Chapter 228 – To Tlaxhuaco

It was on the fifth island that Xipuatl caught on to what Mirian was doing. He looked around as she prepared to levitate again and noticed a skypiper bird fall from the sky, then seemed to realize most of the creatures in the tidepools were dead too.

His eyes widened. “Wait… Mirian… are you using necromancy?”

“Yes,” she said.

Xipuatl grew pale. “But… you can’t!”

“Everything here is dead soon. I’m just speeding it up a bit. And that will give them a chance to live.”

“But necromancy—actual necromancy—it’s—it kills spirits. It becomes an attack on the aspects of the divine!”

“It’s a tool like any other. Again, everything here is already dead, it just hasn’t realized it yet.”

“Souls persist. Spirits persist. They’re not—they’re not like living things. They’re connected to the Elder Gods, and that means—augh, how do I explain it in Friian! You can’t do this. It’s… evil.”

Mirian sighed. “There will be hundreds of continuities where everything here is fine. Myrvites consume each other’s soul energy all the time. It’s part of life.”

Xipuatl was still distraught. “There’s a difference between consuming a soul for a spell and incorporating it into a spirit-amalgam, which is what myrvites do. You can’t—” He stopped, realizing his argument wasn’t fazing Mirian in the slightest. “Can you please… not? It’s going to make negotiations a lot harder.”

Mirian thought, only if you tell them. But she said, “Fine,” even though that was a lie. She’d just have to harvest myrvites he couldn’t see for mana. There was no way she was waiting around for the extra hours it would take to regenerate that much mana naturally. She sat on a rock, eyes fixed on the next island they’d be flying to. The sea breeze felt good in the warm sun, though it was a bit too humid for her tastes. “Why would a pair of leviathans do that?” she asked.

“You mentioned the leylines,” Xipuatl said, shrugging.

“Any history of that happening?”

“I’m the wrong person to ask. But not that I’m aware of. I’ve made the journey from Uxalak to Torrviol twice. Usually, leviathans stay away from boats. Worst we saw was a juvenile sea serpent, and that got chased away by a few shots from the turrets.”

That didn’t settle anything. What she really needed was to talk to the Tlaxhuacan experts. “What about leviathan catalysts? Any special properties?” Mirian was thinking about Apophagorga. It had been able to learn from different timelines, just like her. Can a leviathan do the same? Are they reacting to what Liuan has already done?

Xipuatl shrugged. “Never heard of a dead leviathan. I think some Akanan battleships killed one, once.”

Mirian only half-paid attention to his response. She’d known the answer before she asked the question. She could commune with a hostile bog lion, but that was because such a creature wasn’t a threat to her in the slightest anymore. The leviathan was too dangerous. A single force blast could shatter her prismatic shield. She would be surprised if even her father could manage that with a single spell.

Perhaps the Tlaxhuacans could tell her more. Once again, she found herself becoming impatient. Even a few days’ time felt like too long to wait.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Xipuatl had gotten lost in thoughts again. He kept looking back to where the ship had sunk, even though they couldn’t see the spot anymore. When he realized what Mirian had said, he asked, “Again? Don’t you need time to rest?”

“Not as much as you’d think,” she said, and she flew them on.

***

Mirian kept her detect life on as they flew above the ocean. In the distance, she caught sight of another leviathan, the bulky creature far closer to the islands than was normal. She spent an extra hour going around it.

More questions. There were always more questions.

Right now, she was tired of it. She wanted everything to stop getting in her way. She just wanted answers.

It can’t be rushed, she told herself, and tried to settle her mind. She turned her attention to the sea and the islands below. The sapphire waters sparkled, the shallows glistening with a brilliant turquoise. The water was clear enough that in places she could see colorful fish darting around the jeweled coral reefs. Crowning the glimmering sea were the dark spires of rock, each decorated by the bright emeralds of the flora. Mirian turned her mind to that beauty.

This is why I’m doing this, she reminded herself.

She became more careful about culling souls of the myrvites on the island to consume, and flew them at a slower pace. If Xipuatl noticed, he didn’t say much. Mostly, between Tlaxa lessons and some more lectures on life on the island, he was quiet. Mirian tried to remember what kind of things she’d said to people when she was comforting them. Picking out little phrases she remembered seemed… hollow. It felt like anything she could say would feel too false to give any succor. She let him reflect on his own, and hoped that would be enough.

Two days later, near noon, the great island of Tlaxhuaco came into view. With a start, Mirian realized this was the second time she’d seen the island. Down here, by the ocean, it seemed vast; more of a continent than an island. Up on the Divir Moon, she had seen it though. That still seemed unreal.

From her view, she knew there were three great rivers splitting off from the mountain range in Tlaxhuaco’s interior. She was heading for the eastmost river. Uxalak sat just behind the delta of that river, making its ports one of the best sheltered from the colossal storms that sometimes blew from the Obcassium Ocean.

She knew a little about the political situation and the history, both from Xipuatl and from the histories she’d read that referenced it. Contact with what would become known as Tlaxhuaco had been completely lost after the Cataclysm. There was some evidence that explorers from the Persaman Triarchy had made contact with them, but any sort of contact wasn’t sustained, or perhaps was lost when the Triarchy collapsed. It was only a few hundred years after the various pre-Unification Baracueli kingdoms had begun to cross the Rift Sea and colonize what would become Akana Praediar that regular contact was established. Various enterprising nobles had tried to conquer the island. Xipuatl’s family, the Yanez, married into one of them, establishing them as official nobility in Baracuel’s eyes.

There had been a series of wars, both in Tlaxhuaco and Akana, with more factions fighting each other than Mirian could keep track of, known as the Hundred Wars period. Eventually, when the Luminates and Church split and Akana Praediar became its own country, Tlaxhuaco also broke free of the kingdoms’ yokes and began to consolidate and militarize. Baracuel maintained they’d helped civilize the island, though modern scholars used more circumspect language to dance around the issue. Apparently, there was still a lot of bad blood about it in Tlaxhuaco, even a few hundred years later.

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Probably, it hadn’t helped when Akana Praediar had twice more attempted to invade the island, but this time, Tlaxhuaco had repelled them and come to a peace agreement. However, there was, apparently, still conflict between the two, simmering beneath the surface.

That all meant Mirian could expect two major factions: the isolationists and the synergists. Currently, the isolationists were in power, hence the difficulty of foreigners even getting on the island. Xipuatl was sort of a synergist, though he’d involved himself very little in the actual politics. His idea was brash and idealistic: he thought that if a universal theory of magic could unite Tlaxhuacan traditional magic and Baracueli arcanism, then people would have to pay more attention to the developments of Akanan and Baracueli magic. Too many facts would be on the synergists’ side to be ignored.

Coincidentally, that would elevate not just the synergists, but him and his family.

Mirian thought the strategy was too simple. Nevertheless, she’d prepared a section of notes copied out of her soulbound spellbook on her development of the universal theory of magic, including the tri-bonded glyphs. It was clear-cut evidence that couldn’t be ignored.

She expected her landing on the island to be similar to what she’d done in Palendurio, Mahatan, Falijmali, and Alkazaria. It would involve people being shocked about the apocalypse, a great deal of re-telling the same things over and over. Mirian was feeling sick of it before they even arrived. She dreaded having to be escorted by guards or stumble over petty self-important officials again. Likely, it would take an entire cycle at a minimum—maybe several—before she could get any of them to do anything useful.

Eventually, it will be worth it, though, she thought to herself. You’ll learn new magic. Figure out the leyline deficit anomaly. Perhaps even figure out why the leviathans have gone berserk. If you’re lucky, uncover a new Elder Gate.

As she approached the docks of Uxalak, though, something seemed off.