Chapter 268 – Presence

Mirian made her way to the conduit room near the Gate immediately.

I made it, she told Eyeball as she blinked into the room.

HAHA. HAHAHA, Eyeball thought at her, but they didn’t have the usual amusement flashing on their skin. HOLD ON. I’M DELAYING.

Pact stuff?

PACT STUFF. WELL, YOU’VE FIGURED OUT THE PACT PROBLEMS ARE FALLOUT FROM THE GODS’ WAR. LITTLE TIP FOR YOU, WHILE WE WAIT FOR OUR HUMOR CHALLENGED FRIEND. IF YOU’RE THINKING ABOUT HAVING A WAR AMONG THE ASCENDED GODS? JUST DON’T.

I’ll keep that in mind, Mirian thought.

Conductor appeared a moment later.

YOU GOT LOST AGAIN, Eyeball said.

I DID NOT.

YES YOU DID. I WILL BE WATCHING YOU FROM THE SECOTH CONTINUUM SPLIT, AND YOU’LL BE LOOKING AROUND CONFUSED FOR A WHOLE TWO-TENTHS OF A SECOND.

Conductor’s skin-teeth stiffened, which meant they were annoyed. LET’S GET TO THE POINT, the Elder creature said.

SHE MADE IT, Eyeball thought, and Mirian breathed out a sigh of relief. She wasn’t sure she actually had. THAT MEANS WE HAVE TO CONNECT THE GATE.

HE WON’T BE HAPPY, Conductor said. WE SHOULD REFUSE.

ONLY WITH MOST OF THE OUTCOMES.

If you’ve seen what I want, then you know…

THAT’S PRECISELY THE PROBLEM, Eyeball said. HUMANITY WAS GIFTED ENTERIA. BUT IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN THE GIFT, YOU HAVE TO… UGH I CAN’T SAY. LEARNING IN A LINEAR CHRONOLOGY IS SO ANNOYING. JUST… LET’S USE ONE OF YOUR HUMAN ‘METAPHORS.’ TIME IS A TREE.

And most of the branches are on fire.

YES, QUITE A LOT OF THEM, IN FACT. THERE’S A LOT MORE FIRE THAN TREE AT THIS POINT. JUST… UGH, HOW DO WE EXPLAIN THINGS WITHOUT VIOLATING THE PACT?

Conductor blinked forward slightly. THE PACT IS IN PLACE TO PREVENT THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT MIGHT LEAD TO ANOTHER GODS’ WAR. THE OMINIAN’S GIFT IS LIKE GIVING A CHILD A COMBUSTION SPELL. YES, THEY CAN USE IT TO CHANGE THE CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF THE CORPSES THEY EAT, BUT THEY ALSO MIGHT LIGHT MORE OF THE TREE ON FIRE.

Mirian had to take a moment. Cooking. The human word is ‘cooking.’ But yes, I see your point. Access to the Ominian’s body… changes things. The temporal anchors are there.

YES, Eyeball thought. AND YOU KNOW ALL ABOUT HOW INDIVIDUAL ACTIONS THAT ARE, IN ISOLATION, PERFECTLY FINE, LEAD UP TO SYSTEMIC CRISES.

Mirian thought of what she could do if she could seize the temporal anchors that had returned. Jei. She could bring Jei in. Viridian. With more anchors, Endresen and Torres. Then I won’t let the others use this Gate. I don’t even have to let them know I can go there. I can just say it was the whims of the Ominian.

IF YOU’RE RELYING ON SOMETHING STAYING A SECRET TO PREVENT A PROBLEM, YOU’RE JUST DELAYING THE PROBLEM.

Mirian raised an eyebrow. Isn’t that what you’re doing?

Eyeball’s skin fluoresced in amusement. QUITE THE CONUNDRUM, ISN’T IT? WHAT DOES ONE DO ABOUT AN INEVITABLE PROBLEM?

I’LL TELL HER, THEN, Conductor said. WE’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR THE FUTURE WHERE ENTERIA LIVES. SCOURING THE FIELDS. LOOKING THROUGH ALL THE POSSIBLE DECISIONS, AND WHERE THEY LEAD. The Elder creature paused. WE HAVEN’T FOUND IT YET.

A chill passed through Mirian. How many dead futures had they looked through? It was probably best that she didn’t know. Are you saying I shouldn’t go through the Gate to Divir?

OH, NO. ALL THOSE OTHER FIELDS OF TIME ARE ON FIRE TOO. ER, BRANCHES. WAIT, DO FIELDS HAVE TO BE HORIZONTAL? WELL, NEVER MIND. YOU’LL KNOW SOON ENOUGH, Eyeball said. JUST WARNING YOU, THOUGH, WE CAN’T USE THE CONDUIT ROOM ON DIVIR. THERE’S THE ISSUE.

The entropic antimagic field? But the field is a shell. The inside should be safe, right?

WE’VE SAID ENOUGH. TOO MUCH, Conductor said. ONE OF THE UNMOORED IS SNOOPING AROUND.

Before Mirian could ask what that meant, the other Elder creature vanished.

SO. I COULDN’T HELP MYSELF. I PEEKED, SO I ALREADY KNOW WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO DO. BUT YOU HAVE TO SAY IT ANYWAYS.

Mirian nodded. Open the Torrviol Gate to Divir.

She felt the pulse of arcane energy ripple through the air as the Gate activated.

***

Mirian took a deep breath, then stepped through the Gate.

A moment later, she stepped back through, feeling a bit sheepish. There was no air on Divir. She’d known that, but gotten carried away.

We’ll leave that incident out of the official histories, she decided. She wondered what sort of ridiculous and stupid things the First Prophet had done that people had tactfully not recorded.

She wasn’t sure exactly how the Gate distinguished between fluids that weren’t allowed, like atmosphere or water from the Mahatan Oasis, and fluids that were, like the water in her blood and the air in her lungs. However, there was a way to move air through the Gate reliably, and that was to use a spell to condense it down into a pressurized sphere using a spell, then trap that air in some sort of container that she carried with her. The air burst apart as soon as the spell was cut by her travel through the Gate, but she quickly gathered it back in with a similar gather air spell, then let the sphere rest around her as she moved.

From the top of the Mausoleum, she took a moment to look out across Enteria. It was as beautiful here as it was in the Ominian’s dream. A glistening jewel of green, blue, and white. Sparkling oceans. Whorls of clouds. Vast forests. This place, she thought. Is there anything else like it in all the great void?

Immediately, she felt the cuts to her aura, like she was being hit by a thousand minuscule pinpricks. The entropic antimagic field was indeed a shell, or her aura would be stripped entirely, but something was happening with it. As she looked around, she could see the antimagic shell. Or rather, she couldn’t see the entropic field, but she could see constant sizzling light coming from it. All around, the sphere lit up with bursts of violet, green, and orange light, most small, but some larger. These were interactions she’d seen in the Labyrinth as she funneled pure arcane energy into an entropic field.

She had a pretty good idea what was going on here.

The Gates move arcane energy when open, drawing from the leylines. This would be the perfect mechanism to remove it from Enteria—except as it spreads out to fill the absence of ambient mana, it runs into the antimagic shell. Which means it’s starting the annihilation process now. It must be fragments of the field I’m feeling, or… hmm. More evidence for Endresen’s arcane particle theory. Unless… is a particle just what we call a small enough fragment of a field?

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

She’d have to bring some devices up here to measure what was happening.

But what will that do to the tertiary field that’s holding Divir aloft? That was a question she was far less sure of. The amount of research that was now open to her was difficult to fathom. And not just magical research. She wondered what Gaius would say when he saw artifacts of the Persaman Triarchy, untouched for thousands of years.

Mirian added a heat spell to the air around her, then levitated down to the giant doors. They opened easily to her magic, and she found herself moving down a familiar hall. It was surreal to be here, physically, after so many years. The way the walls shifted, the statues and reliefs of Elder creatures moving in and out of her sight as she walked forward—it was like returning home after a long journey. Even the silence was familiar, and she savored it. Savored this moment. The peace of moving through the Mausoleum. The accumulation of another victory.

Then, as she moved further down the hall, she began to feel the Ominian’s presence. It was more than just a pressure on her aura. It was a pressure on her very soul. The pinpricks of the entropic field vanished, replaced by a far greater pain. Mirian grit her teeth and moved forward.