Chapter 279 – The Unmoored

The man watched her, and Mirian felt the intense power of his aura. The metal embedded in him glinted strangely in the arcane light of the internal sun, crawling with both a nacreous light and oily shadows. He looked at Mirian with his eyeless gaze.

Then his aura surged. In the place where his eyes had once been, Mirian saw cracks in the skin swim with energy. The power swelled, then—he vanished.

He reappeared a moment later, except there were nine of him. There was no time to respond to his attack—he’d started casting the spells at some other point in time, and so as he appeared, all she could do was begin to respond.

But he hadn’t targeted her directly. Equinox’s defenses were useless here. Instead, he cut apart her ongoing spells, severed the steel containers, and then vanished again.

He’d taken her air. He’d also taken her containers with extra air.

Mirian switched to the Lone Pine form and held her breath. She looked around for something she could use. He’d even taken the container of water—otherwise, she could have run electricity through it to liberate breathable air. The Elder construction was resistant to her spells, so there was no material for her to use. She felt sharp pain through her body, and her vision was narrowing. Something to do with void exposure. She ran soul energy through her body to repair the damage.

Her eyes fell on the temporal anchors sticking out of the device.

But just as she was moving towards them, the man reappeared, looking more relaxed. Mirian felt the cool touch of air again, and her steel containers had returned.

“Apologies for the overreaction. I see now,” he thought. There was a casual, controlled tone to his mind-speech, even though she could feel from his aura that he was significantly stronger than Conductor. Fighting him would be suicide, even if she was at full mana capacity; he had demonstrated he could actually wield chronomancy, and there was simply no fighting against that. Just as Specter never had any hope of defeating her, she had no hope of defeating him.

Mirian tentatively extended her aura to touch his. “Who are you?”

“Unmoored. From time, from humanity. I had a name once, but to pledge yourself to Carkavakom as Herald is to give up such things.”

“Unmoored. A Herald. You help enforce the Pact, then.” Mirian let her amusement transmit through her aura. “It’s a pity I still don’t know what the rules of it are, and they can’t be explained to me without violating it. You must know why I’m here. It’s not to provoke anyone, or ruin the Pact—it’s to do everything in my power to resolve the leyline crisis. To save humanity. To save Enteria.”

The Unmoored was silent. Then, with a slight gesture, two chairs and a table appeared in the middle of the room. He sat in one of the chairs. The furniture wasn’t what Mirian expected. It looked rustic and worn. There was scrollwork on the legs of the table she recognized. “Is that early Triarchy design?” she asked.

“I suppose you would call it that now. It’s been so long… sometimes I forget how fragile human collective memory is.” The gravity in the room changed, becoming much more like what she felt on Enteria.

“You are human, though,” Mirian thought to him, taking a seat. The cushions on the chair were worn, but comfortable.

The Unmoored shook his head. “I’m given leeway to communicate with humanity, but I haven’t been human in millennia. I’ve already told you that Carkavakom’s law is one of consequence. I exist to enforce that law. Above all, Carkavakom desires one thing: that there never be another Gods’ War.”

Mirian nodded. “So that was you who talked with the priest in Alkazaria. Just a few minutes ago, from your perspective, I imagine.”

She felt amusement in the Unmoored’s aura. “Yes. First, I had to make sure there was no interference from another Elder God—at least, beyond what Divitrius has already done. I am satisfied that what you did, you did on your own. Though it should have been impossible. No mortal should have been able to open the door here. And yet, I watched you open it. What made you look here? You didn’t discuss it with the others.”

Mirian looked towards the arcane sun behind the crystal window. “Jherica believed it might control the Labyrinth. But if that were the case, there would be matter or energy exchange between Luamin and Enteria. There was still an unsolved problem, though: the temporal anchors must be going somewhere if a Prophet dies before a cycle ends. And there must be a source of energy to move them through time. The temporal anchors in the Ominian are unreachable. But what about these?”

She gestured to the strange device.

“Causality protects them from a creature bound to linear time like you.”

Mirian stared at the glimmering needles. Strange light misted from them—or perhaps her mind just interpreted what she saw as light. “The past Prophets are still at work, then—at least, from some frame of reference in time that I don’t understand. This would be so much easier if I could add people to the loop. Except… that can’t work either.”

“Another idea you haven’t discussed with the others.”

Mirian looked back to the Unmoored. “A hunch, more than a full understanding. Both temporal anchors returned to the Ominian extended the cycle. For a long time, I didn’t have an explanation. How would they be affecting the leyline system? Then I realized, they’re part of a separate system. The stability of the leylines helps keep Divir aloft—but there’s a second system at play. The entropic antimagic around Divir—centered around the Ominian—fails too. It’s a separate failure. Merely stabilizing the leylines isn’t enough. The temporal anchors have to be returned to the Ominian, don’t they? They’re like the chthonic needles my father discovered. They stabilize Their soul.”

The Unmoored met her gaze. Even though he had no eyes, she could tell he was looking into her. Looking through her. At last he said, “Yes.”

“You can tell me that? Then… we have to wait for the other Prophets to return their temporal anchors. How do they even do it? I doubt any of them found my method, or tri-bond glyphwork would have existed before I was born.”

“They will return when they are meant to return. All but the last ‘temporal anchors’ of last Prophets. Causality is no protection for your companions.”

“But we don’t know how many cycles some of the Prophets went through. It could take decades. Centuries.” Mirian felt a chill run through her. The time loop was already weighing on her. Weighing on all of them. How many more times could she tolerate the flaws of humanity? How many more times could Ibrahim watch his wife die? How long could Gabriel persist without succumbing to pure hedonism to escape? How long could Zhuan last before her tests and experiments became unintelligible to anyone else? What if Ceiba Yan tired of his soul-companion? Celen had already been broken by the loop once. How long until we all go insane? she thought.

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“That is also for you to solve. Divitrius has put his last hopes in you.”