Ascendant

Nym told the matriarch all about his fight with the hive queen, and when he got to the part where it had attacked him through his arcana, he asked, “Do you think it could use third layer arcana?

[I don’t know what that is. It is a very powerful monster though. Was a very powerful monster.]

“Right.” Nym blew out a sigh. That was the trouble with the wolves. They were intelligent, but they just didn’t have some words and concepts that he took for granted. “Well, either way I’m having trouble cleaning it out of my system. It’s probably going to be a few days before I can get moving again.”

[A few days is no trouble. We will be leaving soon ourselves, probably around the same time.]

“You are?” Nym asked, surprised. “Why did you want me to wipe out the hive then?”

[Lack of food, more than anything. The only upside to so many of our pack being slain is that we need significantly less food than usual, but there still isn’t enough here. The heat hunters kill everything living they find, and don’t even have the decency to provide a meal when they are hunted in turn. This land needs time to recover, and my pack cannot wait that long.]

Nym looked over at his own pack, which had miraculously survived unmolested. It wasn’t as full as he would have liked, but there was still enough for him to eat for a week or so if he was strict on his rationing. It would be a hungry and uncomfortable week, but he wouldn’t starve. After that, things would get desperate.

The matriarch followed his gaze and said, [You understand. You need to continue your own migration.]

“Yeah,” Nym agreed. “It’s going to be tight. I brought extra food with me, but then all of this happened. Certain young wolves who shall not be named have helped themselves to some of it as well.”

[I wish we could offer you more, but even the strongest of our pack have been reduced to hunting for small game like pups. Many of us are going hungry so that the young may still eat.]

Nym couldn’t see much of a difference in the wolves from when he first arrived, but he supposed there was no reason to assume missing meals was a new event for them. If anything, it made it all the more impressive that his food supply was still intact. “If I had more to give,” he started.

[You have done more than anyone could reasonably ask,] the matriarch cut him off. [Do not starve yourself so that one of mine may have one more meal. We will survive as we always have.]

The conversation changed from there to more pleasant topics. The matriarch told stories of a particularly adventurous and troublesome young pup that it took Nym far too long to realize was her, and talked of the Creator and his wondrously impossible magics. Cold Paw came to visit, and laid next to Nym with his head in Nym’s lap while he received ear scritches.

Nym’s body ached and his belly grumbled. It still hurt to renew the heated wall enchantment that kept him from freezing, but a little less each time he did it. He couldn’t afford to spend too much time recovering, but just the idea of channeling arcana for hours and hours made him want to throw up.

By the end of the third day, he knew he no longer had a choice. He wasn’t recovered yet, but if he waited any longer, his only remaining choice would be to return to Abilanth to resupply. Nym spent an hour or so seriously considering it. He might be able to slip in, buy what he needed from somewhere in the outer ring where the guards were less plentiful and more susceptible to bribes.

In the end, he did a few experimental flights and found that while it was a generally miserable experience, he could maintain his flight spell for the long periods needed to fly. If he left immediately, he could still make the distance without having to risk Abilanth. So he gathered his things and prepared to go.

Before that, he had one last task. He sought out Cold Paw, who was not hard to find as the wolf had been sticking close lately. He seemed to sense something, because as Nym approached, he cocked his head and said, [Time to go?]

“Yeah, I think so,” Nym said.

[Go with?]

“I don’t think so. I need to go where it’s warmer. There’s no snow. I don’t think you’d like it there.”

[Stay with pack. Come with?]

“Same problem, buddy. It’s too cold for me to live here. And I have a friend I need to meet. You’d like her, I think. She’d definitely like you.”

Cold paw considered that for a second, then said, [Bring friend and visit!]

Nym smiled. “That sounds like an excellent idea. I’ll work hard to learn the magic I need so that I can find you again. It might take me a little while though, okay?”

He finished saying his goodbyes and left the wolf pack behind, flying south towards civilization.

* * *

A winter fox sat in the air on a platform made of snow. The snow wanted to fall, but it was leashed to her magic and she would not let it. She had come to investigate the strange twist she’d felt in the season in this area, and been surprised to find a tecula hive, of all things. The monsters rarely left the far north, where they thrived under an eternal blanket of ice and snow, destroying all living things that crossed their paths.

They were an infestation, forever spreading, spawning more and more of them. Since they weren’t alive in a traditional sense and consumed arcana instead of food to survive, they could grow to unbelievable numbers if they weren’t culled. This hive had been, fortunately. There were still a fair number of the lesser monsters hidden in the snow, but without their queen to protect them from the heat of the sun, they would eventually kill themselves off.

That wasn’t what interested the fox, though. It sensed something else hidden beneath the endless white landscape, something she hadn’t seen since she was a kit: a pack of snow wolves. When she was young, they would have preyed on her and she would avoid a pack of them at any cost.

She wasn’t young anymore.

The snow held aloft by her will broke apart and she dove through the air, slipping through the white fields like they were water. Soon enough, she landed in one of the tunnels the wolves had burrowed and followed it to catch up to the migrating pack. They traveled in a loose clump, with their very young and very old in the center, and with the few healthy adults remaining on the outside edges.

The first wolf saw her and growled, crouched down and ready to lunge. She regarded him, amusement playing on her face, then breezed past him before he knew what was happening. The wolf, confused, spun to find her. By then, she had already ghosted past the perimeter guard and was among the pups that were closer to her own size.

Alarmed barks came from the adults, followed by confused yips from the pups. A single ancient wolf calmed them all with that strange telepathic ability they used to communicate, then dropped back to walk next to the fox.

[Greetings,] the wolf said.

“Hello,” the fox replied. “I don’t mean to bother you. I’m just looking into what happened here. Do you mind talking?”

[Not at all. In fact, I wish you’d come by two weeks ago. Let me tell you about our troubles with heat hunters.]

The fox had forgotten that old name for the tecula, the name she’d known them by as a child. Too much time among humans had buried many of her memories from before she’d gained her magic and become something more. It felt good to be reminded of when she was still young, back when things were simple, before she found her humans and they made things complicated. Still, they were worth it.

The wolf matriarch spun her a fascinating story, one that she was sure would interest and delight her humans. No doubt they’d feel the need to tell the other humans who sometimes made them do things they didn’t want to, but which they did anyway in exchange for chunks of metal. The fox had always thought the concept was foolish, but it did allow her humans to buy that ever so delicious invention of theirs: ice cream.

In return for the story, the fox reached into her magic, following its connection to the place beyond the world, and opened up the door. Inside that place were many, many things that were important to her, and many other things that were merely convenient. Her magic knew what she wanted at the moment, and it pulled the carcass of an elk back from the beyond and dropped it in front of her.

“Here,” she told the wolf. “My thanks for the story.”

Then the fox left, her curiosity sated, and found her humans miles and miles away. They were seated around a small fire, a thing which had once annoyed her to no end but which she’d gradually come to accept. There were two of them, one big and strong with blond hair that he kept short, and the other shorter and smaller, but with blazing red hair that reminded the fox of fire. They were not perfect, but they were hers.

“Would you like to hear a true story?” the fox asked slyly. “I might be willing to trade it if you have any of that chocolate flavored ice cream left.”

* * *

Abdun picked through the memories of hundreds of humans he had turned into unknowing informants. This particular tidbit had come from some sort of human military commander who’d gotten it from a subordinate who coordinated with other humans who weren’t officially part of the military but sometimes worked with them anyway. Humans were very much obsessed with their hierarchies and organizations, probably because there were so damn many of them.

 This hive queen thing didn’t seem very strong to him, but then, nothing living down on the ground truly did. He doubted it would take even two spells to kill it. That sense of scale was the problem though. It was so hard to pick out the exceptional from the mundane when it was all just so pathetic.

The humans were certainly excited about it, and he trusted their judgement more than his own when it came to determining what was unusual in their worthless, muddy, little lives. With a thought, he pierced the fifth layer of unreality and molded the arcana into the magic he desired. His visage appeared half a world away and examined the carcass of the big worm thing himself.

The conduit extended through the sixth layer, what his kind knew as Transcendence, and drew upon magics so impossible that humans couldn’t even comprehend them. He watched the battle backwards, reviewing the worms, and the boy with a pathetic assortment of weak first and second layer arcana shapings, not even strong enough to be considered true spells.

If that boy was a hidden Exarch, Abdun would spend the next hundred years living as a human. With a snort of disgust, the visage disappeared and he went back to monitoring his human informants. This job was so. Damn. Boring. But if he could find Exarch Niramyn and deliver him to his own master, he’d be rewarded beyond his wildest dreams. He might even finally learn the conduit forging techniques needed to pull arcana from the Crushing Void. He’d been working on piercing the seventh layer for two centuries with no luck.

As much as it pained him, Abdun got back to work. It was only a matter of time until someone found the missing Exarch, and he was going to make sure it was him.