Chapter 237 – Horrors of the Depths

When Mirian reached the surface, the world seemed too bright at first, and too calm. Down in the Labyrinth, a moment’s hesitation could be death. She’d needed to stay perfectly alert, or an ambush like the one she’d just survived would be lethal.

She checked in on her professors, redirecting them or adding instructions as needed. Then she told them, “I’ll be gone for four days. I’m going to retrieve a specialist to help our work.”

There were several reasons Mirian hadn’t wanted to bring Atrah Xidi up to Torrviol initially. One, the more she interacted with her father, the more likely one of the other Prophets looked into why it was so easy for her to rope the arch-necromancer into helping her. Two, it was four days of travel she’d rather use on research or exploration, and she was trying to be as efficient as possible. Three, the revelation they were working with a scary necromancer could cause a blow-up in the Academy that would halt or destroy some of the research.

The fourth reason, she had to admit, as she flew up from the Mahatan Gate to Atrah Xidi’s hideout, was the one that was the most influential, the one she didn’t want to admit was causing her to come up with the other reasons.

She didn’t want to see his face when he realized this wasn’t their first reunion.

He’d gone so long without seeing her. He deserved the catharsis of their reunion. But she couldn’t. Not every cycle. It would waste too much time. He understood. Gaius was smart and disciplined. He always understood. But there was that moment, that brief moment, when his emotions shone through, and it broke her heart every time she saw it.

She couldn’t let such simple things stop her. I need to steel myself, she thought as she flew north, siphoning the souls of the myrvites she encountered as she went.

“Naluri,” her father whispered when she arrived. And then there it was again when she told him: that moment when his face fell.

“We’ll talk as we fly down south,” she told him, and Gaius smiled, but it wouldn’t be the same. Those beautiful moments they had shared during their first reunion, the sorrow they shared together visiting her mother’s tomb—that memory would be hers alone.

They flew back carrying one of Gaius’s undead soldiers and a satchel of ebonbloom lotuses from his garden.

When they rested that evening in the middle of the desert, she told him.

“I hate that we can’t have a proper reunion. That the loop means you’ll never remember the one we had.”

“Naluri,” her father said with a smile. “So do I. But never let that stop you. Knowing you’re alive, knowing you’re safe—it’s a balm to my soul like no other. Remember that.”

She nodded. “It hurts. How long does it take for the worst wounds to heal?”

“Some never do,” he said. “I still remember that cult who first mentored me. Saidaya and Muham especially. It was like a second family. They taught me so much.” Gaius gave a sad smile. “You can’t live without losing people. After all this time, I think I like the wounds those deaths left… raw. Tender. Then I know, after all this time, that I still care about them. And I can carry them with me, here,” he said, tapping his chest where his heart used to be.

“I think Granpa Irabi told me something similar. It just… it’s become a heavy weight to carry. So many cycles now.”

“How long?”

“Nearly twenty years in the loop,” she said. “In a few cycles, I’ll have lived more of my life in this time loop than outside it.”

“Five hells. You’re forty-two?”

“Something like that. I lost exact track. There were a few partial loops, and variance in length introduced by whether or not a Gate was active, or how long it was active—did I explain that? Having a Gate active for only part of a loop extends the cycle a few days, but having it active for the whole loop extends it farther. Same with having multiple Gates active. The part I need to know more about is how the temporal anchors extend the cycle. They return to the Ominian, up in Their Mausoleum on Divir. What I wonder is—can a chthonic needle like the one you have extend the cycle? Can they be made into temporal anchors? So I’m back to the Labyrinth, since I’m not going to use yours.”

Her father raised an eyebrow. “You know that if you need it… my death isn’t permanent, until the cycle ends. You know I’d do that for you.”

“No,” Mirian said in a tone that brooked no argument.

“Very well,” Gaius said. “What have you seen so far?”

Mirian described the first Vault in Frostland’s Gate, then her recent delve into the Torrviol.

“Oh, a voidling,” her father said after she described the final fight. “I’m impressed you killed it.”

“You know about those?”

“I had to open a Vault without a time loop. I spent a lot of time doing research. These days, people like to hoard Labyrinth research records, but that wasn’t always the case. The Triarchy, for all its flaws, compiled what it knew about the Labyrinth and spread it around enough that several of its records survived. I cross referenced that with the active guilds at the time. A voidling, though! Most of those are another level down. Did you find any centiscerators?”

Mirian gave her father a skeptical look. “There’s no way you didn’t just make that word up.”

“I never encountered one, but there was a famous expedition that included one of the Triarchs. Tried to get to the 6th level. Only one of the members survived, which is the only reason we know about them. I don’t have any of the scrolls anymore—long story—but I remember most of the details.”

On their second day of flight, Gaius regaled Mirian with everything he knew about the Labyrinth, as well as the trials he’d needed to overcome in the Vaults. Mirian was still impressed by how efficiently he could strip the souls of nearby wildlife to power his spells. Despite all her advancements, she still had plenty to improve on.

That evening, they returned through the Mahatan Gate, having stashed the mummy-soldier Gaius had brought in a large box so Mirian could study it without a bunch of annoying questions being asked. Her father approached the Gate with a sense of wonder, casting several spells as he examined it.

“Fascinating,” Gaius muttered after they passed through.

“We’ll return to the Labyrinth in the morning. Feel free to have a look around at the research.” Mirian had already detailed the wards her father needed to avoid tripping with his illusionary disguise on their flight in. She levitated the box over to Specter’s hideout, killed her, incinerated the body, and took over her little lair.

***

As Mirian laid out her supplies for the Labyrinth, her father frowned.

“That’s… it? That’s all you’re bringing?” he said, poking at the things on the table.

She frowned. She had high calorie foods, including myrvite jerky, plenty of water, rope, a telescoping metal pole, a nice sack for carrying anything they found back, and a few mana elixirs. “Why? What else would you bring?”

“Ten times as many mana elixir. Far more soul repositories, all full. We can also create enchanted lures—short lived enchantments to draw out attacks. Your probe trap spell will trigger a carapace-crusher to attack, but not a voidling or a causter. You also don’t have nearly as many enchanted items as I’d recommend. I’d add another sequence to your attack spell page to deal with the doors that slam shut. When one of those stone doors goes down, you need it open immediately. Force drill is too slow. I use shatter rock, which puts out a lot more force a lot faster. What defensive spells are you using?”

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“I’ve just been conserving my mana and using the Dusk Waves dervish stance to react in time with a prismatic shield or whatever I need. Enchanted items take too long to make, and I already have the professors here churning out artifacts needed for research.”

Gaius gave her an appraising glance. “The loop really does play with your mind, doesn’t it? No one I’ve ever talked to looks at the Labyrinth with so little concern. You see death as an inconvenience now.”

“That’s what it is.” She looked at the items laid out again. “Is it really that obvious? I thought I was being careful. After all, arcane physics tells us there must be a limit to the number of loops, so I need to be efficient. And I don’t want the other Prophets to get ahead.”