The False Ascendant, page 1
Lorne Ryburn a.k.a. caerulex
The False Ascendant
A Progression Fantasy Epic
Book 2 of The Menocht Loop series
First published by Timeless Wind Publishing LLC 2022
Copyright © 2022 by Lorne Ryburn
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Lorne Ryburn asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
First edition
Editing by Silas Sontag
Editing by Paul Martin
Cover art by Jeff Brown
Contents
Map of the World
1. Awakening
2. Reunion
3. Deliberation
4. The Bay of Ramsay
5. Landfall
6. Zukal’iss
7. Regret
8. Walking the Palace
9. Lukewarm Reckoning
10. The Details That Defy Us
11. The Last Layer
12. The Primes
13. Royal Retainer
14. Restaurant Redo
15. The Demonstration
16. Arrival
17. Practice
18. Ascendants
19. Appraisal
20. Interlude — Cunabulus
21. Memory of Vengeance
22. The Inevitable
23. Pain
24. The Fassari Summit
25. Pruning Distractions
26. Interlude — Zilverna
27. Viable Strategies
28. Fate Shuffles the Cards
29. Achemiss
30. Resolve
31. Gala
32. Life Versus Death
33. Rematch
34. Confrontation
35. Unplayed Ace
36. Finale
37. An Overdue Call
Author's Note
About the Author
For my patrons, who believe in me and my story. For my sisters, a loving source of chaos. For my parents, who do not read fantasy, but muddled their way through these books.
And finally, for Emil.
1
Awakening
Lisandro felt his heart beat within 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 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 rose 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, 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. 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, their 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 he 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 him
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 flashed hurriedly through all 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 number 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, his 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 approached 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 poured 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 had 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 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.
