“In the Eidolon, witness perfection. It does not hunger, it does not tire, it consumes mana, but not at a rate less than it produces mana. Each Eidolon in our universe is a perfect engine of destruction, tailored to kill and kill and kill until there is nothing left to kill, and each one of them is uniquely designed with that goal in mind. Be as the Eidolon. Single-minded in your purpose, and unstoppable.”

—The Necessity, Valtoris Blackstar

And just like that, the Cull began.

The timer vanished as it hit zero, and they took flight. His previous attempts at this spell had been test runs, weak and wobbly in comparison. This time they took flight like arrows from a bow, soaring across the battlefield faster than the other teams could manage to scramble in and take aim. Shots were fired at them, of course they were. They had made an obvious target of themselves, soaring through the sky, but they did so only briefly. Every missile launched after them fell short, every beam tracking across the open dark sky trying to pluck one of them from their flight swept after them too slow. They touched down only a short sprint from the fallen buildings and took off for them at full speed.

Everyone would try to follow them, and everyone would make themselves an easy target for their competitors for as long as they remained focused on Sylvas’ group. They’d announced their position to Hammerheart, but they’d also marked him as an easy target to anyone nearby with the slightest bit of sense.

Scrambling in through the empty staring windows, they dropped into the buildings. All of the heap were interlinked by places where their windows touched, and Sylvas meant to delve down to the lowest point that they could reach so that exterior bombardment couldn’t touch them. They would make no use of the killing ground outside, because they didn’t need to. Every other team would be fighting in that space if they hadn’t had the sense to break away from the pursuit.

Every other team would be squandering their resources.

None of the artful grace of the ruins that they’d been living in were present in these blocks. Beyond the smooth grey stone of the construction, there was nothing here but twisted and rusted iron girders protruding where the damage had been severe. That and the endless red sands clogging up every room and hallway.

Everyone had their orders, everyone knew where they were going, the only thing that they lacked was a way to get there. There were countless pockets of empty air in these fallen towers, but the means of traversing to them was complicated by the thick layer of red dust heaped up over windows and blocking passages. It was the same problem that they suffered every moment on Strife, the endless bloody dust. But now it wasn’t an irritation, it was a blockade. Kaya started digging into it by hand when their progress was arrested, but that obviously wasn’t a useful solution. “Come on you load of stanzbuhr, muck in!”

Harvan could scout ahead for them, find them the next pocket to go for, but he couldn’t bring anyone with him as he passed through the stone. They’d discovered that early in planning when Sylvas’ grand idea for an ambush fell apart.

The trouble with asking mages trained exclusively for battle to use their magic for anything else was that they just didn’t have the tools. But on the other hand, Sylvas did. Concentrating, he spiked gravity and opened up a singularity point into Cold Storage near the bottom of the heap. It was harder to do so, in the middle of a solid object, he had to really push his mana to get it to cut through, but as soon as he had, the sand began pouring away, vanishing out of this plane of existence and into another. His poor slate was in there, buried under all the mess, but that was a worry for later. He was already desperately cycling mana into his body to complete his third circle, commanding a squad in battle, and trying to work out how to actually beat Hammerheart when it came down to a fight between the two of them. He didn’t need any more problems to contend with at that exact moment.

With the worst of it drained away, Sylvas closed up his pocket dimension and winced. Nobody else could feel it, but the weight of all the sand in there was like an ache to his gravitational senses. It would be costly every time he opened that up again.

Not that Sylvas had much time to think about that, for no sooner did the blockade of sand finally vanish were immediately greeted by an Eidolon leaping soundlessly forward, out from the gloom beyond.

They were beyond the ward-lines of the campus here. Out where all the dangers of Strife could reach them, and they’d just burrowed down into whatever eidolons’ called a home. Gasping as the creature appeared, Sylvas could see that t wasn’t either of the Eidolons that they’d seen on Strife so far. It was bloody and dripping as it sailed through the air, humanoid in shape and skeletal in protrusions, but made only of gore.

Gore that actively dripped from its fingers as it stretched its arms out towards Sylvas, if only by virtue of him being closest.

Reacting slower than he should have, Sylvas raised a hand to cast an Arcane Arrow, but the spell didn’t come in time. He made the shapes, he spoke the words, but the mana that flowed from him was wrong. It was the wrong mix, the wrong consistency, to fit what he had woven.

Then the eidolon was on top of him despite his best effort to belatedly dodge, a single finger of blood punching into his hand, and diving in. Instantly something bit even deeper into his flesh and he felt the Eidolon’s finger attempt to force itself into his body, his wrist suddenly exploding with pain.

Then the shouting started and Gharia’s bubbles hit the thing, followed soon after by a blast of lightning from Ironeyes, which danced up through the creature, forcing its way inside Sylvas to electrocute him too. Fortunately it was enough to separate him and the creature, with him falling to the ground, half stunned while the rest of the party unloaded into the Eidolon until there was nothing left of it but a stain.

“Well, that’s a start,” Kaya replied as they all quickly gathered around Sylvas, everyone muttering urgently. “You okay?”

“I’ll…be fine,” Sylvas replied with a shake of his head, cursing internally at his fizzled spell, then actually out loud when Kaya cast something that caused his hand and to burn like living fire had been poured into it. Lasting for barely more than a second, she then let him go and look at it, seeing only a pink scar remaining where the creature had hit him.

“No more shaking hands with beings from the beyond,” the woman stated before going on to extend a hand to help him up.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

It was a harrowing experience that set the tone for the next ten minutes of their journey into the place as they pushed their way in deeper, encountered another a barrier of sand, cleared it, and were then promptly attacked by another one of the creatures. By the time that the third attack happened, Sylvas had enough presence of mind to scry the creature, revealing exactly what it was.

Name: Callous Gaunt

Species: First Tier Eidolon

Health: 100%

Mana: 100%

Affinity: War

Strength: E5

Resilience: E4

Speed: E3

Potency: F5

Focus: F5

Regeneration: F5

Each time one emerged from the sand, everyone leapt into action. The plan had been to dig in here and preserve their mana supplies until the battle outside had mostly settled, but they were having to squander it fighting these things tooth and nail. Every one of them attacked with the same mindless berserk rage, and every one of them withstood more of a bombardment than any anything they’d ever fought on Strife so far.

Then, after a dozen of the gore hewn Gaunts later, they ran into Harvan, who confirmed that they were as deep as they were going to get.

“Alright, Bael. Time to shine.” Sylvas announced without any preamble as they all looked around.

“Is all this really necessary?” The elf sighed as he cast his wards. Any attempts to view inside the buildings should now have been blocked by his magic. Meanwhile, both Luna and Orson were casting Farsight to keep track of what was happening outside, while the others sought out the most defensible positions, and Kaya used her affinity for metal to reinforce the rusting framework keeping them from being crushed.

Red dust rained down from the slanted ceiling as detonations echoed out far above them. They didn’t need scrying spells to know that a battle still raged outside. The only question was how it would play out. Orson eventually beckoned him over with the report he’d been expecting. “Fierce fighting. Really, really fierce. Making it hard to see who’s left at this point, but I’ll keep trying.”

Sylvas wasn’t surprised by the limited information, just disappointed. He’d half expected the other teams to have the sense to block scrying, but it seemed that they were taking a more Bortan approach to things. Focusing on what was happening in the moment at the expense of planning for the future. Sylvas took a moment and decided to cast his own Farsight to help Orson out, focusing his eye high above the battlefield, where the Instructors placed their own. It was high enough so that could see the lay of the land, if not specifics.

At least half of the groups were out of the fighting already from what he could tell. Two of the outlying emplacements were covered in spell-scars, another was still smoldering and collapsing in on itself. On the other side of the field, the mana was so dense as to be near impregnable to his perception. But as he looked around, luck smiled on him and he was able to catch glimpses of fire and shockwaves of sonic energy coming from one of the standing emplacements that told him Hammerheart still lived, but was pinned down by at least two other groups.

That target on his back had certainly made him as tempting as Sylvas had hoped.

The concussions rocking the buildings they were in mostly seemed to be missed shots from that battle, overshooting their mark and touching down on the now battered towers that they took shelter beneath. There were two stragglers from the open warfare that had happened on the other front making their way towards the tower, but they were cautious, having no idea what Sylvas and his group had prepared for them.

A hesitation that in the end cost them everything when an overshot from elsewhere skimmed across the top of the fallen towers and hit one of them head-on with enough destructive force to blast the skin clean off their bodies. Sylvas hoped that the crests took over quickly after that.

He glanced up to inform the others of the news. “Clear for now.”

“I hardly think that we’re distinguishing ourselves, hiding down here like rats in rubble.” He could hear Bael, even if the elf was out of sight.

“Victory is all that matters.” Sylvas forced a smile. Now was not the time to debate these things. “Not how good we look winning it.”

“The fight’s done.” Luna called out suddenly. “Two teams left as far as I can see. Hammerheart and his crew are on the way.”

Sylvas didn’t deliberately seek him out, but fate made it so that his and Anak’s met eyes all the same. “Good.”

“Gah! Well, they took out the scrying eyes.” Orson yelped next, Sylvas turning to see him rubbing at his eyes. “Want me to spin up more?”

“Took them long enough,” Sylvas said, knowing that he wouldn’t have allowed the same had their places been exchanged. “And no, save your mana, we’ll need it soon enough.”

“Wasn’t just ours either.” Luna added as she too rubbed her eyes. “The did something to pop almost all of them, including the instructors. Saw a bunch of Vaelith’s vanish right before mine did.”

That probably wasn’t a good sign given how angry Sylvas knew the dwarf was.

He forced a smile as the foreboding thought left him, knowing that he couldn’t forget about morale. “Nothing we can do about now other than get ready. Take up your places on the next floor up. Ironeyes should be already there.”

They both nodded and then left, leaving only the sounds of Kaya working on her reinforcement spells to fill the air, all the noise from outside and the magic being thrown outside having vanished. They couldn’t see what was happening out there, and they couldn’t hear it now either. Moreover by now it was possible that the enemy were already inside the building, and equally possible they were a good distance off, planning how to level the place with them inside to secure their win. But even that didn’t matter. Sylvas had planned for both outcomes.

But the longer that a catastrophic impacts didn’t rock the building the more likely that Sylvas became that, Hammerheart – master of close combat – had taken the bait he’d dangled before him. The only thing that Sylvas regretted was not getting a head count of how many of his team were still standing before the scry went down.

Bael opened his mouth, where he stood oh so casually leaning against the wall on the other side of the room, and from his expression Sylvas knew it was going to be nothing but an off brand comment, so he raised a finger to his lips.

A good thing too, since the moment he did his hand come up, did a thin stream of dusty sand start to fall down beside him, enough to make everyone instantly freeze.

Granted, it could have been one of their people moving on the next floor up, but it could have just as easily been someone else. There was simply no way to tell. Everything was perfectly still and silent, except for the soft hiss of falling sand and dust.

Everyone stayed perfectly still and waited.

Seconds ticked by until they became minutes and still nothing happened, a time enough to rankle even the steadiest of nerves. Eventually it even became enough that Sylvas looked for something to occupy his mind with, lest it go dull and sent his will inwards. Diving deep he touched the dark mana at his core and began to move it through the channels carved in his flesh, forcing it through the protections of his second Embodiment and out. He was so close to finishing his circle now, even with his mana supplies dwindled to a fraction of what they should have been by the day’s events and his earlier brute forcing of his paradigm.

Yet even so, he reached for more mana to draw in and replenish himself, even though he knew it wouldn’t be purified into something useful until after the fighting was done. Regardless, it was an idle habit that Sylvas had all but ingrained to himself over his lifetime, needing to feel like he was doing something useful every moment of the day.

It was habit that likely saved his life, for right as he reached for the swirling energy that surrounded him, he felt all of it suddenly draft upwards at once.

A warning that bought him the split second he needed to throw himself to the side.