“Embodiment and Paradigm are both archetypal and non-specific, a broad variety of esoteric techniques from across myriad traditions folded together under the umbrella of their specific effects. Even assuming that an embodiment from one galactic arm and another from a separate one, developed entirely independently of one another that happen to share an effect did, somehow also share a standardized result, you are then confronted with the variance of the individual. Their understanding of the technique. Their history and psychology when it comes to paradigms. Their own unique biology, when it comes to embodiments. And that is all before the various selected Embodiments and Paradigms begin interacting with each other, not to mention the further complications exacerbated by the variances created by affinities. For the purposes of categorization, the current framework is unmatched. In terms of its practical applicability to individual mages in development, the current framework is scarcely better than useless.”
—The Body of Work, Lerman Vilmander
Sylvas found himself dividing time up in two parts. Before Hammerheart left, and after. It was now a week post-Hammerheart. A week of slowly returning to routine after the chaos of the Cull. A week of standard classes meant to shape him into a naval mage that would make the Ardent proud, and combat simulations against Vaelith’s conjured constructs and the other students, the same as usual.
If Sylvas had been quieter than usual, Kaya and his other friends mostly declined to comment. If he had been pushing himself less in the training exercises and relying on others to pick up the slack, then it had not yet become enough of an issue for any of the instructors to call him out on it. When the combat tests were against constructs, he came out on top time and time again despite his lack of any directed attack spells. When they were against the other recruits he ended up hitting the middle of the pack at best. No matter what happened, he was the target, and no matter how fast he responded or how clever he was, there was no overcoming the weight of numbers.
It came down to mana, fundamentally. Multiple casters arrayed against him, all working together, Sylvas could think of ways around. He could funnel them into choke points or turn the battlefield to his advantage in other ways, but his spells all cost far too much and he was out of mana before he was out of opponents every time. It was the most basic arithmetic of magic, and he couldn’t make it come out in his favor, no matter how many chances he had to try again.
“Is it just me, or are you getting worse?” Kaya had joked with him, not knowing that she was twisting the knife. Or perhaps knowing and hoping that the pain might spur him on to fix whatever was broken. He’d just shrugged his shoulders and gone back to reading.
A way forward will present itself.
Sylvas had also been maintaining his Clearmind very carefully since he had his epiphany about what might have been driving him to cause himself harm. Keeping any intrusive thoughts about his home world and anyone he might have loved there far from his conscious mind.
For perhaps the first time since he’d joined the Ardent, Sylvas felt secure. Until now he had been teetering on the edge of a cliff, always just one misstep away from annihilation, but as he fell into the routine of regular classes and exercises things began to feel almost normal. So it was almost inevitable that when he checked his class schedule for the next week after Bael had muttered something about a guest lecturer, that every single class and exercise from his regularly scheduled routine was absent. Replaced with two words. Individual Improvement.
It seemed to be a little vague a title for an actual course being conducted by the Ardent, but then again so had the Cull. Perhaps it was just another of these little in-jokes that the staff and students of Strife shared. He stopped Bael on their way to class to ask him about it. The response was explosive compared to the elf’s usual unflinching devotion to keeping his emotions in check. “No. No it can’t be. Not again. Not already?!”
Snatching his slate out, Bael began digging through until he found his own schedule, then let out a wail like an owl striking, or perhaps a cat being trod on. Vel was not walking with them, but she was walking nearby enough to be taken aback by the sudden noise. Sylvas wondered if she had some Embodiment relating to sound that made her more susceptible to Bael’s wails. Scowling at the two of them she demanded, “What?”
Without a second thought as to who he was dealing with, the elf turned his slate around to show her.
If Sylvas had thought that Bael’s reaction was a little overwrought, the screamed curse word that the fiend Vel let out that shook every piece of glass in her blast radius seemed ever more dramatic. He tripped on the steps as he tried to clap hands over his ears.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Kaya came running up the stairs, thinking that they were under attack, only to see every senior member of the naval track program throwing a fit as she rounded the bend. She looked to Sylvas for answers, and he just shrugged. She caught onto Bortan’s sleeve and stopped the human as he did his best impression of a man who’d just learned he was headed to the gallows in the morning. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Hell week!” He groaned.
“Hell week.” Kaya repeated back to him.
“Hell week?!” Came a cry from behind them as the last stragglers on the stairs caught up to the conversation.
The wailing continued all the way to class, at which point Sylvas finally managed to isolate Bael from the surrounding melodramatics and get a straight answer out of him. “What is hell week?”
With a clearing of his throat, Instructor Hagen drew their attention to the front of the lecture hall. He was an older man, severe looking as well as wrinkled. Beside him hung a complex three dimensional illusion, showing the flight path of an Ardent ship, and the manner in which various gravitational anomalies would effect its velocity and heading. Sighing, he waved a hand and it rippled away. “For those of you unfamiliar with the practice, Hell Week is next week. It is a period of intensive personal improvement at the expense of your regular classes. What it is not, however, is today, so please be seated and silent as I instruct you in the most basic of interplanetary navigation.”
Just a few days ago, the prospect of a whole week focusing solely on improving himself rather than having to consider the various other aspects of life in the Ardent would have had Sylvas bouncing up and down with delight, but things had changed now. The frantic rush for advancement and personal power no longer seemed so vital. He had personal power enough to secure a place in the Ardent now, even if he never forged another circle for the rest of his life.
As for the reason for the name, it wasn’t hard for him to parse. Most students did not have the same drive that he used to have, to be the best version of themselves that they could be. For them, being dragged kicking and screaming towards improvement was probably arduous. Particularly if they’d spent their lives leisurely acquiring their current progression without ever having to endure the intensity of forced advancement.
Hagan had fallen into his usual monotone drawl, explaining the way that a ship could use gravity wells to accelerate and decelerate as it progressed through a system, and how such things could be used to avoid enemy casters getting an effective calculation to land their spells.
Kaya meanwhile, seemed a little more focused on their impending doom. “Hell week?!”
“We shall see what it is when it arrives.” He replied with a shrug, never taking his eyes off Hagan. Even if he couldn’t hear what the instructor was saying over Kaya’s hissed whispers to play it back later, he could always piece it together by lip-reading.
“It’ll be hell? It is in the name. Come on Stanzbuhr. You’re telling me you just… don’t care?”
He laid a hand on hers atop the table. “I care a great deal, but I can’t do anything about it right now.”
She rolled her eyes and went back to staring at the Instructor as if she were listening to a word he said. They had three more days of classes to get through before Hell Week kicked off. Sylvas would be sure to gather all the intelligence possible from the veterans of the last cycle’s Hell Week long before then.
No sooner was class over than his intelligence gathering could begin. “It was a nightmare.” Bael had regained his composure somewhat since he’d first heard the dreaded words Hell Week, but there was still a nervous energy to him that made Sylvas uncomfortable. “The most unpleasant seven days of all my time on Strife, and I am including the period in which I was beholden to a pint-sized psychopath in that judgement, so you can take it to mean it was markedly worse than whatever personal interpretation you may be making.”
Sylvas had fallen into the habit of just staying quiet around Bael when he wanted more information, since the elf was polite enough to try and fill any silence.
“First you have to endure the indignity of the most prying and invasive scrying procedure of your life as they attempt to ascertain your areas of strength and weakness, then comes the Plan.”
Sylvas simply nodded, silencing Kaya with a glance. They just had to let him speak, no matter how desperate Kaya may have gotten to start demanding answers.
“Each individual student is given a specific improvement plan to optimize their progression. Primarily this period seems to be used to push those on the verge of the next circle over the edge into their next level of advancement, but for those like yourselves, so recently come into a new circle and only just stabilized, matters are considerably more nebulous.”
Kaya couldn’t seem to restrain herself any longer. “Is it going to be like Vilmander’s self-improvement spells?”
“Worse, oh so much worse. Every aspect of your life will come under scrutiny. Every facet of your affinity, embodiments, paradigms, spell list, it all becomes fair game for these people, and they do everything that they can to… optimize you.”
“That hardly sounds like the most terrible fate.” Sylvas murmured, more to prod Bael on to his next round of histrionics than because he actually believed it for a second.
“From the moment that your eyes open to the moment that they close, you belong to the Ardent in Hell Week, there is no rest, no relaxation, even your meals are timed and modified for efficiency.” He groaned.
Kaya looked between the two men with some degree of amusement. “So we all have to behave like Sigil for a week?”
Bael’s laugh still had a hysterical edge to it, but the comparison to Sylvas previous behavior wasn’t hard to make. “Indeed, a week of self-sacrifice and pain, Mr Vail here will feel right at home.”
Sylvas forced himself to smile, but the idea that his everyday life since he was barely old enough to read had been everyone else’s idea of hell stuck with him.
Maybe I have been over doing it a little bit, he considered thoughtfully, wondering exactly what it meant for his overall wellbeing.
Either way, he was about to find out.