Chapter 118 – Of Bronze and Bindings

The priests’ moment of elation quickly turned to confusion. “Wait, it’s just you? How did you get through the rock?” one of them asked.

Internally, Mirian groaned. I get to have this conversation again. “I’m the Seventh Prophet,” she said simply, then added, “Undeclared. There’s not enough time for a declaration through the pontiff, and there’s several… complications that make it inadvisable.” At least, for now.

Three of the priests stared at her, while the fourth burst out into hysterical laughter.

“Would one of you like to teach me how to make orichalcum?” she asked.

“That’s… you really weren’t sent by the Order?”

“The entire city is overwhelmed. The initial quake likely killed at least ten thousand, and the antimagic pulse that swept through destroyed most spell engines and a whole lot of spellbooks. The only timeline that is acceptable at this point is a timeline where the leyline eruption does not hit Palendurio. That means I need orichalcum to protect the measurement devices that will help me figure out more about the leyline breakdown. I also think, as a magically resistant material, it will be key in preventing the eruptions in the first place.”

One of the priests gawked. “Wait, a leyline erupted next to the city?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t… if you’re a Prophet, you would have seen it coming. You would have known. But…”

Mirian bit her tongue so she wouldn’t sigh, then explained a bit about the events, summarizing heavily, and the nature of the time loop. “…so in each timeline, you have died, and will continue to die. But in some future, final timeline, you will live. If I can stop the apocalypse. Now, you would think ‘stopping the apocalypse’ would get people lining up to help me, but you’d be wrong. The usual reaction is disbelief, denial, and often despair. Often, I have to spend several loops figuring out how to convince someone.”

By now, the group was looking at her with horror.

One of the priests said, “But you’ve seen the statue of the Ominian in Their lost Mausoleum?”

“That’s right.”

“Shouldn’t that… and you’ve described it?”

“I have.”

“Shouldn’t that alone be enough to have you proclaimed?”

“I have no idea what the criteria are. No one has told me yet.”

“God’s blood,” one of them whispered, which was not a curse a priest said lightly. “Sacred One, we are sorry for our colleagues’ ignorance of the cosmic order,” he said, kneeling. “If you say it is what you need, then it would be my honor to teach you our craft.”

Finally! Mirian thought. For once, people that listen to reason.

Mirian shared out her water and food with them, since they had been trapped there for an entire day. The ventilation shaft, thankfully, remained unbroken, or the priests no doubt would have run out of air long before she reached them.

She learned that only a few select priests within the cults of Shiamagoth or Eintocarst were allowed to learn how orichalcum or mythril was made, and they were sworn to secrecy. But the Prophet was supposed to supersede the laws of all but the Elder Gods.

“The bronze alloy is key,” one of the priests explained. “Very few metals can receive the celestial blessing. The blessing is best applied as the metal cools.”

Mirian watched as one of the priests went through the process. “First, you must visualize the Ominian’s blessing as light that surrounds you. Then, it helps to visualize that light as strands of a web. Hold in your hand the blessed skull of a chimera, and imagine it cutting open the web, until the strands of light flow past the skull and into the bronze.”

As Mirian listened, her incredulity grew. “Mana. You’re using your auric mana. This is—the visualization process is just like I was taught in the Academy. A chimera’s skull is an arcane catalyst. I know how to do this part.”

The priests exchanged worried glances. “But channeling arcane energy is forbidden.”

Mirian waved a dismissive hand. “Yeah, I don’t know what happened with that. I’m sure there’s some weird historical reason.”

“You mean Pontiff Cornelius Argen’s Prime Declaration during the Reign of the Third Prophet?”

She sighed. “I’m sure that was it. Okay, so first you channel definitely-not-mana into the bronze. What next?”

The rest of the process was more complex. The special forge was designed to use mechanical properties to regulate heat, rather than a modern forge that used glyphs for precise regulation. However, for how outdated it was, it did an impressive job keeping the bronze cooling slowly. As mana was fed into the structure by one priest, a second priest started binding it to the metal with high-resonance soul energy from a sacrificed myrvite.

“Can I transfer that soul energy into my own soul repository?” Mirian asked. When they acquiesced, she was pleased to see that the resonance intensity needed for orichalcum only needed to be from something like a mature drake or greater wyvern. Any higher, and she’d have to start hunting bog lions.

The priests continued with the process, showing her which runes were needed. All of them were surprised at how quickly she picked up rune construction.

“This is known as the eighth binding,” she was told. “It’s layered in this pattern with the second and fourth bindings.”

“You don’t happen to know the fifth through seventh bindings, do you?” she asked, hopeful.

“Unfortunately not. The bishops should be able to teach you those.”

Mirian grimaced. The three bishops had refused to teach her. The other bishops were in Alkazaria, which was where a bunch of Arcane Praetorians and the southern traveler’s armies were. She didn’t like that. The archbishops would know, but she still hadn’t figured out a good, low-risk way to talk to them yet.

Happily enough, though, after two days of instruction, Mirian was producing her own orichalcum. The priests were deeply uncomfortable with the idea that what they’d been doing all along was channeling mana like an arcanist, but Mirian’s demonstration of how easy it was for her made it hard to dismiss her.

“There’s sure to be a doctrinal crisis after this,” one of the priests bemoaned.

“Probably a couple,” Mirian said. “I’ll… well, I’ll try to learn a bit more about the history of it so I can navigate it smoothly. I think that’s a long ways away, though.”

Another priest said, “It’s a horrible way to die. Trapped in a small room, with only air, each other, and your darkest thoughts, and no hope.”

Mirian nodded. “I know. I wish… I wish there was more I could do. Always, I wish that.” She still didn’t know what to say to people about it. For all the cycles she was using to prepare, their fate was determined. They couldn’t change it. They couldn’t escape it. So many people were doomed to suffer and die. Worse, the more people she met, the more she knew their faces and names, and the harder it was to simply let it happen. Abandoning Jei to assassination. Abandoning Arenthia to execution. Abandoning Beatrice to death in the Labyrinth. Everad would always die alone in the dark, wondering if anyone would come. These priests would die the same way. Thousands would die trapped beneath their own collapsed homes, while Kathera was doomed to be cut to pieces in broad daylight. Lily would die in an Akanan artillery barrage. Nicolas, in that train car. Valen, in the Kiroscent Dome.

It was not right, what happened to all of them.

She found herself grinding her teeth.

“Are you alright, Sacred One?”

“Too much suffering,” she whispered. “And none of it had to be this way. No. But I must continue.”

After a break, Mirian asked next about mythril and adamantium, which Arenthia had mentioned. She was pretty sure those were the materials that made up the Sword of the Fourth Prophet.

“It’s the same process, but mythril usually takes five priests channeling the blessing of… channeling mana, I suppose, into the alloy. And a… what was the term you used? A higher resonance in the soul. And we don’t make adamantium anymore. Some was made during the Unification War to help defeat Atroxcidi, but I doubt any has been made since. Mythril requires a special alloy of titanium that requires two rarer metals that are hard to obtain, and adamantium requires both iridium and platinum, the former being one of the hardest metals to obtain in all of Baracuel. Both also require much more powerful blessings from the Ominian. The Order usually contracts with myrvite hunting teams, but since a lot of priests were getting killed during those expeditions, they’ve all but stopped.”

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He showed her the formulas, which Mirian recorded and memorized. Mythril would indeed take something as strong as a bog lion. Adamantium seemed to require something on par with a leviathan, which seemed impossible. She wondered how much mana it would take to form the materials, and if it was even possible for a single person to have that kind of capacity. Apparently, the spell resistance they offered was even greater, and she already knew from swinging the Fourth Prophet’s sword around that the materials were incredibly strong. Worth pursuing, if I can. And if the Fourth Prophet found a way to bind something to his soul, I’ll find a way too. Only, I can do better than a sword.

Mirian decided to stay with the priests, as the end came. She could hardly afford to drill so deep each cycle. It had taken most of a day to even reach them.

They made their way out. The priests were convinced they could get an audience with one of the archbishops, but Mirian had her doubts. The hours were ticking down now, and soon the end would come again.

“I wish I could see the Mausoleum,” one of them said with a sigh. “It must be amazing.”

“It is,” Mirian said. “At first, it was a scary place to dream about, but now, I find it peaceful. I like to walk around it and….” Then she stopped. “The other bindings. The Second Prophet wrote them on the walls.”

“He did?”