“This degree of psychological stability is a double edged sword, of course. There can be no using the excuse of an excess of emotions or a moment of madness when a mage is involved. If they commit a crime, it is because they have decided it is in their best interest to do so. If they misbehave, it is because they have made a judgement on how people will respond to that behavior. A mage is not omniscient. These judgements may be flawed, but they will be rational.”

—The Psychology of the Wizard, Remo Aurea

The schedule that had been composed for him during his transition onto the officer cadet program and naval service would have been brutal for any other student.

Yet with the combination of paradigms at his disposal, Sylvas ploughed through the book learning at a pace unmatched by his peers. Though in terms of practical work, he was still working hard to catch up, any progress he made feeling painstakingly slow.

And the reason for that was largely that his mana base remained unstable.

After having discovered his affinity, drawing in mana was no longer as simple as breathing, or rather, it was, but now any mana that he drew mixed into the gravity mana at his core. Which then in turn destabilized it until the mana he lacked affinity for could be filtered slowly out of him. If it hadn’t have been for his second circle embodiment, Sylvas felt quite certain that he’d have suffered injuries from the way that the mana inside him roiled and churned. The weight of gravity mana felt very different to the chaotic, intermixed kind he was used to, as if he was carrying a lead ball in the middle of his chest at all times. He would have become ever more reliant on spells to supplement his waning physical capabilities as the weight of it exhausted him, but the opportunity wasn’t there. He needed to learn an entirely new set of spells that might have some degree of the same effect. The only magic that still worked for him consistently was kinesis, the new spells that he had learned from Fahred, and the flight spell that he’d picked up from Gharia, though it was less cost-effective than before when cast with this chaotic mana.

The intensity of catching up to his new set of classes meant that Sylvas had to be immensely choosy as to how he spent his time. Not only was he split his lessons, but he also needed study and practice a whole new set spells to better work with his affinity. Then even beyond that, Sylvas also had to sift through the countless military grade embodiments and paradigms that existed, hoping that he could find one suitable for his third circle and progression thereafter. Of course, there was also his friends, specifically Kaya, but a slightly expanding category that was slowly starting to include Bael, the elf having made a decent effort to reach out. Unfortunately that reach out was one sided, as neither Kaya nor Bael had much to say to the other, so socializing with one meant having to make up for lost time with the other.

Which in the former’s case, had Sylvas falling back into a familiar role he hadn’t had since his home world had fallen.

Originally Kaya had been dragged into the naval service by virtue of her affinity’s usefulness in space, a change that Sylvas had well been aware of. However what he had missed, more specifically because of its newness in happening that very day, was Kaya’s induction into the officer cadet program as well thanks largely in part to her ‘union’ building efforts, which to her immense dismay had not gone unnoticed by the instructors. Apparently it showed the exact kind of drive that the Ardent looked for in its prospective officers, and in similar fashion to her initial transition, she’d been simply told what her new schedule was. Unfortunately for her, that meant needing an even greater level of academic grounding that she had to catch up on. Specifically the complex math and science needed to at least be competent in the most basic of shipboard officer roles. As such, she often needed Sylvas’ assistance to keep up with the brutal pace of their lessons, which was fortunately easy enough to manage, given that their quarters were connected and that Sylvas had actually been a teacher once, thus knew how best to tutor her efficiently. Even so however, the forced proximity combined with the academic demand could have driven their relationship to a breaking point during their acclimation process, but oddly Sylvas found himself relaxing once the two of them retreated to their quarters. It started to oddly feel like home. Something he didn’t think he’d ever be fortunate to experience ever again.

Bael, meanwhile, was giving Sylvas a long overdue seminar on the social mores of the upper echelons of society within the Empyrean. Most importantly helping him to decide which of the many letters he was now receiving offering him friendship, sponsorship, employment, and in some cases even marriage, could be safely ignored, and which of them came from people of such power and authority that they required very carefully worded rejections. By the end of the first week, Sylvas had turned down four corporations that had enough money to buy and sell whole solar systems, two crowns, via marriage to a prince and princess of different neighboring systems, respectively, and at least a dozen other major players in the Empyrean’s political structure. Governing families of entire planets who officially had no impact on the policies of the allegedly democratic Empyrean, but unofficially ruled from the sidelines.

Then, once he’d finally managed to get a handle on just what the rest of the galaxy seemed to think about him, he learned just how well he fit in with the other recruits, specifically while in one of his many ship-to-ship combat lectures. It was the first class of the evening, and one that he had already memorized the textbooks for, having planned to integrate them later. Much later, such as when he was closer to actually getting out into space. As such, he’d chosen to spend the time working out a new schedule for his learning on his slate while his Lockmind did the heavy lifting of actually remembering the lecture.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

So far the new spells that came with his affinity had been easy enough to pick up, almost familiar to him, strangely. Like he’d heard them all before somewhere. But given the uses that the Empyrean meant to put him to, there were few that were practical for his current situation, with combat applications being even fewer and further in between.

Spatial magic, as an offshoot of gravity magic, was starting to become simple enough for him to manage too now that he was aware of it. He had sent and returned his slate to cold storage multiple times now, recognizing the unique resonance of the particular plane that he was tapping into, and the humming harmonics of the ones that others were using nearby. His sense for it wasn’t complete yet, but he suspected that once he had completely unlocked the Waveform Paradigm that he’d chosen, he would be able to detect when others had objects in Cold Storage, and gain a sense of what they were, even if such a sense wasn’t always exact. One or two of the other recruits hummed to his senses, like they were vibrating in tune to some distant string being plucked, but every one of the Instructors had that same resonance. Fahred alone played a bass tone with all that he carried around in his storage space, while their current Instructor, Forgethane, had more of a midtone.

With its rarity, there weren’t a great many gravity affinity specific embodiments that had been codified for use in the Empyrean. Many of them were relatively new, on the scale of history, as so many gravity mages seemed to have been forced to develop their own. The one that Sylvas had chosen, and was now attempting to decipher into practical mana infusion into his body, had been meant originally as a method for movement in zero-gravity. Manipulating the density and weight of the body so that it could be shifted around without the need to push off anything. On paper it appeared useless to a combatant, but Sylvas had ideas.

Usually when he was focused on a project like this, it would take a loud noise or physical contact from one of his peers to draw him out. If the Instructor asked him a question, the sound of his own name would drag him back to reality, and he would rapidly replay things with Lockmind to learn what he was being asked. This time, however, he was returned to reality by something else entirely. A sudden and complete silence that had fallen over the room.

He glanced up to see Kaya tensed as though she were ready to go to war at his side, and he was taken aback by her fury for a moment before he followed her line of sight to the chamber doors.

Hammerheart had just swaggered in.

As the silence loomed and the accompanying tension built, Sylvas soon realized that as many eyes were on him as were on the dwarf. He looked Hammerheart in the eye, saw the challenge there, the beginnings of a sneer coming onto the man’s face at the sight of him, and then he turned his gaze back to the slate. As if the little man didn’t matter to him at all.

Forgethane was not pleased about the disruption. “Nice of you to finally join us again, recruit.”

“Back from my holiday.” Hammerheart managed to restrain the sneer in his voice when he addressed the instructor, but only just.

“Wonderful. Now take your seat.” Forgethane ordered before turning back to the board where he’d been laying out the basics of evasive formations with the kind of perilous slowness that Sylvas was now finding so irritating in all of his classes.

Then of course as predictable as was the rising suns, Hammerheart swaggered over to where Sylvas was sitting.

“Move. You’re in my seat.” He said from practically on top of Sylvas.

In every other lecture they shared before, Sylvas had seen Hammerheart sit at the back of the chamber, in the highest row, beside his friends, or rather minions, depending how charitable he was feeling. A number that after his stay in the brig and Bael’s break from him only included the fiend, who even now, Sylvas saw had a space still open beside her in anticipation his return. Showing she was still loyal.

“I’m sure there are plenty of others free.” Sylvas replied as politely as he could.

Hammerheart crossed his arms and tried to loom over them, somewhat hampered by being the same height as Sylvas when the human was sitting down. “I want what’s mine.”

By now the others around them were all staring, the Instructor plodding along with the lesson completely oblivious to the dangerous situation unfolding behind him. Kaya bristled, fists clenched under the desk, but Sylvas laid a hand on her arm and smiled. Turning that smile up to Hammerheart, he remained painstakingly polite, not for the dwarf, who didn’t care what he was saying, but for everyone else to hear. “I have no intention of taking what I haven’t earned, and rest assured, you will get exactly what you deserve.”

There was silence as the dwarf tried to work out how to escalate the situation further without getting tossed in the brig. Then one of the other officer cadets who Sylvas barely knew, a human man with close cropped hair and a scar across his chin piped up. “Just sit down, will you? We’re trying to learn here.”

Hammerheart flinched as if he’d been struck.

Clearly he’d thought he had the loyalty and support of everyone around him, something that a glance around him showed was not in fact true in the slightest. Off balance in every sense of the word, the dwarf then did exactly as he was told and went to the end of the line, right to where one of the other students had her slates piled up on a desk beside her. It was clear that he expected her to move them for him to make way, but she didn’t, simply glaring at him once before turning back to the lesson. It was enough to prompt a faint snarl of defeat from Hammerheart, before he turned and stomped off yet again, this time to the back of the room where his space had been saved. It established the new order of things perfectly. Sylvas wasn’t sure exactly what the man had expected after his return, after the murder he’d committed, but all that he had earned was contempt.

And more than anything, Sylvas knew that it was going to burn in him.

All that disdain, his fall from grace, and he was going to blame it all on Sylvas, because to do otherwise would be to accept that he was responsible for his own actions and their consequences. Hammerheart was going to be coming for Sylvas. That hadn’t changed. But now the dwarf was probably imagining a scenario in which ‘accidentally’ killing Sylvas would be his redemption. A way to get back in everyone’s good graces.

What luck that he was going to get an opportunity so soon.