“Failure means death. Perhaps that death will not arrive now. Perhaps it will not arrive for many years. But the seed of it is planted in the moment that you first taste failure and allow yourself to swallow. Spit failure back into the face of any who try to force it on you.”

—The Necessity, Valtoris Blackstar

Like a comet, Sylvas streaked out into the gathered collection of mages chasing him down. They had sent forward scouts out, but had not bothered to cover their flanks in case of ambush. They had considered themselves too powerful, all massed together, for there to be any risk of anyone being so foolish as to come for them. By fist and spell. Sylvas would teach them humility.

The outer rank of mages, he whipped by so quickly they could have blinked and missed him, but the inner core of casters who should have been layering spells of shielding and protection all around them as they advanced, they received the worst blow. The spell of flight had ended before he burst out from between the blocks at the side of this long promenade and he had been casting a shield of his own as momentum carried him on. Gravity Shear sprang to life ahead of him as he crashed into the pack. His intent had been to turn away any spells they flung his way, but he hadn’t counted on the way that Gravity Shear would interact with physical objects. Or more specifically with bodies. As the invisible buffer struck each mage, they were ripped along the surface of it by the forces at work.

Familiar faces whipped past. Bortan’s face was contorted into a mask of rage, rippling as the g-forces pulled at him. Orson and Luna clung to each other as they were carried up and over the top of him. Only Kaya managed to hold her ground, and even then it was only for a brief moment before the metal spikes she’d thrust deep into the sand to keep her steady had all that surrounded them eroded away, then she was snatched back out of Sylvas’ sphere of protection too. Harvan actually managed to phase through it once he realized what was happening, but by then momentum was already flinging him aside, and he hit the side of a building with what should have been a splat, were he not in the midst of trying to return to being solid. Rather than hitting rock, he sunk into it a distance before it became solid to him. He was fused with the wall, and Sylvas had very serious concerns about his survival until the golden light of his Crest plinked on.

Still carried by the momentum of his initial swoop into their midst, Sylvas was carried on out the other side, landing lightly on his feet with gravity’s grip on him loosened by his embodiment so that he could make a quick bounding leap up on top of the raised blocks on the far side of this artificial ravine.

All of the mages he’d hit had been flung behind him, in the direction that he’d been heading. Not all of them had been taken out by his passage through, though he was surprised to note that neither Bortan nor Luna seemed to be moving despite him previously considering them tough as nails. Regardless, that sudden fling of all their allies in one direction had drawn the attention of the rest of the crowd. Which meant they were all looking away from Sylvas, allowing his Lockmind to pinpoint Ironeyes exact position.

He had started casting before he’d even sighted his target, painfully aware of how little time he’d have before everyone began to react. From the corner of his eye, he could see Kaya already dragging herself back to her feet and shaking off the fragments of now broken metal that had surrounded her to protect her from the impact. He didn’t want to be here when she arrived.

Surrounded by allies, Ironeyes’ was not as vulnerable to Inversion as the others had been. There were too many people around him who could react fast, catching him before he fell either by magic or by hand. So Sylvas did not cast Inversion. He cast Gravity Spike.

On solid ground, or against a less physically imposing specimen, it could have been lethal. Cranking the gravity affecting a person up so high, so abruptly, could have ruptured organs, shattered bones and made them into a fleshy pancake. On the red sands of strife, the effect on Ironeyes was entirely different. One moment he was standing there, the next he had vanished. Dragged down under the sand with a sudden puff of displaced rust dust. Sylvas wasn’t sure how deep he’d hauled him, only that the thick layers of sand filling the channel he’d been dragged down would serve as excellent insulation against any sort of electric outburst.

He leapt for safety the moment the spell was complete, and even that was too late. A barrage of magic hit the top of the block he’d been standing on. Stone shattered and shrapnel flew in every direction. Sylvas back was pummeled with hunks of rock as he fled, but the lethal magic that had detonated the obstacle into pieces passed cleanly overhead.

Disoriented for a fraction of a second, he spun himself to face the direction of the distant tower where he meant to make his last stand and came face to face with Bael. The elf had his hands held up, showing that he wasn’t casting anything. Showing that he was harmless and helpless. “Please, don’t let me interrupt you.”

If Sylvas fought him, it would have been delay enough for the rest of the small army in pursuit of him to catch up. If he ran past, he would only have Bael’s assurance that he meant no harm to protect his back. He flashed the elf a smile and took off running, legs aching every step of the way from his heavy fall earlier.

Apparently Bael was true to his word, nothing hit Sylvas in the back, or at least, nothing immediately hit him, and by the time that the barrage of spells came raining down, he was in flight once more.

The quarter full core of mana that he’d entered the fight with had been depleted less than it could have been by his strike, but he was rapidly draining it with these flying spells. Perhaps one eighth left and no possibility of stopping to draw more.

Ironeyes was down, the goal was achieved, but now more than ever he was painfully aware of how unbalanced this exercise was. For all his tricks and clever solutions, he was still up against dozens of mages. All of them in the third circle too, with all the power that came with it, and unlimited by only being able to cast one spell at a time. Even if his core wasn’t almost emptied, winning would have been impossible.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

His gravity sense pinged behind him, and he flung himself aside.

“SIGIL!”

His mistake had been thinking that they were launching a spell at him, rather than an enraged dwarf. Kaya’s manifested armor was glowing red hot from friction when she landed. She struck down like a meteor. Sylvas had no clue what combination of spells they had used to launch her after him, but he’d definitely have to ask before their next group exercise.

The glowing metal rippled and roiled like mercury, flowing out from the armor that encased her and forming a flock of blades that spread behind her like a halo. “Give it up Stanzbuhr. You’re done.”

To release his spell of flight and cast something else at her would mean the end. Even if he took her out, the delay before he could get in the air again would give the rest of them time to catch up.

Faced with two bad choices, he picked the one that would keep him in the fight. He turned tail and ran. Oh, this is going to suck.

The blades followed after him with a whistling sound. A thrum through the air as their razor edges parted the way.

Jerking straight up into the air, most of them swept by and imbedded themselves in a wall, but not all of them. One of the silvery javelins went cleanly through his calf and out the other side as he was too slow to rise. Another hit the back of his foot, ripping through boot and flesh before deflecting off bone and somehow entangling with the tendon, leaving it dangling crooked out of him.

Pain should have overwhelmed him, but his Clearmind held it at bay. It was information he did not need right now, so he could ignore it. The important thing wasn’t that his leg was crippled or that he was losing blood, it was that he hadn’t been taken out of the fight. Given the speed he needed to move at, he was going to be flying everywhere anyway, so the loss of his leg for the remainder of the exercise was… he could ignore it for now.

The tower he’d picked out for his last stand loomed ahead. He’d given his position away now, there was no point in trying to be coy about his destination. With a fresh surge of mana to the spell he shot up and forward.

Or at least, he tried to.

Kaya had not been summoning more blades to fling after him. She had been regaining control of the ones she’d already launched. The metal bar that was still hooked in Sylvas flesh was as immovable as if it had been embedded in the stone below him. The sudden jerk sent a fresh wash of pain through him. Having a tendon plucked like that was probably one of the most excruciating things Sylvas had ever been through. Thank you, Clearmind.

“Not so fast, boyo!” With a clenched fist and force of will, Kaya started dragging her harpooned prey back towards her.

This was exactly the kind of delay that Sylvas could not afford. Drawing in a ragged breath, he did the only thing that he could to keep on fighting. He surged forwards again.

For a moment the javelin held. The muscle running up the back of his calf was plucked like a guitar string, then it began to pull away from the bone, the skin distending out as the forces working on his fragile body began to contort it beyond all recognition. With one last push and a roar of pain, Sylvas tore free. The ripped remains of the muscles in his lower leg dangling limp and useless inside the loose, stretched bag of skin beneath his knee.

He dragged his gaze away from his injuries and towards the tower ahead, cursing the eidetic memory that would keep the image of his ruined flesh fresh in his mind for the rest of his life. The Crest fixed to the front of his uniform had begun to glow, ready to send him into medical stasis and prevent his condition worsening, but he pushed on and snarled, “Not yet.”

Up in the air, before he made it to the tower-top, he was a sitting duck for any spell lobbed his way, and he began performing barrel rolls and twists from almost the moment he escaped Kaya’s grasp to keep them from hitting him. Even so, more than a few came searingly close. A beam of purple scored across his back, neatly turning his uniform jacket into two equally sized pieces that fell off as he rose. Where it touched flesh, skin and muscle began to slough away. The wound could not go deeper, though there was clearly some acidic property to the spell. The reinforcements that he’d built his second circle with prevented his magic or anyone else’s from perforating the channels of mana he’d carved inside himself.

At least that was the only particularly good shot from his pursuers, and it wasn’t as though Quartermaster Chul wasn’t used to replacing his uniform every other day at this point.

He put thoughts of her, and of the medic who would soon be bitching him out again aside. This was not an opportune moment for distractions.

Hitting the top of the tower, momentum flipped him over onto his back. Granting him another lovely look at his mutilated leg as it flopped over him. Rolling back onto his front and letting the flight spell dissipate, he crawled back to the edge.

The army gathering at the foot of the tower was less substantial than it had been, and from this vantage point, Sylvas could see why. Dotted back across the conjured cityscape were the char marks where battles had happened. The shattered stone and scorched sand where the overwhelming force intent on hunting him down had encountered any of the other units of students. It was a bloody swathe across the map, a war of attrition that he hadn’t even known he was winning by leading them this way. Most of the squads they’d encountered had assumed that their scouts were the full group and tried to jump them. The few that had held back had been annihilated all the same when the massive force had spread out to pass through tighter areas. The natural choke points where an ambush would have made sense had resulted in the army dispersing to travel through every back alley and untread path that an ambusher might have been hiding in. With numbers on their side, Kaya’s little alliance had made short work of everyone else out here, but not without losses of their own.

All in all, there had to be only fifteen of them left, including Kaya and Bael. Sylvas had taken out a fair chunk of them with his Gravity Shear charge not long ago, and judging by how drenched a few of them were, they’d encountered Abbas’ group too.

Fifteen against one. I can do this.

“Sigil!” Kaya bellowed up. “Come out and play!”

As taunts went, it lacked a little of her usual punch, but he didn’t intend on exchanging witticisms today. Some of the grunts that Sylvas didn’t know so well made a beeline for the bottom of his tower, beginning their ascent with a combination of spells and embodiments. He let them make it a decent distance up the tower before he gave a reply. Gathering his mana, Sylvas cast Gravity Spike.

Like most of his gravity affinity magic, it was essentially useless as a direct attack. Even though he had taken Ironeyes down with it, if there hadn’t been time pressure, there would have been little trouble for the dwarf’s allies to dig him out and he’d be none the worse for wear, apart from having sand in some unmentionable places. But even these wide area attacks could be lethal if he timed them right, and waiting until the climbers had gotten high enough that a drop could kill them, or at least injure them badly enough to knock them out of the fight had been the right call.

They fell from the tower’s side in one entangled and yelling mass of bodies, every one of them struggling to break free of the rest, and none of them managing it before they hit the ground.

The crunch shouldn’t have been so satisfying, but it was.

Ten against one. The odds were improving.