Chapter 32

“Join the Ardent! The bonds of fellowship that you’ll form will last you a lifetime. Shame that lifetime will only be a few short years of active service before they’re all turned to paste.”

—Washout: Reject of the Ardent, Anonymous

Sylvas passed the bottle back to Kaya as the suns rose. “Vlashgahr still tastes awful.”

“It’s… an acquired taste.” She conceded, before gulping another mouthful and making a wheezing sound.

“What if I don’t want to acquire it? What if I want to acquire literally any taste other than vlashgahr?” He accepted the bottle as it was handed back and did his duty, knocking it back. He didn’t make a wheeze so much as a full body shudder every time he drank some. Which typically led to Kaya chuckling so hard she started coughing again. So she’d take a drink to make it stop. It was a vicious cycle.

Speaking as an entity that exists solely in your brain, I’d have to say that destroying more brain-cells is probably a bad move on your part. Then again, perhaps being stupid might make you happier, it may be worth the tradeoff.

“You say that now, but in a couple years, it’ll be all you drink.”

“If I drink this for a couple of years,” He shuddered again. “I don’t think I’ll make it.”

“You did alright today.” She finally conceded, after taking another long pull on the bottle.

“You too.” He smiled. “That trick with the handshake.”

“Well I wasn’t going to be hitting you unless I could get you close enough to hit.” She shrugged. “Besides, it was you that decided to stick around after burning your hand off.”

“It wasn’t burnt off, it was, erm, well, there was some minor…” He trailed off. And drank again.

“You know you’re not helping those ‘crush on the medic’ rumors floating around, right?” She eventually said when he handed the bottle back.

“I do not have any romantic intentions towards her.” Sylvas replied just a little too fast.

Kaya chuckled, “yeah, of course not. You wouldn’t notice until she was on your lap. Same as with Gharia.”

He pointed at her with the neck of the bottle. “That was… there were cross-cultural… I’m an idiot, aren’t I?”

“Yup.” Kaya nodded vigorously.

In most matters, certainly.

The three of them sat in silence for a while after that, before finally Kaya had swallowed enough courage. “Why?”

He spread his arms to try and encompass all the infinite variety of things she could be talking about. “Why what?”

“The metal, the crystal, all the other things you’re filling yourself with.” She banged the bottle off her knee and there was a clang. “I’ve got these because I had to. But you, you didn’t have to do that to yourself.”

Sylvas paused, trying to put his thoughts into words. Everything in his embodiment and paradigm had seemed perfect, exactly what he needed to advance but now that he was having to justify his choices, it became more difficult. “My body, as it was, wasn’t enough. It couldn’t keep up with what I want to be.”

She was staring at him. “So you just cut bits of yourself off?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that, but no, I added to them,” he explained as gently as he could. “If I didn’t…well, at some point, I don’t think I’d be able to handle my magic anymore. And when that finally happened, well, that would be that.”

They passed the bottle back and forth a couple more times, and Mira was quiet enough that Sylvas did briefly wonder if he was doing himself permanent brain damage.

Eventually, Kaya managed to pull her thoughts together through the fog of vlashgahr. “My legs, my arm. They’re stronger than my old ones, but… I’d rather have them.”

Sylvas put his arm around her shoulders. “I know.”

“I hate them.” 

Kaya almost never spoke softly. She said everything with her full chest, damning the consequences, so when he took that whisper with all due seriousness. 

“I know.”

She shoved at him with her shoulder. “And still—”

“I’m not you, Kaya.” That came out far harsher than Sylvas had meant at first, and he quickly adjusted. “What I want and what you want, who we are, we’re different. So sometimes the things that are bad for you are good for me.”

She nodded. “And sometimes what’s good for me is bad for you.”

“Like vlashgahr.” 

That earned him a chuckle. “You really can’t hold your liquor, can you?”

“And I thought I was the infamous devil drinker…”

She shoved him away from her and he toppled over onto his side helplessly. Then she poked him. “I had to say something impressive so they’d take you serious.”

He chuckled from the fetal position he’d curled into to avoid more poking. “Didn’t realize you were in public relations.”

“You’re kin.” She said without any hesitation. “Had to make sure everyone else knew it too.”

He snorted, and cautiously uncurled. “I’m pretty sure they would have worked it out when we spent every waking moment together.”

“Had to make sure they knew you were important.” She drained the last of the bottle.

“I…” Sylvas trailed off again. Too much vlashgahr had a way of derailing trains of thought. “Thanks?”

“Don’t need to do it any more… not now that you’re all shiny.” She snorted.

They sat there in the warm glow of dawn for a little longer before Sylvas realized that she was snoring and took her up to her room. His head was still spinning from everything that had happened in the last day, assisted ably by enough liquor to pickle a small animal. He settled himself in bed, expecting to immediately pass out, only to realize that he was still too agitated to rest.

Shall I sing you a little lullaby, darling?

“Shut up, Mira.” He mumbled, pulling the covers up over his face.

What was that song your mother used to sing you? Oh yes, you can’t remember. 

He pulled the pillow up around his ears as if that might block her out. “Shut up, Mira.”

You’ll be in the final tomorrow. Facing off with your little princeling again. Are you feeling a little nervous, perhaps? Since you only managed to beat him last time on a technicality?

He rolled his eyes in the darkness. “I might lose in the first match.”

We both know that you won’t. There’s nobody left that can contend with you, except for him.

“I’ll definitely lose if you keep me up.” He snipped at her.

Quite right. Sleep tight. Don’t let the eidolons bite.

There were many functions that Sylvas could not have foreseen that Mira, his Second Thoughts Paradigm and secondary brain, could perform. Flicking some internal switch to flood his brain with chemicals that put him into a deep sleep was one of them.

He woke feeling well rested for the first time that he could remember. The nightmares that had plagued him ever since he left his home world were nowhere to be found, and the aches and pains of overwork on his newly improved body had faded away. 

It was also approximately two minutes until he had to be downstairs and ready to leave. Mira had somehow switched off his usual alarms.

There is no ‘somehow’ about it, you have a slate embedded in your eye, and therefore I have access to it. It isn’t my fault you never worked out how to interface your mind with it directly.

He rolled to the side of the bed and grabbed for his uniform and boots. “Why did you—” 

Because you can teleport directly to the arena yourself with scarcely any effort thanks to the sensory data I have collated from your gravity sensitivity. The full formula for the jump is available for you to check over if you elect not to trust me, but given that I am essentially you, it would likely say something very dire about your psyche.

He paused in his frantic dressing. “So—” 

Breakfast, mana cycling, and then we cast that nasty spell to complete your embodiment. I can work on the paradigm as we go about the day, but it is almost all in alignment. And your match isn’t scheduled for another hour, so you can take your time getting dressed, no point falling over while trying to get a sock on in a hurry.

“Once.” He begrudgingly sat down to pull on his socks. “That happened once.”

Ah but you do remember it so acutely, don’t you darling. It might as well have been yesterday.

“I remember everything acutely,” He felt a little stupid talking to himself, but not stupid enough to stop. “I have an eidetic memory.”

Which I’ll admit has made it very easy for me to get up to speed on all your comings and goings and doings and readings, the latter of which grossly outweigh all the others combined, you truly do need to get a social life, or a hobby involving other people.

He ignored her, dressed himself, went down for breakfast alone in the silent building and then, with no interruptions, began reviewing the Runeweave embodiment that he’d been so painstakingly building. It was just as Mira had said. The formation spell had finished integrating the last of the materials his body bad needed, and now it was just a matter of putting on the finishing touches. Almost every system of his body now had either metal or crystal woven through it, not only reinforcing what was already there, but laying the groundwork for the future improvement of every aspect of him. 

All that was left at this point was the final detail that gave the embodiment its namesake. Yet before he took that final, irreversible leap, he carefully checked over the mana crystals that he’d inserted into his body, needing to verify their integrity after all the beatings he’d taken recently in the arena. Once a part of his gauntlet, the crystals were no longer just contained to his arm, instead having been spread out throughout his body to minimize the risk of them all being taken out in a single blast as they had been during his senseless fight with the Eidolons. More than just that, he future proofed the entire concept, creating potential connection points in a few other suitable locations in his soft tissue so that when he acquired crystals attuned to the other affinities, he’d be able to implant them with minimal effort. 

For once he cast the final forming spell, his Runeweave embodiment would effectively lock itself in place, and would lose its current protean state. As such implanting any new crystals would be a more complicated surgical procedure rather than the comparatively more simple one it was now. Even so however, it was one that he could easily manage with a trip to a well-equipped medical wing, such as the one found at the Blackhall. Fortunately there were no problems to find amongst the embedded gems, each of them were whole, hale, and bereft as so much as a single imperfection. 

He was clear to proceed.

Well, here goes…everything, I guess, Sylvas then took a deep breath and prepared the Runeweave spell, fragmenting his mind again and again and again, each of them with their own set of instructions, their own schemas to follow. Then, once he was at his limit, he fell into Clearmind and spoke the final word need to send everything into motion.

If it wasn’t for the paradigm shielding him from the agony that followed afterwards, he was certain that he would have blacked out right then and there, simply falling over until someone found him. But with its aid, he was able to watch from a detached perspective as hundreds, no thousands, of tiny runes etched themselves all throughout his body, covering his crystal and metal reinforced bones, muscles, blood vessels, and nerves. 

Appearing all at once, so that there was no chance for any magical imbalance, the runes all but promptly flared into effect as the ambient environmental mana charged them, filling Sylvas with an incredible rush of sensations. He felt his lungs fill with seemingly endless air. He felt his his heartrate slow at the same time that he beats became more power. He felt his muscles tense as a newfound strength surge through them. He felt his bones harden as they drank in the latent power of the earth mana around him. He felt a thousand other things as they rushed through his mind almost too fast for even him to follow, the surge eventually cumulating in one single overwhelming emotion.

Wholeness.

 It was as if before this moment he had been countless separate pieces all thrown together, somehow clumsily finding a way to function. But as the Runeweave embodiment finished forming, everything snapped into place all at once.

Wow, I knew it was going to be something, but… He thought as the nigh overwhelming sensation started to level off. Starting from when he had first started, Sylvas had already been impressed with the forces that his initially enhanced body could tolerate, but now that the runes were active, now that they hardened and strengthened all that there was about him, there was simply no comparison. He felt strong, powerful, indomitable. 

A fact that he relished, given that he’d be fighting for his life in just a few minutes when his next match began. 

Rising to his feet now wasn’t a series of mechanical operations involving his legs and muscles, rather it was now a whole body flow. Lifting off from the ground wasn’t a process of seizing control of the gravity mana inside his body, it was just natural thing. He’d been able to fly since almost his first day on Strife, but now it came to him the same way breathing did. It was so much in fact, that if he’d realized, truly realized, how much his perception of his sense of self was going to change with the completion of his embodiment, he probably would have waited until after the tournament.

No you wouldn’t have. Not with how close you are to reaching the Fourth Circle, Mira’s voice echoed in his mind. You would have done exactly this.

Sylvas paused for a second at the intrusive thought, before eventually nodding in agreement with it. Yes, yes I suppose would have.

I know you just as well as you know yourself, Sylvas, came the reply, Mira’s tone then shifting as he continued. It is almost time.

Sylvas paused for a moment to check, it was indeed almost time. Almost time to end this. To prove to everyone that he was worthy of the title of Ardent. To prove that he deserved his place among the best that there ever was.