Ascendant

Nym returned from his walk and ate mechanically, not really tasting the food. He didn’t really have a plan beyond not turning himself in to the guard. He was painfully aware of a lack of resources and that adults wouldn’t take him seriously. Whatever he decided to do, it was going to be a rough road.

“I’m going to Palmara now,” he said.

Ciana blew out a long sigh. “Right. Let’s get this taken care of. I’m sorry, Nym. This isn’t going to be a fun conversation.”

“You don’t have to come with me.”

“No, I should. Senman tried to kill you because you were in the way of him getting at me. I’m so sorry that happened to you. I’ll come with you.”

“Really, it’s fine,” Nym said.

There was no arguing with her though, and soon enough the pair of them were on the road. They walked in silence, Ciana no doubt planning to talk to the guard captain, but Nym just thinking about what he was going to do next. He really didn’t have any good ideas beyond continuing down the road. He could hold his flight for ten minutes easily and stretch it to half an hour if he didn’t mind being completely wiped out. While flying, he could move at about a jogging speed without pushing himself.

His biggest problem was going to be getting a clean break away from Palmara. There was every chance that Mordat would just run him down, but he thought if he could get far enough east to reach the forest Ciana had told him about, he could hide there. That was the plan then, to fly straight to the forest at top speed. He’d have to gamble that he’d make it to cover before he ran out of stamina.

They stopped outside of Palmara. The road stretched out before them, leading into the poor part of town. Past that, around a bend, was where the richer citizens lived. Of course, the guard house was in the rich part of town. That’s where they wanted the guards. Nym had never gotten a chance to really see that side of Palmara as Ciana had warned him away from it after his run in with Amos.

It was a shame. He wasn’t planning on actually entering the town. When he stopped at the outskirts, Ciana stopped and looked back at him. “You don’t need to be nervous. I’m going to be right there with you.”

“Ciana,” Nym began. “I… Thank you. You saved me, even though everyone told you to kick me back out. You gave me food and a place to sleep.”

“It was the right thing to do,” she said. “I don’t know if I ever told you, but I’m adopted. My parents were killed at sea when I was a bit younger than you are now. It’s hard living here, and in some ways it’s harder to be a girl. The man who became my father took me into his home and kept me from starving to death or worse.”

“Why did he do it though?” Nym asked. “Everyone is struggling here. Well, not everyone. Was he rich?”

Ciana laughed softly. “No, he was a fisherman, just like my parents. It took a lot of years for me to really understand the sacrifices he made. I was a lot older than you before I realized how much it cost him, and when I asked him why he’d done it, he said the same thing I told you. He did it because it was right.”

 She led him off the road and sat down in a dusty patch of grass. “I know you’re scared. But you do know I’m not going to abandon you, right?”

“I know that. Big sis is looking out for me. But what does it cost you?”

“You’re too young to worry about that kind of stuff. We’ll survive, you and me.”

Nym let out a deep sigh and looked over at the town. “You say that, but… I killed someone. They’re not just going to shrug and let me go because he had it coming.”

“I’m not going to let them hurt you, Nym.”

He wanted to believe it, that they could just let the guard captain know so they didn’t waste time looking for Senman, and everything would go back to normal. He wasn’t that naïve. Cold rationality dictated that if nothing else, Senman’s friends would want some sort of pay back. Ciana hadn’t even been able to convince them to do anything about him messing with her snare lines.

They were barely surviving as it was. The garden was coming along, but they’d lost all the meat from the crab traps. Ciana would have an easier time on her own, especially without Senman interfering. The boat was still sound; she could get new oars for it. That shark would probably disappear if he wasn’t with her.

He stood up and dusted off his pants. “I don’t think this is a good idea. We shouldn’t tell them.”

“I’m not going to be a hypocrite,” Ciana said. “I know it’s scary, but I will keep you safe.”

Nym shook his head. “How? How do you stop them when they say ‘we need to run this kid out of town’ or ‘lock him up’ or even ‘hang that boy’?”

“No one’s going to hang you, Nym!”

“But they could! And you can’t stop them if they decide that’s what they want to do. We shouldn’t even give them the chance.”

Nym stopped himself from saying more. The conversation was going in circles. Ciana insisted everything would be fine, but really had no way to prove that. Nym was afraid the worst would happen. It was time to go.

“I’m leaving,” he said. “Thank you for saving me. I’ll pay you back some day.”

“What? Where will you go?”

Nym forged the conduit into the second layer and lifted himself into the air. “I don’t know. Someday I’ll come back, when I know that I’m strong enough to protect myself, and you too.”

“Wait, Nym! Don’t leave!”

But it was too late. He’d made up his mind, and he started flying east, skirting the edge of town and heading towards the forest. Hopefully he’d given himself enough of a lead that no one could catch him.

He flew when he could, walked when he had to, and didn’t stop for a break until he’d reached the trees. No one followed him, as far as he could tell. He was free. Free… and alone.

* * *

Exarch Mylazik was not happy. He should have been celebrating his greatest and final victory over Niramyn, but they could not find the body. He’d spent a month, objectively, but more like three when he included all the time his copies had invested into the search. Over twenty ascendant hunters had been tasked with fetching the weakened Exarch or finding his corpse.

All of them had failed. It was impossible. Even if the corpse had been devoured by wild animals, there would still have been an arcana imprint. Niramyn had pierced the twelfth layer! It was not possible for him to just vanish like he’d never existed at all. No, it was proof that the rival Exarch was still alive. It had to be active obscurement, a veil so powerful that Mylazik himself couldn’t see past it.

Mylazik didn’t understand why Niramyn would do that, and it was making him unreasonably angry. He’d always had a volatile temper, but lately the servants had started collaborating to track his movements and ensure they stayed out of his way. It would have been amusing to teleport around just to screw with them if he wasn’t in such a foul mood.

If Niramyn was alive, which he had to be since they couldn’t find him, why hadn’t he come back? If he still somehow had the power to reach into the Edge of Reality and beyond to the Hungering Chasms to wrest back the purest arcana anyone had ever found, if he was still an Exarch, where was he?

His team of ascendant hunters had done everything they could think of to track him down. They’d performed powerful temporal scrying to try to track Niramyn’s progress as he fled using a simple supersonic flight spell, of all things. He hadn’t even reached full speed. It didn’t matter though, because the scrying had been rebuffed by the enchantments woven into the Exarch’s robes. Even as tattered as they were, the magic held strong. They’d tried conventional scrying used projected destinations. There was nothing anywhere along that trail.

They’d divided the globe up into quadrants and each ascendant had meticulously combed through for some trace of a powerful arcana imprint. They’d found plenty of humans that had reached the third layer, even a few in the fourth. Surprisingly, there had been not one but five humans who had managed to break into the fifth layer.

But none of them were Niramyn in disguise! Mylazik had personally checked each of the supposed ‘archmages’ to ensure it. They were barely more powerful than an ascendant child, if maybe more skilled in a wider array of subjects. If all five of them got together and attacked an ascendant who hadn’t managed to get past the eighth layer, it would be an amusing battle.

He’d briefly considered recruiting humans to help search, but dismissed the idea. If a team of a dozen ascendant hunters couldn’t find Niramyn with magic, no human had even the smallest chance of succeeding. Mylazik himself was an Exarch, and he couldn’t do it. Some might argue that it was hypocritical of him to punish his minions for failing to do what he couldn’t achieve either.

Some might receive a lightning bolt to the face if they pointed it out.

He fumed as he paced back and forth in front of an acceleration pod. There was a copy in there, working under a temporal dilation to comb through the arcana imprints from a month ago. It was tedious work and it had already been a full day of waiting. Considering the massive dilation ratio in there, his copy had been at work for months already. He’d expected results after a few hours, and wasn’t happy about the delay, not to mention the cost.

Powering the acceleration pod for so long was stressful, magically speaking, and it would push up his next rejuvenation cycle by at least a decade. He avoided looking at the mirror and seeing the physical evidence of the advanced aging. Yes, he was immortal, but that didn’t mean he wanted to look old. He couldn’t afford to be stuck in stasis for days while he regained his youth right now, maybe not anytime in the next few years.

Despite the fact that they couldn’t find Niramyn or his remains, they were proceeding as if it had been a complete victory. The façade had to be maintained, after all. He’d steadily taken over his rival’s businesses and assets, converted his staff, personally ensured the loyalty of the high-ranking ascendants, and pillaged Niramyn’s vaults.

With a hiss of released air, the pod opened and his copy stepped out. He looked even worse than Mylazik himself, appearing frail and stooped, a man of at least eighty years. “Results?” Mylazik demanded from the copy.

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

With a scream of rage, he raked the room with lightning. “How is he doing it? It’s impossible. There is no way he’s hidden himself this well!”

He absorbed the copy back into his consciousness so that he could review the full results of his own work later. Immediately he sagged, the excess years settling onto his shoulder. At the rate he was burning through his time, he’d be in stasis inside a week.

He needed to come at this from a different approach. If he couldn’t find Niramyn through magic, perhaps revisiting the idea of recruiting humans to help had merit after all. A network of thousands of humans under compulsion scattered over the world would never know they were secret eyes and ears, but would report back if they ever spotted Niramyn. It would be hundreds of hours of work for each ascendant assigned to the task to plant the compulsions, but that’s what minions were for.

He scowled in distaste. It was a brute-force solution completely lacking any sort of elegance. Niramyn was probably laughing at him right now. With a deep scowl, he waved a hand and reset the room back to where he’d placed a temporal lock on it. The air blurred and furniture reformed, exactly as it had been when he’d set the lock a few weeks ago.

Mylazik took a moment to compose himself, then reached out to his commanders to issue their new orders. Niramyn hadn’t beaten him, not yet. Not by a long shot.