Chapter 172 – The Long Road Ahead

Mirian paid for new accommodations for her adoptive family, one with guards. She contracted another company to keep an eye out on anyone attempting to surveil them. The nice thing about Florin was there were a lot of services available for anyone with the coin to pay.

As the war and coup developed, rich families from across Baracuel found their way to the city, perhaps hoping neutral Florin would protect both them and their assets. Likely, they were right. The prices of luxury services and rented apartments went up across the city.

She had promised herself to take this cycle easy, but she also didn’t expect to return to the Florin Principality anytime soon. By the 28th, she’d constructed another three leyline detectors. Sure enough, without Troytin to interfere, Cearsia ordered the destruction of the Divine Monument as soon as she’d captured the city. From this far south, Mirian could only get poor readings.

North of Alkazaria, there was no movement. Apophagorga was either dead or had simply decided to stay burrowed near the leyline.

When the 4th of Duala came, she joined her family on the roof of the apartment after dinner. “I like to watch. There’s a sinister beauty to it. The auroras… the eruptions. Such magnificent colors.”

In the ocean, the dark sea shimmered with a bloom of light.

“I didn’t realize the arcane eruptions were also taking place under the ocean, though I suppose it makes sense,” she added.

Dhelia looked stricken. “Why don’t the Elder Gods stop it?”

“I don’t know,” Mirian said. “Maybe they’re busy. Maybe they can’t. Something happened to the Ominian. They seem… wounded.” She thought of the multitude of wounds in the God’s stone-like flesh, the dripping ichor. She thought of Them sitting on the throne of the Mausoleum, silent and still.

“I still can’t believe it,” Jeron said. “We just sent you off to your final year at the Academy. I can still remember you running around the village as a child, pretending to be a mage.”

“It was very cute,” Dhelia added, then looked over at Zayd. The ground shook again. Her mother looked down at the crowds below. “They must be so scared, not knowing what’s happening.”

“Scary even if you do know what’s happening,” her father said.

“Not really,” Dhelia replied.

Zayd let out a “woah!” as another aurora danced across the sky.

Mirian looked to the Divir moon. It should have started falling by now, she thought. Killing Apophagorga hadn’t changed anything, and she knew for sure the Divine Monument had been destroyed. “A moment,” she said, and returned to the room below where one of her leyline detectors was running. She activated the illusionary display. Without data from the other two detectors to triangulate, the information was incomplete, but it was enough for a basic analysis. The pattern of collapse beneath the surface looks typical. Breakdowns along the Palendurio axis, as expected when the Monument blows, then the effects propagate down to Persama where the moon falls. But it’s not falling yet. Is it leylines in Persama…?

She felt nervous hope surge through her. Did Ibrahim change tactics and start working on the leylines? Did he find a way to stabilize them? Or are there other time travelers, and they found a way to prevent their own Monument from collapsing?

Mirian reemerged on the roof. “Something’s changed,” she said. “We might not see the moon fall tonight after all.”

Her father breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh thank the Gods. I’ve been trying to put on a brave face, but… I really don’t want to die. How much longer do we have?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Well, I like that answer better.”

***

The moon fell on Duala the 10th, six days behind schedule. Mirian had pieced together as much as she could with the leyline detectors, recording some of the most critical information in her soulbound spellbook. By the morning of the 10th, the amount of arcane eruptions occurring at regular intervals had been staggering.

Mirian woke to the dripping ceiling again. Quickly, she fixed up the hole with her new spells before Lily was awake. Then, with a heavy sigh, she got ready to start her investigations.

First, she needed to investigate the presence of other time travelers. With Troytin gone, the Republic Intelligence Division and the Deeps wouldn’t be looking for her. She could finally start moving around in Akana Praediar and figure out just what in the five hells was happening over there. Perhaps she could even stop the war before it even started. If she could recruit allies with persistent memories, that would change everything. If they were her enemies, she needed to know that even more urgently.

Second, there was the Divine Monument. She still wanted to investigate the possibility that the structure wasn’t unique. Her delves into the Palendurio underground hadn’t turned up anything yet, but it also hadn’t been a focus. Jei’s equations implied a second set of coordinates was necessary to make the Elder devices do anything. But, with her new knowledge of runes and tri-bonded sequences, there were new breakthroughs to make in magic, even if all she had was the Torrviol Divine Monument to study.

Third, she needed leyline data. A lot of it. She needed to put detectors in the furthest flung places she could and figure out exactly what was happening so that she could figure out how to stop it. Or even if it could be stopped. With the soulbound Holy Pages, she could finally record data in detail. That would eventually allow her to do something like what Viridian did with his Akanan climate device, except modeling the leylines instead of the weather. Magical research also might assist her. There were still devices at the end of the Frostland’s Gate Labyrinth with unknown functions, and there was that simulation room that seemed to be connected to the arcane eruptions somehow. There was also her new titan catalyst to study. While it had already made casting arcane and celestial spells easier and lent more power to her spells, she hadn’t begun to understand the full implications of such a substance.

Fourth, there was that damn memory curse on her. It was burrowed deep in her soul. She still wasn’t sure how to pick it apart, nor how to dispel the curse safely. She needed to talk to the psychopathic necromancers who had done it to her as a child in the first place. This ‘Doctor Westerun’ seemed like a good person to start with, but investigating the Deeps and the conspiracy might get her information as a side effect. Reluctantly, she had to admit it was the least important of her objectives. The curse bothered her, but it clearly wasn’t impeding her. The fate of the world came first.

Though she’d just made a priority list, Mirian immediately violated it by resolving to spend the cycle in Torrviol. She’d just run wild across all of Baracuel for months. The time loop was still going. It showed no signs of stopping. A month of relaxing research sounded too good to pass up.

She started by recruiting Jei and Torres, then got to work on the Monument as soon as she could. Perhaps ‘relaxing’ wasn’t the right term. The Elder device was monstrously complex, and despite her encyclopedic knowledge of glyphs and runes, there were plenty of sequences used that she couldn’t even guess the function of. She quickly became convinced that there were layers upon layers of glyphs beneath the surface, like an Allard bank seal, only far more complex. The more productive solution was a variation of what the researchers had been trying, which was introducing different energy inputs into parts of the system and seeing what resulted. In short, a great deal of drudgery, not unlike what she’d need to do to study the leylines.

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On the 10th of Solem, though, her plans of relaxation came to a grinding halt.

She picked up the Torrviol Broadsheet to check the news, expecting the usual article about Dawn’s Peace being defeated. Instead, the front page read:

RAMBALDA REBELS! ATROXCIDI RETURNS! UNDEAD SIEGE ALKAZARIA!

A sinister rebel group in Persama known as “Dawn’s Peace” used great treachery to slaughter the Baracueli peacekeepers in Rambalda. By the same treachery, these Persaman outlaws attacked the forts along the Southern Range, then attacked Alkazaria itself! Only by the heroic effort of the garrison was the surprise attack repelled. Once behind the walls of the capital, the soldiers thought they would be safe until reinforcements arrived. But the Torrviol Broadsheet has learned that the forces at work here are far more sinister than a mere rebellion!

Just days ago, legions of undead soldiers emerged from the desert and joined the siege. These terrifying skeletal monstrosities, animated by foul necromancy, were the feared shock troops of the insurrectionaries during the Unification War.

“There can only be one explanation,” Commander Batima Ayral, commander of the Alkazaria garrison, stated to concerned citizens in an address. “The necromancer Atroxcidi has returned. There are no necromancers in Baracuel, and our brave soldiers have fought hard to suppress the despicable practice in Persama. Only a necromancer of his power could command so many undead. But fear not! The Praetorians are with us, and our allies will soon come to our aid.”

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