The world was, for all intents and purposes, standing still while Nym did his best to become someone who could survive the incoming storm. He’d completely lost track of how long he’d been trapped inside the box. It could be years for all he knew.
He was going crazy, that was for sure. Having so much going on in his head was causing problems, despite his best efforts. The problem was a simple one: he and his echoes lacked a unified goal, and it was pulling him apart. Incorporating his third layer echo into his being had done more harm than good. That version of Nym was easily excitable and easily bored.
The parts of him that came from the first layer echo were close enough to his own personality that he appreciated the occasional alternate point of view. It had the same goals and went about them the same way, but saw things just different enough that it sometimes came up with ideas that Nym wouldn’t have.
From his second layer echo, Nym gained a great deal of patience. That echo was perhaps the easiest one to turn to his current task. It wanted to be stronger, and that was exactly what Nym was doing now. It was content to study the magic laid out in front of him as a path to power.
“But it’s so. Damn. Boring,” he said. The new echo wasn’t incorporating into his being correctly, and he was pretty sure that was because it just couldn’t thrive in this environment. He didn’t much blame it, to be honest, but the distractions were only going to make it take longer to finish.
It was a weird feeling, being distracted by himself like that. He knew that he was supposed to be reading, to be learning, and he wanted to, but he couldn’t make himself do it. And then he weirdly hated himself for not doing what he knew he needed to do, while still making no effort to correct anything about the situation.
The books had plenty of advice about successful integration, but none of it was really applicable to the situation. Ascendants were people driven by the pursuit of power and knowledge, and their echoes reflected that. Consolidating them into one being usually involved broadening goals until all aspects were satisfied and reaching compromises about which goals to pursue first.
In Nym’s case, the newest echo’s goal was directly contradictory to Nym’s. He wanted to get out and go do stuff. He’d loved Nym’s life right up until he’d encountered Ferro and decided it was time to stop stalling and accept that if he wanted to protect people, he needed to be strong enough to actually protect them.
Now, that echo was going insane with boredom and threatening to take the entirety of Nym’s being with it. He needed to find some way to negotiate with it. Nym quickly cast a spell that created a replica of himself, a sort of simulacrum, and imbued it with the bulk of the third echo’s personality. “Tell me what you need to be satisfied,” he said.
“Come on, man. You know. We’re the same person. You are just as bored as I am. This is torture. We need to get out and do something.”
“I agree. I would love to go somewhere, but that’s not the reality in front of us. If we want to get out of here, we need to finish the work first. Niramyn isn’t going to let us go on holiday until we’re a true ascendant.”
“Maybe just a small part could go out and check up on the world. You know, see how people are doing, what’s new.”
“Nothing’s new. We’re stuck in a place where time doesn’t exist and we lack the power to scry into the future.”
“Okay, but hear me out. What if we go check anyway?”
Nym rolled his eyes. “You just want an excuse to go for a walk.”
“Yes, damn it! Is that so wrong?”
“Maybe Ferro would be willing to let a piece of us out to look around.”
“How would that even work?” the simulacrum asked. “Wouldn’t that piece just never come back? It would have to wait until the next time the whole of us leaves to rejoin then.”
“It would on its own. Ferro might be able to help with that though.”
“Great, let’s ask him then. No, we can’t. Not until the next time he checks up on us.”
“Correct, and he’s more likely to agree to the request if we’ve demonstrated significant progress. So… we get back to work, then ask him for a favor later.”
“Fine. I’m not happy about this.”
“We’re not happy, you mean. But the harder we work at this, the sooner it gets done, and the sooner we can go back to having a life.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The simulacrum broke apart into arcana and Nym was finally, finally, able to sit down and open the book he’d been reading.
* * *
“This isn’t the core reality,” the fragment of Nym said.
“No. It’s an in between space,” Ferro explained. “As close as you can get while still remaining hidden outside of time.”
“Can I see that reality from here?”
“A… cross section of it, if you will. I will help you move your vision forward in time once you’ve determined where you want to look.”
Nym considered that for a second. “This seems like a lot more work than just setting me down in the core reality and coming back to grab me later.”
“I cannot do that. It would violate Exarch Niramyn’s orders. This, however, is in my power, and it costs me little enough.”
It wasn’t really what Nym had in mind. He’d wanted to check up on his friends, most of whom the ascendants didn’t know about, he thought. Or maybe they did. They seemed to have an infinite variety of ways to learn things, up to and including looking through the past to watch how events had unfolded, or possibly even living through them. Nym still didn’t fully understand how they interacted with the concept of time yet.
Ferro knew about Ciana though. If nothing else, she was already exposed, so it wouldn’t hurt to check up on her. Everyone else was probably also in danger, but he wasn’t going to confirm their existence on the off-chance that he’d be bringing them to an ascendant’s attention.
“How does it work?” Nym said.
“Scry as normal, but through this point here. It will open up to the core reality and allow your magic to look around.”
Nym did as he was instructed and saw the world unfold in his mind. He found Ciana easily enough. She was staying in a three-room house he’d rented for her, though she wasn’t home. Once Nym had locked down who he was looking for, Ferro manipulated his portal and time started to pass by at an enormous rate. Days went by in minutes and Nym watched his big sister go through the motions of her day.
She shopped at the market, roamed the streets and explored, and made friends with some of her neighbors. They worked on a little communal garden together, a scraggly thing struggling to thrive in the cold, rocky dirt of Abilanth. She found work as an apprentice leatherworker, not the job Nym would have chosen given the smell, but something she seemed to enjoy nonetheless.
“This isn’t a real future, is it?” he asked softly.
“It could be,” Ferro said. “If you never come back into her life, this is the next few months. It is the most likely future.”
“The most likely future is I’ll never see her again?”
“Yes. Once you’ve been properly prepared, Exarch Niramyn has work for you.”
Sometimes, Nym felt like he should have taken his chances with the hostile ascendants that hadn’t found him. But no, once Ferro showed up, it was all over. One way or another, he was going to be forced to become Niramyn again. The only way out of that fate would have been if another ascendant interfered and killed Ferro while somehow not finding Nym. It hadn’t seemed likely to happen.
“Well, this has been thoroughly depressing,” Nym said. “But thank you, Ferro. I appreciate that you went out of your way to help me.”
“You’re welcome. Let me know when you’d like to go back.”
“It’s time, I think. This didn’t really scratch the itch like I wanted it to.”
“You do not wish to check in on your other friends?”
Nym wasn’t surprised, but it was another blow to his morale to have it confirmed that Ferro knew about them too. Just in case he was making an erroneous assumption and the ascendant was talking about somebody who wasn’t Analia or the Earth Shapers, he said, “No, thank you. I’ll see them again when I’m able to travel freely. Or I guess maybe not, all things considered.”
Ferro didn’t offer him any words of comfort. He merely nodded, cut the arcana to the spell he was powering, and sent the fragment of Nym back to the whole.
* * *
“That’s just depressing,” Nym said.
It was harder to find motivation to keep working, but he could do it. Depression when trapped in a room with nothing but an endless parade of books to occupy his mind was easier to handle than cabin fever.
The primary motivator in his life at this point was spite. Niramyn thought he’d break, and Nym refused to let him be right. He was going to succeed, and he was going to grow to the point where he could tell even an Exarch to go court a swamp hag. In fact, he fully planned to tell both Exarchs that. He was sick of them screwing up his life.
Nym didn’t know what he was going to do with his life once he was free of the machinations that had completely derailed it. He just knew that he was going to get out from under Niramyn’s thumb somehow. From what he understood about ascendants, they couldn’t die, but they still had ways to fight each other.
No doubt he’d learn each and every one of those ways in full detail, seeing as to how he was to be bait to flush out the ascendants stalking through the timestream, searching for Niramyn. Bait worked even better when it could fight back, and if anyone knew how Niramyn thought, it was Nym. He was so arrogant that he couldn’t even conceive of anyone having the power to do him harm, even after what Mylazik had done to him.
Nym didn’t expect to have any trouble learning how to fight another ascendant, how to get around their immortality and hit them where it hurt. And even if Niramyn and Ferro wouldn’t teach him, he knew someone else who wasn’t afraid of an ascendant, someone who liked to make deals.
The trick would be getting there unnoticed, but Nym figured he could manage it. While they could literally watch him every second of every day, the whole point was to make him strong enough to survive first contact with an ascendant, and that meant going about his life like normal person while he waited for one to find him.
That was why the most likely future for his friends was that they’d never see him again, he realized in a flash of insight. He certainly wouldn’t go anywhere near them until the threat was gone. They might all die of old age long before that happened.
Damn all ascendants and their internal power struggles. He recognized that he wouldn’t exist if not for the two Exarchs, but he didn’t care. They were still going to pay. Flush with fresh spiteful vigor, Nym dove back into his work, and all four parts of him were finally in agreement.