Starbreaker

“Magical combat differs immensely from the hand-to-hand brawling that characterizes most pre-advancement societies. It is a matter of tactics, planning, cunning and resource allocation. Each spell that you cast has the opportunity cost of one that you now cannot. Each spell you fail to cast has the opportunity cost of victory.”

—Squad Tactics, Fal’Vaelith

While his education had been considered prodigious back on his home world, fighting had never been central to it. Life had been slower, more focused on their advancement. The few spells that could have been used in combat were things that he’d picked up in his own research, or as part of competing with the others, not his focus. He was completely out of his depth. But his brain hadn’t suddenly stopped working just because he’d been thrown into a new situation. “You handle them close, I handle them at range. If nothing else, my mana supplies can hopefully outlast them.”

Above them, spells flitted through the air. Sudden volleys of flame, lighting, and other bright and far more bombastically colored bolts zipped through the sky, back and forth. Swiveling in direction as their casters moved at high speed. Kaya kept her eyes on Sylvas. “But how do you want to do this?”

Sylvas looked around once more. They didn’t have the same experience as the people that were already here, the other students had probably honed their reflexes in fights like this regularly. If they wanted to come out on top, then they couldn’t just go with the flow and accept whatever was happening to them, they had to change the game. “They’re used to fighting in this environment. So we either change the environment or get out of it.”

“You’d rather be a sitting frog out on the sand?”

“A sitting frog?” He repeated it back to her.

“Aye, out in the open.”

Sylvas had to think about it for a moment, but the fact was that he probably would have preferred that. He’d have been able to see what was happening around him and respond accordingly. Admittedly, he might lose the head-to-head fight with all the other students, but at least he’d feel like he had a fair shot at it.

Changing the lay of the land, then. “Do you know the spell Vaeleth used to raise the blocks?”

Kaya crossed her arms again. “You think that just because I’m a dwarf I know every spell that works stone?!”

He ignored her usual silly posturing. “Me neither.”

“Nah, I do know it but I can only cast it once before I’m out of mana. What are you thinking?”

A figure flitted by above them, pursued by a second, both flying too fast for Sylvas to recognize either one of them, but not so fast that they could outpace his Arcane Arrow. One lanced up and struck the pursuer, sending a najash girl tumbling out of the sky to hit the top of one of the buildings beside them hard enough to leave a bloody stain and a scatter of teeth. Sylvas winced, it hadn’t even crossed his mind that people would get hurt. He’d assumed that Vaeleth had some sort of ward in place to protect them from real harm, or that the gentle strike he’d made with his Arrow would have scored him a point without the results being so gruesome. The najash didn’t move, just dangled there off the corner of the block. Surrounded by a shimmering silvery glow emanating from her crest.

“We need to move.” Sylvas slipped into Clearmind so he could focus on the task at hand. “Somebody surely saw that.”

“You just…” Kaya gawked at the fallen lizard-woman as Sylvas dragged her away. “Blessed kragh, boy. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

Sylvas felt sick to his stomach at the sight of the blood trickling down the side of the now cracked stone, but if this was what his life was going to be from now on, he had to get used to it.

“We’ve got two options, as I see it. Drop the stone back beneath the earth and level the field, at which point we become reliant on me casting faster than everyone else. Or raise even more, crushing everyone into even closer quarters, so that you’re expertise can shine.”

Kaya looked uncomfortable, possibly for the first time since Sylvas met her. “I don’t think I’ve got the juice to level the whole thing.”

Without knowing the spell or even any of its workings, Sylvas had no idea how much mana it would take to cast. “How much could you bring down?”

“A few?” She shrugged, sheepishly.

Sylvas kept on scanning the skyline above the buildings as they moved, just waiting for someone to spot the fallen lizard-woman and calculate their position from there. “That isn’t very specific.”

“How am I meant to know, I don’t use a mining spell for...”

A thunderclap overhead drowned out the rest of that sentence. A thunderclap that went repeated, again and again, getting louder with each peal. Kaya put her hands over her ears, but Sylvas bore through the pain with Clearmind to keep him focused.

They’d had only a few moments to pull their plans together once they’d realized the situation they’d been dumped into, but the other students had been doing this for weeks or months. The teams that Sylvas had seen scurrying off together had probably put together contingency plans for each scenario that they had been dumped into. The thunderous resonance was just one piece of one plan.

The second piece came into sight, rounding a corner up ahead. Three students all in all. One elf, one dwarf and one fiend. The fiend and elf were in the midst of casting, one summoning the thunderous peals that were sounding overhead, the other creating the protective bubble that surrounded the three of them and kept them from the other spell’s effects.

The thunder spell was nothing if not effective. Kaya was halfway curled to the fetal position, trying to protect her ears, and Sylvas was dimly aware that he had stopped hearing entirely at some point, and that blood was running down his jaw from where the deafening noise had done exactly that, bursting his eardrums. It meant that everything that happened in the next few seconds was in total silence.

The leader of the trio spotted Sylvas and Kaya where they stood and launched a spell their way that Sylvas managed to deflect with a hasty and half-formed shield. That dart of red light rebounded into a nearby wall, showering them with fragments and gravel.

In response, Sylvas launched one Arcane Arrow after another at the trio. The first struck their shield and was absorbed. The pale blue of his magic spreading across its curve and then fading away entirely. He adjusted his aim. He didn’t know how to bring down their shield, had no experience with counter-spells at all, but that didn’t mean he was out of the fight. The next arcane arrow shot right past their shield entirely and clipped the corner of the building beside them.

Sylvas had invested the full destructive power that he could into that second arrow, far more than he would have dared launch at another person if he didn’t want them dead, and his calculation of the angles involved were off.

The chunk of rock that was blown off the block beside the trio was meant to soar across and hit their dwarf leader in the temple, knocking him out of the fight and eliminating the threat. Instead, it landed in the elf’s hands, crushing his fingers and disrupting his casting.

There was no sound, but Sylvas liked to imagine that the bubble went pop when the casting of the shield stopped. Both fiend, elf and dwarf were struck by the fiend’s thunderous spell, knocked to their knees by it, grasping at their ears. It only lasted a brief moment before the interrupted casting brought the effect to an end, but that moment was enough to floor all three of them, and more than enough time for Sylvas to line up his shots.

The first Arcane Arrow hit the dwarf in the forehead with enough force to knock him out. The fiend seemed to recover faster than the elf, moving to cast again the moment that her friend fell, but she too took an Arcane Arrow to the face before she had a chance to speak another word.

Kaya stumbled into Sylvas’ line of sight, mouth working as she went, meaning that she was probably rambling on as usual. That was a relief at least, there was probably no harm done. The elf managed to throw up a ward before Sylvas’ Arrow hit her, but it gave Kaya all the time she needed to close the distance between them and leap at the unfortunate elf. She led with her metal fist and landed on top of an already unconscious elf. She said something to Sylvas, but he couldn’t make out a word. Pointing at his bleeding ears by way of explanation.

The dwarf’s brows drew down and she said something that Sylvas probably wouldn’t have understood anyway thanks to the limitations of translation spells.

A spell took her from behind. Not the simple darts of power that the students had been flinging around so far, something much more sinister. There was a concussion that Sylvas felt even at this distance, and her prosthetics were all flung away from her body with brutal force. She landed heavily on her face, the same impact that had smashed her legs and arm away having thankfully put her out of action before she had to deal with the traumatic consequences of her dismemberment. The silvery haze of the crest covered her, slowing the bleeding, stabilizing her without actually helping.

The dwarf that Sylvas had thought was knocked out was back on his feet and casting.

Sylvas was alone, deafened, and completely out of his depth. So he did the only thing that made sense, he went on the offensive. Nobody in their right mind would have charged towards that caster, which meant that they were probably completely unprepared.

The ground rippled beneath his feet as he sprinted forwards, sending him crashing face-first into Kaya where she lay. He pushed himself up and readied a ward just in time to deflect a beam of bright, blinding red as it lanced at him. It seared out from the central point where it had struck that shield, spreading rapidly until he let the spell fall, then the cinders scattered away from him. For a moment he could see again, just well enough that when a second beam of red zipped towards him, he was able to duck down. It sizzled past the back of his neck, setting his hair on fire as he got his head out of the way.

The mage attacking him was stout and solid, but moving with such speed and grace that it stunned Sylvas. The man leapt from where had last launched a beam, kicked off the wall above them and came down on the far side of Sylvas, already casting once more. Sylvas own attempt to send an Arcane Arrow after him hit nothing but air. The dwarf was just too fast.

This time it was not a red beam but a solid orb of the same color that struck Sylvas square in the chest, driving all the air from his lungs with its burning impact. If he hadn’t already endured such terrible pain as a part of summoning an Eidolon, then the pain alone probably would have been enough to knock him out then and there. But he managed to breathe through, gathering his wits and his strength once more.

He hadn’t even made it off his knees yet since being toppled by the initial rippling of the ground but looking up at the dwarf sneering down at him with contempt, he tried to stand.

It was the latest in a long line of mistakes.

The dwarf had closed the distance between them in the time since casting the orb. And his fist caught Sylvas square in the jaw. Sylvas had taken more than his fair share of punches in his early life, but nothing could have prepared him for this one. Kaya had been strong thanks to her Embodiment, but this dwarf was a true monster. Bones shattered, muscles ripped and Sylvas was knocked out cold before he even hit the ground, a flutter of silver covering his vision before everything turned dark.