Nym knew he needed to check back in with Analia and Cern. If nothing else, Cern should have an assortment of potions, elixirs, tinctures, tonics, salves, and God only knew what else ready, which meant he needed Nym’s help transporting it and preparing it to be sold. Analia… might not want to talk to him. They hadn’t exactly been fighting, but they also hadn’t parted ways on friendly terms. If she was still mad, he’d take it as a win. It would mean she wasn’t dead.
He busied himself with anything else he could think of. He exchanged letters with Risa and went to visit her, he spent time with the Earth Shapers and helped out occasionally with their projects. He studied in Archmage Veran’s library and continued to work on his breakthrough into the fifth layer. And he teleported out to Blood Fin Cove one day to visit Ciana.
She wasn’t home when he got there, but he found her easily enough on the bluffs south of town. There was a brace of rabbits nearby, and she was busy resetting a snare line when he caught up to her. Ciana finished up her work, scooped up her dinner, and continued on the loop that would eventually take her home.
Nym dropped out of the air nearby, not really making any effort to hide his approach. Ciana watched him come near, one hand on her hip. “What’s wrong with you today?” she asked, as soon as he landed.
“Who says there’s anything wrong?”
“I do. I haven’t seen you in over a month, and for the first time ever, you’re not sneaking up on me and scaring me half to death.”
“Yeah, well… sorry. I’ll scare you twice as hard next time.”
“Mmm. Yeah. So, what’s wrong?”
Nym shrugged and gestured for her to start walking. He walked next to her and said, “Just having some problems, feeling frustrated about it all. You’d think, all the magic, I’d be able to solve anything, right?”
“Not really. There are plenty of problems that can’t be solved with brute force, magical or otherwise.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Ciana pulled a branch up and held it for Nym to walk under. “Thanks,” he said. She followed behind him and they stopped near another snare.
“Damn. Empty.”
Nym bit his tongue to keep from offering to set her up somewhere else. He’d already tried that and she’d declined. It wouldn’t be any different if he asked again. For whatever reason, Ciana didn’t want the help. She was… maybe not happy with her lot in life, but determined that any changes would be made under her own power, without relying on someone else to fix everything for her.
He could understand that way of thinking, even if he did wish she’d accept just a little more help than she did. Checking crab traps and snares was all well and good, but it wasn’t even a fraction of what he could do if she’d let him. Even her cellar had largely gone to waste, if only because there was never so much extra food that she needed it. It was a fine place to store stuff overnight before she took it into town to sell or trade, but not much more than that.
“Anyway, you still haven’t told me what this problem is,” Ciana said when they started walking again.
“I have a friend who’s doing something stupid and dangerous. It’s her choice and I can’t stop her, but it’s frustrating because there’s a very real chance she’s going to get herself killed.”
“Oh.” Ciana was silent for a minute. “You don’t really need advice then. You already know what I’d say. It’s just coming to terms with the fact that you can’t tell other people how to live their lives.”
“I guess,” Nym said. “We had a bit of a fight over it. She wanted me to join up with her group and I said no. Maybe I should have though, just to help keep her safe?”
“Well,” Ciana said slowly. “What exactly is she doing?”
Nym spent the next few minutes describing the state of Shu-Ain’s drug trade and what Analia had gotten swept up in, what she’d wanted to drag him into. When he was done, Ciana nodded and said, “I’m not going to tell you if you made the right call or not. There’s… well… you could consider it a good thing to fight against something like that. You could also say that’s not your job and you have every right to live your life without spending it fighting on other people’s behalf.”
“Sure, but what do I do now?”
“Tough question, kiddo. I wish I had a good answer for you.”
“Bah.” Nym reached out and shoved Ciana’s shoulder. “What kind of older sister wisdom is that supposed to be?”
Stolen story; please report.
Before she could respond, a man appeared on the trail in front of them. Nym’s eyes widened and his mouth went dry. He hurried forward a step and placed himself between Ciana. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“Huh. That’s strange. You’re… not here, but you clearly are. How fascinating,” the man murmured to himself.
There was no doubt in Nym’s mind, none whatsoever, that the man standing in front of him was an ascendant. The magic surrounding him had that same otherworldly quality as the metal, needle-thin tower that led to the research lab. The person standing in front of them could obliterate both of them, and probably the whole town of Palmara a few miles away, in an instant, with a single spell, without even trying.
He seemed distracted though, despite having appeared right there on the trail. Nym reached for his own arcana and started to put together a teleport spell. If he was quick and lucky, he’d get it off before the ascendant realized what was happening. Presumably, the man would be able to see arcana the same as Nym could, so he was banking on distraction and speed to pull it off.
“No, no, please. Stay here for a moment. We need to speak,” the man said, absently sending out a single lightning-fast prod of arcana to scramble the delicate teleportation construct. He turned to look at Ciana. “Please wait at your home. I’ll have him back to you shortly.”
Then she disappeared. There was maybe a flicker of arcana, something so brief and small that if Ciana hadn’t vanished, Nym might have thought he’d imagined it. That, more than anything else, scared him. It wasn’t enough that the being before him was unfathomably powerful, he was also so fast that Nym couldn’t even see the spells he was casting before they went off.
“Now then… as I was saying, it’s very strange that you seem to be effectively nonexistent to my magic, but I can quite clearly see you with my eyes. If you don’t mind, Exarch, I’d like to take a moment to examine this defense. I wouldn’t dare remove it; it’s no doubt been the key to your extremely effective hiding, but I may be able to assist and bolster it.”
“Who are you?” Nym asked again.
“Oh, yes, I’m sorry. You must have used a memory lock to alter yourself enough to avoid detection. My name is Ferro. I am one of your lieutenants.”
“Oh… I see. Um, what do you want?”
“What? I want to help you, of course.”
That was unexpected. From the way the message his former self had sounded, he’d expected any ascendant he met to try to kill him, or capture him, or otherwise wish him some form of harm. “Um, how are you going to do that, exactly?”
Ferro looked puzzled for a second. “I’m sure you must need something done that I can assist with. What is currently standing in the way of you recovering your abilities?”
Nym wasn’t sure how much to tell the ascendant. For all that he seemed forthcoming and said he wanted to help, it could still be a trap. There could be something he was trying to get, some information he needed, before he turned on Nym. What that might be, Nym couldn’t begin to guess.
“Well, I guess let me think for a moment. I don’t actually know how to do that.”
“You don’t?” Ferro looked confused. “This was a highly unorthodox plan, Exarch. I suppose the speed at which you constructed it and the limited resources available necessitated something with many possible points of failure.”
“Uh, yeah. Probably that’s what happened, I’m sure.”
The ascendant just stared at him expectantly, like he was waiting for Nym to perform a trick. After a moment of awkward silence, Nym said, “I don’t think there’s much you can do to help me right now. I’m still working on boring through the fourth layer. Then I have to get through the fifth. You know, one step at a time.”
“Show me,” Ferro said. It wasn’t precisely a command, but the arcana churning in the ascendant’s soul well was so overpowering that it was impossible not to be at least a little bit intimidated by him.
Nym took a deep breath, and forged his conduit. He hadn’t really had to consciously think about reaching the third layer with it in months now. That part was automatic, but for the first time in the last thousand attempts, he found himself obsessively going over every minute detail while Ferro watched.
The conduit pierced the membrane of reality and drove through the first layer like it wasn’t even there, then shot across the second layer without so much as stuttering when he crashed through the arcana knots studded in that version of reality. At the third layer, it deftly wove through the strange twisting eddies and tides of the Astral Sea as Nym navigated the space between portals.
Then the conduit pierced the membrane separating it from the fourth layer and crashed into the Bulwark. It split the knotted wall of arcana part ways before his willpower was no longer strong enough to cut through with brute force. Then Nym twisted the whole conduit and started to bore deeper into the layer, to dig through it.
His will was stretched to snapping, and he hadn’t reached the end. He knew he was close, he had to be, but he just couldn’t quite make it to the end. Ferro watched him work, his face impassive, and when he saw that Nym had stalled, he said, “No, not like that. Here, start over.”
Nym did as he was instructed, except when he reached the third layer, Ferro somehow redirected his conduit. Nym nearly broke it just from the shock of having someone else able to influence it, but he recovered quickly and let the ascendant nudge him on the way. The pathway he took was entirely different, both shorter and moving with the current, so to speak.
The conduit practically flew through the third layer and, when it crashed into the fourth, it was far stronger than usual. Nym’s initial drive split the Bulwark almost as far as he could make it with his boring, and then Ferro did something else to the conduit. Nym felt holes open up in it, but instead of the arcana flooding into his soul well, it surged through the length of the conduit and struck just as the initial momentum from reaching out was dying off.
The fourth layer parted like warm butter before the conduit and suddenly Nym was past it, burst through the membrane, and the conduit was firmly lodged into the fifth layer of reality. He stood there, shocked, and felt the arcana pour into his soul well. It was nothing like third layer arcana with its chaotic energy that needed to be tamed before it was useful.
Fifth layer arcana was something else, something gentle and warm, but at the same time enormous. Nym would never be able to control it like he did third layer arcana. At best, he would guide it along by creating a framework for it to fill. It was just like Archmage Veran had described it.
“Much better,” Ferro said. “Now that we’ve taken care of that, what’s next?”