Ascendant

Weeks went by and Nym’s money slowly dwindled. He worked most mornings at the bakery, gradually gaining more responsibilities and with them a very slight increase to his pay. It still wasn’t enough to balance out the cost of the inn, and he was strongly considering switching to somewhere cheaper, or even seeing if he could find a place to just rent long-term. The only thing stopping him was that every time he brought the topic up, Analia told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t allowed to leave.

With his spare time, he continued studying, though he was steadily growing more and more frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t actually cast any of the spells he found. He theoretically knew dozens of new spells thanks to his enforced downtime, but since he couldn’t actually practice casting any of them, he wasn’t confident that he could use them.

The only thing keeping him sane at this point was his work with conduits. Thanks in large part to his ability to see what was supposed to be invisible, he was actually making good progress with that. The second layer was littered with hard points to go around, but all the practice allowed him to deftly weave the conduit where it needed to go. The only problem was that he couldn’t find the far end of the second layer.

Nym revisited his own understanding on conduits over and over again as he read through the philosophies espoused in the guidebook Analia had found. Each time he iterated on his conduit, it got a little stronger. Hours were spent forging it into something truly formidable. Nym was sure he was close, ready to break through to the third layer any day.

A knock at his door brought him back to reality. “Nym?” Analia said. “Are you ready?”

As a surprise, she’d found a healer to examine him and let him know his progress. Nym had spent a month, and was optimistically predicting another five, but he wanted to know what an expert thought. It seemed like a frivolous expense to him, but she’d insisted once he’d confessed the desire to her and declared in no uncertain terms that she would be paying for it.

He opened his eyes and sat up on his bed, knocking over two books that were sitting open near his legs. His room was now every bit as overrun with books as Analia’s, so many that he hadn’t even read some of the titles. Considering he spent most of his days reading now, it was truly impressive how many books she’d gotten her hands on in the last month. It was like she was trying to rebuild her father’s library from scratch.

He stepped over a few precarious piles and made his way to the door. “I’m good. Let’s go,” he said to her after opening it.

The walk wasn’t a long one, but it was hot out in the street. Summer was in full swing now, and Nym wished he could still cast a thermal barrier just to keep the heat out. He would have doused himself with water to cool off, then just maintained that temperature while he walked around. It would have been glorious.

Walking next to him, Analia asked, “Are you daydreaming about that heat ward spell you invented again?”

“Thermal barrier.”

“Sure, that. So are you?”

“…yes. It’s sooo hot out here.”

“If I have to suffer, you have to suffer.”

“I could put it on both of us,” he told her.

“Wait, really?” she asked. “I didn’t know that. Teach me the spell and I’ll keep us both nice and cool.”

“That’s a good idea,” he said. “I’ll start sketching out how to put together the construct when we get back.”

They had a brief discussion about some of his other spells, but other than the lightning bolt spell he’d already tried to teach her, she wasn’t particularly interested in anything in his repertoire. Lightning bolt was powerful, but it required air and fire to work, and it was difficult to aim. She’d managed a spark or two, but nothing that would actually be useful in a fight.

“Where is this healer at again?” Nym asked. “The neighborhood is starting to look a little rough.”

“It shouldn’t be too much farther,” she said, doubt in her voice. “I’m not lost, I don’t think.”

“How very reassuring,” he quipped.

“No, see, it’s right there,” she said, pointing down the street and grabbing onto him. “That’s the clinic.”

“Alright, alright! I see it. Stop grabbing my arm!”

Nym jerked himself free of Analia’s clutches and followed along behind her. He’d grown taller than her at some point, and looked older by at least two or three years now. Not for the first time, he wondered if he’d age right into the ground in the next twenty years. He silently vowed to himself, again, to learn enough magic to figure out what had been done to him and how to fix it.

In some ways, it was nice though. When he’d looked ten, nobody took him seriously. Now he looked like a teenager, which came with its own set of drawbacks, which included a patchy beard just starting to grow in. But adults gave him a lot less grief over being independent. The downside was that they were also a lot less likely to go out of their way to help him.

The inside of the clinic was just as shabby as the outside. There was a threadbare couch near the entrance, complete with blood stains. Next to it was a wooden table with a missing leg. A tree branch had been wedged under it to keep it steady, but it wasn’t trimmed to the right length, so two other legs no longer touched the floor. Two chairs were set up against the far wall, both sturdy and clean.

“Why are we here?” Nym whispered at Analia.

“I was told the healer worked cheap,” she said. “I’m… I’m not very liquid anymore. I put as much on the family line of credit as I could, but somethings I needed to use actual shields for.”

Nym immediately felt like a jerk. Of course he knew that she could get more money by pawning things she’d charged on the family name, but she’d lose half or more of the value that way. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might be struggling in some ways simply because she always had a few new books every day.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize… why don’t we just go?”

“No! This is important. You need to know how bad the damage is.”

“Just… if money is this tight, we don’t really need to do this. I’ll get better eventually.”

Their conversation was cut off by an old man shuffling into the room. “Hello there. My name is Faro,” he said. “Are you in need of some help?”

He was at least seventy years old, or possibly older considering his specialty was healing magic and he probably took very good care of himself. He was no taller than Nym, and moved with that slow deliberation of people who were very weak or very sick. The healer had an easy smile as he peered curiously at the two kids.

“Uh, no, I think-” Nym started to say.

“Yes,” Analia cut him off. “My stubborn friend here is recovering from a matrix destabilization and we want to check on his progress.”

“I see,” Faro said. “I can do that for you. Just grab one of those chairs and have a seat right here. This will take about five minutes and cost you four shims.”

“That’s it? That’s really cheap,” Nym said.

The healer laughed. “When I was a young man, I was all afire to dazzle the world with my skills and be paid handsomely for it. As you get older, you tend to mellow out. I got married, had kids, then grandkids, and great grandkids. Now I just try to keep this neighborhood in as good a shape as I can. What use is a healer who charges so much no one can afford to visit?”

“That’s true, I guess.” Nym looked around at the shabby furnishings. “Maybe you could charge a bit more though.”

Faro’s eyes twinkled. “Are you offering to pay more?”

“If I could, I would,” Nym told him seriously. “Since I can’t use magic now, I’m out of work. I’ve been helping out at a bakery to slow down the drain on my savings. But this, what you’re doing here, that’s a good thing.”

“Well thank you, but the price is still four shims, no matter how much of a smooth talker you are.” The healer winked at Nym. “Now, let’s get a look at you and see how you’re doing.”

Nym dragged a chair over and sat down in front of the healer, who’d pulled a small book out of his pocket and was flipping through it. “Haven’t had a matrix destabilization case in twenty years,” he muttered to himself, making a mark on the page with a pencil. “Six months of this craziness and I’m up to a dozen.”

The healer started channeling arcana, still muttering while he did so, and peered at Nym. “I think you’re my youngest patient yet for this particular issue. Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Nym said quietly. “It was a bad day. I almost died.”

“Ah. Quite understandable. I’ll just get on with it then so as not to take up your day. I’m sure a lovely young couple like yourselves has better things to do than listen to an old man natter on.”

Nym blinked, then glanced back at Analia. She just shrugged in response. “Uh… thanks,” Nym said.

Faro didn’t appear to have heard him. He was standing there, swaying slightly on his heels, and staring off into nothing while arcana swirled around him. His mouth worked, but no sounds came out. Long seconds stretched on and on, with no change. Just when Nym was about to say something, the old man snapped out of it.

“Are you alright?” Analia asked.

“Hmm? Me?” the healer said.

“Yes, you. You were just standing there.”

“Oh, yes, sorry. I should have warned you. Diagnostics spells dump a lot of information into your brain, and I’m getting up there in years. Sometimes it takes me a bit to sort through it. Though, in your case, it took me a bit longer to figure out what I was looking at.”

“What? Is something wrong?”

Faro hesitated for a second, then shook his head. “Easier to just show you, I think.”

More arcana flowed into the aura around him, and an illusion appeared over the table. It depicted a sphere about the size of Nym’s head made up of a hundred little glowing balls connected by wires. “This is a textbook illustration of the matrix that surrounds a soul well. Each of these nodes repels arcana that gets too close to it, and even though it’s more empty space than not, the light around each one creates a solid wall that keeps arcana inside the soul well.”

The illusion disappeared and a new one replaced it. “This is matrix destabilization,” he said. This time, a few of the balls had cracks running through them, and the lights around them flickered or disappeared completely. “It’s like having a leaky bucket. You’ll give yourself arcana poisoning much faster, maybe even immediately if the damage is bad enough, and it hurts like hell to channel arcana in this state.”

A third illusion appeared in its place. This was kind of a sphere, except distorted out of shape and the balls were all different sizes. Some had hairline cracks running through them, but none of them were as damaged as the ones from the second illusion. There was still wire connecting them, but that too had been twisted and stretched to accommodate the uneven spacing and size. “This is your matrix,” the healer said. “And I have no clue how you got it in this shape.”