Ascendant

Nym spent the night reading through the books Bardin had recommended, as well as a few he picked for himself. He skimmed through a lot of it, as all of the books were for beginner mages and most of it overlapped with what he’d already read. There were a lot of competing schools of thought for how a mage’s foundational understanding should be built, which mostly stemmed from arguments over which kind of mage was the best.

In Nym’s opinion, each method had its own advantages and drawbacks, and there was no real reason to limit himself to just one. Of course, there were only so many hours in a day and there was probably some optimal route to learning it all that he hadn’t even begun to tease out yet. It didn’t matter, since the reality of his situation was that as soon as he refused to sign a contract indenturing himself to the noble family, he’d go back to scrounging for whatever he could get.

As long as he had access though, he needed to skip past the beginner books and find a few actual spellbooks in the library. He’d flipped through a few, but Bardin had done too good of a job loading him down with books that talked about magic without actually explaining how to do it. Nym had a lot of new ideas floating around in his head that he planned to test out when he got the chance, but not a lot in terms of actual useful spells.

They left the house together with a few guards in a carriage, which was a novel experience for Nym. He was grateful to travel that way, as the carriage had the same privacy rune sequence that he’d seen before inscribed onto it and had curtains. With any luck, Valgo’s spies wouldn’t realize Nym was in it. With a little more luck, they’d think he’d been killed doing the job and write him off.

Nym didn’t feel like he had any luck at all.

The carriage took them to the Academy, which in hindsight was an obvious destination. He had been expecting a personal residence, but of course most of Bardin’s contacts in the magical community would be based out of the school that he was employed at that probably trained almost every single mage in the city.

The Academy was a series of large buildings that butted up against the mountain cradling Abilanth, and then continued right up its surface. The stone was shaped into stairs and wide shelves to allow for more buildings. All of them, even the ones in the city proper, looked like they’d been grown out of the stone rather than built. Everything was too smooth with no mortar to hold the stones together. Instead, it was as if a series of enormous granite cubes had been hollowed out, except with no seam where they met the ground.

That wasn’t to say that the Academy was plain or lifeless. Metal rails lined the stairs, light orbs floated in delicate wrought iron cages mounted on poles, and various signs announced the uses of the buildings. Nym caught sight of a large grassy courtyard situated between a ring of buildings with several marble statues featured prominently in the center.

Bardin wasn’t interested in touring the place, and instead led him directly to a five-story tower that had more glass windows than Nym had ever seen in a single building. The posted sign let him know that the tower was the home of the various professors and instructors who molded the young minds that attended the Academy.

“You don’t live here?” Nym asked.

Bardin shook his head. “I’m not a full-time professor. I only teach low level classes for first and second years, and like I said, I mostly do it to keep access to the Academy library. Even for nobles, non-faculty just doesn’t get the same unrestricted access.”

They were allowed in once Bardin showed off a silver and gold bracelet marked with the Academy’s symbol and explained that they were visiting a Professor Langdon. Nym followed behind, curious about the bracelet. When Bardin presented it for verification, it had some kind of arcana reaction, and Nym wondered if he could duplicate it.

That was a mystery for another time though, as they only went up two floors before stopping to knock on a wooden door with the symbol of a closed eye carved into it. Several rune series sprawled out from the center symbol, looping around in a way that didn’t seem like it should work according to Nym’s admittedly limited knowledge of runes. He doubted they were there for decoration.

The door opened before Bardin could knock on it to reveal an androgenous person who looked maybe forty. Honestly, it was hard to tell. Their hair was long and braided, and their skin was an odd mixture of smooth and wrinkled. The robes around their body were loose enough to obscure any potential curves or bulges, leaving Nym uncertain how to place the professor.

“Ah, young Bardin. And with you is the strange boy you spoke of?” the professor said. Their voice did nothing to help Nym’s confusion.

“Yes, this is Nym. He is a true magical savant. I can’t even explain some of the things he’s shown me, and he can’t either. He doesn’t remember anything from before a few months ago.”

“A most unusual case. Come in, come in! This way please.”

Professor Langdon led them through a rather spacious room that had two padded couches, four chairs, a table, and a dozen six-foot-tall shelves all overflowing with books, scrolls, pamphlets, and loose papers. Nym looked around in confusion. The room itself was too big.

The doors in the hallway where only ten feet apart. At maximum, the room could be a bit over twenty feet wide including the width of the professor’s own door. And that assumed that the suites on either side had doors right up against the walls, which meant they’d be half the size of the one Nym was in. Even then, it didn’t seem like everything could possibly fit in one room, and there were three other doors leading off the main room.

“This room doesn’t fit,” he said, looking around. “It can’t.”

Professor Langdon cackled. “Oh, he is a quick one. You must be wrong, since here we are. How do you explain that?”

“Magic?”

“Maybe not so clever as I was led to believe then. Obviously it’s magic. This is the Academy!”

“Some type of shrinking spell? No, it might work for objects, but I think I would realize if I’d been targeted by something like that. Wards of some sort would be necessary to maintain it. There are wards here, but not for that. If we’re not smaller, then… perhaps the doorway is a teleportation to another location, and the tower is just a collection of doorways.”

Nym immediately dismissed that idea. “The maintenance costs would be incredible for that many teleportation platforms, plus, again, I didn’t feel like I was targeted by that. And I could see you through the theoretical teleport when you opened the door. Perhaps a more advanced gateway might work, but… no, something spatial though. I want to say spatial expansion, but wouldn’t that be incredibly dangerous to live in? If the spell failed, you could be killed.”

“Ah, see, you got there in the end. You are correct, it is a spatial expansion, and it would in fact be dangerous to live inside something like that without the proper wards set up. Believe me, I’ll have plenty of warning before this place collapses. I’m surprised you recognized them, though. Bardin was not lying about how puzzling you are.”

Bardin started explaining more about the things he’d seen Nym do, but Nym ignored him to study the wards. If not for his ability to see arcana, he probably wouldn’t have noticed them, but unlike other wards he’d run across, these were active and showing no signs of powering down. His understanding of wards was that they needed a trigger before they were empowered, but in this case that didn’t seem to be true.

His best guess was that the wards also served as a framework to stabilize the extra-dimensional space. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he thought that he wasn’t looking at wards at all, but a rune sequence writ large. The entire suite was a giant enchanted object. He wanted to ask, but given the location of the runes, he couldn’t think of a way to explain that he’d seen them without giving away that he could see the arcana embedded into them.

Reluctantly, he dragged his focus back to the conversation, only to find Professor Langdon laughing at him. “What?” he asked.

“Looks like he’s back now. Does he get lost in his own head often?”

“I don’t know him that well,” Bardin said. He smiled at Nym. “But a few times I’ve given him a piece of magic to chew on and he’s gotten that glazed over look. Just wait, tomorrow I’m going to be sending you another message saying he’s enchanted a box to hold a thousand books.”

“If he does, I’m stealing him as my apprentice. Second circle magic is already impressive for his age, third circle would make him a once-in-several generations genius. But enough of that, come, to the lab. Let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on with this young man’s memories.”

The lab was, if anything, even more crowded than the professor’s sitting room. The things inside also looked insanely expensive. There were a lot of mirrors inscribed with complex rune sequences hanging on the walls. In between them were tables filled with crystals of various sizes, shapes, and colors, as well as hundreds of jars filled mostly with powders that came in just as many shades as the crystals themselves.

A barrel in one corner glowed brightly in Nym’s sight and hummed audibly. Professor Langdon noted his gaze and waved a hand at it. “Nothing too fancy. It’s just helping to round out some crystals to be used in my third-year divination class. Come, come, sit here in the center of this circle.”

The circle in question was made of semi-clear powder. It looked suspiciously like a block of quartz he’d noted on one of the tables, only ground down fine. Being careful not to disturb it, he stepped over the line and sat down where he’d been told.

“Good, good. Capable of following basic instructions. You’d be surprised how many would-be apprentices can’t do that. Too many rich noble’s brats who aren’t used to being told what to do.” Professor Langdon cackled again and poked a bony finger at Bardin, whose cheeks flushed red.

“Alright, this is the hard part. Bardin, please wait by the door. Nym, just relax. You’re going to be in there for about ten minutes. You may start to develop a headache. Please let me know if it gets too severe. Are you ready?”

Nym nodded and settled in for a miserable time. He watched the aura of arcana surround the professor and condense around their hands. The arcana jumped out to the circle of quartz powder, which ignited with light, revealing a set of ward runes underneath. Those lit up in waves, pulsing slowly from bright to dim without shedding any actual light.

The professor maintained the connection without talking for the entire time. Nym kept waiting for the headache to start, but it never did. Instead, the professor’s frown kept deepening. Finally, the spell ended and the professor regarded him with a puzzled expression.

“What’s the word, Professor Langdon?” Bardin asked.

“I honestly don’t know,” the professor said. “I’ve never gotten results like this before.”

“Results like what?” Nym asked.

“It’s like… like you didn’t exist prior to four months ago. Strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” the professor explained. “You are obviously not four months old, and yet, nothing.”

“What does that mean?” Nym was trying not to worry just yet, but this was somehow worse than the magister thinking he was lying about his memory loss.

“Damned if I know,” the professor announced. “But I love a good mystery. Let’s find out more!”