From what Nym understood, advancing to the next layer after ascending wasn’t a simple matter of finding a fun new way to manipulate a conduit so that it was stronger or more flexible. What exactly he did need to do was still up for debate. That was the kind of information no one seemed to want to trade for. Perhaps they didn’t want company on whatever layer they’d gotten stuck on, or didn’t want to see anyone surpass them.
He knew he couldn’t dodge Niramyn forever, but he’d hoped that when he was finally forced to see his progenitor again, he’d be a bit closer in power. That didn’t seem likely to happen, not unless he became a hermit for hundreds or thousands of years. If he’d thought he could do it without going insane, he would have seriously considered it. The ascendants could fight amongst themselves, kill each other off or whatever, and he’d just let it pass him by.
That would be nice.
“Someone is asking around about you,” Hozim told him.
“Me? Why?” Nym asked, as if he didn’t already know the answer. There weren’t that many possibilities.
“She didn’t say.”
“Well, who is she?”
“Her name is Valicin. She’s one of Niramyn’s group.”
Nym had no idea who that was. Unless… “Tall, skinny? Kind of a lot of blonde hair? Like it’s a dominant feature?”
“That’s her,” Hozim confirmed.
“Huh. Yeah, I don’t want to talk to her.”
“That’s bad news for you, because she is quite aggressive about finding you”
At least he knew now who’d knocked him back down to the inner layers after Niramyn’s sanctuary had vanished. If he had to pick between the two factions, he figured he was marginally safer on Niramyn’s side, but only marginally. Nym had no interest whatsoever in working for his ‘father,’ wasn’t even really all that sure that he wouldn’t be killed out of hand if they happened to cross paths.
Or maybe not killed, but whatever ascendants did to each other. He was still trying to figure out exactly how that worked, other than that it involved cutting anchors loose and limiting their access to the core reality. Nym wasn’t entirely sure if this was a permanent thing that cost them time, or if they could repair it and get those lost days or months back. That was another one of those topics that it was hard to get a straight answer on.
If he could have found Eriam again, Nym would have taken his questions there. He was sure the man would be far more helpful than anyone else he’d talked to. Unfortunately, Eriam had been dead serious about being sick of ascendants and disappearing once he’d discharged his final obligation. Nobody knew where Eriam was; nobody knew how to contact him.
“How aggressive?” Nym asked.
“Uh, very. Very. She offered to forgive quite a bit of my own debt if I could help her find you. Practically all of it, really.”
“And you of course turned her down.”
“Wellllll…”
“Oh you bastard.”
He felt a ripple in reality, and the woman, Valicin, appeared next to Hozim. “Nym, there you are. Perfect. You have no idea how hard I’ve been trying to find you.”
“And yet I assume you know exactly how hard I’ve been trying to avoid being found. So with that said…” Nym tried to vanish, only to find reality resisting his will. He remained firmly anchored in the lecture hall Hozim had conjured up for the meeting.
“Sorry, but we need to have a talk.”
“I really don’t have anything to say to you.”
“That is unfortunate, because you’re not leaving,” Valicin said.
Nym could try to fight his way out, but even if Hozim stood aside, he doubted he was going to beat another ascendant when he barely had a handful of spells at his disposal and she’d already proven her will was stronger than his. He could play along and try to fish for information, but he suspected all she was doing was fetching him for her master.
Or he could activate his escape tactic, which had its own drawbacks. It would be better to find a way to outfight or outrun her, or to escape the range of whatever she was locking him down with. He pushed against it again, trying to figure out if there was a weakness he could exploit. Maybe if he got her distracted, she’d slip up. Relying on an opponent to make a mistake as his only strategy wasn’t great, but he didn’t think he was going to escape otherwise.
“What do you want?” he asked
“I want you to come with me.”
Nym glanced over at Hozim, who at least had the decency to look embarrassed. “Nothing to say to that?”
“Sorry, Nym. This is between you and her. My job was only to let her know where and when the next meeting was. And with that, I no longer owe anything, so I’ll bid you both farewell.”
Hozim disappeared without another word, leaving Nym alone with his would-be kidnapper. He looked her over and said, “You’re the woman who showed up when I was stranded in the outer layers.”
“At our master’s orders, I assure you. I have no interest in you personally.”
“I wouldn’t say ‘our’ master, or that it makes me feel any better than you’re just doing your job. What does your master want? This whole situation is well past the point where I could be of any use to him.”
He at least got the pleasure of watching Valicin’s face twist into a ferocious scowl, and she said in a tight, clipped tone, “It is not my place to question him. It is only my place to execute his will. Now, you will be coming with me.”
“I don’t think that I will,” Nym said. “I don’t think you can make me.”
Everything around him locked down all at once. He couldn’t see, or hear, or smell. Reality vanished, for all intents and purposes, and he found himself into a void with no arcana at all. He took a few seconds to confirm he was well and truly trapped, then nodded to himself.
He hadn’t expected her to make a mistake that he could exploit, and she hadn’t. She’d overpowered him quite easily, and he was thoroughly stuck. There really was only one thing left to do if he wanted to avoid a face-to-face with Niramyn.
The copy stopped concentrating on holding himself together, and he was quickly reduced to a mass of raw, featureless aracana. His last thought before he returned to nothingness was that he hoped the real Nym had gotten enough from the scry link to know what had happened to him.
* * *
“Not good. Kind of expected it to happen, but still, not good.”
Nym had known Niramyn’s minion was looking for him prior to his meeting, had in fact known prior to his last six meetings, and had been sending out copies for everything. His paranoia had been fully vindicated, and even though he’d missed the end of the conversation once Valicin started acting directly against his copy to prevent escape or summoning help, he could guess what she’d had to say easily enough.
That was going to complicate things if Niramyn and his crew knew that he had fully ascended. He’d suspected they’d known, perhaps had always known, but now he was certain. In a way, he’d gotten lucky meeting Baracia when he did. He didn’t think she would have hesitated to turn on him for the right price either, but Niramyn hadn’t been offering it back then.
His introduction to ascendant society could have gone much worse, but he’d have to be far, far more careful about his interactions with other ascendants in the future. The ongoing war between Niramyn and Myzalik had claimed even more ascendants, but the fear of utter annihilation had spurred more of the neutral ascendants to join Niramyn’s side.
From what he’d heard, his progenitor had almost regained all his lost power now too. No doubt as soon as Niramyn was back to full strength, the fighting would change from skirmishes in the dark to all out bloody warfare. If Nym got lucky, everyone who was involved would kill each other, leaving him and the rest of the ascendants who wanted nothing to do with the fight alone.
On the off chance that he wasn’t that lucky, he needed to prepare himself to survive the coming storm.
* * *
Niramyn was in an excellent mood. It had been a long, rough road, but he’d made it back to pinnacle in record time. It had taken him a thousand years to reach the twelfth layer the first time, not that there was anyone around who remembered that now, at least not in this seed. If he diverged far enough from the primary timeline, he might find one or two of the eldest ascendants had survived there, but they knew their place: hiding far, far away from him.
Things were going well. Myzalik killed a few of his disposable pawns using that strange new magic of his, and for every one lost, a dozen more ran to his side to support him against the devil who was upsetting the status quo. No one wanted to lose eternity, and he was the rallying point of resistance to that fate.
Now, if he could just figure out how Myzalik did it, things would be perfect. No one could ever know that he knew that spell though, lest he become the new devil to be expunged from their ranks. He needed someone else to handle that part for him, someone who could be conveniently disposed of afterwards.
Once that last little piece fell into place, he could end this farce of a war. Even better, he could finally remove that thorn in his side that he’d long since given up on. Myzalik’s mastery of time magic had made it impossible to dispatch the other Exarch. Every time Niramyn tried, his rival just came back. For centuries now, he’d had to content himself with opposing every plan he could, of gloating at each and every victory.
That last gloat would be glorious, and he was so close, he could taste it.
An ascendant appeared in his receiving hall, the one he’d set to reacquire the byproduct after she’d fumbled his rescue and lost him in the inner layers of reality, of all places. Seeing as to how she still didn’t have the boy, he could only assume she’d failed. Again.
“My master,” she said as he allowed her to pass through the receiving hall and directly into his presence.
“You don’t seem to have succeeded in the task I set you to,” he said.
She flinched, though his tone had been mild. “No, Exarch. I managed to track him to an associate, but he sent a mere copy of himself to the meeting. I was able to partially trace a scry link back to the source, but it cut before I got all the way. I… know that it’s possible to trace the link after it’s been severed, but it is beyond my ability.”
“So you came running back to get help covering your own inadequacies,” Niramyn said, his voice flat.
“Yes, master.”
He considered punishing Valicin for her failure, but in truth, she’d made the right call. It was more important that the boy was recovered than that she be the one to do it. She’d found a lead, capitalized on it, and once she’d realized she would need help to follow it to its source, she’d promptly returned to request that help.
There was hope for her yet, if only she’d get over that stubborn insistence that she could push through the Heart of the Stars using nothing but a conduit shell. It didn’t work that way, but she seemed to have run out of ideas. Perhaps he’d reward her with a hint or two once she returned with the boy.
“Very well. I’ll send Ferro to you, and you will show him the connection so that he can retrieve the boy.”
“Thank you, Exarch.”
Niramyn waved her off with a flick of his fingers and went back to contemplating the secrets of Myzalik’s new immortal-killer spell. He understood what it did, of course he did! He’d experienced it first hand, and as far as he knew, he was the only one to survive it. But the specifics of how it did that were still a mystery, one he meant to solve.
From what Nym understood, advancing to the next layer after ascending wasn’t a simple matter of finding a fun new way to manipulate a conduit so that it was stronger or more flexible. What exactly he did need to do was still up for debate. That was the kind of information no one seemed to want to trade for. Perhaps they didn’t want company on whatever layer they’d gotten stuck on, or didn’t want to see anyone surpass them.
He knew he couldn’t dodge Niramyn forever, but he’d hoped that when he was finally forced to see his progenitor again, he’d be a bit closer in power. That didn’t seem likely to happen, not unless he became a hermit for hundreds or thousands of years. If he’d thought he could do it without going insane, he would have seriously considered it. The ascendants could fight amongst themselves, kill each other off or whatever, and he’d just let it pass him by.
That would be nice.
“Someone is asking around about you,” Hozim told him.
“Me? Why?” Nym asked, as if he didn’t already know the answer. There weren’t that many possibilities.
“She didn’t say.”
“Well, who is she?”
“Her name is Valicin. She’s one of Niramyn’s group.”
Nym had no idea who that was. Unless… “Tall, skinny? Kind of a lot of blonde hair? Like it’s a dominant feature?”
“That’s her,” Hozim confirmed.
“Huh. Yeah, I don’t want to talk to her.”
“That’s bad news for you, because she is quite aggressive about finding you”
At least he knew now who’d knocked him back down to the inner layers after Niramyn’s sanctuary had vanished. If he had to pick between the two factions, he figured he was marginally safer on Niramyn’s side, but only marginally. Nym had no interest whatsoever in working for his ‘father,’ wasn’t even really all that sure that he wouldn’t be killed out of hand if they happened to cross paths.
Or maybe not killed, but whatever ascendants did to each other. He was still trying to figure out exactly how that worked, other than that it involved cutting anchors loose and limiting their access to the core reality. Nym wasn’t entirely sure if this was a permanent thing that cost them time, or if they could repair it and get those lost days or months back. That was another one of those topics that it was hard to get a straight answer on.
If he could have found Eriam again, Nym would have taken his questions there. He was sure the man would be far more helpful than anyone else he’d talked to. Unfortunately, Eriam had been dead serious about being sick of ascendants and disappearing once he’d discharged his final obligation. Nobody knew where Eriam was; nobody knew how to contact him.
“How aggressive?” Nym asked.
“Uh, very. Very. She offered to forgive quite a bit of my own debt if I could help her find you. Practically all of it, really.”
“And you of course turned her down.”
“Wellllll…”
“Oh you bastard.”
He felt a ripple in reality, and the woman, Valicin, appeared next to Hozim. “Nym, there you are. Perfect. You have no idea how hard I’ve been trying to find you.”
“And yet I assume you know exactly how hard I’ve been trying to avoid being found. So with that said…” Nym tried to vanish, only to find reality resisting his will. He remained firmly anchored in the lecture hall Hozim had conjured up for the meeting.
“Sorry, but we need to have a talk.”
“I really don’t have anything to say to you.”
“That is unfortunate, because you’re not leaving,” Valicin said.
Nym could try to fight his way out, but even if Hozim stood aside, he doubted he was going to beat another ascendant when he barely had a handful of spells at his disposal and she’d already proven her will was stronger than his. He could play along and try to fish for information, but he suspected all she was doing was fetching him for her master.
Or he could activate his escape tactic, which had its own drawbacks. It would be better to find a way to outfight or outrun her, or to escape the range of whatever she was locking him down with. He pushed against it again, trying to figure out if there was a weakness he could exploit. Maybe if he got her distracted, she’d slip up. Relying on an opponent to make a mistake as his only strategy wasn’t great, but he didn’t think he was going to escape otherwise.
“What do you want?” he asked
“I want you to come with me.”
Nym glanced over at Hozim, who at least had the decency to look embarrassed. “Nothing to say to that?”
“Sorry, Nym. This is between you and her. My job was only to let her know where and when the next meeting was. And with that, I no longer owe anything, so I’ll bid you both farewell.”
Hozim disappeared without another word, leaving Nym alone with his would-be kidnapper. He looked her over and said, “You’re the woman who showed up when I was stranded in the outer layers.”
“At our master’s orders, I assure you. I have no interest in you personally.”
“I wouldn’t say ‘our’ master, or that it makes me feel any better than you’re just doing your job. What does your master want? This whole situation is well past the point where I could be of any use to him.”
He at least got the pleasure of watching Valicin’s face twist into a ferocious scowl, and she said in a tight, clipped tone, “It is not my place to question him. It is only my place to execute his will. Now, you will be coming with me.”
“I don’t think that I will,” Nym said. “I don’t think you can make me.”
Everything around him locked down all at once. He couldn’t see, or hear, or smell. Reality vanished, for all intents and purposes, and he found himself into a void with no arcana at all. He took a few seconds to confirm he was well and truly trapped, then nodded to himself.
He hadn’t expected her to make a mistake that he could exploit, and she hadn’t. She’d overpowered him quite easily, and he was thoroughly stuck. There really was only one thing left to do if he wanted to avoid a face-to-face with Niramyn.
The copy stopped concentrating on holding himself together, and he was quickly reduced to a mass of raw, featureless aracana. His last thought before he returned to nothingness was that he hoped the real Nym had gotten enough from the scry link to know what had happened to him.
* * *
“Not good. Kind of expected it to happen, but still, not good.”
Nym had known Niramyn’s minion was looking for him prior to his meeting, had in fact known prior to his last six meetings, and had been sending out copies for everything. His paranoia had been fully vindicated, and even though he’d missed the end of the conversation once Valicin started acting directly against his copy to prevent escape or summoning help, he could guess what she’d had to say easily enough.
That was going to complicate things if Niramyn and his crew knew that he had fully ascended. He’d suspected they’d known, perhaps had always known, but now he was certain. In a way, he’d gotten lucky meeting Baracia when he did. He didn’t think she would have hesitated to turn on him for the right price either, but Niramyn hadn’t been offering it back then.
His introduction to ascendant society could have gone much worse, but he’d have to be far, far more careful about his interactions with other ascendants in the future. The ongoing war between Niramyn and Myzalik had claimed even more ascendants, but the fear of utter annihilation had spurred more of the neutral ascendants to join Niramyn’s side.
From what he’d heard, his progenitor had almost regained all his lost power now too. No doubt as soon as Niramyn was back to full strength, the fighting would change from skirmishes in the dark to all out bloody warfare. If Nym got lucky, everyone who was involved would kill each other, leaving him and the rest of the ascendants who wanted nothing to do with the fight alone.
On the off chance that he wasn’t that lucky, he needed to prepare himself to survive the coming storm.
* * *
Niramyn was in an excellent mood. It had been a long, rough road, but he’d made it back to pinnacle in record time. It had taken him a thousand years to reach the twelfth layer the first time, not that there was anyone around who remembered that now, at least not in this seed. If he diverged far enough from the primary timeline, he might find one or two of the eldest ascendants had survived there, but they knew their place: hiding far, far away from him.
Things were going well. Myzalik killed a few of his disposable pawns using that strange new magic of his, and for every one lost, a dozen more ran to his side to support him against the devil who was upsetting the status quo. No one wanted to lose eternity, and he was the rallying point of resistance to that fate.
Now, if he could just figure out how Myzalik did it, things would be perfect. No one could ever know that he knew that spell though, lest he become the new devil to be expunged from their ranks. He needed someone else to handle that part for him, someone who could be conveniently disposed of afterwards.
Once that last little piece fell into place, he could end this farce of a war. Even better, he could finally remove that thorn in his side that he’d long since given up on. Myzalik’s mastery of time magic had made it impossible to dispatch the other Exarch. Every time Niramyn tried, his rival just came back. For centuries now, he’d had to content himself with opposing every plan he could, of gloating at each and every victory.
That last gloat would be glorious, and he was so close, he could taste it.
An ascendant appeared in his receiving hall, the one he’d set to reacquire the byproduct after she’d fumbled his rescue and lost him in the inner layers of reality, of all places. Seeing as to how she still didn’t have the boy, he could only assume she’d failed. Again.
“My master,” she said as he allowed her to pass through the receiving hall and directly into his presence.
“You don’t seem to have succeeded in the task I set you to,” he said.
She flinched, though his tone had been mild. “No, Exarch. I managed to track him to an associate, but he sent a mere copy of himself to the meeting. I was able to partially trace a scry link back to the source, but it cut before I got all the way. I… know that it’s possible to trace the link after it’s been severed, but it is beyond my ability.”
“So you came running back to get help covering your own inadequacies,” Niramyn said, his voice flat.
“Yes, master.”
He considered punishing Valicin for her failure, but in truth, she’d made the right call. It was more important that the boy was recovered than that she be the one to do it. She’d found a lead, capitalized on it, and once she’d realized she would need help to follow it to its source, she’d promptly returned to request that help.
There was hope for her yet, if only she’d get over that stubborn insistence that she could push through the Heart of the Stars using nothing but a conduit shell. It didn’t work that way, but she seemed to have run out of ideas. Perhaps he’d reward her with a hint or two once she returned with the boy.
“Very well. I’ll send Ferro to you, and you will show him the connection so that he can retrieve the boy.”
“Thank you, Exarch.”
Niramyn waved her off with a flick of his fingers and went back to contemplating the secrets of Myzalik’s new immortal-killer spell. He understood what it did, of course he did! He’d experienced it first hand, and as far as he knew, he was the only one to survive it. But the specifics of how it did that were still a mystery, one he meant to solve.
