. He poured weight and mass out through the rest of his body, both to toughen it against her, and hoping that it might eventually weigh enough that he’d slide back down to the ground and be able to get some traction, but even as he piled on more and more weight, she applied more and more force by getting closer. If he hadn’t been growing denser, he was certainly that his flesh would have started peeling away.

His body wasn’t moving, and he couldn’t cast, but that didn’t leave him helpless. The usual clean deployment of his orbitals was more of a pathetic crawl as they were pinned to the wall alongside him as they came out of his satchel, but one by one, they began to roll along until they were outside of the directed stream of sound. The moment they were, he launched them at Vel.

She was still only halfway to him, the orbitals had a long way to go, but she couldn’t turn her head if she wanted to keep him pinned, and she certainly couldn’t stop to cast something. In rapid succession, the buckshot of orbitals plowed into her. At this distance, it was hardly precise, but wherever they hit, it knocked the wind out of her. The endless stream of noise stopped. Sylvas dropped to his feet like an anvil falling from a tower.

Bravo, you brutalized her by throwing rocks, feeling proud of yourself?

Shedding weight as he went, Sylvas flew forward as fast as the orbitals had, closing the remaining distance while Vel was still staggered. She turned her face towards him as he closed, still gasping desperately for air, and letting out only the tinniest vibrations that had no hope of pushing him back. Blood stained her uniform. He was so used to fighting mages with enhanced bodies that he’d forgotten that hitting someone with an orbital moving at speed could actually kill. Still, he didn’t hesitate, spinning in the air to deliver a heel to her temple that knocked her out cold.

This time he didn’t hear the horn sound, it would take a moment longer for his ears to mend themselves, but he knew the fight was over.

From there, the time between bouts became hazier and hazier to follow. He remembered returning to the Blackhall, creating the artifact he meant to tether his new mind to and taking it to the medical wing for the medic to safely implant within his skull.  But the finer details past that were as good as gone. Who he saw along the way, the act of moving around, eating, talking, they all faded in significance, turning almost grey and grainy in his mind. It wasn’t exhaustion, and it wasn’t some failure of his eidetic memory, he could choose to replay any moment he selected. Rather it was the Paradigm he was building. He had portioned off so much of himself now that his day to day life didn’t feel real. The only time he came alive was in the arena, when everything had to slot back together and work at full capacity or he’d be in danger.

Instead of sleeping, he spent the night making the transfer, dumping the copy of himself that he’d made into the artifact he’d and the medic had built. It had to be done fast, all in one continuous motion, but considering how many parts were in that motion, it was no surprise that the sun had set again by the time it was completed.

His fourth circle was inches to completion. All that was left was to feed mana into his new Paradigm to help balance it and then finally cast the spell that would complete his embodiment. Everything needed just a bit more time to coalesce into a new whole. But for now, he would have to make do with only half of his mind and his body as it was. The only small comfort was that the ghost of Mira seemed to have quieted, giving him some measure of peace at last. The hallucinations brought on by the process of making the Paradigm were finally over. He wondered if it would be permanent, and if he should he should have said goodbye. 

After all he’d never had the chance to say goodbye to the real Mira.

The looming walls of the arena seemed to jump up out of the red sands as if from nowhere so quickly that Sylvas couldn’t even remember how he had gotten there. He could only hope that everything would work once he was in the actual arena. Then the next thing he knew he was in the stands for a brief moment, seeing Kaya shouting and laughing, then just as quickly he was in one of the waiting rooms. He was looking at his hands as they tied his boots, as he readied himself to fight without any idea of who he was fighting, or how well he’d be able to bring his magic to bear in its current stunted state. Soon enough, he stepped out onto the sands and released his orbitals. They still worked fine, just as his mind did.

With a level of deliberate effort that he didn’t care for, he looked around, at the people beyond the dome, at the white jacketed figure emerging into the light on the far side of the arena. Then all he saw was a blinding flash.

He blinked repeatedly, trying to clear his vision, but it wasn’t working. Why is everything so white? Why can’t I see?

Because you’ve been blinded, you blithering imbecile.

“What?”

Something scorched his shoulder, an almost unfelt impact, followed by a sizzle of pain he didn’t have the wherewithal to block out. I’m blind? How did someone blind me?

Another impact took his leg out from under him and he collapsed into the sand. He could feel it through the palms of his hands. He could taste the metallic tang of it on the air.

Get up.

How can I fight if I can’t see? He lumbered back to his feet anyway, arms outstretched.

Use your other senses, obviously.

He listened and could hear only the distant crowd’s muffled murmurs. He sniffed at the air, cautiously. There was no hint of whoever had done this to him. The only way he knew that they were still in front of him was that the barrage of spells eating into him was coming from that direction. Oh, my gravity sense.

Yes, finally. How did you ever survive without me?

“My mind was my own then.” Sylvas grumbled as more awareness finally came back to him and he reached out with his gravity senses. A second later the whole arena was overlaid across the blank white that was all his eyes could see. It was like a sketchbook of solid objects being effected by gravity, lines tracing down towards the center of the planet. There was one thing in motion in the whole arena. One shape moving from side to side, weaving back and forth in front of him. The spells that it was casting had none of the mass that would be required for him to perceive them or dodge them, but the mage was real. Solid.

He formed his fingers into a hooked claw and levelled his palm at his enemy, then he cast Gravity Spike. He could see his own spell more clearly than anything else in the arena, that condensed ball of gravity soon to be unleashed, and while it missed its target, he had a clearer view of the other mage than ever before when it detonate off to one side of her. Hair whipped around her face, her frame was outlined as the Spike pulled her towards it, from the height and the hair and the build, he finally put together who he was facing.

It’s Luna from your own team. Human, light affinity. That’s how she blinded you, that’s what she’d battering you with now. Beams of concentrated light.

His mind had been so sluggish to begin with, but it finally felt like it was in motion again, the fragments of it that he had not torn loose permanently to make his Second Thoughts paradigm were filling out the space that the other parts had once occupied. He had half as many fragments at his disposal now, but they would each grow to the same capacity that his old mind had with time. This was not a permanent loss, only a passing delay. He could think a little more clearly now, clearly enough to curse under his breath that Mira was back, again.

I know you’d get lonely without me darling. Perhaps you should try moving instead of standing still to be blasted apart?

Still grumbling, he took the advice, launching himself to the side so that the next barrage of light-beams shot past him harmlessly. His body had taken a fair bit of damage before he got his head back into working order, there were burnt holes perforating all the way to the bone in a few places, but he didn’t let it dissuade him from what he had to do.

He cast Inversion. Not trying to give it any focus, just flipping gravity in the area he sensed Luna to be. It ruined his ability to see her with his gravity senses, but he knew from the sudden stop in her relentless assault that it had flung her up into the air. When she hit against the barrier, he heard it, just the faintest echo of the usual plinking noise it made when a spell went awry, and then he let her drop all over again.

Without his eyes, he would struggle to land a blow with any focused spell, or even with his orbitals, but he didn’t need to see to win this fight. She hit the ground hard, and there was a brief moment of silence as Sylvas waited for the horn, but when it didn’t sound, he set to casting Inversion all over again.

Luna made it back up to her feet, but her movements had lost all their grace now, if something wasn’t broken, she was at least bruised enough that she couldn’t run. That made it so much easier to catch her in the next Inversion, launch her up to smash against the dome, and then drop her again.

In the end it took four journeys up and down, up and down, until she finally landed on her head and was knocked out of the fighting. It took the healers longer to get Sylvas’ his vision back than it had to win without it.

Good boy, you did it.