In the end, they concluded that it just wasn’t a viable strategy to try to pierce the wards. It wasn’t that it couldn’t be done, it was that it was going to be tremendously difficult even if they worked together, and that Nym would need to focus all his attention on the god killer spell to hold it ready. They managed to get a look around the palace, even managed to find a redirection ward so cleverly done that Rizin spent a whole afternoon just playing around with it, incorporating parts of the structure into his own magic.
What they didn’t find was a quick way through. Lacking the power to smash the wards, their only option was the delicate process of bypassing them if they wanted to strike Myzalik from inside his own palace. Since Nym had never wanted to do that to begin with, it wasn’t a huge loss for him. His plan had always been to take advantage of a moment of active conflict between Myzalik and Niramyn.
Unfortunately for Nym, his copies had been correct in their assessment that he’d have bare seconds at most to take out Myzalik before Niramyn arrived on the scene. Given how long he expected he’d need to keep god killer up and running, the margins were even thinner than that. It might not even be possible, even if he executed everything perfectly. There certainly wouldn’t be enough time to cast the spell a second time before Niramyn shows up.
“I think we’re going to have to use a different time,” Nym said. “I just don’t see a way to make this work with the abilities I have now.”
“I agree. Of course, I always thought that. There is a vast gulf between your power and those you intend to wield it against.”
“And yet, you’re still helping me.”
“Well, yes, but only because I want to see you use this spell on that ascendant who keeps showing up to pester me every few years.”
“Speaking of,” Nym said, pausing in the scrying spell he was casting, “We should talk about that. I don’t love the idea of killing a random person just to get some target practice. There are really only four ascendants, maybe five, I’m okay with taking out.”
“Well I hope this one’s on your list,” Rizin said, projecting an illusion of a familiar face.
“Huh. You know what? He is.” The ascendant who’d attacked Nym at Lab Six spun around in a circle, allowing Nym to view him from all sides. “That guy works for Myzalik. He’s attacked me once already. Seems to have a vendetta against me for some reason. As long as we do it carefully and don’t tip our hands to his boss, I am perfectly okay with testing out the spell on him.”
Considering that if Abdun had found him, Nym’s fate would have been to be handed over to Myzalik, the only other ascendant who could actually kill him, he felt fully justified in hitting back. He just wanted to do it smart, right before he took out Myzalik.
“So, the encounter a hundred years ago then?” Rizin asked, dragging the conversation back to the two Exarchs.
“The one that resulted in my creation,” Nym said. “I wanted to avoid it for a couple reasons. I’m not sure how bad it’s going to deviate the timeline if I take out Myzalik before he hits Niramyn with the spell. Also the whole thing has Exarch-level obscurement scrambling anyone from looking at what happened.”
“That could work in your favor though. It would prevent any other ascendants from discovering what you did when they investigated,” Rizin pointed out.
“It could, and that would be helpful. It also prevents us from getting a good look at it and figuring out an angle of attack.”
“Does it? If there’s anyone who knows what happened in those few minutes of scrambled time, it’s you.”
“Me? Why would I know? I didn’t even exist then.”
“But Niramyn did, and you came from him.”
“But I don’t have his memories,” Nym objected.
“No? Are you sure?”
Nym squinted at the fox, who looked unbearably smug. He knew something Nym didn’t, and he was going to drag it out for as long as he could. If Nym let him, they’d be going around in circles for the next hour.
“I have never been able to access Niramyn’s memories, even before I became Niramyn again. There were a few involuntary memories he planted in me with specific triggering conditions, but free access was beyond me.”
“You’re not going to let me have my fun with this, are you?”
“I was not planning on it, no.”
“Fine. If you’re going to be like that then. No, you don’t have Niramyn’s memories, and no, you can’t access them, but you can serve as a focus to look into the past. You are close enough to what he was that with the right magic, we can pierce the shroud hanging over that section of the timeline.”
“Do you know that magic?” Nym asked, suspecting he already knew the answer.
“I do.” The fox grinned at him. “I’m sure you’re familiar with mortal magic that uses objects with abstract ties to a person or event to look through the past.”
“Psychometry,” Nym supplied. “Or just token or object reading.”
“Precisely. It can be done on people too, and you’re a prime candidate. It would be better if you could cast the spell on yourself, but in the interest of saving some time, I’ll try it on you first and we’ll see what it reveals.”
“Before we do that, is there any chance that Myzalik will realize we broke through the spells he put on the timeline?”
“None at all,” Rizin assured him.
The fox stalked around him in a slow circle, arcana flaring and billowing out into the air. At first, it was nothing but a cloud of mist that clung to Nym, but gradually it grew denser and patterns emerged. Layer after layer of runes Nym didn’t recognize cocooned him, and if he didn’t trust Rizin quite so much, he would have bolted.
Nym was incredibly vulnerable, ripe to be incapacitated in some way if Rizin betrayed him. The magic was well past the point of fighting back though; he could only wait nervously while Rizin made ever-widening circles around him.
Finally, the arcana burned away and the fox let out a satisfied sigh. “You’re sixty-two years old, just so you know. Subjectively speaking, between the time you’ve spent here and the time you’ve spent in the outer layers, that’s how long you’ve been alive. That’s not counting all the years you’ve tacked on through making copies of yourself. I’m sure you already know not to do that in reality prime unless you want to age rapidly.”
“You’d think I’d know what I was doing after that many years,” Nym said quietly. “Sixty-two. Older than all my friends now, by a lot. And I still feel lost most of the time.”
“Sixty-two is barely a puppy,” Rizin said. “You’re immortal. When you get into the thousands, come let me know.”
“Right. It could happen in a blink, as far as you can tell. I could just flit off to the outer layers and not come back until I’m an Exarch myself.” Or insane, which was far more likely. “Anyway, did you get a look?”
“I did. Behold.”
An image was cast directly into Nym’s mind, though it was more than just sight. He could hear the wind, feel the sunlight on his skin, taste some type of wine on his tongue. He could even feel the memory’s eagerness for the upcoming show. He was looking forward to rubbing it in Myzalik’s face.
The other Exarch projected a visage into his scrying room, as expected. And then things went horribly, horribly wrong. The god killer spell was already primed; it struck him before he could react. He was overcome by rage and desperation, threw himself bodily from his own palace to break the spell’s lock on him.
And then, still a hundred miles or more from the coast, he struck the water. The many enchantments woven into his clothes shielded him from a fatal impact, but his impromptu flight had already worn on them, and skimming through the water was doing him no favors.
He set up the spells that would hide him, mostly mortal magics used in inventive ways, and used the last of the arcana burning in his soul well, now too powerful for his newly-mortal body to contain, to weave the strongest protections. The last thing he remembered was sand on his cheek, and cold water lapping at his ankles.
Nym snapped out of the memory and shook his head to rid himself of it clinging to his thoughts. “Exarch Niramyn’s last moments,” he said softly.
“So it would seem. It tells us exactly when Myzalik attacked.”
“We could hitch a ride on the connection between his true body and his visage,” Nym said. “It would bypass practically all of his wards. I might not even need to do that. God killer itself could target Myzalik through the visage. It worked from his end to cast the spell into Niramyn.”
“You would have a minute at most between Niramyn’s defeat and your own birth,” Rizin cautioned him. “At that point, you’ll be ejected out of the core reality.”
“Right, because that’s time I already used as Nym. Okay, still workable, and it even has the benefit of making sure I don’t end up the product of a deviated timeline that never exists in the primary.”
Rizin stared at him for a moment. “That’s not how it works.”
“What?” Nym asked. “Why not?”
“Every alternate timeline is as real as this one. They are all self-correcting, and they all merge together where they can and separate when they must. Regardless of what you do or don’t do, you already exist and will continue to do so. That is what makes your spell so dangerous, that it rips its victim out of every possible timeline and reverts them into nothingness. It leaves an ascendant-shaped hole that time itself rushes in to fill.”
“Yes… that is how it all works,” Nym agreed, his face blank.
“Ugh. You’re still a baby. You’ll figure this all out on your own someday. For now, I think we have a viable target and timeframe. There are two components that need to be addressed.”
“Niramyn and Abdun.”
“Precisely. I’m sure it won’t be difficult for you to find out the next time Abdun is going to show up and be here to meet him. From there, we’ll proceed directly to crashing your birthday party. What about Niramyn though?”
“Preferably, he would disappear at the same time, but I actually have a thought about that,” Nym said.
“Oh? Do tell. I don’t think you’d have enough time to recast the spell on Niramyn to finish him off before you’re kicked out of the timeline.”
“No, you’re right. Even knowing exactly where he’s going to land, I effectively begin to exist the moment Niramyn seals his memories inside that cube. That’s a hard wall for me, and I need the time he spends casting those spells to take care of Myzalik. There’s no way to get them both if we let Myzalik strike first before ambushing him.”
“So then, you’ll need to repeat this whole set up, but focused on Niramyn. You are of course aware that he is considered the more powerful of the two Exarchs.”
“Yep, I know. But there’s a spot where he’s vulnerable. It’s going to be tricky, but I think I can exploit an open window at a different spot in the timeline. I might need your help.”
“Hmm. That would mean bringing me up to speed in the past, which you clearly didn’t do, else I’d remember it.”
“I did say ‘might,’” Nym said. “If I do it right, I can do it on my own.”
“Well, tell me what you have in mind then.”
With a grin, Nym started laying out his plan.
In the end, they concluded that it just wasn’t a viable strategy to try to pierce the wards. It wasn’t that it couldn’t be done, it was that it was going to be tremendously difficult even if they worked together, and that Nym would need to focus all his attention on the god killer spell to hold it ready. They managed to get a look around the palace, even managed to find a redirection ward so cleverly done that Rizin spent a whole afternoon just playing around with it, incorporating parts of the structure into his own magic.
What they didn’t find was a quick way through. Lacking the power to smash the wards, their only option was the delicate process of bypassing them if they wanted to strike Myzalik from inside his own palace. Since Nym had never wanted to do that to begin with, it wasn’t a huge loss for him. His plan had always been to take advantage of a moment of active conflict between Myzalik and Niramyn.
Unfortunately for Nym, his copies had been correct in their assessment that he’d have bare seconds at most to take out Myzalik before Niramyn arrived on the scene. Given how long he expected he’d need to keep god killer up and running, the margins were even thinner than that. It might not even be possible, even if he executed everything perfectly. There certainly wouldn’t be enough time to cast the spell a second time before Niramyn shows up.
“I think we’re going to have to use a different time,” Nym said. “I just don’t see a way to make this work with the abilities I have now.”
“I agree. Of course, I always thought that. There is a vast gulf between your power and those you intend to wield it against.”
“And yet, you’re still helping me.”
“Well, yes, but only because I want to see you use this spell on that ascendant who keeps showing up to pester me every few years.”
“Speaking of,” Nym said, pausing in the scrying spell he was casting, “We should talk about that. I don’t love the idea of killing a random person just to get some target practice. There are really only four ascendants, maybe five, I’m okay with taking out.”
“Well I hope this one’s on your list,” Rizin said, projecting an illusion of a familiar face.
“Huh. You know what? He is.” The ascendant who’d attacked Nym at Lab Six spun around in a circle, allowing Nym to view him from all sides. “That guy works for Myzalik. He’s attacked me once already. Seems to have a vendetta against me for some reason. As long as we do it carefully and don’t tip our hands to his boss, I am perfectly okay with testing out the spell on him.”
Considering that if Abdun had found him, Nym’s fate would have been to be handed over to Myzalik, the only other ascendant who could actually kill him, he felt fully justified in hitting back. He just wanted to do it smart, right before he took out Myzalik.
“So, the encounter a hundred years ago then?” Rizin asked, dragging the conversation back to the two Exarchs.
“The one that resulted in my creation,” Nym said. “I wanted to avoid it for a couple reasons. I’m not sure how bad it’s going to deviate the timeline if I take out Myzalik before he hits Niramyn with the spell. Also the whole thing has Exarch-level obscurement scrambling anyone from looking at what happened.”
“That could work in your favor though. It would prevent any other ascendants from discovering what you did when they investigated,” Rizin pointed out.
“It could, and that would be helpful. It also prevents us from getting a good look at it and figuring out an angle of attack.”
“Does it? If there’s anyone who knows what happened in those few minutes of scrambled time, it’s you.”
“Me? Why would I know? I didn’t even exist then.”
“But Niramyn did, and you came from him.”
“But I don’t have his memories,” Nym objected.
“No? Are you sure?”
Nym squinted at the fox, who looked unbearably smug. He knew something Nym didn’t, and he was going to drag it out for as long as he could. If Nym let him, they’d be going around in circles for the next hour.
“I have never been able to access Niramyn’s memories, even before I became Niramyn again. There were a few involuntary memories he planted in me with specific triggering conditions, but free access was beyond me.”
“You’re not going to let me have my fun with this, are you?”
“I was not planning on it, no.”
“Fine. If you’re going to be like that then. No, you don’t have Niramyn’s memories, and no, you can’t access them, but you can serve as a focus to look into the past. You are close enough to what he was that with the right magic, we can pierce the shroud hanging over that section of the timeline.”
“Do you know that magic?” Nym asked, suspecting he already knew the answer.
“I do.” The fox grinned at him. “I’m sure you’re familiar with mortal magic that uses objects with abstract ties to a person or event to look through the past.”
“Psychometry,” Nym supplied. “Or just token or object reading.”
“Precisely. It can be done on people too, and you’re a prime candidate. It would be better if you could cast the spell on yourself, but in the interest of saving some time, I’ll try it on you first and we’ll see what it reveals.”
“Before we do that, is there any chance that Myzalik will realize we broke through the spells he put on the timeline?”
“None at all,” Rizin assured him.
The fox stalked around him in a slow circle, arcana flaring and billowing out into the air. At first, it was nothing but a cloud of mist that clung to Nym, but gradually it grew denser and patterns emerged. Layer after layer of runes Nym didn’t recognize cocooned him, and if he didn’t trust Rizin quite so much, he would have bolted.
Nym was incredibly vulnerable, ripe to be incapacitated in some way if Rizin betrayed him. The magic was well past the point of fighting back though; he could only wait nervously while Rizin made ever-widening circles around him.
Finally, the arcana burned away and the fox let out a satisfied sigh. “You’re sixty-two years old, just so you know. Subjectively speaking, between the time you’ve spent here and the time you’ve spent in the outer layers, that’s how long you’ve been alive. That’s not counting all the years you’ve tacked on through making copies of yourself. I’m sure you already know not to do that in reality prime unless you want to age rapidly.”
“You’d think I’d know what I was doing after that many years,” Nym said quietly. “Sixty-two. Older than all my friends now, by a lot. And I still feel lost most of the time.”
“Sixty-two is barely a puppy,” Rizin said. “You’re immortal. When you get into the thousands, come let me know.”
“Right. It could happen in a blink, as far as you can tell. I could just flit off to the outer layers and not come back until I’m an Exarch myself.” Or insane, which was far more likely. “Anyway, did you get a look?”
“I did. Behold.”
An image was cast directly into Nym’s mind, though it was more than just sight. He could hear the wind, feel the sunlight on his skin, taste some type of wine on his tongue. He could even feel the memory’s eagerness for the upcoming show. He was looking forward to rubbing it in Myzalik’s face.
The other Exarch projected a visage into his scrying room, as expected. And then things went horribly, horribly wrong. The god killer spell was already primed; it struck him before he could react. He was overcome by rage and desperation, threw himself bodily from his own palace to break the spell’s lock on him.
And then, still a hundred miles or more from the coast, he struck the water. The many enchantments woven into his clothes shielded him from a fatal impact, but his impromptu flight had already worn on them, and skimming through the water was doing him no favors.
He set up the spells that would hide him, mostly mortal magics used in inventive ways, and used the last of the arcana burning in his soul well, now too powerful for his newly-mortal body to contain, to weave the strongest protections. The last thing he remembered was sand on his cheek, and cold water lapping at his ankles.
Nym snapped out of the memory and shook his head to rid himself of it clinging to his thoughts. “Exarch Niramyn’s last moments,” he said softly.
“So it would seem. It tells us exactly when Myzalik attacked.”
“We could hitch a ride on the connection between his true body and his visage,” Nym said. “It would bypass practically all of his wards. I might not even need to do that. God killer itself could target Myzalik through the visage. It worked from his end to cast the spell into Niramyn.”
“You would have a minute at most between Niramyn’s defeat and your own birth,” Rizin cautioned him. “At that point, you’ll be ejected out of the core reality.”
“Right, because that’s time I already used as Nym. Okay, still workable, and it even has the benefit of making sure I don’t end up the product of a deviated timeline that never exists in the primary.”
Rizin stared at him for a moment. “That’s not how it works.”
“What?” Nym asked. “Why not?”
“Every alternate timeline is as real as this one. They are all self-correcting, and they all merge together where they can and separate when they must. Regardless of what you do or don’t do, you already exist and will continue to do so. That is what makes your spell so dangerous, that it rips its victim out of every possible timeline and reverts them into nothingness. It leaves an ascendant-shaped hole that time itself rushes in to fill.”
“Yes… that is how it all works,” Nym agreed, his face blank.
“Ugh. You’re still a baby. You’ll figure this all out on your own someday. For now, I think we have a viable target and timeframe. There are two components that need to be addressed.”
“Niramyn and Abdun.”
“Precisely. I’m sure it won’t be difficult for you to find out the next time Abdun is going to show up and be here to meet him. From there, we’ll proceed directly to crashing your birthday party. What about Niramyn though?”
“Preferably, he would disappear at the same time, but I actually have a thought about that,” Nym said.
“Oh? Do tell. I don’t think you’d have enough time to recast the spell on Niramyn to finish him off before you’re kicked out of the timeline.”
“No, you’re right. Even knowing exactly where he’s going to land, I effectively begin to exist the moment Niramyn seals his memories inside that cube. That’s a hard wall for me, and I need the time he spends casting those spells to take care of Myzalik. There’s no way to get them both if we let Myzalik strike first before ambushing him.”
“So then, you’ll need to repeat this whole set up, but focused on Niramyn. You are of course aware that he is considered the more powerful of the two Exarchs.”
“Yep, I know. But there’s a spot where he’s vulnerable. It’s going to be tricky, but I think I can exploit an open window at a different spot in the timeline. I might need your help.”
“Hmm. That would mean bringing me up to speed in the past, which you clearly didn’t do, else I’d remember it.”
“I did say ‘might,’” Nym said. “If I do it right, I can do it on my own.”
“Well, tell me what you have in mind then.”
With a grin, Nym started laying out his plan.
