Nym hadn’t had to use the stimulant spell he’d learned back in Ebalsan in a long time, but that morning it was necessary. By the time he’d gotten to bed, there had barely been an hour left before the sun came up. Fortunately for him, his suite had no windows. Unfortunately, the field trip started early. He got maybe three full hours of sleep, and that was with skipping breakfast, so magic was very, very necessary.
The class started out with Nym watching over them as he flew overhead. It turned out that all of Professor Lakton’s estimates on travel time had been short, and their final destination was likely going to be four or five hours of walking, by Nym’s guess. If they stopped for multiple breaks and lunch, it would be even more.
Nym had taken care of a few problem spots last night, namely a dangerous switchback in the trail that was only a foot wide and opened to open air. He’d solved that problem with a bit of terrakinesis to widen it enough to anchor some ice to it, then hydrokinesis to more than triple the trail’s thickness with ice and put it at a slope that would slide anyone who lost their footing into the wall, not the open air.
There’d also been a burrow of some sort of rabbit creatures that were the size of a large dog. He wasn’t sure if they were carnivorous or not, but they weren’t interested in hiding their presence and all of them had arcana auras surrounding them. Nym was confident that he could find them easily again, but he also created a set of ice pillars flanking the entrance to their burrow to serve as a marker.
He’d made it to the Garden of Winter, or at least his air golem had, but it had been so late that he’d done nothing beyond checking to confirm that he’d found the ultimate destination of the field trip, and then teleporting back to the facility. After that it had been straight to bed, too exhausted to think about the night’s events.
If he was being honest with himself, he was anxious to get started. It was his last day and while the work hadn’t been hard, it was stressful. If the garden was as beautiful as it had appeared at first glance though, Nym planned on coming back later to view it at his leisure. In the meantime, it would be interesting to see what the professor had to say about it.
Slowly, in packs of two or three, the students started moving. Professor Lakton paid particular attention to the ones who’d been the slowest over the last two days, extolling them to get moving far more vocally than the ones who’d shown themselves able to keep a strong pace without oversight. Risa was included in that group, of course.
Nym wasn’t sure how he felt about the girl. The date had been nice, and he did want to get to know her better, but at the same time, her life was so much different than his. They appeared to be about the same age, but it was just an appearance, and in three or four years he would look more like her father than a classmate unless they found the solution to the aging curse.
He could accept it as a short fling, enjoy it while it lasted, and move on, but that didn’t feel right to him. The relationships he valued most strongly were the ones he’d grown with Ciana, Analia, and Earth Shapers. The rest were just… casual friends, people he saw occasionally and would help if they asked, but he didn’t spend a lot of time wondering what they were up to or worrying about their safety.
Risa fell more into that second category, and it felt weird to mix physical intimacy with social distance. The obvious solution was to get to know her better, but that led back to the limited amount of time they had before he out-aged her, and at that point his mind had completed another lap around the circle.
Nym sighed and went to work. At least that wasn’t complicated. He built a few air golems and sent them out along with a scrying anchor. They swept around in the patterns he’d perfected over the last two days while his mind split their inputs and parsed it all. If nothing else, it was an excellent exercise to get more comfortable with parallel processing.
Morning stretched on into afternoon, and Nym quickly realized his original thought that they’d be there in five hours had been hopelessly optimistic. It seemed two days of brutal cold-weather travel had exhausted the students. They struggled to keep arcana flowing smoothly, struggled to hold the spells that kept them from freezing in place, struggled to just keep walking.
About four hours and three breaks into the march, Nym flew down to talk to the professor. “At this rate, it’s going to be an eight-hour march,” he said. “We’re barely halfway there.”
“Yes,” she agreed with a frown. “The last day is always the hardest march, but this class seems unusually drained. How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Little tired. I was up late last night going over the route.”
“I’m sure,” she said, dryly. “And your lack of sleep had nothing to do with any of my students.”
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“If it did, that would be between me and them,” Nym told her. “It also would not be relevant to this conversation.”
“It would be if the master mage who is supposed to be protecting us is too tired to do his job.”
“Granted, if that were the case. But it’s not.”
“I should hope not.”
Professor Lakton turned her gaze out on the line of students struggling up a snowy slope. “This class hasn’t set any records for excellence, but I’m surprised they’re this far behind schedule.”
Now that Nym was down on the ground near the class and seeing them with his own eyes, he noticed something strange. Their arcana seemed to be slowly crumbling, little pieces of spell constructs broken off and siphoned away. Every single student was struggling to constantly flush new arcana into their spells, to keep them whole, except one.
“That boy there in the yellow coat, the one with the short brown hair,” Nym said, “I don’t recognize him. Who is he?”
“What… yellow coat? I don’t see anyone wearing anything like that.”
“No? That’s interesting.”
Nym narrowed his eyes and started really looking at the boy’s arcana constructs. It was kind of difficult to tell from so far away, but he was reasonably sure whatever they were, there was nothing for walking on snow or keeping warm in there.
There was something else in there, something he couldn’t quite place. Bits and pieces of it looked familiar, but the overall spell was unlike anything he’d seen before. He was assuming it was what was keeping the people around the boy from recognizing that he wasn’t supposed to be there. Nym himself probably wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been able to literally trace the arcana trail leading to him.
It was some sort of obfuscation or illusion spell, something to distract or redirect attention. Whatever was hiding behind those spells could be dangerous. Nym needed to isolate it from the nearby students before he moved to engage it, just in case it was too strong for him. He wasn’t expecting it; so far nothing in Glacial Valley had been a challenge to beat, just to find. But he also wasn’t willing to bet anyone else’s life on it.
“Get everyone moving again,” Nym said without looking back. “Let them spread out. I want to get as many students away from this thing as possible before I move on it. It’s been lurking in the crowd for hours unnoticed.”
“What’s lurking?” Professor Lakton asked waspishly.
“I don’t know. It’s got some sort of attention deflecting spell going on. Even now I’m having a hard time keeping track of it. Do you remember me pointing it out to you a minute ago?”
“I… don’t. No.” She scowled, but her expression was tinged with fear. “Whatever it is, it’s very strong.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. It’ll probably stick with the largest clump of students it can, but if they’re spread out, we’ll at least reduce its pool of potential human shields and hostages.”
“Right. God help us all. I’ll get everyone moving. You go back to patrolling like everything is normal.”
“Once the line is spread out, I’ll start ferrying the ones in the back towards the front. We’ll say we’re just trying to get there faster. When I get to the group with yellow coat, I’ll grab it and pull it back to the empty trail behind us.”
Their plan decided, Nym flew back up into the sky to continue going through the motions of scouting ahead. While he was up there, he pondered the best way to handle the situation. A hostile teleport was an option, but he was concerned the thing hiding in the students’ midst would resist it and lash out at everyone around it.
Nym didn’t dismiss the plan outright. He could bring a lot of arcana down at once and probably overpower the resistance, but it wasn’t the best use of his resources. Whatever plan he went with, he needed to pick apart those constructs hiding it, if only so he had a better idea of what he was dealing with.
Except that all the planning was moot. As the line started moving again, the students being harried by Professor Lakton in large groups, the boy in the yellow coat just stood there, staring up at Nym and grinning.
He felt his stomach drop when he realized what had happened. The creature had heard the whole plan, despite being well over a hundred feet away. Nym hadn’t seen any sort of sensory enhancement spells in its aura, so it was likely whatever it was had naturally keen senses. It was confident too, just letting all its potential hostages trudge away from it.
Talking seemed like the way to go then. Nym put up a hyperkinetic barrier, readied a lightning bolt, and dropped out of the sky to land in front of the boy, who just watched it all with an amused grin. He didn’t make any moves or say anything; he just stood there, waiting.
“How long have you been following along?” Nym asked
“Oh, just the last two hours or so,” the boy said, proving that he could talk after all.
“What are you?”
“That is a fascinating question. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll tell you what I am if you tell me what you are?”
“I’m a person, obviously.”
The boy clicked his tongue. “This is going to be a very short conversation if you’re just going to lie. You are not a person, not a human one at least. But you’re not an ascendant either. I’ve never seen anything quite like you.”
“It’s… complicated. I’m something in the middle right now. Either way though, I am still a person. And you clearly are not.”
“Fair enough,” the boy laughed. “Let’s let the rest of them get a bit farther away, shall we? Wouldn’t want to scare the children.”
“Why, what are they going to see?”
“You’re too impatient, little half-scendant. Savor the anticipation.”
Nym found he wasn’t willing to play the game. “Drop the spells, or I’ll drop them for you.”
“That would be a mistake. Mind your manners, lest you be reminded.”
The boy’s face wasn’t so relaxed and easy-going now. In fact, the arcana aura around it was growing bigger and bigger. It couldn’t all be the bits it had stolen from the class either; there was just too much. Nym wasn’t sure, but he thought it might even be more than he could generate himself.
The air shimmered around the boy, and a face emerged, something with white and red fur and a vulpine grin. Then the illusion snapped back into place, leaving the boy in the yellow coat once more.
“Let’s talk, shall we?” he said with a smile.