“So you know how you always wanted to take a vacation?” Nym asked.

“No?”

“Well, you did. I definitely heard you say it.”

“I don’t think I did,” Ciana said. “Is this about that guy who showed up, the rude one?”

“Yeah, kind of. Listen, you should… not say anything until we leave. Apparently, they can hear everything you say and do, all the time.”

“What? That’s… Why would they even-”

“It’s my fault,” Nym interrupted her. “My past self gave me protections to help avoid being noticed, but they don’t extend to anyone else. So, I’m sorry, but we need to get you out of here as soon as we can. You should just pack up anything you need to take with you, we’ll barricade the door, and you can enjoy a nice vacation for a little while, okay?”

“Nym, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Ciana, I need you to listen to me. That man who appeared in front of us is the most powerful being you will ever meet. He could obliterate this entire country in seconds if he wanted to. The only reason you’re alive right now is because he’s been sitting here, watching this house, waiting for me to show up. He told me that he’s… I don’t know… not killed, but whatever immortals do to each other, a bunch of other people who showed up looking for me. You. Need. To. Leave.”

He wasn’t trying to scare her, but it needed to be said. Or maybe he was trying to scare her, but not to be mean, but to make her realize how serious the situation was. The only thing he could do to protect her was take her somewhere else and hope that it kept her out of the reach of whatever ascendant showed up next, especially if Ferro couldn’t take them out.

“This is ridiculous. Who even are these people?”

She still wasn’t scared, not like she should be. Nym took one of his memories and wove it into an illusion. “Look at this,” he ordered as he projected the memory of Archmage Veran devastating the forest around the mausoleum. Trees broke apart and bodies went flying everywhere as explosion after explosion rocked the landscape.

“Do you see this? This was done by an archmage after he spent time preparing the magic. That man we met could do this as easily and quickly as lifting a finger. It wouldn’t even be a real effort to him. There is no standing up to them, there is no fighting them. Please, listen to me. Let me protect you the best way I can. Pack up your stuff and I’ll take you anywhere you want.”

Her eyes were wide as she stared at the pure destruction Archmage Veran had wrought in Nym’s memory. He cut the illusion off and grabbed her by the shoulders. “It’s going to be okay,” he said softly. “We’re leaving. I’ve got some money saved up. We can go anywhere you want, and I’ll help you get settled in. I’m sorry, but it’s just not safe for you here. Please, go pack up what you need to bring with you.”

“Okay,” she whispered. Nym watched her walk into the second room of the shack and grab a small sack. She started stuffing it, not that there was much to put in there. Once he was confident that she wouldn’t come back out with another argument, he teleported himself into the cellar, tore open the floor, and retrieved the memory cube.

He’d half-expected it to trigger another vision, but nothing happened. That was good; he didn’t have time to process that right now. Later, when he was safe, he’d channel some fifth layer arcana into it and see if that triggered something. If not, he’d have to come up with a different plan, but he was pretty sure he was right about what he needed to do.

Once she was packed up, Nym joined Ciana in the main room. “Where do you want to go? There’s Thrakus, that place I took you shopping at once. Or Abilanth, the capital. It can get cold there, but we can afford some new winter clothes. Uh, a couple small towns here and there. Safe enough for the most part, but occasionally something dangerous does wander by. I have some friends down by the south coast based in Karu I could introduce you too.”

He considered Shu-Ain, but decided against getting Ciana involved with that whole mess. Cern wouldn’t appreciate her being around, she didn’t speak the local language, and the last thing she needed was to get tangled up in Analia’s mess. Karu wasn’t a great fit either, if only because the Earth Shapers weren’t actually there right now and Nym didn’t know the city well enough to make getting her a place to stay a quick and painless process.

“I don’t know, Nym. Wherever you think is best.”

Abilanth, maybe. As long as the Feldstals didn’t find out about her, she should be safe enough in the middle ring. If it came down to it and there was some sort of emergency, he would work something out with Archmage Veran so that she could talk to him and he could contact Nym to let him know. It was perhaps less safe than Thrakus, but there would at least be someone there she could physically walk over to and who could then notify Nym.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Here we go,” he said. The spell reached out to surround them both, and they disappeared.

* * *

Archmage Veran was not in his sanctum. That wasn’t particularly unusual. He did have a busy schedule after all, but it was really inconvenient for Nym, who was in full-on panic mode trying to take care of dozens of little details at once. He didn’t have time to wait for the archmage to come back, so instead he scribbled a note, left it sitting in the study, grabbed his stash of gold crests, and teleported back to where he’d left Ciana.

After shoving the bag into her hands and giving her brief directions on how to reach the Academy and who to ask for, he was off again. Hopefully his own protection against ascendant scrying would extend to the teleport spell he’d used on her. Hopefully it worked like he thought it would. Hopefully she wouldn’t end up dead because she had sympathy for a little boy who’d washed up on a beach near her home.

Hopefully.

One more letter made its way into the postal system, this one addressed to Risa. Nym was vague in it, not outlining the dangers he was facing. Instead, he just told her that he had to go off on a new job and he wasn’t sure when he’d be back, that it had been sudden and there was no time for goodbyes.

After dropping that off, Nym teleported to Shu-Ain, right onto the roof of Cern’s workshop. He walked in, hoping to find both the alchemist and his apprentice there, but was out of luck. “Cern,” he called out. “I need to talk to you real quick.”

“I’m busy,” Cern called out from the lab.

“Okay, well, some stuff happened and I need to take care of things. I’ll probably be late picking up the next shipment. I’m not sure when I’ll actually be back.”

There was some cussing and scrambling, and Cern poked his head out of the back room. “How am I supposed to make money if you’re not here to transport the goods?”

Nym shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. This is big. I don’t have a choice about this anymore. Do you know where Analia is?”

“No idea,” the alchemist said sourly. “She stopped showing up for lessons too. I haven’t seen her in a few days. She’s… probably alright. It’s not the first time this has happened.”

“Damn,” Nym said. “Okay, I’ll see if I can find her before I go.”

“If you do, tell her she’s supposed to be here helping me, not running around like a vigilante.”

“Will do,” Nym assured Cern.

He got to work scrying, this time sure of what he was looking for. Unfortunately, she was nowhere near the workshop. Or if she was, she had made some changes to her anti-scrying rune sequences that were interfering with his ability to find her. Nym doubted that was the case. It was far more likely she just wasn’t in that part of the city.

He crafted a message spell and sent it out, asking where she was, but she didn’t respond. That could just be because she was still mad at him. Nym debated on using a wide area scry, but he wasn’t sure it would pick her up the way the one designed to bypass anti-scrying measures could. In the end, it only cost him a bit of arcana and a few minutes of his time, so he gave it a shot.

As expected, nothing came back. Nym cursed his luck, but gave up on reaching her. If he really, really needed to, he could find her, but he didn’t have the time. He just hoped she was alright, that she was ignoring him because she was busy or upset still, and not because she was incapacitated or otherwise in danger.

[The ascendants found me. I met one today. Broke through to the fifth layer. I don’t have a choice anymore about whether to take back my old powers. The one I met, if he wanted to, he could have destroyed everyone in a hundred miles with a snap of his fingers. The power they wield is unreal. I’ll never be able to match it the way I’m going. I hope you’re safe. I hope when it’s done, I’m still myself and we’ll see each other again.]

He cast the message out into the void, hoping it would reach her. Like the previous message, no response came back. “Please don’t be dead,” he whispered before teleporting away.

The last step was Karu, or rather the lumber camp his friends were helping to build. A quick scry showed him that Nomick was the closest, and Nym flew over to him first. “Hey,” the earth mage called out when he saw Nym flying his way. “Didn’t expect you back so early.”

“Yeah, something came up. I ran into an ascendant and, long story short, I need to try to get my old powers back or they’re going to take me out without even blinking. The gap between my magic and theirs is too much right now. I just wanted to say goodbye in case, you know… in case things don’t go in my favor.”

“Hey, hey. Easy there,” Nomick said. He pulled Nym into a hug. “Come on, you got this. I believe in you. Let’s go talk to everyone else, give you a proper send off. Then you can come back and tell us all about your exciting adventure in a few weeks.”

“I don’t have time,” Nym said. “I really need to get going.”

“Five minutes, Nym. You’ll regret it if you don’t say your farewells. They’ll be hurt if you don’t stop to talk to them.”

He didn’t want to. Every second he spent out in the open was another second he was vulnerable to a random ascendant dropping out of the sky and obliterating everything in sight. Nym forced himself to take a breath though. “Okay, but we’ve got to be quick. I can’t even tell you how dangerous this is right now. There just aren’t words to describe how powerful a real ascendant is.”

He must have gotten through with how urgent it was, because Nomick didn’t even complain when Nym picked him up and flew him over to collect the other three. Once they were all together, he explained the situation.

“What are you going to do?” Ophelia asked.

“I have an ascendant-crafted thing in my bag,” Nym said. “It contains all my lost memories. Everything I was before I became Nym is in there, and that includes all my knowledge about magic. I’m… I’m afraid that when I unlock it, I’ll stop being Nym again. This was just a small part of my whole life. Exarch Niramyn is immortal, thousands and thousands of years old. How can I change someone like that?”

No one said anything, but Nym could see they’d all reached the inevitable conclusion. “If I don’t come back,” he said, swallowing once to clear his throat. “If I don’t come back, then… I’m glad I met all of you. Thank you for everything.”

One at a time, he hugged all of them. “I took Ciana to Abilanth,” he said. “If you ever end up that way, maybe see if you can find her. I… I didn’t tell her what I’m about to do. I couldn’t.”

He forged his conduit, pulled in the arcana, and wove a teleportation spell around him. “Goodbye,” he said.