It did not take Rizin long to confirm Nym’s story. “Looks like they’re fighting,” he said. “And making a huge mess in the process.”
“Who’s ‘they?’” Nym asked.
“At least two different factions of ascendant society. I guess you could think of Niramyn and Mylazik as lords, and each has weaker ascendants pledged to their service. There are a few other Exarchs with similar deals, and one who has a reputation for viciously attacking anything that gets close to him. No vassals for that one.”
“And the Niramyn and Mylazik factions are fighting?” Nym asked, trying to even picture what an ascendant fight would look like. He doubted it would just be two groups of mages hurling fire and lightning across the sky at each other.
“Yes, though it might be more accurate to say the Niramyn faction is running away and the Mylazik faction is giving chase. I’m not well versed in the politics of it, but a lot of people thought Mylazik did the impossible and killed an ascendant. He absorbed a good chunk of manpower with that little move, and I doubt Niramyn welcomed all his former followers back with open arms.
“No, if I were him, I would have moved very cautiously and done my best to keep my return a secret until I’d gathered all my lost strength and very carefully evaluated the political landscape. Someone blundered somewhere and tipped Niramyn’s hand early, and Mylazik moved to cut him off before he could grow back into a true threat.”
“And since Niramyn was maintaining the sanctuary I was in, when he was attacked, he had to break it or something, which begs the question of whether the woman who showed up and shunted me into the fifth layer was working with him or against him. Maybe she was trying to help me survive, or maybe she was displacing me so he couldn’t find me again. But then, why not just kill me?”
“Your existence spans multiple realities now,” Rizin said. “Do you understand what that means? Killing this physical body in front of me isn’t the end of you, though at your current level, you probably wouldn’t be able to rebuild it for a while.”
Nym had kind of forgotten that. He knew on an intellectual level that he was multi-dimensional now, but the idea that he could just shift his consciousness over and have a body in another layer of reality, or even assign one of his eight parallel processes to it while he managed his core reality body with another one, were still new concepts. Still, since he had no desire to lose his core reality body, he planned on doing his best not to die.
“What you’re saying is I can’t assume she was helping me. She might just have not had enough time to thoroughly kill me all the way, so she settled for making Niramyn lose track of me.”
“That’s a possibility,” Rizin said. “What are you going to do?”
“I know how to locate and bond with my next two reality echoes,” Nym said. “That seems like a good place to start. That next step is going to be harder. I might need some help.”
“Is more power what you really want?” the fox asked. “You didn’t strike me as the type.”
“If I were just going to be a human and all of this ascendant stuff was something I could ignore, no, not really. I’m strong enough now for that. But, well, what are the odds of that happening?”
“What if I told you that I could teach you how to hide yourself even from an ascendant?”
“Can you?” Nym asked.
“Perhaps. Not as you are now, but if you were to bridge that last vital gap and become a true immortal.”
“I guess I would ask what it’s going to cost me.”
“Hmmm… I do have an idea or two. It would depend on how capable you turn out to be. As you are now, I think any favor I might ask of equal value would be beyond your abilities.”
Nym wasn’t sure he wanted to owe Rizin another favor anyway. The fox had deliberately kept information from him last time they’d made an agreement, and the stakes were so much higher now. “I think I would need to know what I’m agreeing to before I agree to it. And if it’s going to be a long-term partnership, I’m not entering it blindly.”
Rizin laughed. It was a strange little yipping sound, almost like hiccups, and completely at odds with his size. “It would take forever to tell you all the details, but very well. What I would like is for you to go back into that little lab and have it start a new experiment. I want a new type of fox bred to my specifications. I will be their progenitor.”
“Aren’t there already ice foxes with magic?” Nym asked.
“Not an ice fox. Something similar, but… different. You may have noticed that I am as much a foreigner in this realm of cold and snow as you are, yes? My coloring isn’t suited to the environment. I want a race of my own to take back to the warmer lands.”
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“And if I go back into the lab and get them to start making that, you’ll show me how to hide myself from ascendants?”
“I’ll be showing you before you go in, I’m sure. You’ll need that knowledge to make sure no one realizes you’ve been there.”
Nym supposed he’d already done one job in there, but things might be different now. The assistant golems might not be so friendly towards him, what with the real Niramyn being back. It would depend on whether or not the Exarch cared enough to visit the lab and correct some errors in judgement the golems had made. He certainly knew about it, since he knew everything Nym had done, which now that he thought about it, his plan to shield his friends from ascendant notice had been a foolish one.
There were probably some long-term ethics to consider about introducing a new race of sapient foxes into the world. They might overtake and wipe out native species, or they might integrate themselves into human civilization. He couldn’t see them overthrowing humans as the dominant species on the planet, but then again, Rizin could probably do that more or less by himself. A coalition of every archmage alive might be able to stand up to him, but Nym doubted it.
There were probably other animals with the same level of power the fox had, maybe in hiding, or just so far away that humans never crossed their paths. Or they disposed of the unfortunate souls who did. Nym had a few ideas for finding such creatures, but until he’d finished his own ascendance, it was probably a bad move.
“Let’s say I agree to this, what exactly am I making?
“I’ll provide you with the specifications, but the short version is one hundred fully sapient fox kits, half male and half female, which would have inborn spells for illusion, darkness, sensory enhancement, speech, and travel magic. I want them placed on a large uninhabited island I’ve picked out, some three thousand square miles of space for them to grow in. I’ll relocate there myself to ensure their development.”
“This isn’t some whim you just thought up, is it?” Nym asked.
“No, I’ve been planning for this ever since I learned about that lab.”
Nym wondered how exactly Rizin knew about it. As far as he was aware, that containment field kept it hidden and didn’t let anything go. Then again, it did send arcana out into the world for its experiments, and Rizin definitely could have found those. That was more or less how Nym had traced the scarab curse back to its origin, though it still didn’t explain how the fox had peeked behind the containment field.
He also wondered why Rizin needed the lab to do it. Perhaps it was just as simple as that the fox’s talents didn’t run in that direction. Nothing about illusions and tricks painted a picture of crafting a new form of life. Nym wasn’t buying that answer though. Unless Rizin was fundamentally different from an ascendant, there was no reason he couldn’t branch out and pick up new magic. He almost had to have a firm grounding in anatomical alterations just to make it to the point where his body could handle the levels of magic he played with.
Still, if that was what he wanted, it was at least something Nym could conceive of being able to do. He could probably do it today if it was as simple as giving over the instructions to the golems and having them start it up. The hardest part was probably going to be getting himself to the level where he could recharge the arcana batteries. It was entirely possible that there wouldn’t be enough to perform the experiment, given how expensive some of Nym’s ideas had been.
“Let’s say I agree to this. What exactly are you going to teach me?”
“What do you need right now? Let me see.” Rizin hopped off the cushion, a movement that shouldn’t have startled Nym, but somehow gave the impression of a monstrously huge creature charging at him. He suppressed a flinch through sheer willpower, but it was close. Despite his new level of power, he was still far below the fox’s level.
“You’ll need to finish consolidating your reality echoes into your being. You can do that on your own. Then the plunge. The passage. The transition.”
Nym snorted. “How poetic.”
“It is not something to be mocked. What you’re doing right now, you’re walking a well-traveled path. You can make mistakes and come back from them. You can turn aside and go back. Once you reach the precipice, the only way forward is to jump. There’s no turning back from that. You either learn to fly, or you fall to your death.”
“I can already fly.”
“Don’t be dense. It was obviously a metaphor.”
“Terrible metaphor,” Nym muttered. “Ow!”
A… something vaguely tail-like swatted him, though Rizin’s tail never moved beyond a twitch. He glared at the fox anyway. Rizin’s eyes stared back at him, deadly serious. “This is not a subject to joke about,” he said. “This will be the most dangerous thing you ever attempt, and failure can have catastrophic events beyond just your own death.”
“Uh, how catastrophic are we talking about?”
“Failure to ascend can leave rents in reality. The mixing of arcana is quite volatile. When I say catastrophic, I mean that literally. Disasters worse than any hurricane or volcanic eruption. There is only so much that can be done to mitigate it. Failure could mean a loss of life on a scale you can scarcely comprehend.”
“Oh…”
“We will revisit this when you’re ready. I will do what I can to guide you after our pact is formed. For now, you have more tangible, concrete goals. You should not leave my side until you are ready to enter the fourth layer and meet with your echo.”
“What about the ascendants still fighting?” Nym asked.
“Not your concern right now. They will not find you while you are under my care, I promise.”
“And what do you want in return?”
Rizin rolled his eyes and disappeared. He reformed out of nothing back in his place on top of the giant cushion. “For now, nothing. What you need costs me nothing beyond the space you stand in, space I wasn’t using anyway. My den is already well protected from the gaze of those who would call themselves gods.”
“And when it’s time to open a tunnel to the fourth layer, will I be able to do that from here?”
“Ah, that. No, I think not. I doubt you could muster a fraction of the power needed to step between realities from inside my den. I do not recommend you even try. It could have unpleasant repercussions for you.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Nym said. Rizin just grinned at him.