Chapter 261 – A Road Not Taken

Mirian began the arduous work of re-scribing the glyphs in her spellbook. She took the time to import specialized materials using Nurea’s connections with the Syndicate and used Torrian Tower’s specialized precision-scribing equipment. Along the way, she found ways to improve the efficiency of the glyphs she reconstructed. The runes took more time given that she needed specific high-energy souls. She started by hunting in the surrounding forest and using Syndicate-smuggled myrvites, then began gating down to the Jiandzhi to get the larger souls she needed. With how many times she’d revised the context in her soulbound book, Mirian had become highly adept at all the steps in the process, though she hadn’t needed to rebuild so much of it at once.

Then, near the end of Solem, she received a message from Jherica:

Mirian,

Liuan’s new plan failed catastrophically. She’s dead. Akana is on a warpath, and the airships are NOT sabotaged. Tried, but now I’m in hiding. Making my way to our mutual friend with the big tree (hopefully vague enough, I expect most of these to be intercepted).

-Sio Jherica

 

Copy 7 of 14

That was going to be a problem.

With Liuan’s hand pushing on the Akanan army, she could get Marshal Cearsia convinced that the ‘weapon’ the RID was propagandizing about wasn’t actually in Torrviol. Without any strategic objective there, the delayed Akanan invasion avoided anything north of Cairnmouth. Without her, though…

“Fuck,” Mirian said as soon as she was done reading the letter. The Akanan invasion would be in a few days and she hadn’t prepared the militia. “Get me Professor Cassius and Captain Moliner. Well, she’s not a captain of the militia yet, but she will be.”

“Who?” asked Song Jei, who happened to be in the room with her.

Mirian waved a dismissive hand. “Cassius will know her. If he’s not in his office, he’s at the practice range or with his eximontar.” Then she began muttering to herself. “Then we’ll need to accelerate the training, build the barricades, collapse the north tunnel network, set foss charges to detonate west of the dorms… should have gotten my… ugh. And where’s Luspire? I need him to hold the front lines while I take down the airships, again. Actually…”

She blinked out the window and headed north to begin walling off the underground passages.

***

Mirian landed on the deck of the Might of Liberty and calmly walked towards the bridge. As she walked, dozens of bullets and spells sank into her black shield. She used the absorbed energy to blast weapons and wands out of the hands of her attackers. The airships and army were still several hours out of Torrviol, and Mirian had come up with a plan that she hoped would save her a lot of time.

“Marshal Emera Cearsia, I wish to negotiate Torrviol’s safety,” she announced as she burst down the door. Cearsia, of course, opened up her spellbook, but Mirian tore it from her hands, stripped the officers of weapons, then blew up the communications console. “My understanding is that the Prophet Liuan Var failed to stop the war this cycle. I am the Prophet Mirian.”

Cearsia was staring at her open-mouthed before she realized she’d lost her composure. “I don’t negotiate with traitors, and I certainly don’t negotiate with mass-murderers who slaughter civilians. Your government—”

“Yes, yes, I know what you believe. You were told Baracuel has developed a secret weapon that is blowing up your cities and then they assassinated your head of state. You were lied to and manipulated because there’s a bunch of powerful people in Akana Praediar who want to turn Baracuel into a subservient country. The magical eruptions, however, are caused by spell engine overuse. All that waste mana is overloading the leylines. What your spies have told you is the ‘Divine Monument’ is actually a Gate created by the Elder Gods. If you blow it up, the apocalypse is in a few days. If you leave it intact, the apocalypse is in a few months, and I have more time to work on preventing it. You’re in a time loop, but only the Prophets can remember previous cycles.”

“You’re a… you expect me to believe that sort of nonsense? Liuan was executed—”

“I’m sure she was, and I promise it won’t stick. She’ll learn from whatever mistakes she made, and you never will. Do you have an explanation for how a sixth-year academy student casually levitated up to your airship and disarmed both you and the majority of the crew? Look, I can show you the Torrviol Gate. It’s currently linked to Mahatan. We can go through it and you can see the city, then I’ll take you back and you can call off your army. Then you can go south and do whatever you want to Cairnmouth or Palendurio—you do like vengefully slaughtering civilians who had nothing to do with even your stated grievances—or head back across the Rift Sea. I don’t care, as long as you don’t attack Torrviol and don’t blow up the Gate.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then I blow up your airships and slaughter enough of the army to get it to rout. And if it comes back, I do it again. I’ll tell you, it’s annoying, time-consuming, and doesn’t help anyone. It’s inefficient and a waste of my time.” Then, Mirian used aura projection to deliver her words into the minds of the officers. I’VE DONE IT BEFORE, and showed them images of the airships burning and falling out of the sky.

The officers had all turned white. Cearsia had stumbled back, but recovered. She was shaken. “Akana Praediar does not negotiate—”

Mirian summoned Eclipse, blinked forward, and cut off her head. She used an improvised force spell to prevent the blood from ruining her clothes. “Typical Emera. Would anyone else like to negotiate? I know we have a gaggle of captains and two commodores. Same offer.”

Behind her, she felt movement. One of the officers was pulling a gun. He didn’t know her aura was right on top of his. She levitated Eclipse backward, driving the sword into his brain up to the guard.

“I—I move to… h-halt the army and d-discuss…” one of the officers stammered out.

“Great! Go ahead and give the orders. Now. Oh, and show of hands, who’d like to visit Mahatan? It’s quite beautiful this time of year.”

***

In the end, the invasion was delayed for several days. Fort Aegrimere’s division began taking up positions in the town, but it seemed the Akanan attackers might withdraw without battle.

Then there was a mutiny in the middle of the officer corps, so even though Mirian had adequately demonstrated why the Akanan army shouldn’t attack for the officers on the bridge, the whole thing was veering into something Zhuan would write about, which annoyed her. As soon as the first artillery shell landed, Mirian went on the offensive. She sliced open the repulsor engines and dropped the two airships on the army, then used Gaius’s trick of exploding the auramancers to quickly and efficiently inflict maximum casualties. She covered up the evidence with fireballs since signs of obvious necromancy would be a problem for the professors she was relying on for research.

When she returned, it was to a throughly shaken Archmage Luspire who had watched her from Torrian Tower.

“They’re routing now, but they often make another pass at the town,” she told him. “Keep lookouts posted to assist with General Hanaran’s patrols. Remember, if the Akanans get in, they slaughter everyone.” And waste my time, she mentally added.

Then she got back to work on her artifice. She’d directed as many people in the town who weren’t involved in its defense to production. If she was going to study antimagic, she already had preliminary notes, and she already had a place where she could directly study an active field:

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

The Labyrinth.

***

Mirian stood before the entropic antimagic field of the Frostland’s Gate Labyrinth. She’d looked for closer ones, but the one she’d found in the Torrviol Labyrinth was too deep to be used. She couldn’t be watching her back from enervators or causters while also conducting experiments, and she certainly couldn’t bring a crew. With her variations on supreme levitation, she could cut her travel time to Frostland’s Gate down to a few hours, and with a glider, the trip back using the high altitude winds was even faster.

Beatrice and the others stood behind her looking nervous. That was the usual reaction to her presence, and Mirian had long since grown tired of assuaging people, so she just let them be nervous.

Mirian had spent weeks testing the effectiveness of different enchantment schemes at resisting antimagic. The most effective thing she’d found was the soul-imbued metals. Ironically, the very thing she was trying to retrieve in quantity from Divir. After her extensive testing, she’d forged an orichalcum gauntlet, then reinforced it with every enchantment that seemed useful.