Book 2: The False Ascendant

Lisandro felt his heart beat in his chest, its rhythm as rapid as Dedere’s tapping foot.

“The moment of reckoning has come,” she said. “Let’s see if ol’ Prophet was right about this one.”

Lisandro could tell that Dedere was extremely agitated because she never fidgeted. He could guess why: The patient had taken three minutes longer than anticipated to exit the loop, almost double the time expected. In other words, this experiment was going to be twice as expensive as they planned for.

He didn’t know why it had gone for so long; they’d have to do an in-depth analysis after the fact, pouring over the dilation loop record. They’d added new scenarios, but their break points hadn’t changed. If the patient stopped showing signs of improvement for more than six months of time within the loop, the experiment was supposed to elapse. The same thing would happen if they showed extreme distress, akin to a complete mental breakdown, sustained for at least two months. If the latter happened, they would exit the loop and remain sedated until their memories from within the loop were treated by a Remorse practitioner.

The two of them couldn’t help but get their hopes up the longer the experiment went on. Theoretically, spending more time inside the Infinity Loop dilation chamber should mean that the patient had awakened as a practitioner and was making steady progress...but they couldn’t dispel the doubt in their hearts that they’d missed something.

It was thus with great excitement and anxiety that Lisandro pressed the system’s Release key.

They heard a loud hum come from the power supply next to the capsule, a towering black box covered in blinking lights. The humming persisted for a good forty-five seconds before petering out to a soft whine, ultimately dissipating after a minute.

Dedere walked over to Lisandro and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing. “I opened the capsule hood last time,” she whispered. “Good luck.”

Just when Lisandro had steeled himself to walk over, a voice came through over the room’s speaker system: “Sedate the patient immediately.”

Lisandro and Dedere’s expressions paled; Lisandro spun around without missing a beat, his finger aiming toward the glosscomp display. He swiped through a menu, his finger eventually landing on Sedate.

After pressing it, the researcher sagged in relief. Dedere, meanwhile, folded her arms across her chest and glared at the capsule.

“Dr. Prophin, did something happen?”

Silence. Then, a hesitant response: “It was just a feeling.”

“Just a feeling” was likely putting it lightly. In Lisandro’s experience, if the Prophet had a feeling strong enough to act upon, it wasn’t “just” a feeling, but a premonition. Lisandro turned around in his chair and stood up before walking over to the capsule, his face coming up against the glass window. From that distance, he could much more clearly see the features of the sleeping young man within, patient Dunai.

“What should we do with him?” Lisandro asked.

“Just keep him there for the time being,” Prophin instructed. “I’ll come over myself to conduct some augury. In the meantime, see what you can gather from the dilation loop footage. Start toward the end; see if you can find out how much power he was able to awaken.”

Lisandro’s mouth thinned to a small line. “Okay,” he replied softly. If that’s what their adviser wanted to do, then he wouldn’t complain. They’d have to wake up the patient sooner or later, though—his mother was waiting.

“And Dedere, if you weren’t doing so already, prepare to conduct an affinity reading.”

❖❖❖

Dr. Eustatius Prophin massaged his wrinkled forehead as he stared intently at the display monitoring the experiment room. For the past five minutes, he had felt an ever-growing sense of foreboding.

He got up from his desk and walked briskly towards the experiment room, a cozy, underground chamber surrounded by dampening void shields cast by peak Dark practitioners. All information between the experiment room and the outside world came through a fist-sized camera-speaker hub linked directly to his personal glosscomp.

The void shielding was potent enough to mask the large energy draw of the capsule, its power tower concentrating the energy of twenty different reactors, each stored in a pocket dimension. The design was as unprecedented as it was costly; without funding from the Guard, it would have been impossible. But along with generous funding from the Eldemari’s coffers came an equally heavy expectation: results.

Dr. Prophin’s feet sped down the metal stairs, leading him to the front of a nondescript room. He knocked once, then waited. The door opened, revealing the austere, white insides of the experiment room.

❖❖❖

Ian felt as though he was drifting in a pool of lukewarm water, his sense of self fuzzy, his memory clouded. It was difficult to focus on anything.

After an unknown period of time, he found that he was able to sense his surroundings. It felt like his lids were weighed down by boulders, but with his Death affinity, he could see even without opening his eyes. He was in a small room, probably underground, judging by the small vital signatures wriggling beyond the walls. He next noticed that he was lying in an ovular pod, beyond which were three other individuals.

Ian tried to focus on them: two were young, and one was old, with graying vitality concentrated in his joints and heart. Unfortunately, wrangling his concentration felt like trying to hold onto wet sand, and he felt himself continuously drifting off.

After a small eternity, he saw one of the young people come over and press up against the egg-shaped enclosure. He pressed something, then darted back as the roof of the pod opened up. Ian realized that he could sense an air current brushing over his skin, along with muffled voices. He flinched, his fingers twitching as his body regained feeling.

“...you’re sure he won’t...” an indistinct voice said.

“Yes,” someone else replied, voice loud and firm. Ian realized it was the old man, syncing the words with his mouth.

“Professor, shouldn’t we get more protection?” a female voice asked hesitantly. “If it’s just us...”

The old man shook his head resolutely. “No one is allowed down here. Besides, if I said it’s fine, it’s fine. Don’t you trust my augury?”

Ian felt like he was getting a better picture of his current situation, though his mind still felt like mush. The old man was probably an End or Beginning practitioner, and had either predicted something with a Beginning augury, or by interpreting lines of fate.

Ian felt a bit of muted excitement swelling in his heart. He tried to remember how he’d moved on from the previous layer, but his most recent memories felt indistinct. He didn’t feel any kind of ill will from the people in the room, and was both curious as to why he was here, and resigned to figuring out yet another layer of the loop.

Time continued to pass slowly, and Ian felt himself fading in and out, gathering bits and pieces of conversation. All of a sudden, as though drenched by a bucket of cold water, he jolted up, breathing heavily. Memories of the last layer, of the mountains and the knife, Germaine and Euryphel, came forth, like some kind of surreal dream.

Ian opened his eyes and regarded the people in the room, his gaze cautious and appraising.

“Who are you people?” he asked, his heart pounding. He slowed his breathing in an attempt to calm himself down.

Even as he asked the question, he felt himself grow dizzy, his entire body starting to shudder, seeming to ignore his conscious mind. He looked down, seeing the world with both his eyes and his decemancy.

After being in the loop for so long, he had forgotten what the real world looked, felt, smelled, and sounded like. With every new layer of the loop, he always had a hope, a suspicion, that he had escaped. But now, he was certain: Comparing the loop—still immediately fresh in his memory—with the world around him, he realized that the loop was but an imitation. It was almost real, but...if he had to describe it, the loop’s version of reality lacked a certain harshness. It was like a slightly hazy reflection of the real world.

“Mr. Dunai!” a voice called out. Seeing that he had Ian’s attention, the old man continued, “Do you know where you are?”

Ian found himself at a loss for words. His mind began to flash hurriedly through all of the possible scenarios he had thought up: was he under a life-death oath? Did they have someone he knew held hostage as leverage? Was he really a participant in some Selejan experiment?

“Selejo?” 

The young man nodded quickly. “Do you remember anything about how you came here?”

“No. Should I?”

The young man shook his head. “You shouldn’t. The first thing we do is wipe your memories pertaining to the Infinity Loop. It’s standard procedure to maximize the stress—” The man suddenly snapped his mouth shut, withering under the professor’s judgmental look.

“We still need to run a few tests before we can let you go,” the old man said, gesturing to the young woman at his side. “First we’ll want to perform a potentioreading.”

Ian froze for a moment, unsure of whether to laugh or cry at the researchers’ nonchalance. Do they really have no idea how powerful I am?  “What if I refuse?” he asked, gauging their reactions.

The old man’s expression became cold. “I had an inkling you might say something like that. Well, to be frank, you agreed to this study under oath.”

Ian felt his stomach drop.

“What kind of oath?”

The young woman spoke up. “You and your mother entered into a joint-fulfillment oath. If you renege on our experiment before its conclusion, your mother will enter into a coma for five years as collateral.”

Ian gaped.

“Don’t act so shocked,” the woman said. “Given the amount of resources required for this experiment, you’re fortunate it’s only a joint-fulfillment oath.”

“How much did you invest in the experiment?” In the loop he’d learned that dilation chambers were exorbitantly expensive to use, but the Infinity Loop didn’t seem to be a normal dilation chamber.

She blinked and rubbed the side of her hand. “More than any regular is worth; more than what most practitioners are worth, for that matter. So please don’t fight this—we need to collect the potentioreading.”

Ian had to admit that the woman’s words were quite reasonable: If he used the dilation chamber but refused to go through with the remainder of their experiments, the researchers would face a serious loss. Unfortunately, Ian suspected that as soon as they took a potentioreading and found out about the experiment’s success, things would spiral out of control.

“There’s no getting around a potentioreading?” Ian asked, voice wavering. The shock of exiting the loop was still coursing through his body, his thoughts racing in all different directions. What would happen even if he got out of taking a potentioreading? There’s no way they wouldn’t have taken some kind of loop recording. And when they watched it, they’d see the potentioreading within. His head jerked to the side as his eyes looked for where the footage might be stored.

Ian grabbed his head as though trying to forcefully settle his mind, gritting his teeth. He knew that the researchers wouldn’t keep important experimental data in one place—odds were his loop recording had already been transferred to a remote location.

“A potentioreading is required under the joint-fulfillment oath,” the woman clarified.

Ian took a deep breath and tried to concentrate vitality into his head, but the mental haze refused to subside. “What about patient confidentiality?”

The old man smiled. “Your results will be kept anonymous to the public, of course.”

The woman researcher began to approach with a potentioreader. As she grew close, Ian instinctively leaned away into the wall of the pod, his head banging painfully against its smooth surface.

“Can you all give me some time to think?” he shouted, a spark of violet flashing in his eyes.

The woman recoiled and moved back, looking to the old man for guidance. After a moment of contemplation, he replied: “We’ll give you a few minutes, but we can’t leave the room. Is that acceptable?”

Ian snorted. “That’s fine.” He turned away, his face turning red with shame. He hated feeling so disoriented. With a start, he realized that he’d even gathered a bit of Death energy. He dispelled it into the surroundings.

After the three researchers left him to himself, they began to pour over a glosspad. He could hear his own voice coming from the device, along with the voices of others. They seemed to be watching the loop recording—confirming his suspicions—and from the sound of it, they were looking at the school layer. He wondered how much, if any, of his dilation-loop-recorded memories they had already watched.

Honestly, from their reactions so far, it doesn’t seem like they’ve anything. Otherwise he would have expected them to be more cautious, more deferential. Upon waking, he hadn’t sensed even a lick of the fear he anticipated.

As the minutes ticked by, Ian slowly felt himself calm down. But even as his heart stopped pounding and his muscles relaxed, questions ceaselessly entered his mind. When was it? Was he still in school? And Y’jeni, why was Mother here and waiting in the lobby? He had hoped that upon waking, he would remember some of the context for how he ended up in the loop, but that seemed like wishful thinking.

After around fifteen minutes passed, Ian was mentally prepared to take the potentioreading. If he refused, his mother would go into a coma; besides, the researchers were already looking at the school layer—they’d see the potentioreading sooner or later.

He peered his head out of the pod and tried to grab the attention of the others. Unexpectedly, they appeared not to hear him at all, their expressions completely engrossed in the screen shared between them. From the sound of it, they were skipping around; Ian thought he heard the sound of seagulls, a common fixture in Menocht Bay.

Ian rolled his eyes and sighed. I guess they’ve seen some of what I can do.

“Hello!” he bellowed, raising his voice.

The trio jolted as though struck by lightning, all three whipping around to face him.

The shock with which they looked at him made him feel almost bashful. He chuckled awkwardly before turning away. “Like what you saw?”

“You spent 222 weeks in the loop,” Dedere murmured, her face pale. “We couldn’t see very much in a few minutes.”

Ian blanched. “222 weeks. What a nice number.” He turned back toward the researchers, making eye contact with the old man. “From your reactions, I figure you’ve seen enough to understand the current situation.”

The old man narrowed his eyes imperceptibly. “Perhaps...regardless, you have taken an oath, the terms of which state that you will not harm any of the researcher staff or equipment, and you will submit yourself to all of our post-dilation-chamber diagnostic tests.”

Ian’s mouth curled downward. “Bring over the potentioreader, then; let’s get this over with.”

❖❖❖

Dedere’s hands gripped the potentioreader as if she weren’t careful, it would slip from her grasp. As she approached patient Dunai, she felt an almost imperceptible, oppressive pressure weigh on her.

Dunai looked at her without emotion, his face as placid as a still pond. After the outburst from earlier, he seemed to have collected himself. She was ashamed to admit that she couldn’t say the same for herself.

Dedere felt her heart start to race just thinking of the footage from the Infinity Loop. They had skipped around quite a lot as they had no way of knowing which parts of the recording were important. However, they had stumbled upon one particular scene that stood out to them: Dunai creating bone constructs on the shore of the Ramsay Channel outside of Academia Hector. Dunai had drifted over the ocean and effortlessly animated animal bones into lifelike constructs. The three of them had watched, utterly unraptured, before Dunai disturbed them.

“Are you ready?” she asked, extending the potentioreader orb.

Dunai nodded and cradled it in his hands. Dedere grabbed her glosspad and made a few gestures. Suddenly, the potentioreader lit up, instantly turning bright red in Ian’s fingers.

The potentioreader’s colorful surface swirled like a cosmic storm in different shades of red. After several minutes, it made a small clicking noise, and the colors froze.

Dedere stared at the glosspad for a moment, her fellow researchers gazing at the screen from over her shoulders. “It’s calculating...” she murmured, frowning. Then, she froze, her hand suspended in place above the glosspad.

The researchers peered incredulously at Ian, who could only give them a slight, knowing smile.

“So, how is it?” he asked.

Dedere shook her head and pressed the screen. The room’s fabY suddenly lit up and began to print a thin sheet of paper. Lisandro walked to the fabY, took the sheet of paper, and placed it in front of Ian.

❖❖❖

Unlike the time he tested his affinity with Jasmine, Ian felt no excitement, only a sense of grudging acceptance. He picked up the freshly-printed sheet of paper. On it was recorded the following:

Potential Affinity Readings of DUNAI, I. J.
Year: 1021 Month: 11 Day: 17
Color: Red II
Affinity (± 0.03%)

• Light: 0.53%
• Dark: 1.09%
• Life: 2.94%
• Death: 99.99%
• Mountain: 1.20%
• Cloud: 1.21%
• Sun: 0.01%
• Moon: 0.00%
• Beginning: 7.78%
• End: 8.01%
• Regret: 12.27%
• Remorse: 12.71%

Huh, Ian thought to himself. Definitely wasn’t 99.99% before. I guess this potentioreader is more accurate than Jasmine’s. He couldn’t recall the precision on her micropotentioreader, but doubted it was as good as ± 0.03%. He was actually more interested in the date printed at the top of the sheet, indicating that it was temporally just before the date that he normally appeared during the school loop.

“You don’t seem very surprised,” the old man observed.

“I had a reading conducted in the loop, with similar results.” He raised an eyebrow. “I should be asking you the same question.”

The old man scoffed, then began to laugh for a solid few seconds. “I am surprised,” he replied candidly. “So surprised I don’t know how to react.”

“I still don’t know your names.”

“I’m Dr. Prophin, and these two are Drs. Manetti and Yuruskane.” He gestured to the man and the woman, respectively.

Ian nodded. “Dr. Prophin, what other tests are there? I want to complete them and be on my way.”

“That is...” Dr. Manetti began before seeing Dr. Prophin’s expression.

“There are a few more tests, but we can conduct them in the coming days,” Dr. Prophin said.

Ian had a suspicion that the old researcher was going to use more tests as an excuse to bring him back to the lab, likely to rope him into more experiments than originally planned.

“How about we just get them all done today? You should have already prepared them, correct?”

Dr. Prophin’s mouth twitched, corners turning downward. “We didn’t prepare every experiment, as a matter of fact. There are a few extra tests that must be conducted in the event that one of our experimental trials is successful.” He swallowed after saying the last word. “We will have to respectfully ask that you return to us when those tests are prepared.”

“I’ll return,” Ian said, drawing out the words. Maybe. “But in exchange...I want an explanation. I want to know how I ended up in your dilation chamber.” At the very least, Ian wanted to hear the official explanation. His conversations with Euryphel and Aunt Julia about the purpose of the loop seemed to be right on target, so far. He was in Selejo, and Dr. Prophin had just indicated that their trial was a success. This confirmed that their goal really was to awaken his affinity in the loop.

Prophin nodded. “When you return, yes.”

Damn. He hoped that they might tell him now, but no such luck.

Ian wondered if they realized that they’d bitten off more than they could chew. Once word got out that they’d awakened someone with 99.99% affinity, everything would spiral out of control. He hoped for all their sakes that they’d keep his potentioreader results under wraps, at least for the time being.

To be honest, though, he’d long since come to terms with the fact that he wouldn’t be able to keep his power a secret forever. Maybe for a few months, but not for years.

But even if the results got out, Ian already had a plan in place, one that he’d been mulling over extensively for the past two weeks: seeking out the SPU’s first prince. He supposed that he’d be dragging Mother along with him.