That was too much of a coincidence for it to actually be one, but Nym had a good idea who might be behind it. That fox had to have known about this lab, and probably known that only an ascendant could get in. The infestation wasn’t a new one; he could have done something about it years ago if he’d wanted to. Nym wondered if he’d find the talisman that had kicked it all off in the fox’s den, assuming that it even existed at all.
He scanned through the notes about the experiment as quickly as possible and confirmed that, yes, the research lab was responsible for supplying the scarabs with the arcana they needed to keep growing and spreading. Of course it was.
“What was the point of this experiment?” he asked, scanning the floating papers in front of him for an answer.
“This was an automated experiment the research lab initiated fifteen hundred cycles ago,” Naera said. “Long-range sensors located a new energy source that was spreading an unusual style of arcana across the landscape. Samples were obtained and the arcana spread traced back to its source, here.”
She pointed to a map, at a spot along the coast where the old ship Nym had discovered was still locked in ice. “The source was transported to containment here, and the arcana duplicated. The goal was to determine if the parasitic constructs produced by the source would accept the substitute arcana structure and further, to iterate on the construct design and test various alterations. If you’ll look over here, you will see a list of various tests performed and their results.”
Nym skimmed the list. Some of the ideas were downright bizarre, things like causing the scarabs to grow extra limbs, having them cannibalize each other to build one super scarab, or trying to merge them with plant life to form a symbiotic reproductive cycle.
“Okay, this is great and all, but can we shut the experiment down? These scarabs have kind of taken over around here.”
“Certainly. How would you like to proceed?” Naera asked.
“Hmmm. Something that kills all the existing scarabs without harming anything else would be ideal. Is that possible?”
“How quickly would you like the scarabs to die off? We have tracked their spread quite closely, but it would still take considerable resources to destroy them all immediately. At best, I am estimating something like ninety percent elimination with the remainder dying off over the next three months without a steady flow of arcana to sustain them.”
“Would we still have the resources for the snow wolf project I have in mind?” Nym asked.
“Not unless you are willing to recharge the arcana batteries.”
“What layers are we using?” Nym was afraid he already knew the answer. There were so many fantastical experiments that defied his knowledge of what was possible with magic that all of them had to be beyond fifth layer.
“There are a total of one hundred seventh layer batteries and twenty-five eighth layer batteries powering the experiments. There are five ninth layer batteries powering the research lab itself, and one twelfth layer battery, purpose unknown.”
“Twelfth?” Nym echoed. Humans had only reached the fifth layer. He couldn’t even imagine what kind of magic twelfth layer arcana was capable of producing. No wonder ascendants were mythical figures, quite literally gods when compared to normal humans.
“Purpose unknown, Exarch,” Naera repeated.
“Are there a lot of ascendants who can reach the twelfth layer?”
“I do not know. That was not within the purview of the research lab. You are the only Exarch on staff though, so I believe it is safe to assume the battery exists for your personal use.”
“But to do what?” Nym muttered quietly. Then, louder, he added, “How much arcana is still stored in the batteries?”
“The lab is operating at sixty-two percent capacity, with an ongoing drain of approximately half a percent per year under the current ongoing experiment load. Cutting arcana funding for the cursed scarab experiment would reduce that arcana load by a tiny fraction of a percent. The scarabs would likely die off on their own inside a year. Using resources to wipe out the current population would drain perhaps twenty percent of our total capacity.”
“And the snow wolf project?”
“Thirty percent of our total capacity to launch it, with an ongoing cost of two percent per year over the next ten years to ensure complete coverage of the next generation.”
Nym wasn’t the best with numbers, and he guessed his former self shared that character flaw. His personal assistant golem had laid out the costs quite clearly; now he just needed to decide what he wanted to do. Of course, price wasn’t the only factor.
“If we send out the kill pulse on the scarabs, who’s going to notice it?”
“I would imagine any ascendant currently anchored to the time stream would.”
“I… don’t understand what that means,” Nym admitted.
“My knowledge is only cursory, as temporal manipulation is not the focus of this research lab. However, to the best of my understanding, the key difference that separates an ascendant from a human is that an ascendant does not experience subjective linear time. They manipulate it in many ways that mortal species do not. This is achieved through reaching of the sixth layer, what ascendants call the Transcendence.
“At any given point in time, some or all ascendants may or may not be present. They may have skipped forward past that point and never experienced it. They may have lost that section of time in battle against another ascendant. Regardless of how it has happened, there are many, many points in time an ascendant may simply not exist in, only to return at a later, or earlier point.”
“What happens if an ascendant wants to go back and redo time he’s already experienced?” Nym asked.
Naera shrugged. “I suppose it depends on how powerful the ascendant is, and what style they are using. You, for instance, are well known as an extremely anchored ascendant, a universal constant always present in the world at all times.”
“I am? And that’s not normal, to be here all the time?”
“The ascendants connected to this research facility appear at random intervals to check up on experiments they are running, refill arcana batteries as needed, and are otherwise often off in their own slices of time where other ascendants are not presently existing.”
Nym held up a hand. “Give me a minute to process this.”
If he was understanding all of this correctly, ascendants were truly immortal, but in such a way that they skipped back and forth across time, dropping in to do something, only to disappear again when they were done. Where they went, he didn’t fully understand. But if they could go into the future and the past, but none of them had caught up with him yet, then that might mean none of them found him, ever.
Or it might mean that he had completely misunderstood what Naera had told him and if he stopped being careful, they’d find him instantly. Or she could be wrong. She had said her knowledge was cursory, so there was probably a lot of important information he was still missing. He needed to be very, very careful here. One mistake could be the end of him if even a single ascendant caught it.
“If I don’t want anyone to know this experiment has been halted, the only thing you can do is cut off the arcana flow to it, correct? The scarabs would stop reproducing, and they would slowly die off on their own?”
“That is correct.”
“Okay, let’s do that.”
“Understood. Would you like to begin immediately?” Kaera asked.
“Yes.”
He’d have to handle the clean up himself. It would probably be months of work, but as long as they weren’t going to keep growing, it would eventually end. Perhaps the fox would agree to letting them die out on their own over a year if he cleaned up specific sites like the Garden of Winter for it. Nym wasn’t sure if he’d go for that, but he figured it didn’t hurt to ask.
“The experiment’s arcana budget has been terminated. No new scarab will be produced with arcana from this point forward. Would you like the source to be replaced back in its original location?”
“What? No! No, don’t do that. You have it here, right? I’ll just take it with me.”
“Very well. It will be waiting for you outside the data archives.”
“Good, good. One problem taken care of,” he said. “I have a few more questions.”
“Of course, Exarch,” Naera said. “What would you like to discuss next?”
“Let me think for a second. Oh! How do I get out of here? Both the lab and the basin around it, I mean. There seems to be some sort of ward scheme preventing me from teleporting out of the area.”
“I believe you are referring to the containment field that prevents the existence of the lab from being spread. It should not be preventing you from leaving unless it is malfunctioning. If you’d like, I can take a new scan of your arcana print and confirm it has been keyed to the spell.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Nym said. “Let’s do that. What if I wanted to bring someone else here who is not an ascendant? How would they leave?”
“That would not be possible without deactivating the containment field. It is difficult to predict what effects that might have, but I do not believe it would be good for the local geographic location.”
“Why not?” Nym asked. He pictured those creatures lying in wait in the darkness outside the needle all escaping, and wondered what he might accidentally set loose if he was careless.
“The containment field also holds all of the ambient arcana the lab has spent locked down for recycling. If the containment field were deactivated, eighth layer arcana would spill out into the world and would likely devastate everything within a thousand miles.”
That was so much worse than what Nym had been picturing. He was really feeling like he was in over his head now, like he was standing in the middle of Cern’s alchemy lab, in the dark, trying not to move so he didn’t jostle something volatile and blow up half the city. Except it was worse, because while the frozen north was quite vast, a thousand miles was also quite a long ways. Abilanth would probably be caught in that, if nothing else. Technically speaking, it was the nation’s capital and destroying it would mean destroying Devros’s leadership.
“Okay, so that idea is a bust then. What else is there? Could you provide a list of topics the lab has researched or which exist inside the data archive for me to look over?”
A new sheet of paper, this one several feet long, appeared in the air. Nym started reading through it, looking for anything interesting or relevant. There were a few topics he would like to know about, but when he inquired further, he found that he was still missing a lot of the base knowledge he needed to understand what he was reading.
That reminded him of something though, an experiment someone else had done that he’d stumbled across and read the notes on without any real hope of understanding them. It had technically been a failure anyway, since the person running it hadn’t really accomplished his goal. He’d made some progress though. If there was anywhere that had a viable strategy, it was Research Lab Six with a specialty in making and modifying new living creatures.
“I’ve got a question, but I don’t see the relevant topic on this list.”
“I will do my best to answer it,” Naera assured him.
“Do you know how to make an ascendant?” Nym asked.
That was too much of a coincidence for it to actually be one, but Nym had a good idea who might be behind it. That fox had to have known about this lab, and probably known that only an ascendant could get in. The infestation wasn’t a new one; he could have done something about it years ago if he’d wanted to. Nym wondered if he’d find the talisman that had kicked it all off in the fox’s den, assuming that it even existed at all.
He scanned through the notes about the experiment as quickly as possible and confirmed that, yes, the research lab was responsible for supplying the scarabs with the arcana they needed to keep growing and spreading. Of course it was.
“What was the point of this experiment?” he asked, scanning the floating papers in front of him for an answer.
“This was an automated experiment the research lab initiated fifteen hundred cycles ago,” Naera said. “Long-range sensors located a new energy source that was spreading an unusual style of arcana across the landscape. Samples were obtained and the arcana spread traced back to its source, here.”
She pointed to a map, at a spot along the coast where the old ship Nym had discovered was still locked in ice. “The source was transported to containment here, and the arcana duplicated. The goal was to determine if the parasitic constructs produced by the source would accept the substitute arcana structure and further, to iterate on the construct design and test various alterations. If you’ll look over here, you will see a list of various tests performed and their results.”
Nym skimmed the list. Some of the ideas were downright bizarre, things like causing the scarabs to grow extra limbs, having them cannibalize each other to build one super scarab, or trying to merge them with plant life to form a symbiotic reproductive cycle.
“Okay, this is great and all, but can we shut the experiment down? These scarabs have kind of taken over around here.”
“Certainly. How would you like to proceed?” Naera asked.
“Hmmm. Something that kills all the existing scarabs without harming anything else would be ideal. Is that possible?”
“How quickly would you like the scarabs to die off? We have tracked their spread quite closely, but it would still take considerable resources to destroy them all immediately. At best, I am estimating something like ninety percent elimination with the remainder dying off over the next three months without a steady flow of arcana to sustain them.”
“Would we still have the resources for the snow wolf project I have in mind?” Nym asked.
“Not unless you are willing to recharge the arcana batteries.”
“What layers are we using?” Nym was afraid he already knew the answer. There were so many fantastical experiments that defied his knowledge of what was possible with magic that all of them had to be beyond fifth layer.
“There are a total of one hundred seventh layer batteries and twenty-five eighth layer batteries powering the experiments. There are five ninth layer batteries powering the research lab itself, and one twelfth layer battery, purpose unknown.”
“Twelfth?” Nym echoed. Humans had only reached the fifth layer. He couldn’t even imagine what kind of magic twelfth layer arcana was capable of producing. No wonder ascendants were mythical figures, quite literally gods when compared to normal humans.
“Purpose unknown, Exarch,” Naera repeated.
“Are there a lot of ascendants who can reach the twelfth layer?”
“I do not know. That was not within the purview of the research lab. You are the only Exarch on staff though, so I believe it is safe to assume the battery exists for your personal use.”
“But to do what?” Nym muttered quietly. Then, louder, he added, “How much arcana is still stored in the batteries?”
“The lab is operating at sixty-two percent capacity, with an ongoing drain of approximately half a percent per year under the current ongoing experiment load. Cutting arcana funding for the cursed scarab experiment would reduce that arcana load by a tiny fraction of a percent. The scarabs would likely die off on their own inside a year. Using resources to wipe out the current population would drain perhaps twenty percent of our total capacity.”
“And the snow wolf project?”
“Thirty percent of our total capacity to launch it, with an ongoing cost of two percent per year over the next ten years to ensure complete coverage of the next generation.”
Nym wasn’t the best with numbers, and he guessed his former self shared that character flaw. His personal assistant golem had laid out the costs quite clearly; now he just needed to decide what he wanted to do. Of course, price wasn’t the only factor.
“If we send out the kill pulse on the scarabs, who’s going to notice it?”
“I would imagine any ascendant currently anchored to the time stream would.”
“I… don’t understand what that means,” Nym admitted.
“My knowledge is only cursory, as temporal manipulation is not the focus of this research lab. However, to the best of my understanding, the key difference that separates an ascendant from a human is that an ascendant does not experience subjective linear time. They manipulate it in many ways that mortal species do not. This is achieved through reaching of the sixth layer, what ascendants call the Transcendence.
“At any given point in time, some or all ascendants may or may not be present. They may have skipped forward past that point and never experienced it. They may have lost that section of time in battle against another ascendant. Regardless of how it has happened, there are many, many points in time an ascendant may simply not exist in, only to return at a later, or earlier point.”
“What happens if an ascendant wants to go back and redo time he’s already experienced?” Nym asked.
Naera shrugged. “I suppose it depends on how powerful the ascendant is, and what style they are using. You, for instance, are well known as an extremely anchored ascendant, a universal constant always present in the world at all times.”
“I am? And that’s not normal, to be here all the time?”
“The ascendants connected to this research facility appear at random intervals to check up on experiments they are running, refill arcana batteries as needed, and are otherwise often off in their own slices of time where other ascendants are not presently existing.”
Nym held up a hand. “Give me a minute to process this.”
If he was understanding all of this correctly, ascendants were truly immortal, but in such a way that they skipped back and forth across time, dropping in to do something, only to disappear again when they were done. Where they went, he didn’t fully understand. But if they could go into the future and the past, but none of them had caught up with him yet, then that might mean none of them found him, ever.
Or it might mean that he had completely misunderstood what Naera had told him and if he stopped being careful, they’d find him instantly. Or she could be wrong. She had said her knowledge was cursory, so there was probably a lot of important information he was still missing. He needed to be very, very careful here. One mistake could be the end of him if even a single ascendant caught it.
“If I don’t want anyone to know this experiment has been halted, the only thing you can do is cut off the arcana flow to it, correct? The scarabs would stop reproducing, and they would slowly die off on their own?”
“That is correct.”
“Okay, let’s do that.”
“Understood. Would you like to begin immediately?” Kaera asked.
“Yes.”
He’d have to handle the clean up himself. It would probably be months of work, but as long as they weren’t going to keep growing, it would eventually end. Perhaps the fox would agree to letting them die out on their own over a year if he cleaned up specific sites like the Garden of Winter for it. Nym wasn’t sure if he’d go for that, but he figured it didn’t hurt to ask.
“The experiment’s arcana budget has been terminated. No new scarab will be produced with arcana from this point forward. Would you like the source to be replaced back in its original location?”
“What? No! No, don’t do that. You have it here, right? I’ll just take it with me.”
“Very well. It will be waiting for you outside the data archives.”
“Good, good. One problem taken care of,” he said. “I have a few more questions.”
“Of course, Exarch,” Naera said. “What would you like to discuss next?”
“Let me think for a second. Oh! How do I get out of here? Both the lab and the basin around it, I mean. There seems to be some sort of ward scheme preventing me from teleporting out of the area.”
“I believe you are referring to the containment field that prevents the existence of the lab from being spread. It should not be preventing you from leaving unless it is malfunctioning. If you’d like, I can take a new scan of your arcana print and confirm it has been keyed to the spell.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Nym said. “Let’s do that. What if I wanted to bring someone else here who is not an ascendant? How would they leave?”
“That would not be possible without deactivating the containment field. It is difficult to predict what effects that might have, but I do not believe it would be good for the local geographic location.”
“Why not?” Nym asked. He pictured those creatures lying in wait in the darkness outside the needle all escaping, and wondered what he might accidentally set loose if he was careless.
“The containment field also holds all of the ambient arcana the lab has spent locked down for recycling. If the containment field were deactivated, eighth layer arcana would spill out into the world and would likely devastate everything within a thousand miles.”
That was so much worse than what Nym had been picturing. He was really feeling like he was in over his head now, like he was standing in the middle of Cern’s alchemy lab, in the dark, trying not to move so he didn’t jostle something volatile and blow up half the city. Except it was worse, because while the frozen north was quite vast, a thousand miles was also quite a long ways. Abilanth would probably be caught in that, if nothing else. Technically speaking, it was the nation’s capital and destroying it would mean destroying Devros’s leadership.
“Okay, so that idea is a bust then. What else is there? Could you provide a list of topics the lab has researched or which exist inside the data archive for me to look over?”
A new sheet of paper, this one several feet long, appeared in the air. Nym started reading through it, looking for anything interesting or relevant. There were a few topics he would like to know about, but when he inquired further, he found that he was still missing a lot of the base knowledge he needed to understand what he was reading.
That reminded him of something though, an experiment someone else had done that he’d stumbled across and read the notes on without any real hope of understanding them. It had technically been a failure anyway, since the person running it hadn’t really accomplished his goal. He’d made some progress though. If there was anywhere that had a viable strategy, it was Research Lab Six with a specialty in making and modifying new living creatures.
“I’ve got a question, but I don’t see the relevant topic on this list.”
“I will do my best to answer it,” Naera assured him.
“Do you know how to make an ascendant?” Nym asked.
