“If knowledge is power, then why are idiots so effective? Simple. Knowledge isn’t power. The application of knowledge is power, and more often than not, those possessed of too much knowledge end up tripping over it in their pursuit of application. Sometimes the correct response to a situation is exactly what the idiot would do.”
—Squad Tactics, Fal’Vaelith
Sylvas was immediately taken aback by what he’d just heard. There was a lot of passion there. A lot of what he had to assume was hate. Was this some friend of Hammerheart’s, or had he somehow offended this complete stranger without trying?
“I literally just met you.” He said, not having a clue of what else to say.
“You have, yes. And we will meet again, in combat. Our clash will be as magnificent as all of your previous battles.” This close, Sylvas could see his eyes. Grey so light they were almost the same as the white of his eyes. “And I shall prove my superiority to you there, on the field of battle where you are at your strongest.”
Sylvas swayed for a moment, weighing the words, then shrugged his shoulders. “But not right now… right?”
“It would not be appropriate to request a duel today, unless you did me some great insult.” He said it as if he was hopeful that Sylvas would say something, start something. As if he couldn’t wait for his opportunity.
Sylvas wet his lips. “See you later then?”
“Indeed you shall. You shall see me, and I you. And when next we meet, I shall test you. I shall take you to the very edge of defeat, and then I shall tip you over. I shall find you wanting.”
“Okay?” Sylvas didn’t make any move to walk away, and eventually the stranger let out a little huff of annoyance and stalked off.
What was that about?
The only good thing that could be said about the whole encounter was that the threats of impending death had put a little adrenaline into Sylvas system, pushing him a little closer to sobriety, if only a little. He was going to explore, take in the sights and the possibilities of Onslaught Citadel, and then when his mind cleared, he could sift through the memories and lay more concrete plans. The others might be content to drink and gamble their days away, but Sylvas had more important things to be getting on with.
The lower levels of the station, he’d move through later once he could fully trust himself on the ladders, but this upper ring was what he was currently the most interested in anyway, because it held all of the businesses willing to trade with recruits of the Ardent. A captive audience for them, that would probably allow the merchants to hike up their prices as high as they desired, but equally, a group of consumers inherently limited and likely to share stories amongst themselves about any bad deals that they received. He would be paying over the odds for anything that he bought here, but he’d also be certain that what he was buying was of good quality. That made life a little easier. Particularly since he didn’t really care about having money, except for what advantages that money could buy him.
Fighting Vaelith had underlined all of the problems with how he had been putting himself together, even as it showed how effective some of his magic could be in combat. It was time to fix the cracks.
By the end of his tour of the upper ring he had uncovered two illicit brothels masquerading as other businesses, a speakeasy selling the kind of drinks that even TiChi wouldn’t, and a variety of purveyors of petty entertainments of various varieties, from artefacts that generated illusory plays of stories that you could interact with to alchemical concoctions that could change your appearance and mental state. Some of them seemed like things that the Ardent wouldn’t sanction but given the earlier conversation about coupling among the recruits, Sylvas was no longer sure of where his employers drew the lines of morality, and he wasn’t planning on ruining anyone else’s fun.
The shop-front that had interested him the most was simply named “Codex” and seemed to be one of the least frequented on the station. Inside there were books, real paper books, held behind transparent screens to protect them from the grubby hands of the general public, but the main draw seemed to be the long menu neatly typed and displayed above the counter. Most of it was a list of places Sylvas had never been or heard of, many names of places that he didn’t even think were places. Historical periods on some of the planets already listed, and collections of lesser documents. It was a library of sorts, or rather a gateway to other libraries. For coin, you could gain temporary access to the listed institutions and repositories of knowledge. Sylvas’ eyes widened and he looked through the list again, now understanding. The collected works of almost the entire Empyrean was here, not to mention pre-Empyrean libraries from many of the founding worlds, papers from the fringes of civilization, even some documents from outside of it, including collected bundles of “Alien texts.”
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Behind the counter a najash with a pair of oversized spectacles fastened to his head and a brightly colored suit looked up at him excitedly. “We are looking for something in particular? This one is always happy to direct you.”
“I… need a little time to think through exactly what I want. How long would I keep access if I purchase it?”
“We offer a flexible pricing plan, but it extends no further than Onslaught Citadel.”
“I need… Paradigms and Embodiments that the Ardent library doesn’t keep. And anything you have on gravity affinity magic.”
The najash was scribbling away on his own slate as Sylvas spoke. “This is… many books across many collections. We are in need of more defining parameters if you mean to read them all in a week’s leave.”
This funny little lizard man was not a part of the Ardent, and Sylvas had been through enough in his life not to trust easily. “Assume that my reading speed is instantaneous, do we still need to trim?”
Some frantic scribbling and calculations followed. “If we remove all paradigms and embodiments in the Ardent Archives, and any that require specific affinities…”
“Other than gravity affinity.”
“Of course.” The najash’s scribbling resumed. “Then… assuming instant reading speed… we have 185 hours.”
Sylvas sighed. “That’s more than a week.”
“And we would not be sleeping.” The najash said with a little amusement.
Sylvas snapped his fingers. “If we eliminate all the writings on Gravity Affinity that are included in the Ardent Archives too, how much do we cut down.”
“This one is not certain of the full extent of the Archives, as they are closed to the public and we are making assumptions, but…” His lipless mouth spread into a facsimile of a smile. “One hundred and eleven hours.”
Sylvas raised his hand, ready to pay. “How much?”
For the first time, the off little lizard man looked slightly uncomfortable. “This dips into many different collections, it will not be inexpensive.”
“How much?” He repeated.
The merchant turned back to his calculations for a moment, up on the board behind him, different collections lit up as they were accessed. A name rang a bell. “You can skip the Veilbohr Institute, I already have access to that.”
Even if he didn’t, he knew just who to ask for it.
Hissing at his slate, the najash restarted his calculations. Finally arriving at, “Eighty-seven gold.”
The number brought Sylvas up dead. That was a substantial amount of money. He’d started out life in the Empyrean with only a hundred gold in total and had no idea how much the Ardent actually paid. Not to mention the costs of his other plans on the station. A glance at his own slate informed him that his account held just under two hundred gold pieces. This would cost nearly half of everything that he had.
“Deal.”
A construct popped up, and he pressed a hand to it to make the payment. He would have to make sure that he made this investment worth it.
The upper ring of the station had a single thoroughfare running around its outer loop close to the bulkhead and space, but many of the shop-fronts were actually set back along branching passages further in towards the center of the station, and by about midday, Sylvas felt confident that he’d explored all of it, and that his sobriety had returned to him. He tucked himself away in a corner of one of the less frequented eateries, somewhere specializing in the distinctive human cuisine from various central worlds that he’d never encountered before and set to work sifting back through his hazy drunken memories of the day so far. His head hurt before he’d even made it a few minutes.
His eye-slate was set up to run through the libraries that he’d bought access to, pouring all of the available information into his brain as quickly as possible to be sifted through like this at a later date. He might be able to make some time to actually read it later, but for now, he needed the conscious parts of his brain to lay out his plans. There were materials available on the station that he’d never have seen down on Strife, variations on existing items, and things that he’d never even heard of before, and he needed to replay all that he’d seen and cross-reference it with all that he’d memorized previously so that he could determine what he needed for his next crafting project. Putting together the staff had been extremely gratifying, and there was so much more that he knew he could do with enchantment if given the opportunity. Things that even the wrinkled remains of his instructor down on the planet had never even thought of.
The first order of business should have been to repair his spell-cheat bracer, but now that he was confronted with all of the available materials up here, he was wondering if some improvements couldn’t be made. He spun back to the beginning of his day to sift through all that he’d seen again, only to overshoot ever so slightly and replay his conversation with Malachai.
At the time, lost in the haze, he had been focused exclusively on the words being said and trying to stay upright, but now, in recollection, all of the information of his other senses flooded back. His gravity sense told him little to nothing about the man, but his second sight spoke volumes. Any mage was a point where mana converged. The weight of the mana within their core bending the ambient magic towards them, distorting it with the presence of itself condensed the same way that matter was drawn to wells of gravity. But Malachai was a nexus. Mana flowed towards him from every side, the only other mages that Sylvas had come across who distorted the natural state of magic so much were full-blown 5th circle wizards. So much power at the man’s fingertips. So much that it put the well that Sylvas had been so proud of excavating for himself to absolute shame. But even Malachai’s incredible power wasn’t enough to stun Sylvas so much as the affinity of the magic that he was calling in from all around, so dark that for one awful moment Sylvas believed that he’d encountered another gravity mage, before realizing that it was not so. There was no answering pull from his own mana, no sense of recognition, Malachai’s affinity was different from his but had a pull just as inevitable. Malachai was a death mage.