Nym didn’t even try to force a teleport out of Rizin’s den. When he felt he was ready, he simply asked the fox to transport him out. They appeared on the slope of a snow-covered mountain, much to Nym’s discomfort. He quickly slapped a warming spell on himself and glared at Rizin.
“One would think you’d be more prepared,” the fox said.
“I guess I thought you’d give me a bit of warning.”
“That was foolish of you.”
Nym rolled his eyes and asked, “Are you here to keep an ascendant from spotting me?”
“I said I would, didn’t I?”
“Right, you did.” Nym frowned. They hadn’t made an official pact yet, but he supposed his position was bad enough that Rizin could afford a little generosity. It made him feel helpless. He didn’t like it. “I just thought that would be later on.”
“That would be rather pointless, since any ascendant could spot you while you’re out here and attack before you could disappear again. I need you alive for now.”
“Thanks, I think?”
Nym busied himself casting the spells he needed to locate his echo in the fourth layer. Once he’d narrowed it down, he said, “I need to do some teleporting. Should I bring you with me or would you prefer to move under your own power?”
“I’ll follow you,” Rizin said. “I’m not sure your spellwork is up for moving something like me.”
“You think so?” Nym asked. Rizin looked like he couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. “I guess the big pillow isn’t for show.”
“Not at all,” the fox agreed.
Nym could spend some time studying the location he wanted to go through his scrying spells, but for the type of work he was doing now, he found it was easier to just line-of-sight teleport a thousand miles or so through the sky. As long as he went high enough, there was practically no risk.
He blipped off towards the horizon several times until he was floating over a desert. Rizin didn’t appear next to him, but he got the sense that the fox was hidden nearby anyway. Nym took a minute to switch out his warming spell for a cooling one, then repeated his echo hunting magics. The next round of teleports sent him south and west over the sea to a new continent. He stopped near the shore over some grasslands that stretched on for a hundred miles and tried again.
“Almost got it,” he said aloud, mostly for Rizin’s benefit.
The last set of teleports took him back into some mountains, though these ones lacked the snowy white caps that he was more familiar with. Finally, Nym settled down on a wide shelf overlooking a gorge at least a thousand feet wide and twice as deep. “Alright, this is the spot.”
“Very well,” Rizin’s voice came out of nowhere. “I’ve shrouded this area. You are free to begin.”
The spell was a little bit different every time he used it. He had to account both for the layer he was trying to reach and the environment he was casting it from. There were a lot of technical terms that the books spouted off in regards to that particular hurdle, but what it boiled down to was that the farther out he got from reality prime, the more work the magic had to do to make the tunnel.
It wasn’t just a distance thing either, it was that it punctured through other layers and it needed to be solidly anchored to do so. That meant constructing a sort of overlay of the surrounding environment so that the spell could attach itself to the core reality in this specific location, and that the location changed every time he cast the spell again.
If everything went well, it would be a lot easier in the future because he would exist on both sides of the tunnel, but for now, the echo was more like a beacon he was aiming for. It made for a lot of prep work, but Nym knew the routine by now, and he finished it up in just a few minutes.
“Alright, time to do it again,” he said as the tunnel opened. He stepped through to the other side, where he found a version of himself seated with his back against a tree. Moss, or something resembling it, had grown over his echo’s legs and up to his stomach.
The echo didn’t take any notice of Nym. In fact, nothing did. He peered around curiously, trying to figure out what was going on. After a moment, he recognized what he was feeling. It was a heaviness in the air, a stillness that smothered the slightest hint of a breeze. There was a quality of absolute silence around him, a quiet winter morning covered in fresh snow.
He caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned to see Rizin looming over him. The fox wasn’t small now, not even close. He sat, twenty feet tall at least, with five enormous tails fanned out behind him. Strangely, all of them poked out to the right at various angles, but none on the left. It made Rizin look lopsided, but as Nym peered closer, he got the impression there was in fact something there after all, something that he just couldn’t see.
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“Oh, um.” Nym took a step back. “Yeah, you weren’t kidding about being bigger. Kind of lopsided though.”
“Am I?” Rizin sounded amused.
“No, probably not.”
“You would do well not to forget that.”
“Right.” Nym’s mouth was suddenly very dry.
“Proceed with your task,” Rizin said. “Good luck reaching your echo.”
Nym wasn’t sure why he needed luck, considering the other Nym was right there. He turned to take a step towards it, then stopped. Something weird had just happened. He took another step, then looked around. “Ah, I see.”
He was moving, but he wasn’t getting any closer to his goal. The more he walked, the farther away his echo appeared to be. That was… unfortunate. Not every part of the fourth layer was like this, but the ones that were could be difficult to navigate. He had a spell prepared for that, but it was going to make it all more complicated.
Nym’s magic started compressing the space, twisting it around so that everything started to slide closer to him. It was a difficult spell to aim, but he thought he could tighten it down enough that the whole world didn’t collapse on him. Once he got it going, he focused on his echo. The rest of the world snapped back into place, and the echo seemed to slide forward, along with the tree he was resting against.
It was a nauseating visual effect, one that Nym countered by focusing on a single point and trying to block out everything else. In this case, he picked the echo’s nose. Soon enough, it was close enough to touch. “Hey, are you awake?” he asked.
The echo didn’t answer. Being careful not to disrupt the spell, Nym reached out to grab a shoulder and give the echo a shake. “Say something.”
“You’re not a patient one, are you?” Rizin said.
“I know,” Nym said, “But I kind of figured you wanted to be out of here as soon as possible. I don’t have hours for this.”
“You’ve got a bit more time still.”
Nym huffed, but said, “Fine. The long way then.”
Merging with an echo was far, far easier if they agreed to it, but as long as they weren’t actively resisting, it was still possible to do. According to the books he’d read, most would-be ascendants found themselves in a similar situation, forced to wait for an unknown length of time, possibly minutes, but possibly months, for their echo to stir.
That was how the fourth layer worked: slowly. Nym didn’t have the time for that, so he firmly anchored himself to his echo with magic, then released the spell that compressed physical space. The echo slid backwards, taking Nym with him. Once they were both safely returned to their original position, Nym started the next spell.
This one was designed to do something similar to the tunnel spell, except with a person. It did its best to anchor the subject and the target together, to create a metaphysical bridge Nym could traverse to merge the fourth echo into his being. As long as the echo didn’t fight back, it would work. The only problem was that it was a slow process normally. Now, even with a hand literally on the echo’s shoulder, it might take ten or twelve hours to complete.
There was a way to combine the two spells, to compress that bridge, but doing that and keeping the tunnel open might just be beyond Nym’s abilities. If he let the tunnel collapse, well, he wouldn’t be stranded, but it would be inconvenient. It might be worth it though if it saved him a few hours. “I’m thinking about letting the tunnel go,” he said, turning to look at Rizin.
The fox tilted his head and watched Nym. “Do you think that will be a problem? I don’t want to mess up any magic you’ve got going on.”
Rizin started laughing, and Nym realized why. They couldn’t hear each other, not with the strangely warped distance and smothering silence of the fourth layer. Shrugging, Nym went back to work. He trusted the fox was canny enough and skilled enough to adapt if he needed to. The tunnel folded up on itself and closed, freeing up a large chunk of Nym’s mind to let him cast multiple other spells at once.
It was still a time-consuming process, but he’d been right about it going much faster without him having to exert the effort to hold the tunnel open. Four hours later, the last anchor point locked into place, and Nym activated the merger spell. The echo disappeared, and he felt his awareness of the fourth layer expand.
Rizin stared at him intently, nodded to himself, and then did something Nym didn’t catch. A moment later, magic grabbed him by the guts and jerked him forward. He fell through reality and landed back on the mountain where he’d started.
“You’ll forgive me, I hope,” Rizin said, once more in his small, one-tailed fox form. “I really didn’t feel like waiting hours more while you fumbled around trying to figure out how to open your gateway back up from the wrong side.”
“I know how to do that,” Nym said. “It would only have taken a moment.”
“And how long would it have taken you to step through?”
“That… is a good point.”
Nym took a moment to examine himself. His being had expanded again, and honestly, he just felt really, really relaxed. He was at peace now, which he had to admit was a foreign state of being for him. It seemed like he’d struggled and stressed for as long as he could remember, with only brief periods of relief.
This echo of him reminded him of how he’d felt for a few weeks when he’d met the Earth Shapers, when he’d been surrounded by friends and his worries were few and far between. It inspired good memories, but unfortunately, his life hadn’t stayed that way.
“One more to go,” he said. “I think I’d like to rest for a bit before I tackle that one, if that’s okay with you.”
Rizin nodded. “You are ready to return to the safety of my den?”
“I don’t know how safe it is with you in there, but yes.”
Rizin took Nym back in an instant. He was once again sitting on his overlarge cushion, and Nym couldn’t help but eyeball it up and compare it to the version of the fox he’d seen in the fourth layer. Even as large as he’d been, the cushion was still too large. That was troubling.
It was one thing to know intellectually that Rizin was stronger than him. But the fox kept himself hidden, wrapped in shadows and illusions. Seeing part of that veil stripped away had shocked Nym out of complacency. His new companion was every bit as dangerous as an ascendant; he was just better at hiding it.
Nym tried to convince himself that it was a good thing. If an ascendant did attack, Rizin could fight back. He was only really screwed if Rizin decided to attack him. So far, that hadn’t happened. So far. Things did tend to change though. An ally today could be an enemy tomorrow.
He didn’t see where he had too many other choices though. No matter what he did, there were risks. Picking the least terrible choice was a hard skill to master. Nym hoped he’d done a good enough job to survive the upcoming storm.