Chapter 270 – Assembly

Mirian watched as members of the Cult of Eintocarst went through their final test of the Holy Crucible. The divination spell engines around the room began to glow as illusionary projections danced in front of her. She only half paid attention to them, preferring to sense the magic currents herself as they moved through her aura.

She shook her head. There was too much leakage on the fourth soul refractor. “Check the rune sequences in the 7B channel. I’ll fix the refractor myself.” She retrieved one of the Elder artifacts she’d retrieved from the Labyrinth for the task and got to work. Sure enough, the refractor had hairline cracks, only visible with several lens spells.

As the priests dutifully checked over the sequences again, Mirian went over the areas where runes and glyphs were linked in tri-bonds together. No one on Enteria could do that for her. Then she checked the soul repositories. Then she waited for the other checks to finish.

She had spent weeks on end hunting the most powerful myrvites she could in the Jiandzhi. All of it together would create a single ingot of adamantium. It wasn’t a lot to work with, but it was still more of the sacred metal than had been made in the prior century.

When she was done, the next loop would see trace elements vanish from places all over Enteria. A dozen alchemist shops would have to contend with diluted inks. A hundred myrvites would be missing small bits of themselves. The Ennecus Guild would find chunks of its magichemical inventory missing. The Association of Metallurgists and Cult of Eintocarst would find several ingots of rare metals missing. The imperial weavers of Uxalak would see a bounty of royal silk go missing. A dozen artifacts from the Labyrinth Vaults would vanish.

And most noticeably, the Triarch’s mythril armor and scepter would be gone from Duala.

She’d learned from previous cycles that it would be a problem to have Gaius hiding out in Alkazaria, so she had him keeping a watch on the movement of anyone coming into the city. Checking the trains for Praetorians or agents carrying anything runic. Checking the cargo ships for too many passengers. She also had the Luminate Order’s full backing, granted in secret by Pontiff Oculo. With her command, they had been moving to root out traitors. Now, Carkavakom’s priests acted as watchers from Palendurio to Madinahr, ensuring the sacred laws were followed. The pilgrims of Altrukyst acted as scouts. The scholars of Yiaverunan, as accountants and logisticians.

Even the Cult of Zomalator was involved, though without the knowledge of the Pontiff. Through Lecne and his priests, she had set up deals with the criminal syndicates, giving her eyes on the movements of black market goods. Everywhere in Baracuel, a secret stirred beneath the surface of the world. Months of such movement were too large to be concealed, so the secret was hardly contained. It had become a whisper in every tavern, the very water that moved the rumor mill: a new Prophet had risen. Or perhaps several.

Mirian could no more stop these rumors than she could stop Divir from falling; no secret could survive when that many people knew about it. So she had prepared with that in mind. Mirian’s regulator armor wasn’t just a prototype. It represented a way to magnify her already considerable power.

In a word, it was bait to a trap.

If Scebur hadn’t actually been eliminated, now was the time he’d be forced to strike. If one of the other Prophets wanted to stop her, she would force their hand. If Xecatl was right, and her enemies were just biding their time, they could bide it no longer. With the Gates under her control, the only way they could force an end to this cycle was through a massive confrontation.

So as she worked, she kept watch.

Baracuel contained its usual turbulence. She’d had the Corrmier brothers and a few other big-name conspirators quietly abducted and assassinated, but their network of allies and supporters was too vast to actually exterminate. Fortunately, Marduke Sacristar had no ideology except for his own wealth and power, so through Nicolus, she’d been able to move him into a position to support the Palamas family, who was reasserting control while Parliament flailed about ineffectually by appointing committees.

But that was just the usual unrest. So far, she’d seen no Prophet-driven movement against her. It was quite possible no one would. After all, she had been keeping those most likely to attack her in the dark about relicarium. And, the time loop would continue. If someone stopped her now, she would remember them. A tactical victory here could also be a strategic defeat.

“Sacred One,” one of the priests said, bowing. “We can find no flaws in the sequences.”

“Good. We run the test again.”

This time, the fourth soul refractor had no leakage. When she checked the middle of the crucible, there was a puddle of molten orichalcum.

“Change out the holy repositories,” she said, gesturing at the soul repositories. It was necessary to change terminology around so no one realized they were doing necromancy. Holy necromancy, yes, but still necromancy. She wasn’t going to change the biases of accumulated lifetimes on a whim. “Clear the contents of the crucible. Rest up. We’ll begin forging the ingot in one hour.”

***

Beneath the Temple of Eintocarst, Mirian worked. For nearly two months she worked day in and day out. No one on Enteria had the skill she did in glyph or runework. It could only be her.

She’d recorded the rune sequences of the Triarch’s scepter for posterity, but as impressive as its design was, her own work had eclipsed theirs, and she needed it for parts. The Triarch’s mythril armor she could keep mostly intact, but it required heavy modification. For several days, she sent pieces of the armor into the crucible, channeling colossal amounts of heat into the metal so it could be shaped and the integrity of the sacred metal reinforced.

The regulator armor had a breastplate of solid mythril. From the chest radiated out sweeping lines so that the chest of the armor resembled a rib cage. This mostly followed the Triarch’s design, but she’d applied more modern methods to it, hollowing out the ‘ribs’ of the armor and putting in perfectly formed conduit crystals grown using Elder artifacts.

These conduit crystals wouldn’t work on the final leyline regulator design; they would only work when resonating with her soul. This allowed her to adjust the resistance of the conduits with a thought, allowing her to either absorb excess arcane energy or let it move in perfect flow. This formulation built on her early research, and was the pinnacle of the studies that she, Jei, Seneca, and her father had worked through. First, they’d discovered amber jeweled lotus extract could be incorporated into chrysoberyl for a higher mana capacity than corundum. Then, she tested out adding powdered orichalcum and then powdered mythril to crystals, which had led her to the soul-linked conduits.

The final formulation used powdered adamantium and extract of the ebonbloom lotuses from her father’s garden. It was incorporated into a silicon-carbide crystal. The resulting crystal was pearly white from one angle and looked like the night sky from another. Tiny flecks of black and gold floated in it, giving the crystals a wondrous, celestial look. Even if they’d had no useful properties, they would have been the prize of emperors. As it was, they were simply the most efficient way to move arcane energy that she had found in her years of research, very nearly achieving perfect mana flow.