Nym was ready to finish recruiting his last two echoes, but Ferro didn’t answer when called, and Niramyn wasn’t even worth asking. He showed up on his own terms, and he reminded Nym more of the father he’d met in Niramyn’s early memories than anything else.

With nothing left to do but wait, Nym started on the top shelf of books. He’d been hoping they’d make more sense once he finished the red set, but he was disappointed to find they were as obtuse as ever. It was so bad that Nym might have thought he was just reading them in the wrong order if he’d been in a normal library. It didn’t seem likely that an Exarch’s mental fabrication would mix something like that up, but he checked all the other books anyway.

“Nope, that wasn’t the problem,” he muttered to himself. Something was missing, probably deliberately. He guessed it was some sort of method to control him, to keep him from knowing how to become a true ascendant until they were ready for him. That or there was something special about the fourth and fifth layer echoes that he was missing.

Until he could get Ferro to answer though, he was stuck doing nothing but rote memorization on passages he didn’t understand and practicing spells he already knew how to cast. It was tedious and frustrating, but he couldn’t make himself just turn his brain off and stare at the wall. He supposed there were a few more augmentations he could attempt, but they were dangerous to do without someone around who could help fix anything that went wrong.

He was half-tempted to try them anyway, but that would be crazy. Only an idiot would do something like that, and he suspected he knew exactly where he’d inherited the kind of arrogance a mage needed to think it was a smart idea. Even if it worked, that didn’t make it a good idea, and he had essentially unlimited time to work, so there was no rush.

There were only six green-bound books, and he read them all cover to cover at least a dozen times. It was obvious that they were designed to build on something, but he was missing some vital piece of information, or more likely a whole book’s worth. When he did finally get that missing piece though, he hoped it would all snap into place quickly and easily.

And then, without any warning, the sanctuary vanished and he was standing in the endless white void. A woman he didn’t know appeared in front of him, reached out to place one hand on his chest, and shoved. Nym had just enough time to get an impression of a tall, slender form with wavy blonde hair before he fell backwards through the void, crashed into something, and rebounded off it before he had time to process what was happening.

Outside the sanctuary, he still struggled to break the membrane separating the fifth and sixth layers, and so couldn’t channel arcana to use any sort of magic to save himself. He went tumbling through chaotic nothingness that was nevertheless full of things he kept bouncing off of. After being tumbled around for a subjective eternity, he broke through something and landed in a world he’d never seen before.

The sky, such as it was, was like some sort of patchwork quilt of different squares of land, except the patches moved around each other in dizzying patterns. Below it, the ground was a reflection of the quilt, an enormous mirror that stretched horizon to horizon. He was heading right for it, and at a dizzying speed. Nym didn’t know what would happen if he crashed into it, but he didn’t think it would be anything good.

Reflexively, he reached out for arcana to halt his descent. The conduit formed, but then slapped against a membrane he recognized: the one separating the fourth and fifth layers. He was attacking it from the wrong side, which told him he’d somehow been shunted into the fifth layer. He needed to either cast a pinnacle spell to keep him in the air or figure out how to rip through the layers backwards to reach at least the third layer.

That thought actually helped center him. Whatever was going on, he had a clear, immediate goal, and plenty of tools to help him achieve it. This problem at least was one he’d studied in detail, since he needed to be able to draw arcana from layers besides the one he was on while outside the core reality. It was all theory though, with no real way to practice until now.

Nym broke his first conduit and wove a new one, this one designed to take advantage of the massive weight of fifth layer arcana and wield it like a hammer to crash through the fourth layer. It slammed down on it, a wide, solid blade of arcana at the tip, and split the membrane in two.

The fourth layer gave way and Nym’s conduit reached the Astral Sea. Greedily, he drank in the arcana needed to perform a flight spell and slowed to a stop. He was still a mile or two from the ground, such as it was. It was hard to gauge altitude without a spell to aid him, and that hadn’t been important enough for him to cast one.

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Now that he was no longer concerned about splattering across the reflective surface of the ground, Nym’s next priority was to make sure he was safe. The other layers of reality could be just as brutal as the core itself, with some threats that were far more dangerous than anything living in the real world.

A series of quick divinations ensured that there was no immediate danger nearby, but that didn’t ease Nym’s mind. Someone had broken an Exarch’s sanctum, and then an ascendant he didn’t recognize had appeared and done something to him. Nym wasn’t even sure it was magic. Maybe she was friendly, or maybe not. She had pushed him out of a place he was trapped at to a layer that he could conceivably find his own way home from.

That seemed to indicate some degree of helpfulness to Nym, as he doubted it had been an accident. She hadn’t stopped to talk to him, not even for a second, but he wasn’t sure what conclusion to draw from that. Maybe if he’d known her, he could have said what the reason was, but with nothing to go on, it could be anywhere from she was checking chores off a list to she couldn’t communicate for some reason to she didn’t have more than an instant of time to work with.

Whatever the reason, he had an opportunity to work without worrying about Ferro looking over his shoulder, unless it was all a trap to see what he’d do if he thought he was free of them. It could be some sort of loyalty test, but fortunately, Nym had the same plan either way. He was going back to the core reality and having a conversation with a certain fox.

If that didn’t go well, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. He considered paying another visit to the research lab, but that might not be a great idea. Without any frame of reference for what was going on, putting himself in a position where unknown ascendants could find him was a risky move. The lab probably wouldn’t have the information he was looking for anyway.

Nym had one other option, but he was going to save that for after his visit. He had enough knowledge now to reach and hopefully absorb his fourth and fifth layer echoes into the whole of his being. There wasn’t really any downside to doing that; it would only make him stronger and put him in a position where he was ready to take that final step. Of course, if they were as hyper and scatterbrained as his third layer echo had been, maybe he’d hold off.

He wove together the spell needed to create a tunnel back to the core reality. It was unexpectedly difficult to make complex channels for the arcana to flow through while inside the fifth layer when there was more arcana pushing at the outside of the spell construct too. Nym had to take extra care to keep everything reinforced. No doubt Ferro would have something to say about how long it took him to put the spell together, but since Ferro wasn’t here, Nym didn’t have to listen to the lecture.

He stepped through and found himself back in reality prime. It took him a second to orient himself and realize that he was upside down, not helped by the fact that all he could see was ocean and sky, and that horizon line was a long way off.

After he righted himself, Nym spent a minute establishing his protections as best he could. He doubted much of anything would be able to get the jump on him, let alone harm him, but every now and then something surprised him. If an ascendant showed up, it wouldn’t matter what he did, but against something else that might be into the sixth layer, he thought he had half a chance, at least to run away.

Nym teleported to Archmage Veran’s sanctum, did a quick scry to confirm there was no one there, and pilfered the fox ring and statuette from his room. A fortunate side effect of being temporally locked for years, or however long it had been, was that nothing much had changed in the real world. His room was just like he’d left it.

He slipped the ring on, powered the arcana batteries in the fox’s eyes, and teleported again to get clear of any wards in the archmage’s sanctum that might interfere with the magic. Then he sent out the telepathic call and waited. It didn’t take long before Rizin appeared in front of him.

“Oh ho, what’s this!” the fox said with a grin. “I guess I can’t call you half-scendant anymore. You’re multi-dimensional now, though… perhaps still in progress, yes?”

“Yeah,” Nym said. “It’s a long story that involves a lot of ascendant shenanigans. Do you, uh, do you have a place where we can talk without worrying about being overheard?”

“Ah, what troubles are you bringing to my den?”

“I thought you weren’t afraid of ascendants,” Nym shot back.

“Afraid, no? It would be foolish not to respect strength though. Now tell me honestly, will you be bringing a host of powerful foes down on my head?”

“No?” Nym asked as much as said. “I don’t think so. Something happened, and I need time to figure out what. Advice would be helpful. I’m kind of sailing in uncharted waters right now.”

“Very well,” Rizin said after a pause to think. “I can at least hear you out.”

The world blurred but didn’t quite go black. When it cleared again, Nym was standing next to a giant cushion, many times too big for Rizin’s current form. The fox was the biggest Nym had ever seen, easily the size of a wolf, though much sleeker and perhaps more graceful. The cushion he sat on could have doubled as the floor for a house.

The fox grinned at Nym, and the shadows flickered with motion behind him. It reminded Nym of a tail flicking back and forth, except so fast that it was everywhere all at once. He’d seen that before, but at the time, Nym hadn’t recognized what it was. Rizin was far more than he appeared to be, obviously, but not just on a magical level. He was hiding even his physical form, presenting a mask in much the same way he’d pretended to be the boy with the yellow jacket when they’d first met.

That was good. Nym needed an ally strong enough to stand up to an ascendant. Hopefully the price for that help wouldn’t be too harsh. There was only one way to find out. “You’re sure we’re safe to speak here.”

“I am.”

“Alright, let me try to explain what I know happened, and what I think it means, and we can figure out what to do from there.”