Chapter 161 – Final Preparations

Mirian spent two more cycles training with Rostal. The old dervish pushed her hard, but she demanded he push her harder. She built the death-corridor course in an abandoned part of the Palendurio canals to keep herself used to the hall. She also raised up three stone pillars with shape stone to train on.

Near the end of that second cycle, Rostal was giving her a strange look.

“What?” she asked in Adamic.

“At first, I thought you were a creature of lightning. Now I think you also have fire in you. I must teach you the Last Breath Of The Phoenix.”

Mirian smiled at him. “Very well.”

She could immediately see how it was dangerous. Just like with arcane magic, energy was not free; it had to come from somewhere. To gain the extra strength of the stance, the soul itself was the fuel. Like the form of the Dusk Waves, she could see her soul dancing as if in a storm, and the chaos of it made it hard to control once the fires of the Phoenix form started.

But she also saw a pattern. The form involved drawing soul-energy pools into points, like a flame drawing oxygen into itself. But those points were all near the surface, and the action felt a lot like drawing soul energy for a celestial spell.

As the cycle closed, Mirian traded gold for smuggled myrvites to charge her soul repositories, then attempted drawing outside soul energy to fuel the dervish form. It was tricky, because she had to draw the soul energy right along the surface of her own soul, but not mix the energies lest they cause damage.

But it worked.

When she asked Rostal if any dervishes had done anything like it, his brow furrowed. “Perhaps. But if they did, it is lost to us. So much is lost to us. It sounds like more of what the necromancers were famous for.” He tilted his head and looked at her. “Not all that is lost deserves to be remembered.”

What she’d discovered would all be called ‘necromancy’ by the ignorant. But drawing strength from myrvite souls would help alleviate her exhaustion. None of their opinions would last long enough to matter.

She spent the next cycle practicing rapid artifice and mapping out the locations of myrvites that would be on her journey to Frostland’s Gate, as well as refining her wyvern-bone project with the artisans there.

It was that cycle she received a worrying message from Respected Jei, delivered by courier. She’d written it in Adamic. It was a simple enough message:

There was no airship from Akana Praediar. Broadsheet from Alkazaria continues to report defeat of Dawn’s Peace in Rambalda.

That worried Mirian. Have their goals changed? Or just their tactics? Did Troytin learn something new that he seeks to exploit? Or did he sneak into Torrviol using the skiff like he used to do to catch me off guard?

Without information, it was all speculation. Wary of a trap, Mirian ditched her stolen spellbook and returned to Torrviol. She used divination to scour the forest for an abandoned airship and the town for anyone using illusions or bindings to change their appearance.

Nothing.

Which didn’t alleviate her worry at all.

I can’t let it stop my plans. I’m almost there, Mirian thought.

***

She returned to the Labyrinth the next cycle, making minimal preparations in Torrviol to better simulate her planned timeline. This time, she made it past the room with two golems. Beyond them was another corridor. As she entered, the platforms began to move. At one junction, electricity periodically arced from rod to rod.

She analyzed the movements, mentally mapped out her route, then ran, leaping from platform to platform. When she approached the electric arcs, she had to leap back to the platform behind her, then forward again as soon as the arc went off. Then came another corridor, and another, and another, each with its own deadly challenges. Finally, soul repositories depleted, stamina exhausted, she stumbled into the next room.

Two golems dropped down from the ceiling behind her, and a third in front.

On instinct, she rushed forward, leaping and then kicking off a wall to get extra distance. She didn’t look back; it would just slow her down. There were two elevated pillars, and she kicked off between them, rapidly ascending, then leapt forward, and just in time. Behind her, she felt the air of the bladed arm of the smaller golem.

One more leap brought her onto the platform with the forward golem. She dodged its first smash, but the hit caused the platform to wobble and she lost her footing. She scrambled for the far edge past it.

She almost made it. Stone spikes rained down from the ceiling, and one caught her in the leg. Mirian screamed, then toppled off the platform, dropping thirty feet to the floor below. The fall didn’t kill her. Instead, electric traps on the floor turned on, and then there was darkness.

***

The next cycle, the 160th, she figured out the solution to the last room. When the golem slammed the platform, that somehow sent a signal to the spikes above. She had to slide under the golem, between its legs, while the spikes rained down.

She made it to the final platform, then ran through the door. She looked around, expecting more golems, traps, or maybe a blade that descended from the ceiling. Instead, she froze.

She was in a jungle.

Is this the final room?

Except it was too small for that, but the plant life there seemed similar.

Another feeling overwhelmed her: her connection to her mana. At last! she thought in relief. She walked forward, brushing aside a low hanging branch. There, in the center of the room, was a pedestal. The top of it was decagonal. On each side was a single, beautifully formed glyph.

The basic forces of energy. Kinetic, heat, magnetism, electricity, gravity, sound, light, arcane, and soul. But what is the last glyph? She had never seen it before.

She heard the pleasant sound of birdsong. She looked up, and saw a black bird sitting on a branch, its wings covered in eyes. She looked at it, ready to fight, but it didn’t seem hostile. The brush stirred, and a small lizard-like thing scurried by, unconcerned by her presence. Its scales resembled the fangs of a snake, but twisted together like braids. The bark of the trees seemed to slowly undulate. The insects flying around were wholly alien to her.

This was life, but not the kind found on the surface. Still, it wasn’t actively attacking her, so she let them be.

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She approached the pedestal, and experimentally channeled a trickle of mana into the glyph for heat energy.

Not much happened. Did the room become slightly warmer?