The spell wasn’t quite as good as the one he’d been under after he’d touched Niramyn’s memory cube, but it did have the advantage of being usable by Nym. An ascendant might notice a presence in the mortal timeline if they knew where to look, but they wouldn’t be able to tell who was there or what exactly they’d done. At least, that was the theory.
In practice, there were counter-spells and divinations that might pierce the obfuscation, but it gave Nym enough assurances that he could finally right a problem he’d been wanting to address for a long time.
That was why he stood in the air, completely invisible, and looked down on the city of Shu-Ain. Somewhere below him was a young woman, by his count now fifteen years old, and still laboring under a nasty set of geases he’d detected subjective years ago. Today was the day those broke and she started healing.
Nym recognized now what had happened to Analia, what had driven her to join up with that vigilante group and fight. He wished he’d known back when he still could have fixed it instead of leaving her to suffer for years, but he couldn’t take the risk of leading an ascendant to her.
It was dark now, well after midnight on a cool summer night. Analia wasn’t asleep though. She was laying in her bed, tossing and turning, her mind fighting against the geases that drove her. Even as Nym watched, she threw the blankets off and started pacing around her room. He guessed that wasn’t an unusual behavior for her, given that the women she was sharing the room with didn’t so much as roll over in their own beds.
She looked different now, her hair cut short and her eyes sunk into her skull. Gone was the sparkle that had once danced in their depths, replaced instead by dark bags hanging under them. Her lips were turned down into a permanent frown. Her body had a nervous tension to it, an almost feral energy that demanded she do something, anything.
One of the other women sat up and turned to her. “Can’t sleep again?”
“No,” Analia said shortly. “Too much on my mind.”
“It’s going to be a long day tomorrow. You need to rest.”
“When I can. I’ll go outside. Sorry to wake you.”
The woman shrugged and went back to bed. Analia strode down the hall and out into a garden joined to the barracks she was staying in. Guards nodded to her as she went by, but otherwise ignored her. She paced around the garden for several minutes, just doing laps around the outer wall.
There was a tree in the center, a nice, tall thing that would be excellent for shade on a hot, lazy summer day. There was even a bench underneath it, flanked on either side by raised flower beds. Still invisible, Nym teleported himself down to sit on it and watched Analia go by. For the last hour, he’d been studying how the geases were driving her behavior, what they were designed to do and how she’d managed to channel those demands into something constructive instead.
It was messy, dangerous, and had driven her to near madness. For all his power, Nym wasn’t sure if removing them would save her mind or break it. He didn’t feel there was much of a choice though, not if she was going to live another year. Leaving them in place would destroy her.
He let the invisibility drop as she was walking by and said, “Hi.”
Arcana flowed through her, instantly snapping into place to burst forth and bathe him in a wave of fire. Nym casually picked it apart with a few well-placed threads of his own arcana and the flames sputtered out. “Wow, you’re jumpy, aren’t you?”
“Who- Nym?! You’re alive!”
“So far,” he said. “Been a rough… well, I’ve lost track. Time works differently on the other side. Twenty years, maybe?”
“You’re alive,” she said again, her voice softer. “What happened to you?”
“I ascended,” Nym said. “Didn’t have a choice. The ascendants finally found me. I tried to find you to say goodbye, but…”
“Yeah. Cern was not happy with you, you know? You messed his whole scheme up. He actually moved back home about a year ago, went into business with that merchant family you connected him with.”
“I’ll make it up to him someday,” Nym said. He flicked his fingers and gold coins flew through the air in every direction. A second gesture sent them all back into nothingness. “I’m sure he’ll forgive me. But that’s not why I’m here.”
“So why are you here?”
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“For you. I know what your father did to you, Analia.”
Her legs went weak and went out from beneath her. A cushion of air caught her before she could collapse to the ground, and her chest jerked in a ragged sob. “I’m sorry,” she choked out. “I tried to fight it. I didn’t want to betray you, but I couldn’t stop myself. I wasn’t strong enough.”
“It’s okay. I know it wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry I didn’t see it back then. I should have. I would have, if I hadn’t been so stupid.”
“It was better once you were gone. I couldn’t betray you then. You weren’t there, so there was nothing to tell him. But the geases kept pushing me to move, to do something, to hunt you down and find you, to stick to you so that I could tell him everything you said and did.”
“Yeah, I figured it out later, why you were so pushy about me joining your group, why you were even here in the first place. It was an outlet for the urges, a way for you to cope. But it’s getting worse now.”
“I’m not going to last much longer,” she said. “We’ve got a big job tomorrow, probably my last one.”
“Because you’re quitting?” Nym asked quietly. He already knew that wasn’t the answer.
Analia looked away and didn’t say anything.
“Because you’re going to throw your life away for the cause,” he said.
“I can’t hold it back anymore.”
Eriam had been right. Nym had done him a big favor, inadvertently. If his suspicions were right, without Nym interfering now, Eriam wasn’t going to exist in the future. He just hadn’t realized he’d been cutting it so close. It was kind of scary to think how little time he had before Analia died. He’d wasted so much of it just hiding away.
“I can break the geases,” Nym said.
Her head snapped up to look at him. He could practically see her thoughts on her face. The backlash from it would likely kill her, and if it didn’t, it would still break her mind. It was too late to save her. She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Nym cut her off.
“I am an ascendant, a real one now. You have some idea of what that means, right? It’s… it’s power like you can’t even imagine. I don’t even need to cast spells anymore if I don’t want to. I can just push my will on reality and force it to obey. I can break the geases, and make you whole, if you trust me to do it.”
“I… what about my friends here? They’re relying on me. I can’t just abandon them.”
“No one is asking you to,” Nym said. “I can leave a copy of you here to fulfill your obligations. If you want to step back in afterwards, that’s your choice. If you’d prefer them to think you died doing whatever it is you’re doing, that can be arranged too.”
Analia didn’t say anything for a long time, and Nym let her think. He was putting a lot on her, and not giving her a lot of time to process it. She needed to make choices in the next few hours that would determine whether she lived or died, and if she lived, what kind of life she wanted to lead. Anyone would need more than a few minutes to wrestle with that.
“I need to know that my friends will be alright if I’m not there,” she said.
Nym created a copy of himself, only shaped to look exactly like Analia. “This is a part of me,” he said. “He, or she I suppose, knows everything I know. I’ll take the knowledge she needs to do whatever you’re supposed to do tomorrow right out of your mind, and she’ll do it. But she’ll have all the power of an ascendant behind her. Not to be mean, but she’ll be many, many times more effective than you could hope to be.”
“You can do that?” Analia asked.
“For all practical purposes, here, in this world, I can do anything I want. Unless another ascendant shows up to oppose my will, I am basically a god.”
That wasn’t quite true, but it was close enough for the purposes of this discussion. He was still fallible, could still be surprised. If he got careless, it was possible for someone to kill his mortal avatar. That would only be an inconvenience. It wasn’t like he couldn’t make a new one, though the time he’d lose rebuilding it would be annoying. If it came down to it, he’d pick some dead time where nothing interesting was happening to grow a new avatar.
“This is insane,” she said. “I… I don’t want to die, but I can’t live like this. I don’t want my friends to die either. And there’s all the people we’ll save if we pull this off. There’s a lot going on. If I’m not here to help, and… can she really do this?”
“She can. I can. I will, if you trust me. I’m not going to force this on you, Analia. It has to be your choice.”
“Maybe it would be easier if it wasn’t.”
“Maybe, but that’s not how it works. I’m not that kind of person.”
“Yeah, I know. You were always all about freedom. It’s good to see that hasn’t changed.”
Analia sat down on the bench next to Nym and leaned her head on his shoulder. “I missed you, you know? I didn’t know if you were dead or just abandoned me. The things the geas made me do to you, I don’t think anyone would be surprised if you didn’t want to see me again. Even now, it’s telling me to latch onto you, forcing me to. It’s going berserk because I’m not supposed to reveal it to you, ever, or to anyone else who doesn’t already know about it. But you do know, so I can talk to you, but I’m not allowed to, and it’s going around in circles.”
“I’m sorry.”
Now that he knew how, he could see the strands of magic wrapped around her mind, anchored in her spirit, and fed by her soul well. They were ugly, knotted things tangled so tight around her that they were choking her to death. It was a slow death, full of pain and misery, and she was at the brink. He could still pull her back, but only if she would let him.
Since Eriam existed, and if Nym was right about his guesses, then Analia would choose to live. Nym desperately hoped he was right. If she died from the geases, he would kill her father. If she survived, he might still do it anyway. Jaspar Feldstal was an awful, sadistic person who in every way deserved death. The only thing that would spare him was Analia’s decision not to kill him, but she couldn’t make that decision unless she lived through the geases.
They sat there together for hours, neither saying anything, until the sun started to brighten the sky. Finally, Nym shifted and said, “I’m sorry, but it’s time to make a decision.”
“Yeah. Can’t put it off any longer. You promise everyone will be safe?”
“I promise.”
She took a deep breath, and nodded. “I want to live. Please help me.”