“On each relic world Eidolons still roam the wild places. Of course they do. They have nowhere to go, and nothing to do. Their work is complete. They are death, and there is nothing left to kill.”
—Requiem For the Vanished, Luvid Hagen
His slate gave pretty clear instructions, but the maps were all shown on its two-dimensional surface, when the complex of tunnels and chambers inside the cliff-face was extremely three dimensional. There was no clear distinction between the chimneys through the stone that would have ladders and those that were simply bare and dusty rock, so while moving downwards was all too easy, moving up was hit-or-miss all the way. If I could fly, it would have been no problem. If mana infused my muscles, I could have leapt up and rebounded to the floor above without breaking a sweat, but to a mage with no particular enhancements to their body, and no spells to help me move around, just getting to my bunk is a challenge. And it was a bunk, rather than a room.
Despite all of the empty space in this ruin that he’d spent time wandering through to find where they’d sleep at night, his bed was fastened on top of another and lined up in a hallway with countless more. The tunnel was barely wide enough for him and the bed to stand side by side, if one of the lockers in between the bunks was opened then the passage became unusable too. It seemed like it was deliberately designed to make them as claustrophobic and uncomfortable as possible. Perhaps it was. Perhaps these were the conditions that they’d be sleeping in on Ardent ships once their training was done. With his bunk found, Sylvas checked in the locker to find the promised changes of uniform already hanging in place, along with a second pair of boots resting at the bottom that he hadn’t even thought to ask about.
The mess hall was a lot easier to find, if not easier to get to. The whole complex had been built by mages, for mages, so the usual concerns about things like verticality were absent from the design. Stairs and elevators didn’t exist, in part because of the age of the structure they were inhabiting here in the cliffs, but mostly because the people living there didn’t need them.
The punch earlier had been forgotten in the flood of adrenaline that followed, but it ached like a knot in his stomach now as he clambered and climbed his way down chimneys cut into the bare stone. It was just as well that he had woken in the infirmary so early, otherwise he probably would have missed dinner entirely.
He arrived in another pristine white space within the cliffside, with all the dust and crumbling stone held back by plates of that same material the ardent ships seemed to be constructed from. Even with the best efforts of the staff and whatever cleaning spells they had at their disposal, the floor did not remain white, red footprints trailed everywhere about the mess. The same regulation patterned boots. The tables and benches were all sterile planes of metal, devoid of any homey touches. This place was not somewhere to get comfortable. Nowhere on the planet seemed to be. The Ardent could have made it a comfortable place if they had wanted, could have set up filtering fields to keep out the rust-colored dust and built in furnishings to make everyone feel at home, but the intention was for them to be uncomfortable. Comfort would have encouraged them to stay put, when the only path to comfort was ascension, even the lazy could be driven on. Sylvas had seen it all, in his last life, before his world died.
“Oi! Devildrinker!” Kaya bellowed at the top of her lungs, making Sylvas and every other recruit nearby flinch. “Over here!”
Somehow, despite having been here precisely the same length of time as Sylvas, Kaya had already managed to slot herself neatly in amongst the other recruits. She was seated in the middle of one of the benches with others pressed in neatly at her sides. All eyes had turned to Sylvas, of course, with her drawing attention to him, but they soon returned to their conversations, all of which Kaya seemed to be at the heart of. Sylvas had known that she was easy to get along with once you got past the rough edges, but he had no idea that she’d prove to be so… sociable.
He made a detour to the kitchen where a depressed looking elf in a hairnet carefully assembled a tray of food for him, even adding a sprig of some herb on top of the heap of nutritional slop just for the look of it, then headed over to join Kaya. It was with no small amazement that he approached the packed table and saw people slide along the bench to make room for him. Perhaps he would find some camaraderie here after all.
“Why’s she call you that?” A slender fiend girl to his left asked him and for a brief moment, Sylvas flashed back to the memory of a forked tongue tickling along the roof of his mouth.
He blinked the recollection away. “The first time that I met Kaya, it was after a rather poorly considered night out with one of your kinfolk.”
“End up in the infirmary then, too?” The girl had turned back to her dinner with a roll of the eyes.
It was a fair assumption, but it still irritated Sylvas a little. “Well, yes, but just for my physical exam. The fiend that I had gone out with was there—”
“Was still blacked-out.” Kaya cackled from the other side of the table.
There was a moment of hushed silence before something asked. “He outdrank a fiend?”
Sylvas opened his mouth to correct their misunderstanding, but it seemed Kaya was having none of it. “Even showed up to his appointment on time the next morning!”
Sylvas face nearly hit his nutritional slop when the fiend girl slapped him on the back. “Damn boy! If that’s the case, I’ll have to take you out with me next time we get leave.”
There was some laughter, and a sense of general agreement from the rest of the table that they were looking forward to going out drinking with Sylvas, or possibly just looking forward to going out drinking.
By that point, correcting them all would have been even more awkward, so Sylvas just started picking at his dinner instead. It was less than appetizing. The dwarf to his left chuckled. “You get used to it.”
Sylvas forced himself to chew and swallow a mouthful before replying, “I don’t want to?”
That drew out another chuckle, even though Sylvas hadn’t been joking in the slightest.
An albino Najash beside Kaya leaned forward, it took Sylvas a moment to realize it was the same one who he had knocked out of the sky, and who had threatened him in the infirmary. “I hear you ran into little Lord Hammerheart.”
“The dwarf with the minions?” Sylvas was still dealing with the gritty texture of the food on his tongue. “I had no idea that he was nobility.”
That drew more laughter. The fiend at his side nudged him with a giggle that seemed far too girlish for somebody with horns. “He sure thinks he’s nobility.”
“Daddy’s mining consortium bought him a spot in naval training.” The Najash continued. “Needs to be knocked down a peg… or five.”
The knot in Sylvas stomach ached at the sentiment. “Well I can assure you that after today, I intend to do as much knocking as possible.”
“Good on you, lad.” The dwarf at his side said, warmly.
It seemed that loyalties were not drawn along racial lines among the Ardent, that was a relief. For despite having been informed that humans were the dominant species among the Empyrean, Sylvas had to say that he had seen very few of them on Strife until now. So if he’d been forced to have to fall back on them for support every time there was a disagreement, they would have been heavily outnumbered.
There were a couple of humans at this table, but they looked as alien to Sylvas as any of the others. One had metal rings fixed through his ears and a beard like a dwarf’s. Another had bright pink hair, buzzed in so short at the sides that he could make out inked patterns on her scalp. They might have been human, but their experiences living inside the Empyrean were so different from everything that he’d ever known that he didn’t even know how to talk to them. The pink haired girl caught him staring and flashed him an insincere smile. All of her teeth were made of gold.
Extremely different.
Attention was drawn back to Kaya by a belch. “I was just telling these soft Empyrean folks that their days of topping rankings were over now the real competition has arrived from outside their borders.”
Sylvas did his best not to flinch again. He had hoped to keep his status as an outsider a secret and do some private study to catch up on any customs and behavior that currently escaped him, but it seemed that Kaya felt honesty was the best policy, even if it painted a target on their backs.
The Najash snorted. “I keep telling her, the Empyrean recruits are the ones to watch out for. We’re here because we’ve got to be. They chose to be here.”
Kaya waved her hand as if she could knock the words away. “Load of krahg! I grew up sleeping on cold steel, eating cold steel, breaking ore with my bare hands. This lot couldn’t bend a girder if you held it for them.”
The dwarf at Sylvas side barked something back in dwarvish that had Kaya on her feet and roaring more untranslatable words right back at him. The dwarf had thrown himself up to meet her eye to eye, bellowing right back, then the two of them slumped back down onto their respective benches and went back to eating as though nothing had happened. The fiend girl giggled. “Dwarves…”
She had leaned in close like it was a whisper, and Sylvas had felt her breath tickling his ear. For a brief moment he was distracted enough to eat his dinner without the unpleasant experience of tasting it.
The albino najash watched Sylvas with narrowed eyes, but said nothing to shame him, even though it must have been abundantly clear from his slow spreading blush what had happened. Instead she just shrugged her shoulders and turned back to Kaya. “You’ll get your chance to prove it tomorrow, one way or the other.”
“We starting out with another big scrap at dawn?” Kaya looked entirely too excited by the prospect. Sylvas had gotten some measure of revenge on Hammerheart and his lackeys, but he imagined that his dwarf friend was itching for some payback.
“No, we’ll be starting lectures.” Her sharp teeth snapped shut after the word. “Anyone who can cast a spell can fight. Not everyone can make it through three hours of Instructor Hagen’s Tactical Introduction.”
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All around them there was groaning. Echoing even beyond their table, as the whole room caught on to the class being mentioned. Ironically, the fact that it was so reviled by everyone else made Sylvas quite excited to experience it. If only so that he could share in the communal complaining.
The meal came to a relatively abrupt end after that. In spite of the quality of the food and the ongoing conversation happening around him, Sylvas was able to shovel it all away in record time, catching up to Kaya even though she was well ahead of him thanks to her earlier arrival. They rose all together as a table, fully intent on walking together as far as they could to their respective bunks, but that plan was thrown out of the window as all around them little white shields suddenly burst into existence. Sylvas actually tried to touch one meant for the person next to him, only for his fingers to pass through the sending harmlessly. On his second attempt he heard Instructor Vaelith’s voice speaking into his head. “Change of plan children. Live combat drill. Now.”
Sylvas gawked at the message, but the other recruits were already setting off for the exit. “Seriously?”
“Eidolons don’t wait until its convenient.” The fiend girl who had been giving him confusing feelings called back over her shoulder.
He looked to Kaya for support, but she was hopping along towards the door trying to pull a boot back onto her mechanized leg as she went. “Come on, boy. Two chances to kick culgh in the same day ain’t an opportunity to turn down.”
**I screwed up the Chapter Patterning here -- This will be a double chapter page.**
“Warfare is the highest calling of all sentient beings. The means by which we differentiate ourselves. Yet the greatest battle can be won without a spell being cast or a blade being drawn. In silent dark, death can come and change the course of history.”
—The Necessity, Valtoris Blackstar
The recruits arrived on the field, en masse, to discover that the other half of the school, the naval training program, had arrived before them and were neatly arrayed opposite. Somewhere among them was Hammerheart and his minions, but Sylvas couldn’t pick them out of the line-up at this distance. Vaelith strode between the two lines, rapidly casting something that made her voice boom across the plains.
“Good evening children. So sorry to interrupt your nap time, but this is a live combat drill.” She said it with a light-hearted tone that belied the tension strumming through all of the more seasoned recruits. “You will be observed and judged based on your effectiveness in combat, your ability to problem-solve, and your ability to follow the orders of your senior cadets. Failure in any of these categories means you have failed the test. Fail the test and you get…”
“Remedial lessons.” The recruits around Sylvas echoed in response, the words coming out as a more of a groan than anything else.
Vaelith’s voice washed over them, rocking Sylvas back on his heels with its volume. “And since you have a full schedule here on Strife, guess who’s time those lessons come out of?”
This time there was no answer. It was so clearly a rhetorical question that even this group could grasp it. Vaelith pressed on. “Two recruits to one officer cadet, if you’ve got somebody you want to stick with, grab them now.”
Sylvas looked around for Kaya, but she was out of arm’s reach after their mad rush out from the cliffs. He felt a hand close on his, and relief flooded through him before he could turn around and meet the pink eyes of the albino lizard woman from earlier on. He almost snatched his hand back, but by then it was too late.
Vaelith’s latest spell took hold, a whisper of green fire washing over them all. “Alright pairs, stick together and head towards your commanding cadet outlined in green. You’ve got twenty seconds, then we’re starting without you.”
Sylvas met the Najash’s startled stare and the pair of them took off running towards the opposite line. Sylvas looked back and forth along it for the tell-tale glow of Vaelith’s magic around one of the officer cadets but he could see nothing.
Sylvas turned to his companion. “Do you see it?”
He trailed off as he realized that he didn’t even know her name, leaving the sentence hanging awkwardly. At least until she saved him with a nod, her head turning to the left.
“There.” She stated, hand coming up to point and giving them a destination to rush to.
As they ran for the distant figure lit up in green, Sylvas grumbled to himself. “What is the point of giving us a schedule if they intend to—”
The Najash cut him off with a hiss. “We are being tested. Adaptability is one of the criteria.”
Sylvas refrained from complaining anymore because he didn’t have enough breath to do otherwise. It seemed that the lizard-girl had some sort of physical enhancement as well. It seemed increasingly likely that he was the only one on the planet who didn’t. He didn’t much care for being physically overpowered by literally everyone around him, but if he couldn’t do anything about it until he was forging his second circle then he could at least pretend that what was simple exercise for them wasn’t killing him.
They arrived at their would be officer for the day, an unfamiliar human man with a starred black patch on his jacket who glanced back and forth between the two of them placidly. While Vaelith’s hair was buzzed short, this slightly overweight fellow seemed to be entirely devoid of any hair whatsoever, not even an eyelash was anywhere to be seen. He looked to the Najash. “Who’s this then?”
“New blood.” She finally let Sylvas’ hand go. “Didn’t want him sniping me again.”
“This one got you in testing?” The cadet chortled. “He’s still got space-dust on him.”
The najash didn’t rise to the bait. “Just watch.”
Sylvas held out a hand in greeting. “Sylvas Vail.”
The other human looked down at his hand as if it were something disgusting. “Today, you’ll call me sir.”
The najash slapped Sylvas’ hand down. “I’m Gharia and this smooth-skin dolt is Bortan.”
Sylvas couldn’t keep some degree of sarcasm out of his voice as he replied. “A pleasure to meet you.”
Vaelith saved them from the discomfort of any further socializing. “Three leagues south there is a storm-front coming in. Only trouble is, there’s no wind. What does that tell you?”
As one, the senior cadets replied. “Eidolons.”
Sylvas’ attention was instantly caught. He had not even considered the possibility that he’d be facing an actual eidolon on his first day of training to be one of the Ardent. It hardly seemed fair.
Vaelith’s voice went on booming over the top of his panic. “If a single eidolon makes it through to the wards here at campus, you fail. If any of the other recruits on the field die, you fail. If you die, you fail. Nice simple mission for you. When they’re all dead, you go to bed.”
Sylvas’ mind began spinning, why would there be Eidolons here? Now? This place was a part of the Empyrean, it was meant to be safe from fools like him being tricked into summoning them. Bortan had set off towards the southern front without hesitation. Was this normal? Were eidolons everywhere? Sylvas forced himself into Clearmind. Distractions were dangerous right now.
“Is this a regular thing?” He called out to Gharia.
“It’s a relic world.” She gave a casual shrug before putting on a fresh turn of acceleration to catch up to Bortan where he strode ahead.
After that, he didn’t have breath to spare for more questions. The other two had embodiments that let them eat up the terrain with ease, while he was having to struggle every step of the way with the red sand shifting underfoot.
His two companions on the other hand, seemed to have no trouble whatsoever. They were sniping comments back and forth at each other that Sylvas, trailing behind, could only catch on the wind.
“Why haven’t they kicked you out of training yet?” Gharia’s abrasive comments towards Sylvas no longer seemed so abrasive.
To his credit Bortan took it in stride. Clearly this was not the first time she had needled him. “Because I’m an exemplary student.”
“An exemplar that can’t hit circle four.” Gharia said it as though she were talking to Sylvas, even though the comment was clearly directed at their team leader.
Bortan rolled his eyes. “Rushing advancement is a surefire way to—”
Gharia put on another turn of speed, darting ahead of the other mage and then running along backwards so she could see his face as she tormented him. “Maybe you weren’t meant to be on a ship, or an officer at that too, ever think of that?”
“But if I wasn’t either, who would get you meatheads to where you needed to be and then told you what to do?” He replied with a bland smile that instantly prompted an amused chuckle from Gharia.
“To be fair, I’m pretty sure we could puzzle out the complexities of ‘go over there and blast the eidolons, not each other’ without your incredible tactical mind.”
And with that, it seemed like it was Bortan’s turn to go on the offensive. “Can’t even hit circle three and she thinks she can do my job—”
“Oh didn’t you hear? Rushing advancement is a surefire way to—”
Sylvas attention was turned from their banter towards the distant horizon. It was still night on Strife, in as much as the planet had night at all. Over the horizon in every direction a glow seemed to linger, whether the product of the planetary system’s suns being so close to rising once more, or some sort of ambient charge created by all of the magic that saturated the world, Sylvas couldn’t say for sure. It would be another topic for him to research. One of many.
Regardless, as the storm came into sight, it became rapidly apparent that it was less a gathering of clouds sprinkling down rain, as he had been accustomed to back home, and more of a wall of red sand, drawn up into whipping dervishes and slowly advancing on them. Here and there across that wall, dark shapes moved, like shadows behind a veil. Most were low to the ground, advancing troops of varying sizes, but others flitted across the sky within the sandstorm. Either tempest tossed by the forces involved, or so powerful in their flight that whatever wind powered the swirling sand’s advance didn’t impede them.
It was different from Croesia. There the rifts had opened and the nightmares had come pouring out, but here, it seemed almost natural for them to exist in this world. In a place so alien, those strange shadows seemed at home and the mortals arrayed against them felt like they were the intruders.
Sylvas had expected to feel fear now that he was facing eidolons again, but to his surprise, even without Clearmind, it was less like fear and more like a tempered anxiety, almost excitement. These were the things that had destroyed my world, left me adrift in the cosmos, yet for some reason I just can’t muster up any terror.
Perhaps it was the casual way that all the other recruits were lining up to face them as if it were just another lesson that they had to get through. Perhaps it was simply the fact that there were other people at his side at all.
He drew in a few steadying breaths, trying to ignore the thick dust coating his tongue each time that he did, and he asked. “What are your orders, sir?”
After so much disrespect from Gharia, Bortan was momentarily stunned, then he conceded. “She was pretty much right. Blast the eidolons as they break cover, don’t get killed.”
“You don’t have any strategy that you want us to follow?” Sylvas couldn’t hold back his surprise.
“They’re tier one eidolons, they can’t even think, let alone cast. Just blast them until you tap out of mana, then sit back and watch me wipe out the rest.”
Gharia chuffed once more, tail lashing. “Oh yes, a third circle mage can totally solo a whole swarm of remnant war eidolons.”
“We’re one unit of many, also, shut up.” Bortan kept his gaze on the wall of red advancing on them, but he pointed a finger in her general direction. “That’s an order.”
“Denied.” She replied before turning to Sylvas. “What would you do different, new guy?”
Sylvas sighed at being put on the spot. “Follow orders?”
Her chuff of amusement turned into a snort of disgust when she realized he wasn’t joking. “Bortan orders aren’t orders, he’s a baby officer, they’re still more like…uh, suggestions?”
“I am standing right here you know.” Bortan was casting some sort of protective spells on himself in preparation for the fight to come.
“I am unfamiliar with the enemy, unfamiliar with the terrain, unfamiliar with your capabilities.” Sylvas felt obliged to explain further, so she didn’t misunderstand his compliance as weakness, as she seemed intent on doing. “I need more information before I can start contradicting anyone.”
“You could learn a lot from this guy, Gharia.” The nascent officer commented, his tone particularly amused.
Before she could break out into a stream of native words that the translator spell wouldn’t bother with, Sylvas added. “Of course, if I was familiar with all those things, I suspect I’d have better orders to give than; blast them and don’t die.”
It wiped the smirk off Bortan’s face as swiftly as it had come. While he’d taken all of Gharia’s ribbing in good faith, it seemed like Sylvas’ one comment wasn’t going to be given the same grace. “In the heat of battle, freshie, you’ll have no time for clever tactics. Kill or be killed.”
The first of the eidolons burst free of the sand wall, dashing forward ahead of the pack towards their position. The other recruits scattered along the battle-line did nothing in response. Why would they? It wasn’t their position to hold, and they had limited mana supplies to deal with what the night threw at them.
Scuttling legs were Sylvas first impression, running along both sides of the creature’s flattened and elongated body were so many needle-thin legs that he couldn’t count them. So many that they seemed more like rippling hairs than limbs at all. But at the front there was a shape that was recognizable. A gaping open hole into the core of the monster, unprotected by the bright red chitin that enclosed the rest of it, but guarded by a snapping array of mandibles arrayed around it in a full circle, like some nightmare lamprey blended with a centipede.
At the speed it was travelling, it would be on them in seconds, and as Sylvas cast a glance to Gharia and Bortan he realized that neither one of them was casting. Instead they were staring intently at him. Waiting for him to deal with the rampaging monster of nightmare that was bearing down on them all, alone.