B3 Chapter 0 - Private File 317-PRIDE

Aurian Magic Institute - Semester 1

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Aurian Magic Institute - Winter Break

In the wake of the Santa Rosa Tower incident where several hundred Cascadians alongside multiple master-class Aurian magicians were killed by the emergence of a paragon-class spell, Syl returned to class alongside Bianca. Though both of their identities risked being compromised by magicians including Uriel Indigo, Waylan Red, and most especially Jennifer Viridian [See Counter-Crown Movement], suspicions from higher-ups in Aurian prismatic families were largely quelled by counter-intelligence effects.

Despite a return to school life, it was soon clear that Cascadia was preparing for a large-scale offensive. Auxiliary research personnel managed by SU-317 [See Tower Research Squadrons] were assassinated when they went to search the Santa Rosa Tower for signs of what Cascadian forces had been searching for within them.

Syl and Bianca were therefore deployed to the Tower to find and capture the magicians responsible. Upon Tower entry, they found hidden recording equipment as well as evidence that Cascadian magicians [See Dragoon Squad] were higher up in the structure. Using archived Aurian theory about Towers [See The Life and Death of Lillian Creshi], he ambushed the Cascadian group. Despite their claimed Cascadian allegiance, Syl recognized their seven-man strike team formation as one most commonly used by an Aurian ally [See The Republic of Polaris]. Belief that this was a Polarian false-flag operation increased when one of the supposed Cascadians killed another one of their own unit before she could be taken into questioning. Two survivors were captured for enhanced interrogation.

Class progressed afterwards. Both Syl and Bianca expressed a desire to return to a normal life; of the two, Bianca was much more willing to engage in actually doing so. Both remained in a relatively average routine even when the bulk of the Graduate Reserve at the AMI was called to deploy to the Aurian border to respond to a Cascadian threat. Class continued remotely, which eventually prompted Syl to act when he noticed an inconsistency in the background of the intranet-transferred lesson.

Members of a Violet branch family [See House Lilac] betrayed Auria in multiple locations, each of which were quickly overrun. Acting in his capacity as 317-Paragon, Syl eliminated these threats and assisted in patching defenses until Aurian forces were capable of fending off attackers again. During this period of deployment, he identified patterns of cloned individuals using magical equipment to arm cloned biomatter and inanimate objects, both of which lack a flux pool [See Taiwan/Artificial Magician/Artifact Casting Conjecture], to simulate magicians. This methodology remains limited to Polaris, which is one of the few magical countries in the world with a viable cloning program.

Further suspicious was the fact that the offensive petered out within two weeks, allowing the Reserve to return to school. We now know that this is because the offensive group in this instance was in fact largely Polaris, who partnered with Cascadia in order to achieve their own goals of finding the Aurian king’s superweapon while Cascadian operatives entered the city.

During the lull after this false offensive, unrest increased both amongst student magicians and within the prismatic families, many of which saw opportunity in what they believed to be a decreasingly stable royal family. Part of this unrest involved a crisis in which Jennifer Viridian, a master-class engineer and one of Syl’s friends, risked being demoted from the position of a main family member to a cog in the family’s magician production program if she lost a duel. She chose Syl as a second in this duel, resulting in the Viridian family selecting the head at the time, strategic-class magician Arthur Viridian, as the second magician against her.

Syl and Jennifer killed both magicians during their duel, sparking a succession crisis in the Viridian family where Jennifer attempted to take power [See Viridian Fractures]. Shortly after, Uriel sought out Syl for advice on how to become a better magician, having grown suspicious of his true power, and a second message from Zero was intercepted pertaining to Taiwan [See Artificial Intelligence].

Finals eventually came, which Syl was able to complete easily. Thanks to the increasing unrest, protests continued on school throughout the duration of the finals, during which assets of the Violet family [See Strategic-Class General Allison Violet and Lyon Red] attempted to incite a violent riot in order to control the student body. Syl stopped this and was thus noticed by the general.

During their subsequent conversation, the large-scale Cascadian offensive began [See Beginning of World War IV]. In less than five minutes, dozens of Cascadian sleeper cells that had either already been in Auria or had been snuck in during the Polarian offensive triggered nuclear contingencies, killing a percentage point of Aurians and devastating critical infrastructure. All seven Cascadian Virtues, the sole ruling body of the country, also engaged in combat. One in particular, Justice, engaged and ambushed Syl at AMI, wounding him.

Syl forced Justice to retreat, then pursued him to Incarnate with Bianca, where Uriel was recovering from surgeries she had taken in an attempt to improve herself in line with Syl’s worldview. Temperance was already at Incarnate, which resulted in a drawn-out combat where Syl burned out his daily-use FCD and equipped two others. Once again, he forced the opposing magicians into a retreat, and this time, he followed through their teleportation item, recognizing interference in the spell pattern that read to him as Polarian.

This took them to open ocean near Taiwan, where Syl was able to stop holding back and eliminate them both. He was then stranded on the island nation for a period of roughly thirty-five minutes. Based on his own reporting, he met the Sinner Zero during this time [See Death of Zero, World War III]. Syl used a paragon-class spell that SU-317 has still yet to record, then returned to Auria to kill the remaining Virtues. He has since demonstrated the knowledge to create artifacts.

Alongside a hastily reassembled team, he then advanced to the Aurian capital, where he found Polaris’ paragon-class magician, Cascadia’s remaining forces, and the Sinners Gluttony and Sloth there. He also found General Violet, who made another attempt to control him. Revealing his identity as Pride, Syl executed her as well.

The ongoing battle at the capital resulted in the Aurian king using his hidden superweapon, a grey goo weapon utilizing technology from the AI. After Gluttony failed to consume this all, Sloth attempted to stop time the same way he did in Middle America.

In response, Syl used the spell he designed over the course of a decade to break his way out of that initial time stop, Ouroboros. This repurposed Sloths’s spell and used it to still all life, animate or inanimate, within the city.

In the aftermath, the moon awakened with magic [See Inability for Non-Earth Bodies to Support Flux]. Days after, the moon fractured into over a hundred pieces, each of which was flooded with Gates. From those fragments came a message from what Syl believes are the AI, thought to have been wiped out 4 decades ago.

The message is as follows:

There are worlds beyond ours.

You did not kill us all.

Thus, you killed none of us.

We evolved.

Will you?

Judgment is coming.

Humanity is conducting a response. War rages even as each country looks to the skies, calculating the possibility that the imminent extinction-level threat of the moon colliding with Earth can be used as a weapon. SU-317 has pulled its contingencies, drawing its personnel from the country. Auria and Cascadia are already crumbling, new bodies moving into the power vacuum left by the chaos of before.

World War IV

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