“Death affinity magic, often called necromancy, is a dark mirror to life affinity magic and healing. And that perfect mirroring often surprises those who encounter it. A necromancer cannot only summon the powers of death to lay waste to their foes, they can create a false approximation of life from amidst the death. Reanimating flesh and bones that healing magic can no longer touch. Each unit created in this manner begets more death, fueling its own continuation, and also flooding the necromancer with the mana required to continue creating new units so long as available materials exist. Perhaps most dangerously of all is the fact that each unit functions independently of its creator until receiving their focus once more. A self-sustaining, self-perpetuating army that requires none of the concentration of mana-construct creatures thanks to the existing anatomy and mana framework inherent in once-living bodies. The only issue with this perpetual state of expansion is when it reaches its natural limit. When there are no more deaths to be made, it cannot persist, the mage at the heart of it becomes the fuel that the raised dead consume to maintain their existence. There have been few opportunities throughout history to observe this in effect, particularly given that necromancy rarely occurs in a vacuum. The circumstances that would create one necromancer beget more and their conflicts consume the worlds around them.”
—The Second Apocalypse, Xiodalus Blaudud
On the third day of shore-leave, even the hardiest partiers of the Blackhall were reaching their limits. Sylvas actually saw many of them out and about during the day, browsing the shops, eating food that wasn’t just dressage on a cocktail. He served as something of a tour guide to many of his fellow recruits, guiding them to the merchants that might have the wares they were looking for, and he delighted in every one of them that he was able to bring to the library access exchange and introduce to the wonders of the myriad documents available. Kaya surprised him by picking out some dwarvish library that he’d never heard of, settling herself in during her hangover to read through some old epic poems of her people. Bael, who he had thought would be most intrigued, given his academic nature, was already well aware of the place, and already running an enchantment on his slate to copy over information at much the same speed that Sylvas was consuming it.
All the while the eye-slate ran, and Sylvas learned more and more about his affinity and the possibilities for his next step of advancement. While earlier circles were relatively easy to construct, the latter ones became more and more mana intensive, something that would be even more difficult for Sylvas given the weight and density of gravity affinity mana. Furthermore, he’d come to the conclusion early on that none of the gravity affinity paradigms or embodiments would actually serve him well moving forward. His existing ones gave him a fair approximation of what most of the other more specific ones offered.
His biggest problem at present was that while he was able to consume vast amounts of information and retain it, he could not process it with any great speed. He had toyed with the fragmentation of his psyche, thinking of setting each of the pieces to read and comprehend a specific section of the texts he’d consumed and then absorb them on reintegration, but every experiment with it had resulted in a garbled mess. He was getting everything but without context or logic, it was just more chunks of data that meant nothing to him. The personality fragments couldn’t create a holistic understanding of information by themselves, they were only meant to carry out simple processes like casting or maintaining spells. Even though they were all pieces of him, they were not the whole of him, and they didn’t have his full mind’s attention and processing to work with.
In a weird way, his inability to sift through all the information and find a suitable paradigm actually helped to inform what he wanted his next paradigm to be. There were many speed of thought enhancing paradigms, and many more that could help him to integrate memorized material into his thinking, mostly more or less useless stuff meant for academics that would have no practical application on the battlefield. It was striking that balance that presented most of Sylvas problems. Fahred would have been overjoyed at the thought of him taking on a paradigm that was useless in a fight, Vaelith wouldn’t see the point of it at all, and neither of them could see the person that Sylvas was trying to become. Even though he didn’t have a clear vision of it yet, he knew it was neither of the extremes that they were demanding. Not a mindless soldier or a harmless academic. He could be more than both of these tiny little boxes that they were trying to shove him into.
He was going to be more.
Thanks to Bael’s assistance, Sylvas soon had all the pertinent parts of the libraries he was raiding stored away, on his slate, if not in his mind. The countdown to the end of their leave no longer feeling so frantically close. Now that drinking was no longer so high on the list of everyone’s priorities, Sylvas was somewhat shocked to find that he was actually enjoying socializing with them. Initially, he had assumed that the loud chaos of a bar was the natural state of friendship outside of the regimented routines of work, but as they all sat around a long table in one of the station’s restaurants, a half dozen conversations going on between the various members of his closest circle of friends, he was surprisingly contented. True, he didn’t particularly care about Bael’s archaeological minutiae, Gharia’s perversely detailed description of her love life, or any of the others niche interests either, but when he took those small details in, they painted a broader picture, and he came to a greater understanding of each of his friends. He knew not to trust Havran with money, to always trust Ironeyes with flirting. He knew that despite his relatively slim form, Anak was one of the strongest people at the table. Luna knew more about music than anyone he’d ever met, and that included Veltrian, whose affinity for sound somehow didn’t push her over the top in terms of technical grasp of it as an artistic medium.
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Stranger still were the moments, the entirely unexpected moments, when he himself realized that he was known. When Kaya would pass along a bowl of dipping sauce that wasn’t sweet enough for her tastes, but that she knew he’d like. When there would be a little lull in an argument between two of his friends over something inconsequential, a gap in their own private conversation while they waited for him to weigh in with his opinion. Sylvas had spent his entire life holding back. Keeping who he really was behind a veneer of politeness and distance, first because any hint of a person shining through in the orphanage would have been an invitation to torment him, then to disguise his humble origins within the Heralds and most recently because he had seen everyone around him as his competition. He had tried to give as little away as he could, so that he’d retain every advantage, and it was becoming increasingly apparent that he had failed. These people knew him, they liked him, in spite of knowing him. It was an idea that would take some getting used to. But still, he couldn’t deny a sense of warmth that had nothing to do with the hot meal in his stomach.
There was no confusion or tripping over one another on their way back to their quarters that night, just a long line at the bathrooms as everyone cleaned up ready for bed. Beyond their immediate group, there were still plenty of partying recruits all over the station, and Sylvas had no doubt that there would be no shortage of tales of hilarity come morning, but for now, he was more than content just to hear those stories instead of living them.
Despite the awkwardness of the last morning, he ended up nestled in a bunk in between Gharia on one side and Kaya on the other. Before his head had even hit the pillow, the dwarf was snoring, and when he rolled over so he didn’t have to watch her lips vibrating along to the tune, he came face to face with the lizard woman he’d inadvertently rejected. She was just lying there, watching him, with that strange predatory stillness that people found so off-putting about the Najash. Like she was debating whether or not to pounce and preserving energy until the decision was made.
Nervously, unsure of what he was doing or why, Sylvas stretched out a hand, and hers came out from under the scratchy blanket to take it. Her expression was unreadable, so much of the Najash body language was conveyed in positioning and movement of the tail, and none of it was visible as she lay still beneath the covers. Things between them were good again. She had let the discomfort pass, there was no reason for him to say anything more. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t understand.”
“I forgot how little you know.” She replied, her voice dry and whispering in the dark. He tried to pull his hand back, only for her to tighten her hold. “I do not mean that you are… you make this difficult. You appear, and you know so much without ever having to learn, and it makes me forget the things you do not know.”
“I’ll try to be more obviously stupid going forward.”
She let out that little wheeze of laughter. “All anyone could ask.”
They lay still in companionable silence, her cold hand still in his, for a long moment. Then Sylvas decided to be brave. “If I had understood…”
It was her turn to try and pull away. A hint of a hiss on her lips.
“If I had understood, I can’t promise that things would have been any different. I’m not sure I’m ready for… anything.”
She huffed air out through her nostrils. “It wasn’t like I was going to ask you to raise my babies.”
Time to be brave one last time, even if it was a struggle to make the words come. “I lost someone… close to me. Not so long ago. I don’t think I could…”
She tightened her grip on him again, the points of her claws pricking at the back of his hand. “You will feel what you feel, no matter what name you put on that feeling.”
“Maybe I will.” Sylvas tried to smile, but the ache in his chest that he’d spent so long ignoring was back. “But I’m not ready to… I’m not ready to think about it yet.”
She let out a chuffing chuckle. “Obviously stupid, as requested. Good job.”
Sylvas laughed despite himself, then they both drew back into their own beds. “Good night, Gharia.”
“Good night, idiot.”
Sylvas was still smiling as he closed his eyes and drifted off, entering into a deep and peaceful sleep.
At least until the alarms starting blaring.