Chapter 160 – Another Route

When the time loop started fresh, Mirian spent some time in the dorms one night quietly breaking into people’s rooms and investigating their spellbooks. It had the advantage of both disrupting the initial conditions Troytin would encounter, and offering her a quick way to get several spells without scribing them. She left a few of her usual surprises, then traveled to Palendurio and hired a new assassin to go after Troytin.

Mirian spent two cycles training her speed, strength, and agility with Rostal, then two more perfecting the obstacle course. The tricky part was at the end. To replicate the reversal of gravity, Mirian had to precisely channel into her levitation wand so it was exerting a force exactly twice as much as gravity on herself, then had to continue channeling while also twisting her body like a cat so she could land upside down on the hanging platforms.

Meanwhile, she continued to iterate her designs with the artisans in Frostland’s Gate, and sketched out new ways to streamline her work. In those cycles, she started stealing Professor Cassius’s eximontar, a beautiful creature named Winterblossom.

One day, I’ll have to ask Cassius how he came up with that name.

Winterblossom was proud, aggressive, and also significantly larger and faster than any of the other myrvite mounts. It took Mirian a bit to figure out just how Winterblossom liked his mana threads, but once she figured that out, the mount took a liking to her.

Having practiced leaping about her model of the death corridor until she was absolutely sick of it, Mirian was ready to try the Labyrinth again. She cleansed Torrviol of spies, set up new pitfalls, then headed north.

On the steepest sections of the pass, Mirian took to levitating both herself and Winterblossom up the mountain trail. At first, Winterblossom kicked wildly and made a distressed chittering noise, but eventually, he got used to it. Overall, she was still saving mana and reducing travel time.

Her next innovation in saving time came as she approached the highest part of the Littenord Pass. Winterblossom was pretty good at navigating the snow, but it was still deep. When she’d tried giving Winterblossom ice-crafted snow shoes the first time she’d stolen him, it hadn’t worked, and the eximontar had made his displeasure known. But walking down the deep drifts took time, and keeping track of the trail was equally annoying. This early in the cycle, she had no footprints or travelers to follow.

Looking down from the height of the pass, it was a long slope, treacherous with ice and a few short cliffs.

I have to fight gravity the whole time to get up here. Why not use it to speed my descent? she thought.

Her stolen spellbook didn’t have exactly what she needed, but the spell would be a fairly simple one. She spent some time by the warmth of the traveler’s obelisk scribing away as Winterblossom tried to eat different kinds of fir needles. The dumb animal lacerated his tongue on a sword-pine tree, then stomped around in a panic until Mirian could finally calm him down and hold him still to heal him. At least the priest’s healing techniques work the same on eximontar, she thought.

Finally, she’d scribed the spell: nested perforated force spheres.

It was actually two separate spells so she could control the mana flows going into them separately, but she thought of it as a single thing. If it worked, she would get down the mountain in record time.

“Ready, Winterblossom?” she asked. The creature made a weird clicking noise with its mandibles. Mirian guided it over to the edge of the trail where the downward slope began, levitated them slightly, then cast the spell around them.

The inner force sphere was designed to stay still and keep whoever was in it upright. The outer force sphere could roll as much as it wanted, and the air holes in both would make sure they didn’t suffocate. Mirian used a force spell to drag a rock into the back of the sphere to start their momentum, giving them a solid thwack!

They began to roll down the mountain. Winterblossom, inured already to levitation spells, still didn’t like the feeling and made his displeasure known, but couldn’t move much. Mirian was focused on putting more mana into the second part of the spell so the outer sphere stayed intact. They began to bounce down the mountain, accelerating far faster than even a double-conduit levitation wand could manage.

Mirian let out a whoop as the force sphere tumbled down the path, launching itself off a cliff. There was a feeling of falling and Winterblossom made a gross noise, but then with an explosion of snow they hit the slope and kept going, continuing to build speed. Wind and flakes of icy mush streamed through the air holes, while the sphere kicked up clouds of snow on both sides, adding some friction, but not nearly enough to slow them much.

She kept channeling, feeding more mana into the outer sphere as it was bombarded by stray rocks and little falls. Winterblossom made another noise, then gave up and laid down, only crushing Mirian’s left leg a little. The bottom of the inner sphere started to get damp with slush as the snow they careened over melted and found its way in gaps.

The sphere tumbled down another slope, then splashed into the shallow mountain stream. Once they were in that, they started making even better speed. Mirian shrank the inner sphere slightly so the water didn’t fill too much, but this late in the season, the stream was mostly frozen over. The sphere continued, smashing through a cluster of icicles on one rocky bank, breaking off the branches of shrubs that had leaned too far into the stream and startling the five hells out of a group of elk that had thought it was a safe time to get a drink.

At last, they reached a valley, and the sphere ground itself into enough snow on the flat plain that it came to a halt. She dismissed the spell, laughing from the joy of it. “Oh, come on Winterblossom! That was great!” she told the eximontar.

Winterblossom turned his head and snorted, clicking twice.

Mirian let the mount pout, and levitated up above the canopy to see how far she’d come. In the distance, she could see the pass they’d come down, looming high above them. That probably saved me a half day or more, she thought.

Winterblossom needed a bit more time to lie in the snow, but judicious use of the grooming brush and another offering of mana finally got the beast to get up and continue. Once away from the slopes, the path was almost a straight shot to the village.

***

They stood at the edge of the death corridor. Mirian began to limber up, shedding all her supplies except the tightly strapped pack that contained her spellbook, soul repositories, food, waterskin, and puzzle-solving supplies. She’d worked to minimize the weight of the pack, while maximizing the useful tools.

“You’re really going to run that thing?” Beatrice asked, skeptically.

Mirian finished stretching. “Remember, no matter what happens, head back to town. And you remember when the myrvites swarm the town?”

“The 19th of Solem. We’ll be ready,” Cediri said. “Whew. Good luck.”

Mirian embraced the Spear That Cuts Water. As soon as the crushing wall across the way closed and then opened again, she accelerated into a sprint. She leapt across the gap, landing with both feet before she started moving again. She leapt to the first safe tile as the wall slammed closed behind her, then made a series of one-legged leaps onto the safe tiles, alternating using her left and right feet.

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Second tile. Fifth tile. Fourth tile. First. Sixth. Fifth again.

Then, she dove forward, twisting her body like a corkscrew. The yank of gravity reversing was, at least, familiar, but it threw her off balance since it didn’t happen as a result of her spell. She landed with a grunt on the platform below, then took a moment to recover.

As she stood, though, the platform began to vibrate. That can’t be good.

Whatever it was about to do wouldn’t be good for her health. Mirian took a running start and leapt to the next platform. As she did, she heard a wunk! When she landed on the next platform, she looked behind her, only to see the first platform she’d landed on had retracted itself, leaving behind only stone spikes.

The second platform started to vibrate.

Shit. She recovered her footing, then leapt. The third platform started vibrating too. This time she didn’t hesitate, just took another running leap, hit the last platform, and kept running. It was a good thing, too, because whatever timer the platforms were on, the last one was shorter. Even as her feet left the platform, she felt it starting to lower, making her jump to the final ledge short. With her enhanced reflexes, she grabbed onto the ledge, her body slamming into the wall.