Chapter 165 – Speedrunning the Loop – Solem 21

Mirian sat in the heart of the Alkazaria Citadel at a long, crowded table. The large, domed room they were in was ancient. Long ago, kings had held meetings with their lords here. The old stonework and angular carvings on the wall were contrasted by the modern glyph lamps.

Ibrahim was still missing, which meant, ironically, they were having to do things the hard way. By now, the sheer amount of changes in the timeline had made conversations like this far less predictable, and the events, more volatile. This time, a scout had claimed to have caught another sighting of Atroxcidi. Mirian wondered if it was chance, or Troytin leveraging the Deeps to screw with her. After all, she’d been too busy with her own agenda to properly impede him this time.

Torres and Jei sat to her left at the table. On her right was Praetorian Trinea. First Praetorian Voran didn’t sit; instead, he paced around the table holding the myrvite detector.

Since Mirian was disguised as Adria, she kept still and waited patiently to talk.

“You’re sure?” Voran asked.

Torres glanced at Mirian. “Yes,” her old professor said stoically, though Mirian knew she was nervous as hell. “The beast will emerge. Then, it will seek out the largest source of magical energy it can find. We must strike it while it’s weak.”

“You have airships. We have a target.”

“With respect, the target will wait,” Mirian said. “The titan will not.”

“You have airships. What the hell can it do?”

“Burrow and wait them out,” Mirian said. “Professor Jei?”

Jei nodded. “Iliyia’s device tracked the beast moving back and forth underground. The logical conclusion is the titan can move within the fourth spatial dimension. This makes sense. The Elder Gods and myrvite titans are closely connected. What is necessary is spells that attack it there, in the arcane dimension. This is not something artillery can do. It takes highly trained expert spellcasters.”

“Consider Archmage Protocol,” Mirian said. Trinea, in an earlier cycle, had explained that the Praetorians had a common tactical playbook. ‘Archmage Protocol’ was the idea that, if you were going after an extremely powerful caster with unknown capabilities, you wanted to hit them as hard and as fast as possible with such overwhelming force there was no chance they could deal with it. Mirian would have rather explained how the protocol related to the Elder titan, but Adria wouldn’t.

The meeting hadn’t been going as smoothly as she liked. She considered revealing herself a Prophet, but because she’d been trying to lay low in previous cycles and had hidden herself, she didn’t know how the Praetorians would react if she did. Better to stick with what she’d practiced; combining all the routes together had been enough of a headache. The changes were all building on each other, and she’d already been forced to improvise several times.

The haze of exhaustion kept trying to settle on her. She’d been burning soul energy from her repositories regularly just to stave it off.

First Praetorian Voran looked at Mirian again, eyes narrowing. Finally he said, “Director Arturus has been in contact with me.”

That raised Mirian’s hackles. He’s at the forefront of the conspiracy within the Deeps. So it is Troytin’s work. “And?” she said, working to keep her voice steady.

Voran still looked like he was trying to bore a hole in Mirian with his eyes. “He told me some concerning things. Most worrisome, that Atroxcidi seeks to strike Baracuel. Soon. Very soon.”

There was a sharp intake of breath throughout the room.

Mirian sneered. “The Department of Public Security has been playing politics with the Akanans. Their cell in Torrviol is out of control. I caught Nikoline Brunn sending false reports to the Capital. I don’t trust them.”

Jei looked worried, though to anyone that didn’t know her, she still looked like a statue. Her old mentor knew she was improvising now. Another damned avalanche, Mirian thought.

Voran’s shoulders relaxed slightly. There was longstanding animosity between the Deeps and Praetorians. They had to work together, but there was a lot of competition, especially as the Deeps continued to encroach on the purview of the Praetorians. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

Mirian wanted to launch into a long explanation, but that wasn’t how Adria talked. She said, curtly, “It didn’t seem relevant. It’s not part of my mission.”

Voran went back to pacing. “I can’t simply dismiss the report. If there’s any truth to it, if we’re out of position when he strikes… I don’t need to tell you how much damage he could do. And it would be the honor of the Praetorians that would die first. If the beast emerges, I have reason to order us north. But the mission comes first.”

Damnit! Mirian thought. There would be no time to organize, and that would leave her myrvite hunters and other allies unsupported. The Praetorians were crucial for preventing the beast from using the fourth dimension to evade them.

Troytin’s mobilized the Deeps. If he has Arturus, he has a lot more. He at least has an inkling of what I’m trying to do, then. Which means, he has agents here.

On a hunch, Mirian cast the celestial spell detect life. Sure enough, she could see someone who appeared to be in the wall. A secret passage, and someone listening. She needed to improvise further.

“While we continue preparations for the necromancer, let Professor Jei train the Praetorians on the spells, and Professor Torres lead the authorized scribing of the forbidden glyphs on the devices I’ve prepared. That way, we are ready for both contingencies.”

“Done,” Voran said. “Otherwise, all preparations are still to move south for the operation.”

“First Praetorian,” Mirian said with a slight bow, and left the room at a swift walk. The spy in the walls started moving too, the passage leading north. Mirian took a left and sped down the corridor as fast as was reasonable.

She arrived at Saint’s Hall, an expansive room with a tall arched ceiling, just as the spy in the wall stepped out of a secret passage and replaced both the hidden door and the tapestry covering it. The room had several guards lounging around, and several workers busy renovating a wall. She didn’t recognize the man, but she noticed a bishop sitting at one of the tables. Bishop Saban. The bishop who liked to look at her funny. But she hadn’t seen him since Ibrahim stopped attacking the city.

None of the workers or soldiers in the room had reacted at all to the spy stepping out of the wall. Mirian embraced her soul-sight. Bindings, she saw immediately. That it was illegal for the Deeps to impersonate soldiers was irrelevant. She knew instantly the room was full of agents. But the spy who had come out of the wall was just another agent. The coin being siphoned from the Grand Sanctum to fund the conspiracy had come from the eastern temples. The connection came to her. Now she knew who was in charge of this operation.

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Mirian ignored the spies, and strode over to the bishop.

“Ah, Adria,” Bishop Saban said, rising. “I’ve always said you had the courage of a…”

He left the sentence dangling, waiting for her to finish it. Specter’s tripwire word. Troytin told him I wasn’t the real Adria, but he wants to check first. “Apologies. I don’t really have time. I have a lot to do by nightfall.”

She noticed Saban’s gaze narrow as she said the first of Specter’s code words.

“And I lost my cerulean pendant on the way here. Commander Hirte was hoping I’d wear it to the masquerade after this was all over. So I’m not in the mood.”

The bishop looked at Mirian, then looked at the gathered agents. He would know Mirian had the celestial bindings disguising her to look like Adria, but he couldn’t know she wouldn’t look like Nikoline with them removed. Clearly, he’d been ordered to disrupt her plans here.

Mirian stepped closer. “The target isn’t here yet,” she said in a harsh whisper. “Who’s fucking with my orders?”

The agents started to reach towards their belts and weapons. Saban hesitated, then made a quick hand signal. They relaxed. The bishop brought his own voice to a whisper. “I got orders from the director himself.”

“Bullshit. I just talked to Arturus. Someone’s fucking with the operation. Is it one of the Akanans?” A lie had to be stated with perfect confidence.

“It had his seal,” Saban said, but he wasn’t confident.

“You of all people should know how easy those are to forge. Check for the secondary tripwire word.”

“Secondary?” the bishop said, confused.