Starbreaker

“This degree of psychological stability is a double edged sword, of course. There can be no using the excuse of an excess of emotions or a moment of madness when a mage is involved. If they commit a crime, it is because they have decided it is in their best interest to do so. If they misbehave, it is because they have made a judgement on how people will respond to that behavior. A mage is not omniscient. These judgements may be flawed, but they will be rational.”

—The Psychology of the Wizard, Remo Aurea

The schedule that had been composed for him would have been brutal for any other student, but with the combination of paradigms at his disposal, Sylvas ploughed through the book learning at a pace unmatched by his peers. In terms of practical work, that came more slowly than he would have liked.

His mana base remained unstable. Drawing in mana was no longer as simple as breathing, or rather, it was, but now any mana that he drew mixed into the gravity mana at his core, destabilizing it until the mana he lacked affinity for could be filtered slowly out of him. If it hadn’t have been for his second circle embodiment, he felt quite certain that he’d have suffered injuries from the way that the mana inside him sloshed and leapt about. The weight of gravity mana felt very different to the chaotic kind, like he was carrying a lead ball in the middle of his chest at all times. He would have become ever more reliant on spells to supplement his waning physical capabilities as the weight of it exhausted him, but the opportunity wasn’t there. He needed to learn an entirely new set of spells that might have some degree of the same effect. The only magic that still worked for him consistently was kinesis, the new spells that he had learned from Fahred, and the flight spell that he’d picked up from Gharia, though it was less cost-effective than before when cast with this chaotic mana.

The intensity of his classes meant that only his free time was set aside for studying the new selection of spells that he’d discovered in his slate, and that time ate up the time that he should have been using to sift through the various embodiments and paradigms that he’d use to create his third circle. Not to mention the vast amounts of time that were taken up with Kaya and Bael. Neither had much to say to the other, so socializing with one meant having to make up for lost time with the other.

Kaya had been dragged up into the officer’s school more or less against her will, hated the academic complexity of it all, and needed Sylvas constant assistance to keep up with the brutal pace of their lessons. Their forced proximity could have driven their relationship to a breaking point during this stress, but oddly Sylvas found himself relaxing once the two of them were in their chambers. It felt oddly like home. Something he didn’t think he’d ever really felt before.

Bael, meanwhile, was giving Sylvas a long overdue seminar on the social mores of the upper echelons of society within the Empyrean. Most importantly helping him to decide which of the many letters he was now receiving offering him friendship, sponsorship, employment, and in some cases even marriage, could be safely ignored, and which of them came from people of such power and authority that they required very carefully worded rejections. By the end of the first day, Sylvas had turned down four corporations that had enough money to buy and sell whole solar systems, two crowns, via marriage to a prince and princess of different neighboring systems, respectively, and at least a dozen of the major players in the Empyrean’s feudal politics. Governing families of entire planets who officially had no impact on the policies of the allegedly democratic Empyrean, but unofficially ruled from the sidelines.

It was only during their ship-to-ship lecture the next morning that how well he’d ingratiated himself with the other officers became clear to him. It was the first class of the evening, and one that he had already memorized the textbooks for. He could integrate them later, when he was closer to getting out into space, but for now he was spending his time working out his new embodiment on his slate.

The new spells that came with his affinity, they had been easy enough to pick up, almost familiar to him, strangely. Like he’d heard them all before somewhere. But given the uses that the Empyrean meant to put him to, there were few that were practical for his current situation, combat applications were few and far between.

Spatial magic, as an offshoot of gravity magic, was simple enough for him too now that he was aware of it. He had sent and returned his slate to cold storage multiple times now, recognizing the unique resonance of the particular plane that he was tapping into, and the humming harmonics of the ones that others were using nearby. His sense for it wasn’t complete yet, but he suspected that once he had completely unlocked the Waveform Paradigm that was essentially being forced on him by lack of options, he would be able to detect when others had objects in Cold Storage, and gain a sense of what they were, even if it wasn’t exact. One or two of the other recruits hummed to his senses, like they were vibrating in tune to some distant string being plucked, but every one of the Instructors had that same resonance. Fahred alone played a bass tone with all that he carried around in his storage space, while their current Instructor, Forgethane, had more of a midtone.

With its rarity, there weren’t a great many gravity affinity embodiments that had been codified for use in the Empyrean. Many of them were relatively new, on the scale of history, as so many gravity mages seemed to have been forced to develop their own. The one that Sylvas had chosen, and was now attempting to decipher into practical mana infusion into his body, had been meant originally as a method for movement in zero-gravity. Manipulating the density and weight of the body so that it could be shifted around without the need to push off anything. On paper it appeared useless to a combatant, but Sylvas had ideas.

Usually when he was focused on a project like this, it would take a loud noise or physical contact from one of his peers to draw him out. If the Instructor asked him a question, the sound of his own name would drag him back to reality, and he would rapidly replay things with Lockmind to learn what he was being asked. This time, however, he was returned to reality by something else entirely. A sudden and complete silence had fallen over the room.

He glanced up to see Kaya tensed as though she were ready to go to war at his side, and he was taken aback by her fury for a moment before he followed her line of sight to the chamber doors. Hammerheart had just swaggered in.

The silence, the tension, Sylvas realized that as many eyes were on him as were on the dwarf. He looked Hammerheart in the eye, saw the challenge there, the beginnings of a sneer coming onto the man’s face at the sight of him, and then he turned his gaze back to the slate. As if that little man didn’t matter to him at all.

Forgethane was not pleased about the disruption. “Nice of you to finally join us, Recruit.”

“Back from my holiday.” Hammerheart managed to restrain his sneer when he turned to the instructor, but only just.

“Take your seat.” Forgethane turned back to the board, where he’d been laying out the basics of evasive formations with the kind of perilous slowness that Sylvas was now finding so irritating in all of his classes.

As predictable as the rising suns, Hammerheart swaggered over to where Sylvas was sitting. “Move. You’re in my seat.”

In every other lecture, Syvlas had seen Hammerheart sit at the back of the chamber, in the highest row, beside the fiend that still remained loyal to him. She was up there even now, with a space still open beside her in preparation for his return. Still loyal. The only one of the officers who hadn’t even made a passing attempt at conversation with Sylvas.

“I’m sure there are plenty of others free.” Sylvas replied as politely as he could.

Hammerheart crossed his arms and tried to loom over them, somewhat hampered by being the same height as Sylvas when the human was sitting down. “I want what’s mine.”

By now the other officers around them were all staring, the Instructor plodding along with the lesson completely oblivious to the dangerous situation unfolding behind him. Kaya bristled, fists clenched under the desk, but Sylvas laid a hand on her arm and smiled. Turning that smile up to Hammerheart, he remained painstakingly polite, not for the dwarf, who didn’t care what he was saying, but for everyone else to hear. “I have no intention of taking what I haven’t earned, and rest assured, you will get exactly what you deserve.”

There was silence as the dwarf tried to work out how to escalate the situation further without getting tossed in the brig. Then one of the other officers who Sylvas barely knew, a human man with close cropped hair and a scar across his chin piped up. “Just sit down, will you? We’re trying to learn here.”

Hammerheart flinched as if he’d been struck. Clearly he thought he had the loyalty and support of everyone around him. Off balance, he did as he was told and went to the end of the line, where one of the other students had her slates piled up on a desk beside her. He obviously expected her to move them for him to make way, but she didn’t. He snarled, and stomped off to the back of the room where his space had been saved, but it established the new order of things perfectly. He had expected fear and respect for the murder he’d committed, but all he had earned was contempt.

It was going to burn in him. All that disdain, his fall from grace, and he was going to blame it all on Sylvas, because to do otherwise would be to accept that he was responsible for his own actions and their consequences. He was going to be coming for Sylvas. That hadn’t changed. But now Hammerheart was probably imagining a scenario in which killing him would be his redemption. A way to get back in everyone’s good graces.

What luck that he was going to get an opportunity so soon.