Chapter 7

“Much has been said of the Eidolon. Much speculation has been made to its purpose in the universal order. Its fundamental nature. What will drives them to do as they do. I say to you this, of the Eidolon. It does not matter. It does not matter why they exist. It does not matter what they might want. It does not matter what they do. So far as we are concerned, the only thing that matters about an Eidolon is that they can be killed. And it’s from that single point that we find our safety.”

—Account of the First Ardent: Volume One

For the remainder of the day, Sylvas was seething. He alone had nowhere to be and nothing to do on an entire planet run to a strict military schedule, and the absence of anything that he was meant to be doing left his mind free to focus on seething even more. He knew that he could push the anger away and cover it over with his paradigms. He knew that he could use this time to get on with figuring out exactly what Vaelith had told him to. He had collected his lost gear and reattuned it to his mana after making a graceful descent from atop the tower, but now the things that would usually bring him comfort stung him.

Reading worked, in the sense that information was still flowing into his brain through his eye-piece, but he was too angry to actually integrate any of it. Working on his enchantments would have been a useful way to spend the spare time too, since he was still in the process of connecting up his orbitals with the gauntlet for the full effect he intended them to have in tandem, going back and forth from texts to inscriptions and back to maximize the flow of mana from one to the other. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t spend his time tinkering with the things that brought him joy, knowing that Vaelith – who had championed him from the very beginning of his career in the Ardent – was out there thinking that he had abandoned his ascension and was wasting his time. He knew that both reading and enchanting were going to be vital to his progression. He was shaping his progression around them, in fact. Yet her words and the thinly concealed contempt on her face as she spoke them burned him.

Chul was out of commission for the day, doing her actual job, so there was no possibility of working out his frustrations that way, but he took off at a run around the campus all the same, trying to push his body to the limit so that his brain would be forced to shut up.

Just because he wasn’t drive his way through the circles, she thought that he’d given up. That he was wasting his potential. A potential so great that she thought he could beat her. Apparently all it would take was one more circle and he’d be her match. That was the carrot that she was dangling in front of him to drive him on, making him sprint right off the cliff edge. But even so, he knew her all too well by now, if he made it to the finish line, it would be moved, the parameters would be changed, Vaelith would reveal that she’d been holding back half of her capabilities all along and wipe the floor with him all over again.

Mana wasn’t a factor. Sylvas thought with a shake of his head as he needled at the issue. The problem was that he hadn’t been able to predict what she was doing fast enough to deal with it. He hadn’t guessed that she would catch on to his ambush and protect herself. That was normal. That was only human. More mana wouldn’t have helped him fix it.

Bael wouldn’t have fallen into the trap. He would have kept his distance, analyzed things, realized that the mana floes around her were being distorted by the armor she’d conjured. Kaya would have fallen right into the trap, but she would have been strong enough to punch through it. A dervish of steel cutting down all of Vaelith’s tricks.

But they weren’t with him. This wasn’t a team exercise. The tournament wouldn’t be either. It would be him, alone, with all of his flaws and nothing of them to save him from his own stupid mistakes. In hindsight, he shouldn’t have gambled on a knock out blow. Vaelith was right about that. He should have kept his distance, picked at her until he got through her defenses. Gaining mobility from his spells didn’t work well enough in this pace of fighting. Gaining mobility from his orbitals didn’t work when they could be taken out of action so easily.

Kicking off the ground, he shed his weight, soaring over the line of recruits marching from the temple to the underground complex for their dinner. It worked, but it left him helpless in the air, unable to change direction without outside intervention. Being able to control the mana in his orbitals and his staff and move them around was all well and good, but when it was just him, alone, he couldn’t make himself soar like a bird. He could only make himself a sitting duck.

Drawing weight back to him, he hit the ground in a heavy roll and then was back on his feet running. If worst came to worst, he could always keep on going until he was exhausted enough to pass out when the end of the day came around. He certainly wasn’t in the mood to socialize tonight, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to be good company. Kaya was forgiving of any amount of snappiness from him, but the others would lose patience soon enough if he kept on being prickly. Everyone could tolerate him being better than them so long as he always acted like he was one of their buddies, but the moment that he stopped with the endless mind-numbing rituals of courtesy they’d turn on him. He knew it.

The frustration with Vaelith had taken him back to the orphanage, but the time spent with the other recruits, all smiling faces and knives behind their backs, that reminded him of the tower, of the heralds. They’d all acted like his friend back then to, but the moment he grew too fast, became too powerful, a wall had gone up. He was closed off from all of them entirely. The politeness that had once been their point of interface became a shield, keeping him away. The only one that had ever cared enough to cast aside politeness had been Mira and look what that had gotten her. Front row seats to the death of the planet.

Running wasn’t enough anymore. He had to hit something. To cast. To fight. Punching Vaelith in the face would have been his first and favorite choice, but he knew that if he went to her so soon it would only end in her kicking his ass all across the campus again. He was practically growling as he spoke the words of his flying spell and leapt, stripping away all weight, soaring straight up. He couldn’t cast while it was in effect. Couldn’t do anything worthwhile. But it would let him rise. It would let him fly up and up into the star-spotted sky, far from Vaelith, from Farhed, from the campus. Far from everyone just waiting to abandon or betray him. Up here, above it all, he was alone.

Still he continued to rise. The wind grew cold, then colder still. Breathing became harder as the air thinned. He had never flown so high but he had to get away. He had to go somewhere that all of the frustration of life down below couldn’t reach him.

At some point he had left the protective bubble of the wards around the Blackhall, and now he was vulnerable to whatever eidolons still lurked among the clouds, but he’d welcome their attack about now. At least they were something he could fix. A problem he could solve. Casting his gaze out across the barren expanse of Strife, he thought he could make out the lights of the other campuses and the caldera arena where he’d soon be forced to brutalize his fellow students for another little tick beside his name. Another report of adequate performance.

Letting the flying spell end, he dropped. 

He was falling from a far greater height than he had from the tower back on Croesia, the first time that he’d faced his own inevitable death, but there was no fear in him now. Not because the ground rushing up at him was any less capable of shattering him, not because he knew that someone would scrape him up and carry him to the medic for another quick fix and long lecture, but because he had conquered this death. In an instant he could strip himself of all weight and land delicately. He could recast his spell of flight. He could even pull his staff out of cold storage and use his control over the mana within it to halt his fall. He had become powerful. Powerful enough that the things that had once filled him with terror couldn’t touch him anymore, and it still was not enough. It would never be enough. No matter what he did he would never be as strong as he needed to be. There would always be something more, out of reach. Some impossibility that they demanded of him.

The ground rushed up, spreading ever wider until it encompassed his whole vision. He was not afraid, but he wasn’t content either. This really was the perfect place for him. The Ardent would never be satisfied no matter how powerful he became or what difficulties he overcame, but neither would he. That was the self-destructive truth that had made him save himself, not any nonsense concern about stabilizing mana bases, or learning how to use his powers. No matter how high he flew, even if he went speeding out into space and suffocated himself, it was never going to be enough for him either.

At the last moment, he stripped away all his weight. He was already speeding down at terminal velocity, so landing hurt, but with his own Embodiment and the assistance of the boots, there wasn’t enough of an impact to do any real damage. He felt the pain jolting up through his legs, up his back, shaking his bones. He could feel the tiny hairline fractures in them that would turn into breaks with a more serious jolt, they ached all over him.

He could visit the infirmary later to endure his lecture and get patched up, but he was in no hurry to make the pain fade right now. That and he was pretty sure that if the half elf medic was to talk down to him like normal while he was in his current mood, he might end up fighting with her as well.

Food, then bed. Sylvas resolved, hoping that he could sleep his thoughts away and start fresh with the dawn. The pain thrummed through him, like he was a harp string being plucked, but he let it. He had endured much worse to become what he was, and he’d endure worse again, without a second thought. The only real question was when he’d succumb to this terrible hunger for power and give in. It was his worst nature, to constantly want more, and it didn’t help that Vaelith wanted to encourage it.

He arrived at the mess in the Blackhall to find only stragglers remaining. Veltrian and a few of her friends were gathered around a table in the corner, and there were a few shell-shocked recruits who’d clearly just returned from the infirmary themselves. One girl flexing a newly regrown hand. Bortan rubbing at the back of his neck in a way that made Sylvas think it had been broken earlier in the day. Nobody was in a chatty mood, and that suited him well. The staff had all retired for the evening, but there was an array of food left out in a buffet style for the late-comers and midnight snackers to help themselves to. It had all seemed so flavorful and rich when Sylvas first arrived here that he felt like it was an endless feast, but having spoken more with other natives of the Empyrean, apparently it was about average, and the actual contents were all carefully engineered to give them the maximum amount of nutrients to help them grow, with special additives, both to give them the flavor that had fooled him, and to suit any specific dietary needs of the myriad different species that attended. With the buffet of food, those nutritional additives for unusual species were all just set at the side in a metal crate to be searched through and sprinkled on.

He served himself out a bowl of nutritional slop that he’d have sworn was a delicious stew, and then dug through the box for what he was looking for. The label clearly showed it wasn’t meant for humans, elves, dwarves, najash or even fiends; who had the capability to digest stuff that Sylvas was pretty sure was entirely inedible. In fact, he hadn’t yet even seen this particular species during his short time in the Empyrean so far, but the cooks of the Ardent were nothing if not prepared. He sprinkled the silvery powder over his food, stirred it through and hoped that he knew what he was doing.

The stew tasted bloody as he ate it, and he had to hope that it wasn’t the additive slicing up the inside of his mouth and adding that flavor. Not that it would have stopped him, of course. It definitely hurt as he swallowed it down, but he took that to be a sign of his body rejecting the poison rather than a clear indication that he was being split open. He forced his way through the whole bowl before heading for his chambers. This was the last gauntlet before he could be alone with his thoughts again. If Kaya was laying in wait… well, he had to hope that she wouldn’t be. He didn’t even know how he would deal with it really. It wasn’t as though there was any level of rudeness that could dissuade her from bothering him incessantly.

To his surprise, it was Bael standing outside his room waiting. The elf looked quite at ease, leaning against a wall and browsing through his slate. His long hair hung loose about his face, which was a stark difference from the way it was usually braided away out of his line of sight, and because of that, it took Sylvas an extra moment to recognize him before he said, “Good evening.”

Sylvas replied, as politely as he could, “Good evening, Bael. You will have to excuse me, I’m not really in the right mood for our usual… repartee.” 

“Nor did I expect you to be after a day spent in training with so vigorous a taskmaster. I simply wished to inform you that I have already composed as complete a list as I can and would appreciate your input when you have the opportunity.”

Bael had a habit of keeping Sylvas off balance long enough to get around whatever mood he happened to be in. This time, intrigue overwhelmed his foul mood for long enough to make him ask, “A list?”

“Of the other competitors in the Crucible, their affinities, their embodiments and paradigms, and what we know of their preferences in terms of spells and combat.”

Sylvas gawked at him for a moment. “How could you have a list of all the competitors when all three campuses are going to be…”

There was a sideways glance and a single-shoulder shrug, as if finding things like this out was a simple matter. “While we were on the Citadel in orbit I found time out of my busy schedule to make contact with some people from each of the other campuses who felt inclined to share what information they had, in exchange for my own.”

Sylvas perfect memory reminded him of Kalisdrothan’s letter, and the way that Bael’s tongue seemed to wag constantly. “You told them all my secrets then?”

“Of course not. I told them a commensurate number of secrets to the value of the information that they in turn were providing to me. I do not expect that they turned on their allies, any more than I would turn on mine. If anything, the information that I’ve provided regarding your abilities is liable to be an advantage rather than detriment to your success in the tournament, given that it will sow some measure of fear into their hearts. If you had an unusual affinity alone, or power alone, you likely would have been a subject of… well let us just say that you would have made a target of yourself to those so inclined as to desire the opportunity to prove themselves. But the combination of affinity, power and shown competence on multiple occasions and across various situations has them somewhat reluctant to engage you. In fact, there have been some murmurs in the Greyhall of a campaign among the students to have you banned from the early rounds of the competition in the interests of fairness.” He saw Sylvas open his mouth with a frown already set on his face. “And no, that was not information traded on the Citadel, that was simply rumor spreading through the usual channels. As a matter of fact, I believe that your confrontation with the Prince on Mournhold likely caused such rumors to be birthed and propagated.”

Having made his way around the elf, Sylvas already had his hand on the handle of his door and was ready to duck inside, but no matter what he was feeling right now, the information that Bael was offering to share with him for nothing was too valuable to ignore. “Thank you for the list. If you send it to my slate, I’ll make whatever additions I can.”

“Then we will of course need to sit down and discuss strategy to address each of our prospective opponents.”

Even though it was the furthest thing from what he was feeling, Sylvas forced a smile. “Of course.”

“Then I bid you good night. May rest mend what Vaelith has taken.” There was a little quirk to the elf’s lip as he said it. Not a smile, never a smile, but the implication that there might have been one. Sylvas blood boiled all over again, but he was able to get into his room and shut the door before it could boil over. Bael probably thought that all that Vaelith had taken from him during their training session was energy, sweat and most likely blood but the truth was so much worse. Vaelith had taken the brief period of respite that he’d carved out. She’d taken his peace.

Feeling sick to his stomach from the additives and the emotional storm that should have been roiling in his mind, or possibly his heart, but seemed to have migrated now to his stomach. Sylvas didn’t even bother to check his messages or prime some reading materials for bed. He stripped out of his gear, flung himself down and waited for exhaustion to carry him off into the night.