Chapter 242 – Vaults

Opening the entrance door to the Vault took no time at all. Like the Frostland’s Vault, the instructions on how to open it were written in the glyphs. She read them like they were a language now.

Once inside, she took note of the puzzles. Several would require specific myrvite parts to open. She had a good guess as to which ones she’d need; some of them could be procured from the nearby econode. The others came from distant parts of Baracuel, some as far as the far eastern towns, but she knew from experience that the Syndicate would have them in stock. This Vault only had a single route, so she left and opened up the second entrance door.

An ice carnipede greeted her.

Mirian deflected its lunging bite with a hasty force shield, then drilled holes in it and set it on fire on the inside. As it was dying, she bound its soul, refilling her depleted repositories. The next few rooms held other myrvites. How the Labyrinth was keeping them alive, she wasn’t sure, since they didn’t seem to have a source of food. However, it did offer an opportunity. Depending on what I can find down here, some of the parts I need to open the other Vault might be in here.

She went through each room quickly. One held a variety of dangerous plants, but she was able to scour it clean and then use a modified spell similar to collect smoke to gather up the toxic spores they released and then burn them. Next was a room full of stygala owls. They sent flurries of razor feathers at her, flying about so they were hard to kill. She modified a force blade spell to persist in a large area, leading the owls to shred themselves as they attempted to evade. Their feathers never had a chance of piercing her barriers. After the abominations she’d faced, she wondered why the Vault bothered challenging her with such weak creatures.

Then, five rooms later, she walked into a room with ten pillars. There were three runes that were new to her, but she could understand what they meant from context. The instructions were as clear as reading glyphs. She needed to distribute specific spectra of soul energy to each pillar. While her current soul repositories allowed her to store soul energy at different energy levels, the pillars required the soul energy to still be in a pristine form. Her current design of soul repositories could allow her to produce any rune of a lower energy level than the soul she’d captured, but she’d need to make a special device for these requirements.

With a sigh, she realized she’d have to wait a cycle. She’d need her father’s help to design something that could preserve a soul that well. Mirian headed back out to the large chamber where she’d fought the abominations, and began to scavenge the few unburnt pieces of the centiscerator and some of the crystal splinters left over from the enervator. Then she checked her father’s corpse one last time. Reluctantly, she picked up his chthonic needle from where it had been lying on the ground.

A spike of bitterness shot through her. She suppressed it. One cannot hurry through the path of time, she thought. Though, that wasn’t quite right. Celen had found a shortcut.

At the very least, Mirian could work on opening the first Vault. It would just take time to procure the materials. She’d also have to make some guesses as to the materials she’d need for the rooms beyond, but she had over a month and a half left. Plenty of time to make several trips down. As long as this room stays empty, I hope. If the abomination pair appeared again, she might be forced to tap her temporal anchor to reset the cycle for herself.

She gave a mirthless laugh as she headed back to the surface. Here she was, still second only to two archmages in recorded history, and it wasn’t enough. I still need more power.

She vowed to double her spell intensity training exercises this cycle.

***

Mirian paced about the Torrian Tower lab grinding her teeth. She felt a twinge in her leg each time she pivoted, but she ignored it; it would fix itself when the world ended.

The room full of people watched her. She’d called Priest Krier, several of the professors, and one of the Akanan spies who was trained in soul magic to help her think. The results of their tests on the Labyrinth abomination pieces were conclusive. “How can the shards and the carapace have no antimagic properties?” she asked. “When we were fighting them, both of them had stronger spell resistance than a leviathan! The crystal on that enervator had more resistance than a myrvite titan! It ate 100 myr spells like they were nothing.”

Professor Jei, who was sitting in the corner, perked up. “You fought a leviathan?”

Viridian, who was twiddling a glyph pen, asked, “You fought a myrvite titan?”

Mirian ignored them. “Souls are the primary source of spell resistance. Linked orichalcum furthers it, but orichalcum by itself is passively spell resistant. So we know materials can be—Priest Krier, I told the professors about orichalcum on the day we started research. Neither the Luminates nor the Department of Public Security can keep it a secret. My current designs for a leyline regulator require over a ton of orichalcum wire. The secret foundry in the Grand Sanctum will be insufficient to the task.”

Priest Krier, who’s eyes had gone wide as dinner plates, opened and closed his mouth, then sat.

“The point is, a material can be spell resistant.”

Professor Torres spoke up next. “Is the orichalcum spell resistant because soul energy is still bound to it? You said it’s part of the process of manufacture, but the idea that the soul energy is consumed feels like an assumption. What if the soul stays bound to the metal? Following that train of thought, maybe the Labyrinth creatures were infused with soul energy.”

Priest Krier stood again. “Professor, I must protest your characterization of celestial magic. The sacred process is not one of binding souls, but of prayer and—”

“Priest Krier, I appreciate your concern, but this is not the time and place for a debate on the semantics, nor the theology,” Mirian said diplomatically. This was also not the time or place to discuss that the entire Luminate Order was practicing, by its own definitions, necromancy. Something about the Declaration Crisis and their ties with the Praetorians and Deeps had caused the Luminates to lose sight of the true character of celestial magic. Mirian suspected there was a complex political history, and had absolutely no patience for discussing that right now with anyone who was ignorant even of how ignorant they were.

She stopped pacing. Torres had a good idea though. She looked at the samples on the table. That was a line of inquiry she could pursue.

“Where’s that orichalcum hairpin and torc?”

Agent Idras stared at the table as Torres produced Specter’s stolen defensive jewelry and set them on the table next to the crystalline shards of the enervator.

“Are those…?”

“Yes,” Mirian said, and summoned her spellbook. She flipped through the pages. If there’s remnant soul energy bound to the orichalcum, I should be able to separate it back out. And, if the needles and crystal of those Labyrinth abominations are becoming spell resistant, perhaps it’s by temporary infusions. Understanding the nature of the binding…

She began to cast, then stopped. Her spells weren’t precise enough. It was like trying to get dissolved salt out of water by dipping your hand in to grasp it.

“We have a new investigation, based on her hypothesis. Torres and Endresen, I’ll need your help in designing a new tri-bonded spell engine. One that can manipulate both bindings and dissection spells. If it’s possible to separate bronze back into copper and tin, it must be possible to separate orichalcum back into its constituent pieces. We’ll just need extremely precise measurements to detect any, ah, energy that comes out.” Soul energy, she didn’t add, for the benefit of Priest Krier. She looked to Professor Viridian. “Selkus, are there myrvites that can temporarily augment their own spell resistance?”

The professor of myrvite studies tapped his chin thoughtfully. “I haven’t the slightest idea. Let me think. Hmm… you know, there’s been several papers contesting how to quantify the spell resistance of copper beetles. The wizards involved thought it might be a matter of the instruments measuring it, but perhaps it’s variable. Also sand writhers would be a good candidate to study, though they’re native to Persama, so it might be hard to—oh! There’s that wonderful Gate of yours.”

Mirian nodded. “Good. We can start investigating their ability to infuse their own tissue with concentrations of soul energy. Once the investigations are set up, I’ll be going back down into the Labyrinth again.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The meeting broke up shortly after that. Three days later, Nicolus and Nurea arrived with new crates of myrvite parts, and Mirian returned to the depths.

***

Fortunately, unlike with Frostland’s Gate, there was little movement of the Labyrinth beneath Torrviol. The abominations she killed down there remained dead, though of course, all the corpses still mysteriously vanished when left alone for too long.

It took two more shipments of myrvite parts before Mirian was able to break into the last room of the first Vault. A particularly baffling ecosystem puzzle seemed to be asking what ate the nightmelders of the northern high desert. The answer turned out to be a rare, previously undiscovered fungus. It was only by studying an intact nightmelder corpse that Viridian was able to isolate the spores of the fungus, which attached themselves to the myrvite while alive, then grew when it died. It was the spores she needed to deliver to the last pillar in the last room.

Then, she saw the final door. Gaius had been right. This Vault was significantly shorter than the last one. Primarily, this Vault seemed to be about teaching lessons about anatomy, symbiosis, and parasitism. The glyphs and runes of the final door all told a story of the interactions between arcane and celestial energies. It was simple enough to open.

Inside, she saw the nine statues of the Elder Gods. The depictions of them were exactly the same as they had been in the Frostland’s Gate Vault. Zomalator was still represented. So was the mysterious ninth God. She wondered what Priest Krier, or perhaps Pontiff Occulo would say about the depictions.

Mirian touched the lid of the stone chest in the center of the room. The stone split apart, the pieces retracting into the fourth dimension.

She instantly recognized several of the items. One of them was the crystal-creation stone. That would give us two total, she thought. Another was a leyline repulsor—the same kind the Akanans used to keep their airship dreadnoughts afloat. That would be useful.

Three of the devices she didn’t recognize. The last object was a cube full of violet and orange liquid that seemed to turn silver from a different angle. Her heart beat faster. Another cube of relicarium.

She left the cube and gathered the other devices.

***

The 28th of Solem came and went without incident. Mirian kept Cassius’s militia on patrol all the same, just in case. She also received the reports of her agents regularly. From the letters, she couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary from Palendurio. From the Syndicate reports, Cairnmouth seemed normal too. Professor Runer was detained and imprisoned for a month in Rambalda, but finally let go and reported Ibrahim was nowhere to be seen. Selesia’s reports from Akana noted the airships remained grounded, but it seemed the Akanan forces were still mobilizing, and war fever was still everywhere in the country. Liuan was delaying Akana’s invasion more than preventing it.