The next morning, Nym met Analia for practice. Instead of the garden they’d been using, she led him back to the library. “Are we working on something else today?” he asked.
“Sort of,” she hedged.
She sat down at a table and gestured for him to take the seat opposite of her. “This is… delicate. Promise me you won’t repeat anything I tell you here.”
“I promise,” he said. He wasn’t even sure who he could tell.
“I know that you’re self-taught, but you’re really, really good,” she said. “I work hard. I have all the advantages of wealth and station. I’ve been learning magic for five years now and the only reason I’m not enrolled in the Academy is that I get a whole slew of private tutors instead. But you… you’ve got a few months of memories, basically nothing besides the clothes on your back, and those have seen better days. And somehow, you’re better than me.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“I need help figuring some stuff out, and I can’t take it to Bardin. I want you to help me.”
Nym’s eyebrows shot up. “This is about the room, isn’t it?” he said softly.
She nodded and stared straight ahead, fear plain on her face.
“What’s in it?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Something horrible, I think. I don’t understand most of it.”
“Why do you need me?”
“Bardin looked at it with me. He wasn’t surprised. I think he was already in on this secret of my father’s, and they didn’t want me to know. It’s something about me, I know it. I read parts of the journals he kept. I need help figuring out what he did.”
The journals were what Valgo had wanted him to steal. Nym probably wasn’t going to get a better opportunity to abscond with them, but at the same time, it would be betraying the trust Analia and Bardin had placed in him. It seemed like Bardin genuinely wanted what was best for Nym, or at least he wanted to help Nym by helping his own family more. He didn’t see anything wrong with the contract, and probably most of the people working in the manor had something similar.
If Nym helped Analia, Bardin wouldn’t be happy with him. He would probably revoke his offer of a contract, which wasn’t a real loss in Nym’s mind. Sooner or later he was going to end up out on the street anyway. If he went this route, at least he might get to study some secret research not available anywhere else in the world.
Losing the library would be a blow, but now that Nym finally had a spell to see in the dark, and now that he’d learned a bit more about wards, he was confident he could treat Abilanth’s bookstores as after-hours libraries. He had a lot less moral qualms about that than he did about stealing from them. More than that, he had actually learned a fair bit about the basics of magic, enough that he had some ideas for how to construct his own spells rather than learning someone else’s.
Really, he didn’t have much to lose compared to what he might gain. From a purely logical perspective, helping Analia was the right move. On a more emotional level, he liked Analia and he owed her a favor. If not for her actions when he’d first broken into the library, he likely would be in a mage cell. She’d caught him, and when he’d hurt himself trying to escape, it had only been her mercy that had kept him free.
“How do you want to do this?” he asked.
“I’m not good enough with air cushions to move that shelf. And I don’t think anyone wants to pick up the library after another wind spell. I need you to get me in.”
“I can do that,” Nym said. “And then what?”
“There’s a lot of equipment in there. I recognize a few things, but I don’t know what most of it is for. There are books in there too with a lot of weird stuff I can’t figure out. It’s at least third circle magic. But I figured between the two of us, even if we can’t cast it, we could at least work out the theory behind it so we know what it’s for.”
“Is Malk going to just let us do this?”
Analia looked surprised at the idea that her bodyguard would have any sort of independent desires that would contradict her own. “He… I don’t think so. His job is to keep me safe.”
“Sure, but you’re talking about going against your brother’s wishes and, presumably, your father’s. He knows who fills his pockets. If he does try to stop us, can he?”
“He knows a lot of first circle magic. He’s very fast, very strong. If he took the initiative in a fight, he could drop either of us before we had a chance to react. But if we knew he was coming and had some distance, well… I don’t think he could catch me, but he could maybe prevent me from getting into the room. But I don’t think he would try!”
Nym didn’t like the sound of any of that. Malk had always registered as a threat in his mind. The man made no secret of his dislike and that he considered Nym a criminal. To be fair, he was right, so Nym tried not to hold it against him. If Malk set his mind to it, he could be a fairly large problem to deal with.
Nym considered his new kinetic barrier spell. It was primarily designed to be used against small, fast-moving things, like arrows or thrown weapons. He thought that if he powered it enough, he might be able to keep Malk out, but that would be exhausting in minutes. And this was all just speculation, since he hadn’t had a chance to stress test it. It was easy enough to hold when nothing was hitting it, but he imagined it would be a different story holding the barrier when someone like Malk was attacking it.
“If we can get into the room, I think I can keep him out, for a little while at least. But if I’m doing that, it’s going to be hard to focus on anything else. If this is going to go right, he needs to be onboard with the plan or far enough away that he can’t interfere. This whole thing is your idea so you should decide.”
“I don’t think he’ll fight us. He only argues with me if he thinks I’m going to do something that’s not safe. We’re not doing anything but looking at books. As long as we don’t make another mess, I think we’ll be fine. Do you think you can lift the whole bookshelf without unloading it?”
“Yeah, that shouldn’t be an issue.”
“So you’ll help?”
He made a brief show of considering it before flashing her a grin and saying, “I’m in. When are we doing this?”
“Right now,” Analia said.
“If you’re sure,” Nym said. Analia nodded, and he filled his soul well. Cushions of air wrapped around the whole shelf, tight around the front to hold the books in place. The shelf lifted a fraction of an inch off the floor, just enough for it to slide forward and swing to the side. It did it without a whisper of sound too; Malk didn’t even notice until the two kids stood up and walked over to it.
“When did that happen?” he yelped, scrambling to catch up.
“I asked Nym to open it up for me. I want to do a bit of reading here.”
“Are you sure you should?” Malk asked.
“I am quite sure that I should do whatever I please,” she told him loftily.
“Of course, my lady. I will keep watch on the door and keep the outsider at bay.”
“No,” Analia said. “He’ll be coming with me and acting as my assistant for the day.”
“But… this is a hidden vault of knowledge belonging to your family. Surely you aren’t going to share those secrets with this miscreant.”
“I’ve made my decision, Malk. Please keep anyone from bothering us while we work.”
The man shot Nym the most hate-filled glare he’d ever seen in his life. With visible effort, he forced out through clenched teeth, “As you wish, my lady.”
They entered the hidden room. As soon as Analia passed the threshold, wards lit up in Nym’s sight, though they didn’t seem to do anything but connect to a series of panels set high up on the walls that all glowed a soft green. The room was laid out exactly as Nym’s divinations showed it to be.
“I was wondering why this room doesn’t have the same anti-scrying rune sequences on it as your wardrobe,” he said idly. “If it’s so secret, you’d think it would.”
“Hmm?” Analia looked over at him from the book she’d grabbed from the shelf. “I’m not sure. It might be a power issue, or that the arcana in the runes would interfere with the research. Maybe we’ll find the answer in all of this. Here, this is what I want your opinion on. It seems to be a book of spells designed to make permanent changes to a person.”
Nym took the book from her and flipped through it. It was as she said, although the spells were vastly more complicated than anything else he’d ever seen. “This is going to take a while to work through,” he said. “And this is just one book out of… what… sixty?”
“Like I said, I’m not trying to cast these. I want to know what my father was working on. These six journals here are his. The ten before that are my grandfather’s. Here, read this entry. It’ll clear it all up.”
* * *
Finally! Something’s gone right.
The incubation tank is fully functional, and the newborn is still young enough to undergo the procedure. I missed this opportunity with Bardin, but I won’t let it slip past me again.
If my father’s theory is correct, an ascendant isn’t born. They are made. What little lore we have regarding them tells of limitless arcana flowing through them like a raging river, while man licks rivulets of water from a cave wall. The soul well must be the key.
This first experiment should serve to cause it to grow exponentially as the subject ages. It will be years until I know if it worked, but if so, my new daughter will have the potential to be the most powerful mage of her generation. If it works, I can go public with the research and we can adapt it to work outside of just my own bloodline.
Everything is ready. The tank will keep her alive while the magic works on her. Tomorrow, I will begin the ritual. This will work. It has to.
Please, God, let this work.
* * *
“What the hell is this?” Nym whispered. He looked up at Analia, who had tears in her eyes.
“I don’t know. What did he do to me?”
“Did he risk your life in that… that thing there?”
Nym turned to look at the cylinder. It was made of glass, and empty. Elaborate rune sequences were etched into the glass, looping round and round its surface from top to bottom. It was almost impossible to read because a second set of rune sequences had been carved onto the inside of the glass. Nym couldn’t even begin to guess what any of it was for.
“Did it work?” he said, looking at it in sick fascination.
“You know how we have ways of measuring how much arcana your soul well can hold?”
Nym remembered reading something about it. The criteria for testing didn’t make a lot of sense to him, but the gist of it was the soul well grew with the body, and at a predictable rate. An average mage should score a ten on the scale, regardless of when they took the test.
“What did you get?” he asked.
“Last time they measured me six months ago, I scored a twenty-six.”
The next morning, Nym met Analia for practice. Instead of the garden they’d been using, she led him back to the library. “Are we working on something else today?” he asked.
“Sort of,” she hedged.
She sat down at a table and gestured for him to take the seat opposite of her. “This is… delicate. Promise me you won’t repeat anything I tell you here.”
“I promise,” he said. He wasn’t even sure who he could tell.
“I know that you’re self-taught, but you’re really, really good,” she said. “I work hard. I have all the advantages of wealth and station. I’ve been learning magic for five years now and the only reason I’m not enrolled in the Academy is that I get a whole slew of private tutors instead. But you… you’ve got a few months of memories, basically nothing besides the clothes on your back, and those have seen better days. And somehow, you’re better than me.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“I need help figuring some stuff out, and I can’t take it to Bardin. I want you to help me.”
Nym’s eyebrows shot up. “This is about the room, isn’t it?” he said softly.
She nodded and stared straight ahead, fear plain on her face.
“What’s in it?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Something horrible, I think. I don’t understand most of it.”
“Why do you need me?”
“Bardin looked at it with me. He wasn’t surprised. I think he was already in on this secret of my father’s, and they didn’t want me to know. It’s something about me, I know it. I read parts of the journals he kept. I need help figuring out what he did.”
The journals were what Valgo had wanted him to steal. Nym probably wasn’t going to get a better opportunity to abscond with them, but at the same time, it would be betraying the trust Analia and Bardin had placed in him. It seemed like Bardin genuinely wanted what was best for Nym, or at least he wanted to help Nym by helping his own family more. He didn’t see anything wrong with the contract, and probably most of the people working in the manor had something similar.
If Nym helped Analia, Bardin wouldn’t be happy with him. He would probably revoke his offer of a contract, which wasn’t a real loss in Nym’s mind. Sooner or later he was going to end up out on the street anyway. If he went this route, at least he might get to study some secret research not available anywhere else in the world.
Losing the library would be a blow, but now that Nym finally had a spell to see in the dark, and now that he’d learned a bit more about wards, he was confident he could treat Abilanth’s bookstores as after-hours libraries. He had a lot less moral qualms about that than he did about stealing from them. More than that, he had actually learned a fair bit about the basics of magic, enough that he had some ideas for how to construct his own spells rather than learning someone else’s.
Really, he didn’t have much to lose compared to what he might gain. From a purely logical perspective, helping Analia was the right move. On a more emotional level, he liked Analia and he owed her a favor. If not for her actions when he’d first broken into the library, he likely would be in a mage cell. She’d caught him, and when he’d hurt himself trying to escape, it had only been her mercy that had kept him free.
“How do you want to do this?” he asked.
“I’m not good enough with air cushions to move that shelf. And I don’t think anyone wants to pick up the library after another wind spell. I need you to get me in.”
“I can do that,” Nym said. “And then what?”
“There’s a lot of equipment in there. I recognize a few things, but I don’t know what most of it is for. There are books in there too with a lot of weird stuff I can’t figure out. It’s at least third circle magic. But I figured between the two of us, even if we can’t cast it, we could at least work out the theory behind it so we know what it’s for.”
“Is Malk going to just let us do this?”
Analia looked surprised at the idea that her bodyguard would have any sort of independent desires that would contradict her own. “He… I don’t think so. His job is to keep me safe.”
“Sure, but you’re talking about going against your brother’s wishes and, presumably, your father’s. He knows who fills his pockets. If he does try to stop us, can he?”
“He knows a lot of first circle magic. He’s very fast, very strong. If he took the initiative in a fight, he could drop either of us before we had a chance to react. But if we knew he was coming and had some distance, well… I don’t think he could catch me, but he could maybe prevent me from getting into the room. But I don’t think he would try!”
Nym didn’t like the sound of any of that. Malk had always registered as a threat in his mind. The man made no secret of his dislike and that he considered Nym a criminal. To be fair, he was right, so Nym tried not to hold it against him. If Malk set his mind to it, he could be a fairly large problem to deal with.
Nym considered his new kinetic barrier spell. It was primarily designed to be used against small, fast-moving things, like arrows or thrown weapons. He thought that if he powered it enough, he might be able to keep Malk out, but that would be exhausting in minutes. And this was all just speculation, since he hadn’t had a chance to stress test it. It was easy enough to hold when nothing was hitting it, but he imagined it would be a different story holding the barrier when someone like Malk was attacking it.
“If we can get into the room, I think I can keep him out, for a little while at least. But if I’m doing that, it’s going to be hard to focus on anything else. If this is going to go right, he needs to be onboard with the plan or far enough away that he can’t interfere. This whole thing is your idea so you should decide.”
“I don’t think he’ll fight us. He only argues with me if he thinks I’m going to do something that’s not safe. We’re not doing anything but looking at books. As long as we don’t make another mess, I think we’ll be fine. Do you think you can lift the whole bookshelf without unloading it?”
“Yeah, that shouldn’t be an issue.”
“So you’ll help?”
He made a brief show of considering it before flashing her a grin and saying, “I’m in. When are we doing this?”
“Right now,” Analia said.
“If you’re sure,” Nym said. Analia nodded, and he filled his soul well. Cushions of air wrapped around the whole shelf, tight around the front to hold the books in place. The shelf lifted a fraction of an inch off the floor, just enough for it to slide forward and swing to the side. It did it without a whisper of sound too; Malk didn’t even notice until the two kids stood up and walked over to it.
“When did that happen?” he yelped, scrambling to catch up.
“I asked Nym to open it up for me. I want to do a bit of reading here.”
“Are you sure you should?” Malk asked.
“I am quite sure that I should do whatever I please,” she told him loftily.
“Of course, my lady. I will keep watch on the door and keep the outsider at bay.”
“No,” Analia said. “He’ll be coming with me and acting as my assistant for the day.”
“But… this is a hidden vault of knowledge belonging to your family. Surely you aren’t going to share those secrets with this miscreant.”
“I’ve made my decision, Malk. Please keep anyone from bothering us while we work.”
The man shot Nym the most hate-filled glare he’d ever seen in his life. With visible effort, he forced out through clenched teeth, “As you wish, my lady.”
They entered the hidden room. As soon as Analia passed the threshold, wards lit up in Nym’s sight, though they didn’t seem to do anything but connect to a series of panels set high up on the walls that all glowed a soft green. The room was laid out exactly as Nym’s divinations showed it to be.
“I was wondering why this room doesn’t have the same anti-scrying rune sequences on it as your wardrobe,” he said idly. “If it’s so secret, you’d think it would.”
“Hmm?” Analia looked over at him from the book she’d grabbed from the shelf. “I’m not sure. It might be a power issue, or that the arcana in the runes would interfere with the research. Maybe we’ll find the answer in all of this. Here, this is what I want your opinion on. It seems to be a book of spells designed to make permanent changes to a person.”
Nym took the book from her and flipped through it. It was as she said, although the spells were vastly more complicated than anything else he’d ever seen. “This is going to take a while to work through,” he said. “And this is just one book out of… what… sixty?”
“Like I said, I’m not trying to cast these. I want to know what my father was working on. These six journals here are his. The ten before that are my grandfather’s. Here, read this entry. It’ll clear it all up.”
* * *
Finally! Something’s gone right.
The incubation tank is fully functional, and the newborn is still young enough to undergo the procedure. I missed this opportunity with Bardin, but I won’t let it slip past me again.
If my father’s theory is correct, an ascendant isn’t born. They are made. What little lore we have regarding them tells of limitless arcana flowing through them like a raging river, while man licks rivulets of water from a cave wall. The soul well must be the key.
This first experiment should serve to cause it to grow exponentially as the subject ages. It will be years until I know if it worked, but if so, my new daughter will have the potential to be the most powerful mage of her generation. If it works, I can go public with the research and we can adapt it to work outside of just my own bloodline.
Everything is ready. The tank will keep her alive while the magic works on her. Tomorrow, I will begin the ritual. This will work. It has to.
Please, God, let this work.
* * *
“What the hell is this?” Nym whispered. He looked up at Analia, who had tears in her eyes.
“I don’t know. What did he do to me?”
“Did he risk your life in that… that thing there?”
Nym turned to look at the cylinder. It was made of glass, and empty. Elaborate rune sequences were etched into the glass, looping round and round its surface from top to bottom. It was almost impossible to read because a second set of rune sequences had been carved onto the inside of the glass. Nym couldn’t even begin to guess what any of it was for.
“Did it work?” he said, looking at it in sick fascination.
“You know how we have ways of measuring how much arcana your soul well can hold?”
Nym remembered reading something about it. The criteria for testing didn’t make a lot of sense to him, but the gist of it was the soul well grew with the body, and at a predictable rate. An average mage should score a ten on the scale, regardless of when they took the test.
“What did you get?” he asked.
“Last time they measured me six months ago, I scored a twenty-six.”
