Starbreaker

“Warfare is the highest calling of all sentient beings. The means by which we differentiate ourselves. Yet the greatest battle can be won without a spell being cast or a blade being drawn. In silent dark, death can come and change the course of history.”

—The Necessity, Valtoris Blackstar

 

The recruits arrived on the field, en masse, to discover that the other half of the school, the officer’s training program, had arrived before them and were neatly arrayed opposite. Somewhere among them was Hammerheart and his minions, but Sylvas couldn’t pick them out of the line-up at this distance. Vaelith strode between the two lines, rapidly casting something that made her voice boom across the plains.

“Good evening children. So sorry to interrupt your nap time, but this is a live combat drill.” She said it with a light-hearted tone that belied the tension strumming through all of the more seasoned recruits. “You will be observed and judged based on your effectiveness in combat, your ability to problem-solve, and your ability to follow the orders of your commanding officer. Failure in any of these categories means you have failed the test. Fail the test and you get…”

“Remedial lessons.” The recruits around Sylvas groaned in response.

Vaeleth’s voice washed over them, rocking Sylvas back on his heels with its volume. “And since you have a full schedule here on Strife, guess who’s time those lessons come out of?”

This time there was no answer. It was so clearly a rhetorical question that even this group could grasp it. Vaeleth pressed on. “Two recruits to one officer, if you’ve got somebody you want to stick with, grab them now.”

Sylvas looked around for Kaya, but she was out of arm’s reach after their mad rush out from the cliffs. He felt a hand close on his, and relief flooded through him before he could turn around and meet the pink eyes of the albino lizard woman from earlier on. He almost snatched his hand back, but by then it was too late.

Vaeleth’s latest spell took hold, a whisper of green fire washing over them all. “Alright pairs, stick together and head towards the officer outlined in green. You’ve got 20 seconds, then we’re starting without you.”

Sylvas met the Najash’s startled stare and the pair of them took off running towards the opposite line. Sylvas looked back and forth along it for the tell-tale glow of Vaeleth’s magic around one of the officer trainees but he could see nothing. Sylvas turned to his companion, “Do you see it…” He trailed off as he realized that he didn’t even know her name.

She nodded to the left, “There.”

As they ran for the distant figure lit up in green, Sylvas grumbled to himself. “What is the point of giving us a schedule if they intend to…”

The Najash cut him off with a hiss. “We are being tested. Adaptability is one of the criteria.”

Sylvas refrained from complaining anymore because he didn’t have enough breath to do otherwise. It seemed that the lizard-girl had some sort of physical enhancement as well. It seemed increasingly likely that he was the only one on the planet who didn’t. He didn’t much care for being physically overpowered by literally everyone around him, but if he couldn’t do anything about it until he was forging his second circle then he could at least pretend that what was simple exercise for them wasn’t killing him.

They arrived at their officer, an unfamiliar human man who glanced back and forth between the two of them placidly. While Vaeleth’s hair was buzzed short, this slightly overweight fellow seemed to be entirely devoid of any hair whatsoever, not even an eyelash was anywhere to be seen. He looked to the Najash, “Who’s this then?”

“New blood.” She finally let Sylvas hand go. “Didn’t want him sniping me again.”

“This one got you in testing?” The officer recruit chortled. “He’s still got space-dust on him.”

The najash didn’t rise to the bait. “Just watch.”

Sylvas held out a hand in greeting. “Sylvas Vail.”

The other human looked down at his hand as if it were something disgusting. “You’ll call me sir.”

The najash slapped Sylvas’ hand down. “I’m Gharia and this smooth-skin dolt is Bortan.”

Sylvas couldn’t keep some degree of sarcasm out of his voice as he replied, “A pleasure to meet you.”

Vaeleth saved them from the discomfort of any further socializing. “Three leagues south there is a storm-front coming in. Only trouble is, there’s no wind. What does that tell you?”

As one, the officer recruits replied, “Eidolons.”

Sylvas’ attention was instantly caught. He had not even considered the possibility that he’d be facing an actual eidolon on his first day of training to be one of the Ardent. It hardly seemed fair.

Vaeleth’s voice went on booming over the top of his panic. “If a single eidolon makes it through to the wards here at campus, you fail. If any of the other recruits on the field die, you fail. If you die, you fail. Nice simple mission for you. When they’re all dead, you go to bed.”

Sylvas’ mind began spinning, why would there be Eidolons here? Now? This place was a part of the Empyrean, it was meant to be safe from fools like him being tricked into summoning them. Bortan had set off towards the southern front without hesitation. Was this normal? Were eidolons everywhere? Sylvas forced himself into Clearmind. Distractions were dangerous right now.

“Is this a regular thing?” He called out to Gharia.

“It’s a relic world.” She gave a casual shrug before putting on a fresh turn of acceleration to catch up to Bortan where he strode ahead.

After that, he didn’t have breath to spare for more questions. The other two had embodiments that let them eat up the terrain with ease, while he was having to struggle every step of the way with the red sand shifting underfoot.

His two companions on the other hand, seemed to have no trouble whatsoever. They were sniping comments back and forth at each other that Sylvas, trailing behind, could only catch on the wind.

“Why haven’t they kicked you out of officer training yet?” Gharia’s abrasive comments towards Sylvas no longer seemed so abrasive.

To his credit Bortan took it in stride. Clearly this was not the first time she had needled him. “Because I’m an exemplary student.”

“An exemplar that can’t hit circle four.” Gharia said it as though she were talking to Sylvas, even though the comment was clearly directed at their team leader.

Bortan rolled his eyes. “Rushing advancement is a surefire way to…”

Gharia put on another turn of speed, darting ahead of the other mage and then running along backwards so she could see his face as she tormented him. “Maybe you weren’t meant to be an officer, ever think of that?”

“But if I wasn’t an officer, who would tell you meatheads what to do?” He replied with a bland smile.

Gharia chuffed with amusement. “To be fair, I’m pretty sure we could puzzle out the complexities of ‘blast the eidolons not each other’ without your incredible tactical mind.”

It seemed to be Bortan’s turn to go on the offensive. “Can’t even hit circle three and she thinks she can do my job…”

“Oh didn’t you hear? Rushing advancement is a surefire way to…”

Sylvas attention was turned from their banter towards the distant horizon. It was still night on Strife, in as much as the planet had night at all. Over the horizon in every direction a glow seemed to linger, whether the product of the planetary system’s suns being so close to rising once more, or some sort of ambient charge created by all of the magic that saturated the world, Sylvas couldn’t say for sure. It would be another topic for him to research. One of many.

Regardless, as the storm came into sight, it became rapidly apparent that it was less a gathering of clouds sprinkling down rain, as he had been accustomed to back home, and more of a wall of red sand, drawn up into whipping dervish contortions and slowly advancing on them. Here and there across that wall, dark shapes moved, like shadows behind a veil. Most were low to the ground, advancing troops of varying sizes, but others flitted across the sky within the sandstorm. Either tempest tossed by the forces involved, or so powerful in their flight that whatever wind powered the swirling sand’s advance didn’t impede them.

It was different from Croesia. There the rifts had opened and the nightmares had come pouring out, but here, it seemed almost natural for them to exist in this world. In a place so alien, those strange shadows seemed at home and the mortals arrayed against them felt like they were the intruders.

Sylvas had expected to feel fear now that he was facing eidolons again, but to his surprise, even without Clearmind, it was less like fear and more like a tempered anxiety, almost excitement. These were the things that had destroyed my world, left me adrift in the cosmos, yet for some reason I just can’t muster up any terror. Perhaps it was the casual way that all the other recruits were lining up to face them as if it were just another lesson that they had to get through. Perhaps it was simply the fact that there were other people at his side at all.

He drew in a few steadying breaths, trying to ignore the thick dust coating his tongue each time that he did, and he asked, “What are your orders, sir?”

After so much disrespect from Gharia, Bortan was momentarily stunned, then he conceded. “She was pretty much right. Blast the eidolons as they break cover, don’t get killed.”

“You don’t have any strategy that you want us to follow?” Sylvas couldn’t hold back his surprise.

“They’re tier one eidolons, they can’t even think, let alone cast. Just blast them until you tap out of mana, then sit back and watch me wipe out the rest.”

Gharia chuffed once more, tail lashing. “Oh yeah, a third circle mage can totally solo a whole swarm of remnant war eidolons.”

“We’re one unit of many, also, shut up.” Bortan kept his gaze on the wall of red advancing on them, but he pointed a finger in her general direction. “That’s an order.”

“Denied.” She replied before turning to Sylvas. “What would you do different, new guy?”

Sylvas sighed. “Follow orders?”

Her chuff of amusement turned into a snort of disgust when she realized he wasn’t joking. “Bortan orders aren’t orders, they’re more like suggestions?”

“I am standing right here you know.” Bortan was casting some sort of protective spells on himself in preparation for the fight to come.

“I am unfamiliar with the enemy, unfamiliar with the terrain, unfamiliar with your capabilities.” Sylvas felt obliged to explain further, so she didn’t misunderstand his compliance as weakness, as she seemed intent on doing. “I need more information before I can start contradicting our commanding officer.”

“You could learn a lot from this guy, Gharia.” Their officer smirked.

Before she could break out into a stream of native words that the translator spell wouldn’t bother with, Sylvas added, “Of course, if I was familiar with all those things, I suspect I’d have better orders to give than; blast them and don’t die.”

It wiped the smirk off Bortan’s face as swiftly as it had come. While he’d taken all of Gharia’s ribbing in good faith, it seemed like Sylvas’ one comment wasn’t going to be given the same grace. “In the heat of battle, you’ll have no time for clever tactics. Kill or be killed.”

The first of the eidolons burst free of the sand wall, dashing forward ahead of the pack towards their position. The other recruits scattered along the battle-line did nothing in response. Why would they? It wasn’t their position to hold, and they had limited mana supplies to deal with what the night threw at them.

Scuttling legs were Sylvas first impression, running along both sides of the creature’s flattened and elongated body were so many needle-thin legs that he couldn’t count them. So many that they seemed more like rippling hairs than limbs at all. But at the front there was a shape that was recognizable. A gaping open hole into the core of the monster, unprotected by the bright red chitin that enclosed the rest of it, but guarded by a snapping array of mandibles arrayed around it in a full circle, like some nightmare lamprey blended with a centipede.

At the speed it was travelling, it would be on them in seconds, and as Sylvas cast a glance to Gharia and Bortan he realized that neither one of them was casting. Instead they were staring intently at him. Waiting for him to deal with the rampaging monster of nightmare that was bearing down on them all, alone.