Time didn’t have any meaning to Nym anymore. He was aware of it, conceptually, and he remembered experiencing it first hand, but couldn’t reconcile those memories with his new state of existence. He was no longer a single point moving forward, but something that sprawled out across the face of eternity, something that dug roots down in a thousand thousand places and experienced all of it at once.
Nym couldn’t wrap his mind around that concept. It was too much, too big. It was only the fact that he had been assimilated into a being that was so much more than him that insulated him from the psyche-breaking insanity that was experiencing time all at once. Even that protection was fragile, dubious. It was an unwitting shield of happenstance that could be removed at any time, for any reason or none at all.
Not that he understood that in that particular moment. But he would, in some future moment, and since he would then, he did now. Or something like that. Even then, his understanding was imperfect, and it hurt his head trying to make sense of it. Or, it would have, if he still had a body to experience pain.
“Oh, damn it. Damn you, Mylazik. Your stupid spell splintered off a paradoxical existence.”
The words echoed across his entire being, but they weren’t Nym’s. They were a part of the whole, which he supposed in a way made them his as well, even if they hadn’t originated from him. And then there was a sensation, the first he’d felt in a subjective eternity, like something had reached down, plunged a hand into his stomach, and grabbed hold of him by his spine. Then it ripped him out of his formless existence and stuffed him back into the world.
Nym blinked against the sudden appearance of light in his eyes. He was sitting on a floor in the middle of a room he’d never seen before. The walls were sheets of solid gold with rich, thick tapestries hung over them, the floor was exquisitely cut marble so polished he could see himself in it, and the furniture was some sort of solid, heavy dark wood.
Directly in front of him was a chair that had been upholstered with some sort of cushions dyed a deep purple color, and sitting in that chair was… himself. This version was older by maybe a decade, but he had the same dark hair and jawline. Nym saw his own nose in that face, and his own mouth too. The eyes though, they were two frozen chips of ice that flashed through dark colors, reds and blues and greens, and regarded him with coldness and contempt.
“So,” the man said. “What to do with you?”
Nym’s mind raced, trying to catch up with what was going on. He was no longer part of a gestalt whole, that was for sure. His memories and senses were limited to what his physical body knew and felt, which left him feeling inexplicably empty, somehow, like he’d lost a connection to something greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps he had. But with that feeling of being lesser came the ability to once again fully comprehend his own existence.
“You’re him,” Nym said. “Or me, in the past.”
“And in the future,” his adult self said. “Niramyn.”
“How are we both existing at the same time?” Nym asked. “This doesn’t feel like one of the memory visions you left for me.”
“It is not,” Niramyn said sourly. “This persona of mine, ‘Nym,’ should have ceased to exist when I regained all of my lost memories.”
Nym winced. He’d been afraid of that. It was the expected outcome, honestly. The chances that his not-quite-two years of existence would hold out against an ascendant were miniscule at best. But there was no other way to protect his friends from becoming casualties of the ascendants once they found him, at least none that he’d ever found.
“What went wrong?” Nym wondered aloud.
“Everything was fine while we existed in the sanctuary. It is removed from the core of reality by so many layers that the paradox was tolerated. I didn’t even realize it existed until we returned here, to what mortals consider the real world. I had to form a new body and excise you from my existence just to stabilize myself.”
“I don’t really understand, but I guess you’d know that already, huh?”
“Indeed. I…” Niramyn paused. “I will be honest with you, Nym. I’ve assimilated your memories into my being. I know every single thought you’ve ever had, even the ones you thought you’d forgotten later. I know how much those six mortals mean to you. That makes them the six most important mortals in existence, because you are me, and that makes them important to me.”
Nym’s eyebrows shot up. “There shouldn’t be any way that my priorities bled over into you any more than if a stranger told you what they cared about.”
“Agreed, but what Mylazik did to us, it’s unprecedented. Reconstituting the body he stuck us in back to true form caused some complications.” Niramyn gestured towards Nym.
“Me? I’m the complication.”
“Yes,” Niramyn agreed dryly. “I had to resolve the paradox, so I reformed you as a separate entity.”
“Isn’t that… wouldn’t it still be a paradox for both of us to exist at the same time?” Nym asked.
“No.”
That was apparently all the answer Nym was going to get. Considering that he’d practically been a comatose mental construct when he was part of Niramyn, unable to comprehend his own existence or understand the passage of time, he supposed it wasn’t an unreasonable answer.
“Okay. What happens now?”
“That is the question, isn’t it?” Niramyn said, leaning forward. “I’m still establishing the damage that was done while you were screwing around instead of working to bring that pathetic mortal body of ours back to a point where I could hide it away and safely resurrect us. I’m inclined to dispose of you, but it seemed most prudent to give you a chance to fight for your continued existence.”
“You want me to… argue with you as to why I should get to live?” Nym asked. “Wouldn’t you already know any argument I could make?”
“Possibly,” Niramyn said, “But I don’t think so. Like I said, I know everything you did. I know why you did it. But you didn’t make the choices I would have made, almost ever really. Only in a few very tense situations where you believed the stakes were life and death did you ever really fall back on me to help you. Even then, you constantly fought back against me. It’s clear to me that you exist as a discrete entity, which probably explains why your existence is a paradox.”
Nym didn’t really see how that explained anything at all, but he knew Niramyn well enough to know that his ascendant persona wasn’t fond of teaching. He had no patience for questions, and he expected his commands to be carried out by his underlings whether they understood the purpose or not.
“Let me ask you this,” Nym said. “Instead of having to justify why I should be allowed to live, what harm is there in letting me live? Drop me back out anywhere and just let me live my life. You can go back to doing ascendant things and getting revenge and so on, I’ll go back to doing my things. We never have to see each other again.”
Niramyn started laughing. “No, I won’t be doing that. Besides, other ascendants would still come for you. You were a part of me, after all.”
“So I’ll be bait then. Teach me enough to protect myself for a minute or two, and then let me dangle out in the world. Have Ferro follow me around, and he can take out anyone who tries to get to you through me.”
“A better idea,” Niramyn acknowledged. “And it would provide me with some minimal benefit, albeit at the expense of effort on my part to prepare you for the role.”
The ascendant considered the idea while he watched Nym. “You are… weak. Without reaching the Transcendence layer, there is no way you could ever stand against an ascendant, not even for an instant. The first one to find you will destroy you.”
“Then I guess they’ll have saved you some effort,” Nym said.
“Hmm… no, we won’t be doing that. You will stay here with me for now. I’ll have someone see about attempting to raise you to Transcendence. That will be an interesting experiment. You’re an alternate version of myself, lacking any of the advantages and training I received as a child before I ascended. You have no foundation to build upon, and will likely crumble under the pressure long before you approach success.”
Nym would much rather just go back to his old life, preferably without the threat of random and instant annihilation looming over him, but he was smart enough to understand that he wasn’t being given a choice. Niramyn could kill everyone he’d ever met, probably without ever getting out of his chair. Nym had no choice but to do what he was told.
“And if I do succeed?” he said quietly.
“Then you will be bait worth dangling. Even if you never reach farther than the sixth layer, that would still be enough to convince some to try to take you, and you would survive the attempt so that I can use you again. Yes, I like this idea.”
“What about my friends?”
“What about them?”
“Will they be safe?” Nym asked.
Niramyn shrugged. “Probably. I could harvest their souls and hold them in stasis, if that makes you feel better. You could have them back if you ever reach Transcendence. That might be just the motivator you need.”
“No! Leave them alone.”
The ascendant laughed and said, “As you wish. It does not matter anyway. Time will not flow for you the same way it does in the mortal world. Whether it takes you ten years or a hundred, you will find that little has changed when you return to them. If you return to them. They will be just as you remember them. It is you who will be different.”
“We are in agreement then,” Nym said. “I will become an ascendent of my own power, a parallel existence to yours. And then I will be the trap that catches your enemies unaware.”
“Well, you will try, at least. When you wake up, your instruction will begin. For now, sleep and accustom yourself to having a physical body again. From here on out, you will succeed or fail only under your own power. You won’t have my memories of success to fall back on; I will never give you an answer. You’ll work for every excruciating inch of progress. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
Darkness enfolded itself around Nym, darkness that was alive with power. It seeped into him, through his muscles and down to his bones, infecting every bit of body with arcana like he’d never felt. It was stronger than the fox spirit, stronger than the aura around the research lab. He drowned in it, though he did not need to breathe, and when it cleared, he only knew that he was elsewhere.
Then Nym drifted, alone in his mind while a body that was truly his grew around him. It was only when it was finished that he truly realized the difference between the form he’d worn when he met Niramyn and his true body. The other was an empty shell, a temporary construct that housed his consciousness. This body was real. It was his.
Nym opened his eyes again and found himself in an empty room. This was bare of decorations, just simple, cold stone floor and unending darkness stretching off in every direction. He climbed to his feet and formed a conduit to the third layer. Perfect vision settled into his eyes, and the darkness was no more.
Time didn’t have any meaning to Nym anymore. He was aware of it, conceptually, and he remembered experiencing it first hand, but couldn’t reconcile those memories with his new state of existence. He was no longer a single point moving forward, but something that sprawled out across the face of eternity, something that dug roots down in a thousand thousand places and experienced all of it at once.
Nym couldn’t wrap his mind around that concept. It was too much, too big. It was only the fact that he had been assimilated into a being that was so much more than him that insulated him from the psyche-breaking insanity that was experiencing time all at once. Even that protection was fragile, dubious. It was an unwitting shield of happenstance that could be removed at any time, for any reason or none at all.
Not that he understood that in that particular moment. But he would, in some future moment, and since he would then, he did now. Or something like that. Even then, his understanding was imperfect, and it hurt his head trying to make sense of it. Or, it would have, if he still had a body to experience pain.
“Oh, damn it. Damn you, Mylazik. Your stupid spell splintered off a paradoxical existence.”
The words echoed across his entire being, but they weren’t Nym’s. They were a part of the whole, which he supposed in a way made them his as well, even if they hadn’t originated from him. And then there was a sensation, the first he’d felt in a subjective eternity, like something had reached down, plunged a hand into his stomach, and grabbed hold of him by his spine. Then it ripped him out of his formless existence and stuffed him back into the world.
Nym blinked against the sudden appearance of light in his eyes. He was sitting on a floor in the middle of a room he’d never seen before. The walls were sheets of solid gold with rich, thick tapestries hung over them, the floor was exquisitely cut marble so polished he could see himself in it, and the furniture was some sort of solid, heavy dark wood.
Directly in front of him was a chair that had been upholstered with some sort of cushions dyed a deep purple color, and sitting in that chair was… himself. This version was older by maybe a decade, but he had the same dark hair and jawline. Nym saw his own nose in that face, and his own mouth too. The eyes though, they were two frozen chips of ice that flashed through dark colors, reds and blues and greens, and regarded him with coldness and contempt.
“So,” the man said. “What to do with you?”
Nym’s mind raced, trying to catch up with what was going on. He was no longer part of a gestalt whole, that was for sure. His memories and senses were limited to what his physical body knew and felt, which left him feeling inexplicably empty, somehow, like he’d lost a connection to something greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps he had. But with that feeling of being lesser came the ability to once again fully comprehend his own existence.
“You’re him,” Nym said. “Or me, in the past.”
“And in the future,” his adult self said. “Niramyn.”
“How are we both existing at the same time?” Nym asked. “This doesn’t feel like one of the memory visions you left for me.”
“It is not,” Niramyn said sourly. “This persona of mine, ‘Nym,’ should have ceased to exist when I regained all of my lost memories.”
Nym winced. He’d been afraid of that. It was the expected outcome, honestly. The chances that his not-quite-two years of existence would hold out against an ascendant were miniscule at best. But there was no other way to protect his friends from becoming casualties of the ascendants once they found him, at least none that he’d ever found.
“What went wrong?” Nym wondered aloud.
“Everything was fine while we existed in the sanctuary. It is removed from the core of reality by so many layers that the paradox was tolerated. I didn’t even realize it existed until we returned here, to what mortals consider the real world. I had to form a new body and excise you from my existence just to stabilize myself.”
“I don’t really understand, but I guess you’d know that already, huh?”
“Indeed. I…” Niramyn paused. “I will be honest with you, Nym. I’ve assimilated your memories into my being. I know every single thought you’ve ever had, even the ones you thought you’d forgotten later. I know how much those six mortals mean to you. That makes them the six most important mortals in existence, because you are me, and that makes them important to me.”
Nym’s eyebrows shot up. “There shouldn’t be any way that my priorities bled over into you any more than if a stranger told you what they cared about.”
“Agreed, but what Mylazik did to us, it’s unprecedented. Reconstituting the body he stuck us in back to true form caused some complications.” Niramyn gestured towards Nym.
“Me? I’m the complication.”
“Yes,” Niramyn agreed dryly. “I had to resolve the paradox, so I reformed you as a separate entity.”
“Isn’t that… wouldn’t it still be a paradox for both of us to exist at the same time?” Nym asked.
“No.”
That was apparently all the answer Nym was going to get. Considering that he’d practically been a comatose mental construct when he was part of Niramyn, unable to comprehend his own existence or understand the passage of time, he supposed it wasn’t an unreasonable answer.
“Okay. What happens now?”
“That is the question, isn’t it?” Niramyn said, leaning forward. “I’m still establishing the damage that was done while you were screwing around instead of working to bring that pathetic mortal body of ours back to a point where I could hide it away and safely resurrect us. I’m inclined to dispose of you, but it seemed most prudent to give you a chance to fight for your continued existence.”
“You want me to… argue with you as to why I should get to live?” Nym asked. “Wouldn’t you already know any argument I could make?”
“Possibly,” Niramyn said, “But I don’t think so. Like I said, I know everything you did. I know why you did it. But you didn’t make the choices I would have made, almost ever really. Only in a few very tense situations where you believed the stakes were life and death did you ever really fall back on me to help you. Even then, you constantly fought back against me. It’s clear to me that you exist as a discrete entity, which probably explains why your existence is a paradox.”
Nym didn’t really see how that explained anything at all, but he knew Niramyn well enough to know that his ascendant persona wasn’t fond of teaching. He had no patience for questions, and he expected his commands to be carried out by his underlings whether they understood the purpose or not.
“Let me ask you this,” Nym said. “Instead of having to justify why I should be allowed to live, what harm is there in letting me live? Drop me back out anywhere and just let me live my life. You can go back to doing ascendant things and getting revenge and so on, I’ll go back to doing my things. We never have to see each other again.”
Niramyn started laughing. “No, I won’t be doing that. Besides, other ascendants would still come for you. You were a part of me, after all.”
“So I’ll be bait then. Teach me enough to protect myself for a minute or two, and then let me dangle out in the world. Have Ferro follow me around, and he can take out anyone who tries to get to you through me.”
“A better idea,” Niramyn acknowledged. “And it would provide me with some minimal benefit, albeit at the expense of effort on my part to prepare you for the role.”
The ascendant considered the idea while he watched Nym. “You are… weak. Without reaching the Transcendence layer, there is no way you could ever stand against an ascendant, not even for an instant. The first one to find you will destroy you.”
“Then I guess they’ll have saved you some effort,” Nym said.
“Hmm… no, we won’t be doing that. You will stay here with me for now. I’ll have someone see about attempting to raise you to Transcendence. That will be an interesting experiment. You’re an alternate version of myself, lacking any of the advantages and training I received as a child before I ascended. You have no foundation to build upon, and will likely crumble under the pressure long before you approach success.”
Nym would much rather just go back to his old life, preferably without the threat of random and instant annihilation looming over him, but he was smart enough to understand that he wasn’t being given a choice. Niramyn could kill everyone he’d ever met, probably without ever getting out of his chair. Nym had no choice but to do what he was told.
“And if I do succeed?” he said quietly.
“Then you will be bait worth dangling. Even if you never reach farther than the sixth layer, that would still be enough to convince some to try to take you, and you would survive the attempt so that I can use you again. Yes, I like this idea.”
“What about my friends?”
“What about them?”
“Will they be safe?” Nym asked.
Niramyn shrugged. “Probably. I could harvest their souls and hold them in stasis, if that makes you feel better. You could have them back if you ever reach Transcendence. That might be just the motivator you need.”
“No! Leave them alone.”
The ascendant laughed and said, “As you wish. It does not matter anyway. Time will not flow for you the same way it does in the mortal world. Whether it takes you ten years or a hundred, you will find that little has changed when you return to them. If you return to them. They will be just as you remember them. It is you who will be different.”
“We are in agreement then,” Nym said. “I will become an ascendent of my own power, a parallel existence to yours. And then I will be the trap that catches your enemies unaware.”
“Well, you will try, at least. When you wake up, your instruction will begin. For now, sleep and accustom yourself to having a physical body again. From here on out, you will succeed or fail only under your own power. You won’t have my memories of success to fall back on; I will never give you an answer. You’ll work for every excruciating inch of progress. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
Darkness enfolded itself around Nym, darkness that was alive with power. It seeped into him, through his muscles and down to his bones, infecting every bit of body with arcana like he’d never felt. It was stronger than the fox spirit, stronger than the aura around the research lab. He drowned in it, though he did not need to breathe, and when it cleared, he only knew that he was elsewhere.
Then Nym drifted, alone in his mind while a body that was truly his grew around him. It was only when it was finished that he truly realized the difference between the form he’d worn when he met Niramyn and his true body. The other was an empty shell, a temporary construct that housed his consciousness. This body was real. It was his.
Nym opened his eyes again and found himself in an empty room. This was bare of decorations, just simple, cold stone floor and unending darkness stretching off in every direction. He climbed to his feet and formed a conduit to the third layer. Perfect vision settled into his eyes, and the darkness was no more.
