The ascendant Nym was meeting was named Hozim. Baracia had arranged the meeting, and Nym waited with her for the new ascendant to show up. “Anything I should know about him?” Nym asked.
“He is easy-going, and loves to teach. Truthfully, there probably isn’t anyone better to show you how to make new anchors and cast them through time. For the advanced stuff, you’ll need to seek out other ascendants or make your own path, but you’re still decades away from that point. Hozim will teach you the basics, and the favors he’ll trade you for are nothing too onerous.”
Given Nym’s track record with instruction, he gave it a coin-toss whether he’d appreciate Hozim’s style of teaching. It was somewhat depressing to think that his best instructor to date had been a shelf full of books tailored from Niramyn’s own memories. Things had been so well laid out, and followed his own thought processes so closely, that it was rare to have a question that the early books couldn’t answer.
Of course, that had all vanished on the final shelf, but Nym suspected that was on purpose. Or maybe he’d just diverged from his past life’s way of thinking enough that once he was past the basics, they were no longer in sync. If so, that was fine with Nym. He didn’t particularly like Niramyn and wouldn’t shed any tears if Myzalik did manage to kill him for real next time.
“He’s here,” Baracia said.
A man who looked like he was in his early thirties appeared in the doorway. He was dressed in strange clothes, some kind of pants and a coat made from materials Nym didn’t recognize. There were patches on the elbows of his coats, and he was wearing a vest underneath, one that only buttoned up about halfway. A strip of cloth made of some other material hung down from his neck and was tucked into the vest.
“Ah, yes, I get that a lot,” the man said with a chuckle when he saw Nym blinking at his outfit. “My eccentric fashion sense. Trust me, it’s quite the popular look in one of the possible alternate timelines I favor.”
“Yeah… I’m sure. Hozim, I presume?”
“The one and only.”
“I’m Nym, but I guess you probably already knew that.”
“Indeed I did, young man. A fresh ascendant, and so young too. I’m not sure we’ve ever had one younger,” Hozim said. “Quite the accomplishment.”
“There were some extenuating circumstances,” Nym said. “But thank you.”
“And he’s modest too! Where’d you find this one, Baracia?” Hozim’s chuckle turned into a full laugh and he added, “Stand and be proud. You are an immortal now, one of the few, one of the elite.”
Nym glanced over at Baracia, who just rolled her eyes and sighed. “Hozim is, well, you can see for yourself. But I promise he’s a good person.”
“I am boisterous and grating on the nerves,” Hozim said, leaning forward and giving Nym a conspiratorial wink. “But come, come, let’s make ourselves comfortable, then discuss some business. I have dozens of little tasks to do that are perfect for a new ascendant, and you no doubt have many questions that I can provide answers to.”
Baracia led the two of them into her study, only this time the desk was missing, there was an extra thirty feet of length to the interior of the room, and an enormous table dominated the floor near the windows. Three chairs were situated around it, and the other two ascendants popped across the room with magic to appear in their chairs. Nym exerted a flicker of will and blipped over to the third chair between them.
“Oh-ho! Excellent. You’re already able to manifest your will in opposition to Baracia’s home. That will save us from some tedious exercises, though it wouldn’t hurt to learn them anyway,” Hozim said. “One can’t ever really be too prepared, after all.”
“Perhaps later,” Nym deflected. “Priorities and all of that.”
“Of course, of course. Baracia, might you be planning on serving those delicious little cakes? You know those are half the reason I come to your events.”
“I would be happy to,” she said. A dozen little plates, each with its own yellow-frosted cake a few inches wide and studded with a chunked strawberry scattered across its top, appeared on the table. “Please, help yourself.”
Nym manifested a fork, floated the nearest cake over to him, and took a bite. His eyebrows shot up in surprise, and he examined the cake more closely. A subtle flow of arcana trickled from the cake as he chewed it, technically poisoning him since it wasn’t being directed into his soul well, but so weak that it wasn’t any real effort to cleanse it. He didn’t doubt that it could be much stronger, though he suspected he would have been able to tell before he tasted it if it was.
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“Interesting cake,” Nym said. He took another bite and chewed slowly, wondering if it could be served to humans. It was probably safe, as long as they were forewarned, but he’d be the first to admit that his idea of how much arcana a human could safely process outside of their soul well was a bit skewed.
Hozim was working on this third before Nym finished his first and set his fork down. It disappeared almost as soon as it touched the table, his will no longer actively working against Baracia’s home to maintain its shape. “Thank you,” he told her. “I might try to steal the recipe from you to make it myself, assuming there is one.”
“Ah, hrmm. I suppose it was based off something I had once before I ascended. I couldn’t honestly tell you what it was made of, or even if these are an accurate recollection of the taste. I conjured them from my memories of eating one as a child, you see.”
“And an excellent conjuring it was!” Hozim cut in. He stacked the plates together and set them aside. “Now then, to the heart of the matter. You need to learn how to create new anchors and how to place them in different spots in the timeline. I can teach you that. In exchange, I’ll have you perform some small tasks for me in the core reality during specific times that I’ve already used. How does that sound?”
“Depending on the tasks and when they need to happen, it sounds like an excellent arrangement.”
“Well let’s talk about that. I’m going to assume that you’re still using a mortal calendar as a frame of reference?”
“Yeah,” Nym admitted. “I haven’t quite figured out how ascendants measure that kind of stuff yet.”
“We break timelines down by catastrophic events that have a tendency to occur regardless of which timeline you end up mucking around in. It’s a lot easier to record time from that volcanic eruption that sank a prosperous island nation or the meteorite swarm that decimated a sizable portion of a continent, since those tend to always happen in every timeline, regardless of what the humans are doing.”
“That makes sense,” Nym said. “I’m used to the Latorsikan calendar, but there are probably timelines where it doesn’t exist at all, or where it does but has a different starting point. My 1215 might be another timeline’s 1225.”
“Exactly, yes. Of course, there are a lot of years to cover, and nobody wants to get up into the hundreds of thousands of years, so we just generally agreed on specific events that we call the Third Cataclysm or the Ninth Cataclysm.”
Nym supposed for a group of people whose existence never ended, it would eventually be necessary to remove the variables inherent by mortal time-keeping methods. No doubt both of the other people in this room could name a dozen or more civilizations that had kept their own calendars, and that wasn’t even getting into alternate versions of those civilizations.
“Let me see now… 1215 of the Latorsikan calendar.” Hozim tapped his chin with his finger. “Oh! I know. I have just the project going on in that time frame. There’s a group of mages I gathered a few hundred years earlier who were studying how to become ascendants, and they kind of died out about a century earlier than when you’re from. I’ll show you how to make an anchor, and you go back and kickstart them to get things going again. Maybe this time they’ll get lucky and make some progress.”
“So… you want me to give some magic lessons to some humans a hundred years before the point in time I ascended?”
“Indeed. No need to lay it all out for them, just cut away some of the wrong ideas that are choking the Collective out, get them pointed in the right direction, and send them on their way.”
Nym froze. “I’m sorry, did you say the Collective?”
“Hmm, yes. It seemed overly dramatic to me, but that is what they called themselves.”
He couldn’t help it; he started laughing. “So if I don’t do this, they cease to exist decades before I meet them. That might be worth it.”
“Well, no, not exactly,” Hozim said. “The primary timeline likes to remain the same. It finds ways to correct itself. We generally try to help it along if we’re able, though sometimes an alternate timeline is desired, and in those cases, we exert a massive amount of influence to shift the timeline. If you don’t do it and no other ascendants exert any pressure on the primary timeline, someone else will step in, or they’ll figure something out on their own. Or a different organization will take their place and accomplish many of the same things.”
“Seems like if it’s going to happen either way, there’s not a lot of reason to go help it along,” Nym pointed out.
“In the long term, no, it’s not necessary to interfere unless you are trying to alter something big in the primary timeline. However, let’s just say that assisting could result in the Collective getting back on its feet earlier, which might result in different leadership, and that could perhaps allow me to tweak another ascendant’s nose that I got my candidate into a leadership position over his.”
Of course that was the reason. There were very few reasons for ascendants to go to the core reality at all, though perhaps encouraging mortals to try to grow in magic and possibly ascend themselves might be a good one. Nym wasn’t actually sure if the current group of ascendants wanted to increase their number or not. It was just as likely that they didn’t care for competition, but he supposed it might get lonely or boring after a few millennia of not having new people to talk to. So far, none of the ascendants he’d spoken with seemed particularly concerned about him joining their ranks, so he decided it was probably a good thing if more people managed it.
“I did not have great experiences with the Collective when I was a mortal,” Nym said. “What would happen if someone else took over?”
Hozim shrugged. “Excellent question, and I’m sure we can find an alternate timeline to explore where that’s exactly what happened. But in reality prime, if you don’t help the Collective, someone else will. You’ll find that a century is more than long enough for the timeline to course correct. Most alterations we make are by necessity minor and not long-reaching.”
“Alright, I guess if it’s not going to change my own interactions with them either way, it wouldn’t hurt anything.”
Hozim flashed him a wide grin, and said, “That’s your side of the exchange settled then. Let’s talk about mine. You’ll need to know how to make anchors, so I’ll teach you that and help you place your first one. We’ll place it before your current anchor, and you can use it to help me out. Come, come, let’s get started. Oh, wait, Baracia, dear, might I take one of these cakes with me?”