Chapter 128 – Delicate Engineering

A small artifact at Mirian’s belt let out a chime and began to glow. That’s the divination ward tripped. The forward elements are here, she knew. Probably the two recon companies of the 24th Brigade. Four more companies of four other brigades would be advancing carefully but quickly around the city.

Mirian sent out a pulse of arcane energy that was tuned to her modified seeds of chaos. One hour until they activate, now. Each of the spell engines would be burning minuscule amounts of fossilized myrvite until the timers went off. Then they’d all take to the air.

She levitated to the roof of the Myrvite Studies building, and crouched down, rechecking her gear. She’d re-bound her soul so that she appeared to be Akanan, and had one of the town’s tailors make her a replica uniform. Beneath the uniform, she had all four pieces of orichalcum, as well as several pieces of steel armor over silk padding that would absorb the impact of bullets she managed to slow down. There were two soul repositories, now fully charged with myrvite souls. She’d redone the binding on her spellbook to resemble the standard issue Akanan military design, then used cloth armguards to bind her key wands to her forearms: levitation, greater lightning, magnetic shield, force shield, greater force blade, and magnetic detonation. The rest of what she needed would be in her spellbook. She was still vulnerable to magebreaker ammunition, but though those pierced force shields, magnetic shields could still slow them, if not stop them entirely.

Finally, she had two mana elixirs, an arcanometer, and several other artificer’s tools. She also could plausibly pass as a 7th Airborne engineer since she already knew their countersigns and chain of command. She doubted the other time traveler had bothered to convince an entire army group to change up their pass phrases or infiltration protocols for this sort of contingency.

Mirian had also gotten a brief refresher on Eskinar from her former tutor, making sure her accent was at least passable. The good news was, Akanans had fairly pronounced regional accents, and so someone from the western reaches of the country might plausibly speak like her. Plausibly. Ideally, she would have few conversations.

She kept herself huddled to the building roof, watching as two divisions swept into Torrviol, rapidly clearing buildings. There was some scattered gunfire as they encountered some of the civilians who had refused to flee. Some were taken prisoner.

Most were just executed.

There was something at work there that Mirian couldn’t comprehend. The Akanans were able to dehumanize their enemies with a rapidity and completeness that seemed like it should have been impossible. What do they tell the soldiers before they come here?

Soon enough, the airships came into view. Mirian cast her night camouflage spell, then levitated up. As long as she approached the airships from above, the evening light and overcast sky would still hide her.

Mirian flew into the air, letting the cold air shear away any fatigue she felt. Again, there was that strange nostalgia. For years, she’d felt like winning the Battle of Torrviol was this critical thing. Now, it was just another catastrophe, one she could ignore or embrace as needed. The wind whipped at her as the colossal airship grew in front of her. Even after all this time, the size of it felt unreal. She soared above it, then let the behemoth pass by. She could make out the people below, working feverishly on the deck. The cranes were getting ready to deploy an assault squad on top of Bainrose.

A chill ran through Mirian that wasn’t the wind. That’s why I could never get them to lift me up on the crane again, even in disguise. Troytin would have alerted them after he saw me. She watched as the soldiers donned the harnesses attached to the ropes. Meanwhile, spotters on the foredeck scanned below for any sign of resistance. He started working against me almost immediately, then. Specter probably hasn’t been a good influence on him, but he made his decision to fight early. She shook her head. Why did the Ominian choose such a fool?

The aft deck had few crew on it. Mirian picked a spot that had enough of the ship’s superstructure around it to create cover, then descended. She matched her speed to the ship’s, then landed gingerly and dismissed the camouflage spell.

Her disguise needed no illusions, and took no mana. Her auric mana was still abundant. The seeds of chaos should be deploying.

She hurried down below decks, passing two crewmen. They gave a brief, “sir,” acknowledging her rank above them, but otherwise paid her no notice. Everyone was too busy, and really, who expected infiltration while they were in the air? Of course, how can the people of Torrviol simultaneously be so nefarious they need to be gunned down and so stupid as to have no defenses or contingencies?

As the Might of Liberty dropped the first round of soldiers onto Bainrose, Republic’s Justice circled above to provide cover. That brought them down to low elevation, and it lowered their speed significantly.

That made them easy targets for the seeds of chaos. The tiny spell engines would be activating a glyph sequence telling them to seek out the biggest source of arcane energy they could detect, and to plummet towards it. As soon as the devices received the shock of kinetic energy from the crash, that would trigger another glyph sequence that would ignite what remained of the fossilized myrvite, which in turn would rupture all the glyphs and cause an explosion. It wasn’t nearly as deadly as a spellfire shell, but it would certainly do damage.

Mirian was well below decks when she heard the first crack! It sounded like a distant gunshot. Then it was followed by another. Then another.

Then the sounds came with the frequency of rain. “We’re under attack!” she heard someone shout.

Panicked calls soon erupted all over. People started running through the halls as alarm klaxons sounded throughout the ship. More explosions echoed from above, and suddenly the ship jerked to the side, slamming her against the wall.

Mirian recovered and continued to the engine room.

Two guards stood by the thick steel doors. Mirian shouted, “We’re under attack! Command’s been hit and the stabilization wings are heavily damaged. Damage control just ordered me here to give the team details so the emergency systems can keep the ship in the air.”

The guards looked worried. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know! It was quiet, nothing sighted, then all of a sudden, spellbombs everywhere! Countersign is ‘forges of Ferrabridge,’ Captain Thalia didn’t give me anything else.”

The first guard looked at the second. He shook his head. “We can’t. Relay the message to the crew inside through comms—”

The ship shook again, and the list grew heavier.

Mirian infused her voice with as much panic as she could muster. “Comms to the engine room is down! The team needs an accurate damage report or this ship is going into the ground!”

“We should—”

“Negative. We can activate the door communication glyph array.”

“Oh. That would work,” Mirian said, and waited for the second guard to turn his back. Then Eclipse materialized in her hand.

The first guard had time to say, “What th—!” Then Mirian’s rapier was through his throat, through the spinal column, and out the other side. The blade pierced through the chain links and bone like a needle going through cloth. At the same time, she sent a greater lightning spell into the second guard, so that as he turned to face her, he was seized by electricity. He went to his knees, skin sizzling, then face planted on the ground.

Mirian checked their bodies for glyph keys, but there were none. Probably, they had to communicate an authorization code and the door only opened up from the inside. The commander of the ship might have a glyph key, but he would be on the bridge, and there were a lot of soldiers and a great deal of fire that way.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

There was always another way to open a door.

Mirian started with several magnetic detonation spells on the hinges. The door shook, but there were already alarm klaxons, and the ship was already shaking. Then she lobbed a few fireball spells behind her so that anyone coming down the hall would be slowed down or repelled by the flames.

With the door weakened and her back covered, Mirian telekinetically flipped through her spellbook to find kinetic push.

The door groaned as she pushed, the steel warping. She paused, and cast several more magnetic detonations along the frame, then resumed, heaving as her mana poured into the spell. She could just make out panicked shouting beyond the door, but the sound of metal screeching overcame it. Smoke was starting to fill the hallway, so she cast a quick filter air spell before resuming her assault on the door. With one last push, it came crashing down, shaking the hall.

Beyond the door was a massive spell engine, unlike any she’d seen before, and several engineers. She didn’t get a count, because gunfire erupted in front of her, and she had to rush to hide to the side of the hall.

As smoke rushed from behind her into the engine room, Mirian cast force shield, then magnetic shield, then ran into the room. There was more gunfire, and she used the muzzle flashes to locate her quarry, slicing up the two offending engineers with quick force blade spells.

There were three more engineers she could see, interrupted from monitoring the engine by her incursion.

“It’s just one person?” one of them asked.

“Lieutenant—what are you… what’s going on?” shouted another.

“Can we do this peacefully, or do I need to cut off a few more heads?” Mirian asked.

When one of the engineers pointed a wand at her, Mirian brought up Eclipse. The force spell—whatever it had been—dissolved on the mythril blade.

Mirian decapitated him before he could cast anything else. “Anyone else?”