Chapter 173 – Seeker

Mirian stood by the prow of the passenger ship, letting the wind whip at her as she waited for shore to appear. Already, she was impatient to get to Vadriach City. Her mother may have loved ships, but she couldn’t see the appeal. They rocked around too much for her to do much work, and the smell of rotting kelp and salt got tiresome.

It was the 170th time loop. She’d spent two loops in Akana Praediar already. She hadn’t used any soul magic or illusions; the Republic Intelligence Division knew how to detect those. She hadn’t caused any explosions or airship chases or stolen tens of thousands of doubloons; she still wasn’t sure how closely Ibrahim was watching for her, or how many other time travelers were in play.

Instead, she’d just laid low, getting a feel for what ‘normal’ felt like. She’d walked the streets of Mercanton. She’d scouted out the RID headquarters in Vadriach, then gotten a sense of the University’s wards. Unfortunately for her, they were a lot more robust than those in a place like Torrviol, and she’d discovered laws on spellcasting were much more strict in Akana Praediar.

At last, Vadriach City appeared on the horizon.

It was a sprawling city, bigger than Palendurio and Cairnmouth put together. It also had several towers that nearly rivaled Torrian Tower in height, all of which had been built in the last decade. The coast was full of docks, warehouses, and spell-engine powered cranes, with ships arriving and departing constantly. The only city that was bigger was Mercanton, which boasted the most factories of any city on Enteria.

Mirian hoped their prodigious industrial might could be put to use. Their spell engines could be used to model the leyline collapse. She was also praying the spell engines might be put to some use in regulating the leylines. She could channel at 107 myr, putting her well over the threshold for ‘archmage.’ However, a large arcane eruption or leyline breach put out arcane power measured in tens of thousands of myr.

That was why her first priority was seeing if she could recruit any of the other time travelers. She could marshal an army, kill a myrvite titan, and duel an archmage. But she couldn’t even conceive of a way of stopping the apocalypse alone.

Another thing was bothering her. As best she could tell, removing the Elder device in Troytin had somehow extended the end of the world by six days. There was something else, beyond simply the leyline collapse, at work.

She didn’t have the slightest idea what.

“Mirian? Oh, there you are,” came a voice from behind her.

This cycle, Mirian had decided she was tired of journeying alone, so she’d recruited a student from the Academy to come with her. She had all sorts of justifications, like how it would introduce extra changes into each cycle, making her harder to track, or how the other student knew the country better than she did, but in the end, she knew herself well enough to know they were excuses. She’d asked Selesia to come with her because she reminded her of a simpler time, and she was a kind, friendly person she could talk to.

Selesia came and stood by her. “It’s really something, isn’t it?” she said, speaking in Eskanar because Mirian needed the practice with the language.

“It is. Amazing what people can build.”

It had been surprisingly easy to convince Selesia to come with her. First she was shocked to learn her crush was actually a Prophet, then elated when Mirian took her on a short flight, then disappointed that Mirian no longer wanted their relationship to be anything but friendship, then excited for a month-long adventure where she could skip school with no consequences.

Once she understood that part, things that would have normally been shocking—like purchasing counterfeit papers from the criminal Syndicate—didn’t bother her so much.

Together, they watched the city grow larger until Mirian could make out the spell engine-powered wagons moving about the streets. They used them enough that Mirian could feel a subtle pressure on her aura as she walked the streets from all the excess D-class mana not burned in the engines. Akana Praediar seemed like Baracuel, but a few steps past what a normal person considered ‘sane.’

“So what’s our, uh, mission?” Selesia asked.

“This time, we’re looking for another time traveler. A wizard named Jherica. Except they might be incapacitated.”

Selesia leaned on the railing. “This is so weird. Like, I should be in classes, but… it’s so strange. I didn’t expect to come back home for another two years.” She sniffed. “Not that Vadriach is much like home. Takoa is much more reasonably sized, and you can’t smell it from a mile off-shore.”

Mirian smiled. That was another thing she’d found while scouting the city: a lot of Akanans were stuck-up snobs who acted like other people’s existence were a personal affront to them. Selesia hated it just as much as she did. It would be nice to have someone to help keep her sane.

There was another good reason to be in Akana Praediar.

Ibrahim had somehow figured out how to recruit the arch-necromancer Atroxicidi to his cause. It was likely that within the next few cycles, the entire eastern half of Baracuel would fall to Dawn’s Peace and the undead army the other time traveler now commanded.

Mirian badly wanted to study one of the undead soldiers and figure out how it worked. However, even getting close to a necromancer with that kind of power was a needless risk. If anyone would know how to bypass the protections of the temporal anchor, it was a legendary necromancer who had killed several archmages.

As soon as they docked, Mirian was waiting by the plank. Desperately, she wanted to just levitate down, but that would get the city guard called on her, and that was what she was trying to avoid.

“So did you come often to Vadriach?” Mirian asked Selesia when they finally made it down the plank and onto the streets. She’d packed light, as always.

“Only once as a kid, but then I passed through regularly when I was going to Riverside Academy. Since, you know, it’s upriver from Vadriach. Uh, don’t roll your ‘r’s when you talk, it’ll stand out.”

“Right,” Mirian said. She’d picked them up new clothing in Palendurio that was more of an Akanan style, but walking through the streets, she still stood out because of her slightly darker skin. Still, there were plenty of people from all over the world in Vadriach. Selesia had advised her that it would only really be a problem if she went to somewhere like Ferrabridge or further west where the prejudice was a lot worse.

“You ever apply for the Academy here?”

“No, I didn’t bother. You either have to be a prodigy or have connections. Oh, we should go two blocks north! There’s a great restaurant, owned by… well, he’s a distant relative. You’ve never had genuine Takoa food, right?”

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“Never have,” Mirian said.

“How’s your spice tolerance?”

“One-half of Professor Torres’s,” Mirian said. Then to clarify, “She special orders her dishes with scarlet fire peppers.”

Selesia laughed. “Okay, I won’t do that to you. How’d that happen, anyways? East Baracuel likes spices, south Akana likes spices, but in between them, spices are heretical! I’d die if I had to live in Mercanton. They think sugar is a substitute for flavor.”

“No idea,” Mirian said.

When she’d first stepped foot in Vadriach City, Mirian had looked at the grime and trash everywhere and wondered why anyone wanted to live there. The answer, though, was several blocks away, where the streets were pristine, the churches beautiful, and the parks full of laughing children and monuments to the glory of Akana Praediar. Then, another dozen blocks away, trash piles again. The Akanan Capital was a hell of a mixed bag, it seemed.

They ate lunch at Selesia’s restaurant, then made their way to a post office.

Selesia took the lead, having been coached by Mirian over lunch. “I’m looking to send a letter to one ‘Jherica,’” Selesia told the woman at a desk. “They’re a member of the University.”

The woman looked at her. “Is that the first name or last name?”