The spell to connect to his reality echo was based at its core upon the idea of the conduit. It was just modified so heavily as to be practically unrecognizable. Nym and Ferro ended up on an isolated island far, far out in the middle of the ocean, a thousand miles or more away from anywhere.
“Wouldn’t this make it harder to make the connection if I’m not near where my echo is in his layer?” Nym asked. The books had very clearly listed that as a possible point of failure.
“It would,” Ferro agreed. “And when you try to make future connections, that’s something to be aware of. However, that first layer is just slightly out of step with the core reality. Chances are good that you and your echo are in pretty close to the same spot, for all the same reasons. Out here, there will be less interference, and if someone comes to snoop around, I’ll have plenty of space to handle it.”
It felt kind of weird to Nym to think that he could match Archmage Veran spell for spell, even if he didn’t have the decades of experience to always know which spell was the best to use, but that he was relying on Ferro to protect him. If he encountered a monstrous ice worm hive queen now, he could kill it from a mile away with minimal effort. Before, it had been a heroic effort that nearly cost him his life.
And forget human threats like Senman or Valgo. Even that abduction squad from the Collective was a non-issue now. Nym had a whole selection of protective spells he could enact that would keep him safe while he slept, and that was only if he decided he wanted to sleep. It was absurd, but at the same time, it wasn’t nearly enough.
“I’m leaving this world behind, aren’t I?” he said to himself.
“Yes, you are,” Ferro answered anyway. “You may come back to visit, but it will never truly be your home again. You’re on the verge of outgrowing it.”
Nym didn’t like that thought, but at this point he didn’t have a choice. He’d willingly opened that cube and brought Niramyn back to life, and now he was going to suffer the consequences, had in fact been suffering for however many months he’d been locked away learning about magic. This was the price he paid for his continued existence, which was better than he’d expected to get.
If it kept his friends safe, it was worth it. He was not going to be the reason they died.
“About time to get started I guess. It won’t get done any faster by hesitating.”
The arcana came easily to him now, faster than he’d ever seen his former mentor gather it. He began forging the channels needed to create a framework for the spell, something he didn’t expect to need much longer. Even now, his willpower was so strong that he could almost control the arcana with that alone.
Once he’d successfully bonded with his reality echoes, he would be able to push into Transcendence, and everything would change. The rules of magic as he knew them would become obsolete. Well, not all of them, but taking this step would break a lot of the hard limits he was currently laboring under.
Nym realized he was still stalling, even now while he was actively shaping the spell. It wasn’t going to be a quick spell, but there was no margin for error and he couldn’t keep dragging his feet. Every part had to be done right, with every parallel process he’d built in his mind fully focused on the task at hand. He was actually building four spells nested inside each other in a kind of knot, and timing was critical to keep them from getting tangled up or breaking down.
There was so much going on that he had to open three more conduits to the fifth layer, but he’d known that would be necessary going in and had already accounted for that. Each one opened smoothly and increased his output as it became necessary. There was so much arcana going into the spell that it was starting to destabilize reality, which was the point. The membrane that held back the Phase Shift layer from the core reality was stressed to the point that it was going to tear.
Unlike the last tear in reality he’d dealt with, this one would be small and temporary. It wasn’t leading to a different reality, just an adjacent version of this one. No big deal. It was only the thickest concentration of arcana he’d ever felt in his life forming into a spell not three feet away. If he fumbled it, Ferro was there to act as his safety net.
Except that’s when Nym noticed that he wasn’t. There was no one else on the island at all, which probably meant there’d been some sort of trouble and he’d been obliged to step in. Nym wondered if he’d resolve it peacefully or if he’d be forced to-
An explosion rippled through reality a hundred miles away. Nym could see it in the air and water, feel it when it washed over him. His spell was safe, but only because he reacted quickly enough to both recognize the attack and to trigger one of his emergency contingencies in the fraction of a second he had before it reached him.
That answered that question then. If he was lucky, that would be the last time that happened before he completed the spell. Nym peered around warily, half expecting fate to punish him for daring to think something like that. When no explosion came, he gave a little mental shrug and turned his full attention back to his work.
And then somehow, suddenly and far too quickly, it was done. The tunnel between realities opened, and Nym stepped through.
* * *
Nym and Nym stood face to face with each other. Their clothes looked the same. So did their hair. The differences were more subtle than that. It was little things like posture and facial tics, the way one Nym’s gaze held steady, but the other’s eyes occasionally flicked back and forth as they studied each other.
“You’re different now,” Nym said.
“I know. It was necessary.”
“Maybe, but was it for the better?”
“I didn’t have another choice. You know what could have happened to our friends.”
Nym nodded. “It still could.”
“It won’t. I’m not going to let it.”
“I wish I could believe that,” Nym told himself.
“Then help me make sure of it.”
Nym considered that. His counterpart from reality prime was markedly stronger than him now. He’d left his reality and grown elsewhere, and Nym’s version of the world didn’t reflect those changes. He was as weak as always. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. His reality was so close to reality prime that they were almost mirrors. Things worked a little differently, sure, but so much had changed that Nym was perhaps the most powerful archmage in his reality while he was barely a pretender to the title.
If he agreed to this, if he fused his core to Nym, they would become a multi-dimensional being. Nym imagined that this first step was much easier for true ascendants. There was no hesitation there, not with their shared goal. Nym didn’t really want to be an ascendant though, and since he didn’t want it, neither did Nym.
They needed to connect over something else, and that something was the friends who’d become their new family. Specifically, it was the need to protect them from the threats they’d inherited from their progenitor. But because of what Nym had done, opening that box up and being pulled out of his reality against his own will, he’d left Nym behind. They weren’t equals anymore.
“Do you think we can do it together?” Nym asked.
“I don’t see why not. You’re worried about how unbalanced we are, right?”
“It’s a legitimate concern.”
“It is,” Nym acknowledged. “You know that you’ll know everything I know if we become one being, right?”
“It’s not that. It’s the changes you’ve made to your mind. We don’t feel like we’re even the same people now. I don’t know if this will work even if we do it.”
“I took that into account. It will still work,” Nym said.
Nym laughed. “You sound so confident.”
“I am.”
“Yeah, well, I know how many bad decisions you made that you were confident were right at the time, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t share that feeling.”
“What do you want me to do? Should I lay out the reasons why I think this will work? Would that make you feel better?”
“It might,” Nym said.
“We’re wasting time. Ferro was fighting another ascendant last I checked. Hopefully he won, but if he didn’t, this tunnel needs to close in the next few seconds. Either you’re in or you’re not. What’s it going to be?”
“You already know the answer.”
Nym nodded. He did. If it had been anything other than ‘yes,’ there wouldn’t have been another Nym at the end of the tunnel.
“It’ll be a bit different than how it usually goes, I think. I need your help to make the magic work, but I accounted for that. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
Nym and Nym worked together, forming a new spell. One Nym, the prime Nym, took the lead. It should have been a partnership, but that wasn’t how it had played out. Instead, Nym was left to fill in the blanks, to make it up as he went along, but even that had been accounted for.
The spell wrapped around the both of them and pulled tight. Nym stumbled forward, caught off-guard by the sudden tug. Nym took a smooth step forward, easily moving with the spell’s constriction. On the second step, Nym regained his balance and moved under his own power. Nym met him, hand outstretched. Their palms pressed against each other, mirrors that didn’t quite reflect what they should.
And then there was only one Nym.
He could feel himself existing in multiple places. It was like being part of Niramyn again, only less overwhelming. There were still two physical bodies, one Nym from each reality, but now they acted in unison. It wasn’t symmetrical motion any more than two hands acting together to the will of a single person were symmetrical.
Just like that, the first step towards his ascendance was complete. He would start the process all over again and convince the second layer version of Nym to join their collective whole, and again, and again, and again. And if he managed all of that, he could become an ascendant for real.
Nym stepped back through the tunnel, leaving the other half of his being inside the first layer. The island he’d been standing on was gone now and the tunnel opened into empty air. Nym flew up and looked around for Ferro, only to find the ascendant right next to him.
“You won?” Nym asked.
“I did. She should have known better than to challenge me. And you were successful in connecting with your echo, I see.”
“Yes.” Nym frowned. “It was difficult. Existing inside Niramyn’s sanctuary has unbalanced things. I’m not sure if that will make the next time easier or harder.”
“Harder for the next one, perhaps. Or it might not matter. It will be a good thing as you get farther out though. Realities there are different in many ways, and your reflections would not have been your equal anyway. At least this way, you’ll have the upper hand.”
Nym hoped that Ferro was right. There’d been a brief moment when he’d thought he was going to refuse himself, and if that had happened, it could have been the end of his own existence. The other Nym knew that too though. In the end, that had been the deciding factor. They would protect their friends, and in doing so, protect themselves.
The spell to connect to his reality echo was based at its core upon the idea of the conduit. It was just modified so heavily as to be practically unrecognizable. Nym and Ferro ended up on an isolated island far, far out in the middle of the ocean, a thousand miles or more away from anywhere.
“Wouldn’t this make it harder to make the connection if I’m not near where my echo is in his layer?” Nym asked. The books had very clearly listed that as a possible point of failure.
“It would,” Ferro agreed. “And when you try to make future connections, that’s something to be aware of. However, that first layer is just slightly out of step with the core reality. Chances are good that you and your echo are in pretty close to the same spot, for all the same reasons. Out here, there will be less interference, and if someone comes to snoop around, I’ll have plenty of space to handle it.”
It felt kind of weird to Nym to think that he could match Archmage Veran spell for spell, even if he didn’t have the decades of experience to always know which spell was the best to use, but that he was relying on Ferro to protect him. If he encountered a monstrous ice worm hive queen now, he could kill it from a mile away with minimal effort. Before, it had been a heroic effort that nearly cost him his life.
And forget human threats like Senman or Valgo. Even that abduction squad from the Collective was a non-issue now. Nym had a whole selection of protective spells he could enact that would keep him safe while he slept, and that was only if he decided he wanted to sleep. It was absurd, but at the same time, it wasn’t nearly enough.
“I’m leaving this world behind, aren’t I?” he said to himself.
“Yes, you are,” Ferro answered anyway. “You may come back to visit, but it will never truly be your home again. You’re on the verge of outgrowing it.”
Nym didn’t like that thought, but at this point he didn’t have a choice. He’d willingly opened that cube and brought Niramyn back to life, and now he was going to suffer the consequences, had in fact been suffering for however many months he’d been locked away learning about magic. This was the price he paid for his continued existence, which was better than he’d expected to get.
If it kept his friends safe, it was worth it. He was not going to be the reason they died.
“About time to get started I guess. It won’t get done any faster by hesitating.”
The arcana came easily to him now, faster than he’d ever seen his former mentor gather it. He began forging the channels needed to create a framework for the spell, something he didn’t expect to need much longer. Even now, his willpower was so strong that he could almost control the arcana with that alone.
Once he’d successfully bonded with his reality echoes, he would be able to push into Transcendence, and everything would change. The rules of magic as he knew them would become obsolete. Well, not all of them, but taking this step would break a lot of the hard limits he was currently laboring under.
Nym realized he was still stalling, even now while he was actively shaping the spell. It wasn’t going to be a quick spell, but there was no margin for error and he couldn’t keep dragging his feet. Every part had to be done right, with every parallel process he’d built in his mind fully focused on the task at hand. He was actually building four spells nested inside each other in a kind of knot, and timing was critical to keep them from getting tangled up or breaking down.
There was so much going on that he had to open three more conduits to the fifth layer, but he’d known that would be necessary going in and had already accounted for that. Each one opened smoothly and increased his output as it became necessary. There was so much arcana going into the spell that it was starting to destabilize reality, which was the point. The membrane that held back the Phase Shift layer from the core reality was stressed to the point that it was going to tear.
Unlike the last tear in reality he’d dealt with, this one would be small and temporary. It wasn’t leading to a different reality, just an adjacent version of this one. No big deal. It was only the thickest concentration of arcana he’d ever felt in his life forming into a spell not three feet away. If he fumbled it, Ferro was there to act as his safety net.
Except that’s when Nym noticed that he wasn’t. There was no one else on the island at all, which probably meant there’d been some sort of trouble and he’d been obliged to step in. Nym wondered if he’d resolve it peacefully or if he’d be forced to-
An explosion rippled through reality a hundred miles away. Nym could see it in the air and water, feel it when it washed over him. His spell was safe, but only because he reacted quickly enough to both recognize the attack and to trigger one of his emergency contingencies in the fraction of a second he had before it reached him.
That answered that question then. If he was lucky, that would be the last time that happened before he completed the spell. Nym peered around warily, half expecting fate to punish him for daring to think something like that. When no explosion came, he gave a little mental shrug and turned his full attention back to his work.
And then somehow, suddenly and far too quickly, it was done. The tunnel between realities opened, and Nym stepped through.
* * *
Nym and Nym stood face to face with each other. Their clothes looked the same. So did their hair. The differences were more subtle than that. It was little things like posture and facial tics, the way one Nym’s gaze held steady, but the other’s eyes occasionally flicked back and forth as they studied each other.
“You’re different now,” Nym said.
“I know. It was necessary.”
“Maybe, but was it for the better?”
“I didn’t have another choice. You know what could have happened to our friends.”
Nym nodded. “It still could.”
“It won’t. I’m not going to let it.”
“I wish I could believe that,” Nym told himself.
“Then help me make sure of it.”
Nym considered that. His counterpart from reality prime was markedly stronger than him now. He’d left his reality and grown elsewhere, and Nym’s version of the world didn’t reflect those changes. He was as weak as always. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. His reality was so close to reality prime that they were almost mirrors. Things worked a little differently, sure, but so much had changed that Nym was perhaps the most powerful archmage in his reality while he was barely a pretender to the title.
If he agreed to this, if he fused his core to Nym, they would become a multi-dimensional being. Nym imagined that this first step was much easier for true ascendants. There was no hesitation there, not with their shared goal. Nym didn’t really want to be an ascendant though, and since he didn’t want it, neither did Nym.
They needed to connect over something else, and that something was the friends who’d become their new family. Specifically, it was the need to protect them from the threats they’d inherited from their progenitor. But because of what Nym had done, opening that box up and being pulled out of his reality against his own will, he’d left Nym behind. They weren’t equals anymore.
“Do you think we can do it together?” Nym asked.
“I don’t see why not. You’re worried about how unbalanced we are, right?”
“It’s a legitimate concern.”
“It is,” Nym acknowledged. “You know that you’ll know everything I know if we become one being, right?”
“It’s not that. It’s the changes you’ve made to your mind. We don’t feel like we’re even the same people now. I don’t know if this will work even if we do it.”
“I took that into account. It will still work,” Nym said.
Nym laughed. “You sound so confident.”
“I am.”
“Yeah, well, I know how many bad decisions you made that you were confident were right at the time, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t share that feeling.”
“What do you want me to do? Should I lay out the reasons why I think this will work? Would that make you feel better?”
“It might,” Nym said.
“We’re wasting time. Ferro was fighting another ascendant last I checked. Hopefully he won, but if he didn’t, this tunnel needs to close in the next few seconds. Either you’re in or you’re not. What’s it going to be?”
“You already know the answer.”
Nym nodded. He did. If it had been anything other than ‘yes,’ there wouldn’t have been another Nym at the end of the tunnel.
“It’ll be a bit different than how it usually goes, I think. I need your help to make the magic work, but I accounted for that. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
Nym and Nym worked together, forming a new spell. One Nym, the prime Nym, took the lead. It should have been a partnership, but that wasn’t how it had played out. Instead, Nym was left to fill in the blanks, to make it up as he went along, but even that had been accounted for.
The spell wrapped around the both of them and pulled tight. Nym stumbled forward, caught off-guard by the sudden tug. Nym took a smooth step forward, easily moving with the spell’s constriction. On the second step, Nym regained his balance and moved under his own power. Nym met him, hand outstretched. Their palms pressed against each other, mirrors that didn’t quite reflect what they should.
And then there was only one Nym.
He could feel himself existing in multiple places. It was like being part of Niramyn again, only less overwhelming. There were still two physical bodies, one Nym from each reality, but now they acted in unison. It wasn’t symmetrical motion any more than two hands acting together to the will of a single person were symmetrical.
Just like that, the first step towards his ascendance was complete. He would start the process all over again and convince the second layer version of Nym to join their collective whole, and again, and again, and again. And if he managed all of that, he could become an ascendant for real.
Nym stepped back through the tunnel, leaving the other half of his being inside the first layer. The island he’d been standing on was gone now and the tunnel opened into empty air. Nym flew up and looked around for Ferro, only to find the ascendant right next to him.
“You won?” Nym asked.
“I did. She should have known better than to challenge me. And you were successful in connecting with your echo, I see.”
“Yes.” Nym frowned. “It was difficult. Existing inside Niramyn’s sanctuary has unbalanced things. I’m not sure if that will make the next time easier or harder.”
“Harder for the next one, perhaps. Or it might not matter. It will be a good thing as you get farther out though. Realities there are different in many ways, and your reflections would not have been your equal anyway. At least this way, you’ll have the upper hand.”
Nym hoped that Ferro was right. There’d been a brief moment when he’d thought he was going to refuse himself, and if that had happened, it could have been the end of his own existence. The other Nym knew that too though. In the end, that had been the deciding factor. They would protect their friends, and in doing so, protect themselves.
