“The definition of victory is simple. There is nobody left to contest you. If that requires death, then deal death. If it requires compassion, then use compassion. The goal is to eliminate all competition, not to make enemies of all their allies. The path of least resistance is always the most beneficial, as it allows you to retain more resources to be used in later conflicts. Make friends of enemies, and your ranks swell.”

—The Necessity, Valtoris Blackstar

Sylvas closed his eyes and breathed deep. The mana flowed through him in gentle circuits as it was meant to, containing in his core the raw potential of all his untapped mana. He had a hand on Ironeye’s shoulder, and the other, more tentatively placed in the square of Hot Lips’ back. All three of them were already enchanted with every spell that the whole group could pull together to give them more speed as they ran together across the deserted no-mans-land.

There was nothing left to do, but to begin.

The other recruits, devoid of any bright ideas of their own, had filtered over to stand on the periphery of the spearhead that Sylvas was at the tip of. They’d take off running when they saw everyone else go, Sylvas was sure of it. That was good.

“Whenever you’re ready.” He spoke softly to the fiend, always feeling that he needed to be careful when he spoke to her.

She flashed him a devilish smile at the words. “Oh darling, I’m always ready.”

Then she promptly cast her Wildfire and it washed out across the battlefield, effusive and vast, spreading out in every direction. It wouldn’t hit the enemy lines, but it wasn’t meant to. It was just meant to blind them to what was happening behind it. As it began to die down, Ironeye unleashed his Thunderchain, right down the middle of their path. It erupted out in every direction, washing over the enemy entrenchment.

Dimly, as if through a veil, Sylvas could see the mana that formed the spells. The agitation of the mana that the fire spell had caused blurred everyone else’s second sight. The sudden jagged fractals that formed as the lightning passed through turned any perception of what was happening beyond it into a kaleidoscope contortion.

Then the fiend cast again.

Taking turns, sprinting with their whole class behind them and Sylvas hands driving them forwards, they cast. Flame then lightning, flame then lightning, over and over, keeping the enemy blind. If they had any courage in them, some might have broken from their cover and recognized that neither one of the spells had the power to do them harm, but not a one of them did. This was what Vaelith had wanted, all the recruits in one big blind charge towards the enemy, like they were mindless eidolons, but for all that they were mindless, eidolons weren’t harmless. If they could have advanced behind a screen like this, then they would have too. He was teaching them a better lesson than Vaelith could have likely ever hoped.

The Wildfire was widespread, gushing out from the fiend’s outstretched hands to burst across the field in every direction, forcing smoke out ahead of it to further obscure their path. The Thunderchain on the other hand was less broad. It was only fired down the central line of their charge, crackling out from there to spread across the fronts of the fortifications, but doing less to obscure sight. It was the best Sylvas could do with the tools that he had available.

On either end of the enemy line, mages started ducking out and launching a counter-attack. They were still reluctant to fully emerge out of fear of the harmless wildfire searing away their eyebrows, but during each casting of Thunderchain, Sylvas began to see them, launching a barrage at the flanks of the charge he was leading.

That was why having the rest of the class charging with them was useful, especially given that their placement on the periphery of the spearhead. They had formed the expendable flanks. They were the ones getting picked off by the sharpshooters on either end of the enemy entrenchment.

By this point in time, Sylvas knew who his allies were and he wasn’t going to shed any tears for the rest, those who believed the lies that Hammerheart spread about him but still tried to cling to his coat-tails to carry them to victory. If my side has to have losses, let it be them.

He pushed the mana out of his core, through his channels and on into the other two. Their own mana supplies would not have been sufficient to keep up the cover all the way across the whole battlefield. Even with Sylvas own supply they wouldn’t have made it, but he was cheating the system. Each of them had an affinity, they could only draw one type of mana from him, while he stored all of them. Each of them could fully drain every part of the mana in his core of the affinity that they could use while leaving all the myriad other types of mana in place. Once he’d unlocked his own affinity and sealed it with his third circle, this would have been impossible, but in this moment, his weakness was his strength.

Affinities were the reason that the technique for sharing mana wasn’t taught, even though it was simple enough. Much simpler if you have the Arterium Arcanum of course.

Once the mana hit their bodies, what they could use was filtered through and the rest washed back up Sylvas’ channels, contra-flowing back into his core to provide more weight to the next wave that he pushed out. With every spell, he thrust mana down one arm or the other. His steps became sluggish and stumbling. His grip on Ironeye and Hot Lips became less about pushing them on, and more about staying upright through the wild gyrations of the mana inside of him. He ran with his eyes shut, as blinded by the chaos of mana swirling all around them as the enemy would have been. He just had to trust that they were still going the right way.

Beyond the roar of flame and thunder, he heard screams, signaling the outer flanks of their spearhead being shot down. Whittling body by body until only Sylvas and his team were left as the final outburst of flame washed over the raised fortifications just a few feet away. Everyone knew what to do from here and they all promptly leapt into action.

Ironeye and Hot Lips had a quarter supply of mana each to keep them going, not enough to win going head-to-head with other mages on their level, but more than enough for them to support the lower circle mages while they did their work. As for Sylvas, he felt as though he was coming apart at the seams. They should have tried this in an environment where victory wasn’t on the line first. If they had done some sensible experimentation, he would have known that distorting the supply of mana inside him was going to ruin his equilibrium, both his physical balance, and the floes of mana within him. For the first time, the core of mana at his center felt in danger of becoming unstable, all the natural balance created by the opposing affinities neutralizing one another was gone. Beneath one sleeve he could feel frost on his skin where all the fire mana had been stripped away, beneath the other a dull ache as though his bones had turned to stone inside his arm.

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So much of his focus had to be turned internally, that he probably wouldn’t have seen doom coming for him if it weren’t for Clearmind.

Kaya and the others had set off to do what they’d trained for, circumventing the fortifications where they could, cutting clean through them where they couldn’t. The officer cadets and other recruits with them hadn’t been able to get a clear look at them throughout their entire advance and popped out of hiding now expecting to start picking off stragglers only to face a furious mob on their doorstep. The fighting was close-range and brutal, but despite all that their forces had been depleted, the majority of the recruits had made it, and that meant that the other side was badly outnumbered. They fought back in a kind of daze as they saw their clean and perfect victory snatched away from them and were dragged down into the mud with the infantry mages who thrived in such an element.

A great deal of frustration was being let out across the battlefield. All the long months of training that had seen the two separate groups butt heads were now blossoming out into a reckoning. Especially among the senior groups in particular. But from amidst that reckoning, Sylvas caught sight of the real problem coming his way. Hammerheart was incensed. He’d definitely have been one of the arrogant fools who had thought this victory was in the bag, and now that had been taken from him, he was out for revenge.

An aura of blazing flame surrounded him, some ward or another that kept any of the mages relying on physical attacks from getting too close, but it seemed to blaze blue-hot when he caught sight of Sylvas standing out in front of the fortifications, all alone. With a leap, the dwarf cleared the distance between them. All of the fighting was going on at the other side of the barricades, and none of Sylvas allies had held back to protect him as he tried to bring his mana circulation back into balance. For an understandable reason, since they couldn’t have spared a single fighter to do so. If this was how he was going to be taken out of the exercise, he’d accept it as his due. He’d already achieved more than anyone else, including himself, had considered possible.

All that he could hope to do now was delay the dwarf as long as possible. The longer that Hammerheart took to finish him off, the longer his fury would be kept away from the other mages. To that end, he needed the other man to be as clumsy as possible, otherwise this fight would be over in moments. “What’s the matter, stanzbuhr? This isn’t the first time I’ve kicked your culgh. You should be used to it by now.”

He felt sure that his pronunciation was terrible despite repeating Kaya’s words perfectly, but regardless, they had the desired effect. All magic forgotten, Hammerheart charged at Sylvas, roaring out a stream of expletives that would have been untranslatable even if they weren’t all mashed together.

Which meant that Sylvas’ next task was to try and deal with a titanically strong dwarf trying to punch him to death.

As the dwarf swung the first punch at him, Sylvas managed to fire off an arcane arrow. It hurt as he cast, with all his channels inflamed by the unbalanced mana, and when it came bursting forth, it looked wrong. The blue light that usually made it up was distorted and dirty. It hit Hammerheart’s fist as it swung, knocking the blow back in the direction it came, but also encasing the dwarf’s arm up to the elbow in ice and grit.

The dwarf staggered back, confused, and if Sylvas’ senses hadn’t all been too busy screaming about the agony he was putting himself through by casting with unbalanced mana, then it would have been the ideal opportunity for a follow up attack. As it was, Sylvas only victory was managing to remain standing.

Hammerheart is thinking, can’t have that, Sylvas thought, feeling punch drunk despite having taken no blows, prompting his next set of taunting words to come out thick and slurred.

“Is that all you’ve got?”

Hammerheart roared as he charged in again, ducking where Sylvas next arcane arrow probably would have gone if he’d managed to cast it, and drove a fist into his gut. Nothing was held back this time. Inside him, something ruptured, and Sylvas felt knuckles grazing his spine before the impact lifted him off his feet and threw him out into the red desert beyond. Here and there, red shards of what looked like glass had formed where the wildfire had been burning hot enough, but Sylvas was flung beyond that. If it had been solid ground, he’d have been dead on impact, as it was, he was buried.

The force of the blow and the fall that accompanied it rammed him down through the blood red dust and for one beautiful moment it cushioned and held him before the pain caught up. He tried to cough up blood, but the moment his mouth opened, that iron tainted ash poured in, filling his mouth and clogging it.

Thereby stopping any hope he had of casting.

It left him needing to lay there as the ash covered him, hoping against hope that Hammerheart came after him lest he’d suffocate. Sylvas knew that the healing abilities of the Empyrean bordered on the miraculous, but how long could he go without air before he died? The crest would preserve him once he’d suffocated for long enough, but it didn’t supply air. Even if the Empyrean’s medicine could bring him back somehow, what good would it do if he was too brain damaged to string a spell together.

He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t cast, but he could dig, so that was what he did. Hand over hand, as if he could swim up through the red sands of Strife back to safety. His lungs burned with every motion and whatever had been destroyed inside of him by Hammerheart’s awful blow screamed with every motion. But even with those combined together, they didn’t even compare to the pain of the mana inside of him, leaving his body feeling as if it were being shredded apart with each and every motion.

Which for all Sylvas knew, it was.

Panic started to consume him as he reached up as high as he could, desperately hoping that he might finally break the surface, that someone, anyone, might see it and rescue him. But he knew it was in vain. All eyes would be on the fight. Even the scrying eyes of the instructors hovering in the sky above. It didn’t matter anyway. His hand didn’t break through into the air. It didn’t touch anything but more of the accursed dust.

Sylvas’ mouth was full of the taste of blood. His vision would have been turning black even if he wasn’t buried. He couldn’t move a muscle, but inside of him the mana still flowed, still churned, and beyond it there was still that echo, something that he only felt when he was so close to the edge. He had the mana and no spell to cast, but he was nothing if not resourceful in the face of inevitable death.

Forcing the fingers of his upturned palm to spread, he forced his mana out. Everything that he could control, everything that he could push, he sent out through the channels in his upturned arm. He couldn’t see the results even with his second sight, everything was too confusing and painful for that. But even so he poured every last drop of power remaining to him out and up, hoping against desperate hope that someone, anyone, might see that beacon and come save him.

Mira. He thought desperately as the magic left him. I’m…I’m coming.

Then the darkness encroaching on him from all sides slammed shut, and Sylvas knew nothing at all.