Chapter 201 – Research Interrupted

Selkus Viridian sat next to Mirian on the garden bench, looking out across the courtyard. An artificial waterfall from one of the stone aqueducts was complemented by bird song. The birds, unfortunately, were in little bronze cages, which glittered prettily but somewhat soured Mirian on the scene.

Sentinel Eylua stood just behind them on the bench, looming. Her presence was starting to grate on Mirian.

“There’s definitely novel research to be found in exploring the lotuses,” Viridian said. “Probably, new hybrids could be grown that produce more of the magichemicals Sefora is after. The problem is, that would take over a month, and I’m to understand that’s a bit of a problem.”

Mirian had told the professors about the apocalypse like she always did, but hadn’t told the prince. Given that Gabriel was trying to keep Prince Rehiz happy, it meant dancing around certain facts in her conversations.

“That would give us a very short time for the alchemistry side of the research. But if it works…”

The jeweled lotuses could be used to make arcane catalysts with minimal alchemical processing, and the tests Seneca had done on the tiny crystals in their petals had shown that they might be useful in creating new kinds of conduit crystals. The problem was, they produced both the magichemicals and crystals in tiny amounts. The other problem was both Prince Rehiz and Minister Zeysum had only allowed them to sample a few petals from a few plants. The lotuses, after all, were also sacred. Mirian was a bit sick of how many sacred things Mahatan seemed to have.

“Anything that has the potential to enhance the capacity or efficiency of a conduit crystal has to be a priority for our research.” Glancing back, she said, “If there’s an arcane eruption near the palace, the sacred gardens are vulnerable. The leyline disruptions are going to get worse the longer this takes us.”

Eylua didn’t respond to the information, but Gabriel had assured Mirian that the woman had an excellent memory.

“I’ve asked permission to try growing my own, and I’m trying to get silt imported from the Setarab river. I’m afraid the royal gardeners don’t trust me much. I suppose that’s natural, but it has been a bit disappointing. The practices they’re using have a strong traditional basis, and while traditions can be a great source of well-tested knowledge, they can also be an impediment to new methodologies. It would be easier if they shared my feeling of our impermanence in this world,” Viridian said.

What he meant was, ‘tell them about the time loop so no one cares if I turn the whole garden to mulch,’ but he was being diplomatic about it. “Maybe next time,” she replied absent mindedly. That was vague enough Eylua couldn’t infer too much. Next time would be better. She was filing away bits of knowledge that might be helpful in convincing them. She stood. “I need to see how Torres is progressing with the spellrods.”

As soon as she started moving, Sentinel Eylua was behind her. She’s taking the order ‘shadow her’ a bit too literally.

***

Professor Torres met her with a stack full of diagrams. “These designs all have glyph organization methods that might improve the efficiency of your spellbook, depending on how you’ve optimized it,” her old artificing professor said. “This one is interesting because of the way it does conduit-linkage.”

Torres had another spellrod partially disassembled on a table. The head archivist was looking at the whole thing with a great deal of concern. Clearly, she didn’t know how meticulous Torres was.

Mirian ran her finger over the diagram, tracing glyph paths. “This is interesting. The crystals are directly linked? It doesn’t use silver or gold wire at all?”

“None. They used calcite crystals, so not the most efficient conduit, but they chose ones with faces that fit together like a puzzle.”

That would be a useful technique to copy. The ancient Persamans had needed to find crystals that could line up. With Zhighuan crystal magic, Mirian could just grow them. It would greatly reduce the inefficiency of the mana moving through the conduit and prevent the kind of heat and electric energy buildup that occurred when massive amounts of mana were moving through a conduit.

They began to discuss the other layouts that Torres had discovered.

Midway through the conversation, the archivist interrupted them. “You are going to put the spellrod back together, yes? It belonged to Triarch Masikatt, second of her name.”

“Yes, I’ll get to it,” Torres said, annoyed. “That one’s more ornamental than functional. Too much gold bleeding off mana,” she told Mirian.

***

Several days later, the eruptions had worsened. That had led to Viridian being able to convince the gardeners to give him a bit more free-reign. Viridian had also managed to steal several lotus seeds and was attempting to secretly introduce them to small amounts of fossilized myrvite under the suspicion that ebonbloom lotuses might be regular jeweled lotuses that grew differently because of environmental conditions. There were a few myrvite plants that did something like that, though it wasn’t common.

The leyline readings that were coming in were promising. The intensity of the leylines running near Mahatan were lower than usual, though the eruptions near Torrviol had increased. One arcane geyser had erupted in Torrviol Lake itself, destroying two fishing boats and terrifying the rest. The spellward barrier around town had been breached too many times, and myrvites were starting to kill farm animals—and at least one student.

By then, Endresen and several other professors Mirian had brought through the Gate were teaching classes to some hundred Persaman students. Rehiz seemed pleased by this, especially since he was able to position the classes as a gift from the palace and promise it would help rid Mahatan of the much loathed bandits that plagued the trade routes.

Mirian had just finished her debrief with Jei when Gabriel barged in.

“God, are you going to ever make a move on her?” he asked in Cuelsin.

She clenched her jaw. “Stick to the report.”

“Seriously, it’s obvious you like her. So seduce her! You must know something she likes by now.”

“That’s not why. She’s not… it doesn’t matter how I see her. She doesn’t see me that way. And I respect her too much to do anything. You don’t know what she’s done for me, so shut the hells up.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes, then swapped to Eskinar. “I kept the news out of the city as long as I could. Paid a lot of bandits, tipped off others, even killed some messenger birds. But now our wonderful prince has heard what’s going on with Ibrahim.”

“Hmph. And how’d he react?”

“A little too eagerly. You have to remember, Mahatan was straight-up fucking pillaged by Baracueli soldiers and their mercenaries. They fought here for a decade before the prince sucking on Baracuel’s teat was assassinated and replaced. Yes, Dawn’s Peace got chased out of here, yes, the northern corporations have their sticky little fingers snatching up all the foss dug up here—”

“Foss?”

“You should try talking to normal people sometime. Academics and corporations use ‘fossilized myrvite.’ Miners and traders just say ‘foss.’ You’re all about efficiency, right? Seems like the sort of thing you’d love. Anyways, the point is, you need to talk to him. Convince him that Ibrahim is just faffing about and that he’d be a fool to join him. Or that you’ve foreseen some bullshit. He’s already pissed at me that my agents somehow ‘missed’ this development that Alatishad has known about for a full week now. Actually two, but I’m not about to let truth get in the way. You want more time to let your little team of ivory tower wizards play with flowers? Then you need to earn it.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

***

Mirian met Prince Rehiz in his hunting room three days later, which was decorated with the skulls of various myrvites. She wasn’t sure how impressive it was to kill a two-headed vulture, but that seemed to be a favorite hunting target. Maybe it was some tradition.

The greater dune drake skull, on the other hand, was impressive. It was about as wide as Mirian was tall.

“Ah, Mirian the Chosen,” he said. He seemed in a good mood.

“Honored Prince,” she replied. “You wanted to see me about Ibrahim Kalishah?” Gabriel had arranged the meeting, though obviously the prince had felt no rush about the matter.

“I doubt that’s his real last name. The tomes of families indicate that line died out.”

“I wouldn’t know. What did you want to know about him?”