Chapter 265 – Drifting Further

The next cycle, Liuan re-exerted her control over Akana Praediar, and Mirian was pleased to see that Akana Praediar’s aggression was restrained until late in the month of Nerevain, which meant the attacks on Cairnmouth and Palendurio were just starting when moonfall annihilated all life on Enteria.

Two cycles later, Xecatl had found a way to use spirit manipulation to control a kind of colorful myrvite bird found on Tlaxhuaco. A zephyr falcon was faster, but these birds could carry something as heavy as a focus. Xecatl could send three of the birds to meet them in Palendurio, allowing Zhuan’s violet focuses to be distributed more quickly to the Prophets in Akana. However, their contact in the Ominian’s dreamscape remained inconsistent. There was no way to predict when they might encounter another Prophet, or who it would be.

Mirian was always busy now, either diving into the Labyrinth, progressing research in Torrviol, or recently, mapping out the factories and artifice production of Baracuel and planning out how a city’s worth of material could be moved deep into the Persaman desert.

She uncovered another entrance to the Labyrinth near Second Cairn, then another in the Casnevar Range. She found two more cubes of relicarium, putting her well above the amount she’d need for her regulator armor. She spent time contemplating what the best use for it was and landed on the leyline regulators. Those strange silver tools, the same ones used by the Akanan dreadnoughts, could exert pressure on the leylines. They seemed to be identical to the tools Eyeball and Conductor used, but neither of the Elder creatures would discuss them due to the ‘pact.’ The Akanans were using the repulsion and residual magical energy as a way to float their ships, but the same phenomena might be able to move leylines closer towards Gates, allowing more energy to be redistributed, or perhaps had potential for lifting another heavy object—Divir.

That gave her three plans:

1. Build the leyline regulator in Mayat Shadr to keep the Divir moon aloft;
2. Look for some sort of leyline control mechanism on the Elder construction on Luamin;
3. Use the Akanan dreadnought artifice to keep the moon up.

The third plan had the benefit of two of the leyline levitation engines already existing in Arborholm. Liuan sent a grumpy reply to Mirian’s message about them. She could keep the airships grounded, but convincing the military to gut their superweapons and send them up into the void—that was going to be tricky. Jherica liked the plan, but brought up the problem Mirian had already discussed with the other Prophets through letters or their brief contact in the dreamscape: to install the leyline levitation engines, they’d have to pierce the entropic antimagic field around Divir.

But if I can reach the Gate….

After several messages back and forth, she got the weight of the Akanan airships from Liuan, then started the calculations and initial designs of a construct that might be able to levitate the moon. Such a device would still require leylines beneath it, just with a higher tolerance for instability. However, if that reduces the complexity and size of the regulator below, it could be the more efficient solution.

Mirian spent entire days poring over glyph sequences. Sometimes, she would emerge from one of the labs in Torrian Tower and realize she hadn’t been thinking in any human language for hours, just glyphs and runes. Then, she would be off to test how much weight a steel beam could hold and how much arcane energy draw a reinforcement enchantment was pulling from a repulsor. Often, she found herself discussing experiments she’d forgotten to tell the wizards about, or conflate an investigation Endresen was running with one she’d run a year ago. Her memory tricks and her notes in her soulbound spellbook could only take her so far. There was simply too much to know, and still too much left to be done.

When Zhuan contacted her in the dreamscape for assistance, she first wanted to tell the other woman that she was too busy. Then, she realized that she’d been busy for years. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d visited Arriroba. When she thought back, it was hard to remember Zayd’s face. She’d avoided her second family to protect them from being targeted by other Prophets, first to make sure Troytin wouldn’t touch them, then out of fear that another Prophet might.

Very well, Mirian told her through soul-speech. I’ll meet you in Palendurio.

***

It was now standard practice to keep the Palendurio Gate buried beneath the river where it stayed hidden and safe, so she met Zhuan by the riverside. By then, it was Merisheth. Without Akana Praediar’s invasion to back him, and with plenty of Baracueli army divisions free since Ibrahim wasn’t pinning them down in the south, order had been restored and General Corrmier was awaiting execution for treason. However, because of how many powerful people would have been implicated in an investigation, it was just Corrmier, his brother, and a handful of other conspirators who had been imprisoned. Gabriel had mentioned something about the Deeps pressuring Parliament, but as long as it didn’t involve open fighting on the street, Mirian didn’t want to deal with it.

“We’ll fly east into the Casnevar,” Mirian said as soon as Zhuan emerged from the river. Several people were staring at the Zhighuan woman who had just levitated out from the Magrio. She paid them no mind. In a moment, they were about to see something a lot more shocking than that.

“What’s the political situation here?” Zhuan asked.

Mirian waved a dismissive hand. “Stable. I had the Luminate Order declare me a Prophet in secret. They know I’m working on something to stop the crisis, but that the project benefits from staying hidden. It keeps things quiet, and it’s less for me to deal with.”

Zhuan shook her head. “You should be working on that part.”

“Later,” Mirian said. “First, I need something for them to build. Then I’ll worry about how they’ll build it. The prototypes in Torrviol are making progress. I’ve worked out how to efficiently get rotating shifts of arcanists to grow quarter-scale conduit crystals. Ready?”

Zhuan clenched and unclenched her jaw. They’d had this conversation before. “Ready.”

Mirian used lift person on her then cast her own supreme levitation, then added a minor force cone to shield them from the wind and cut through the air. Hundreds of people probably saw her, but whatever effect that had on the timeline, she didn’t care. There wasn’t enough time for it to evolve into anything significantly disruptive.

Besides, plenty of them probably thought they were seeing a zephyr falcon.

They left the city behind quickly, then were passing over farmland until the reached the foothills. Mirian looked over and realized Zhuan was grinning. When she noticed Mirian watching her, she said, “This is fun.”

Mirian let a small smile show. Many years ago, she’d been enthralled by her first flights. When did it lose its novelty? she wondered. And at least Zhuan would remember the joy, unlike the people below them. They would remember nothing.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Mirian had gone hunting enough for myrvite parts in the mountains. She didn’t remember exactly where the wyvern nests or rock drake caves would be, but she had a general sense, and detect life did the rest. Within a few minutes of landing on the slopes, Mirian had bound a wyvern in force shackles.

Nestmate showing dominance, she told it. Submit.

It stopped its thrashing, but still looked confused. Mirian was very clearly not a nestmate.

“Xecatl is getting better at speaking in the dream, and she has those spirit-constructs. But this is different. How?”

“It’s like any language,” Mirian explained. “You just have to speak to them in glyphs and runes. Xecatl is doing it, she’s just better at having conversations with trees.”