Chapter 271 – Excursion

Mirian watched the auroras over Alkazaria. They’d intensified dramatically over the past four days, but they were still at lower levels than usual.

She stood atop one of the towers on the central hill wearing Equinox and summoned the leyline repulsors into place. A collective murmur went through the priests and arcanists watching her. She was used to the reaction. It was one thing to know, and another to see.

Mirian began to gather her auric mana, letting it gather. “Go ahead,” she told the arcanists.

The arcanists cast, using a directed magnetic spell on her armor. The energy went through the transmutation process, becoming arcane energy that she could tap into. Measuring mana was still difficult, but from what she could tell, with Equinox, she now could gain more arcane energy than she used in defending from spells. Magnetic spells were especially safe, so she was using those.

There were still limitations, of course. The system wasn’t perfectly efficient, and would bleed off other forces. It also took her own soul at work to stabilize that system. Much like her father’s mummy soldiers, the resilience could be overcome. However, with the armor rerouting different energies into the energy-absorbing Elder artifacts, it would take an extreme amount of energy to overwhelm the system.

A leyline would do the trick.

Mirian joined the arcane energy she was leeching from the other arcanists with her own mana, then tapped into the leyline repulsors. “Repulsor” had been a poor choice of description. She had seen the Akanan airships using them and initially thought they repelled each other like a magnet, but that wasn’t quite right. They connected with the leylines. She was quite sure Eyeball and Conductor were using a similar device when they activated a Gate, though like with most things, they refused to discuss it.

Spread out in Alkazaria were a dozen leyline detectors, a device she was thoroughly sick of making. However the readings on a dozen devices would be able to sense even small changes. Despite her power, compared to the leylines, she was a raindrop falling on the Ibaihan River.

She cast through the repulsors, willing the leyline beneath Alkazaria to move.

There was a collective gasp through the crowd of priests and arcanists as they felt the sheer power of the arcane energy at work brushing up against their auras. Mirian clenched her teeth and closed her eyes, feeling the rush of energy. Sweat beaded on her forehead from the effort of it. There was another gasp as light poured from the arcane vents on the back of her armor, spreading out like luminous wings for a dozen feet in both directions.

Then she stopped, breathing hard. With the extra energy trickling in from the repulsor and from the arcanists, she’d cast at power exceeding her personal maximum for an entire minute. It would take some time to recover from that.

A few hours later, the data from the leyline detectors came in. A high ranking wizard from one of the local academies, whose name she’d forgotten several times now, read out the results.

She’d moved the Alkazaria leyline a fraction of a degree. It had reverted back to its initial position almost instantly.

It was a start.

That she could do it at all was a triumph. Many of the leyines beneath Enteria were in flux. With correct timing, and positioning, she could potentially redirect the route one was taking. Done far enough upstream of the cascade, even a fraction of a percent change might be enough to move more leylines into the zones where the Gates could pick up and transmit the magical energy.

***

The loop ended on the 17th, significantly earlier than Mirian’s forecast. The destabilization of the antimagic and tertiary fields on Divir must be having a greater effect than I realized, she thought as she woke in her dorm room.

Then she manifested Equinox to herself, marveling at the beauty of the design.

The sound of armor clinking together and rush of wind as air was displaced woke Lily. Usually, she just gaped at her. This time, as soon as her glasses were on, she scrambled back, bumping into the far wall. “What in the five hells!” she screamed. “Who are you? What are you…?”

“This is the 253rd time we’ve had this conversation,” Mirian said, using a quick spell to patch the damage the temporal anchor had done on its way in. “I’m a new Prophet. I apologize I can’t explain more, but there’s work to be done.” And with that, she levitated out the door.

***

Over the next few months, Mirian did in fact work on figuring out how to make her divination devices more resilient to antimagic bombardment. The most effective materials were the soul-infused metals, but the entire reason she’d bothered to retrieve the mythril on Divir was because such metals were time consuming to make. Mundane materials like lead, usually so effective at stopping any sort of energy from passing, did nothing to stop what she was now calling “anti-arcane” energy. The only other thing that seemed to work were fragments of the Labyrinth itself, which she could harvest in tiny amounts by drilling into it—inevitably leading to the Labyrinth summoning things to attack her—or larger amounts, but only after leyline eruptions had pushed smoldering chunks of it to the surface. Presumably, it was because a four-dimensional material was better at blocking anything related to the arcane force.

The tests were successful, but were all done by finding antimagic areas of the Labyrinth and slamming arcane energy into them while the devices sat nearby. They didn’t at all test the tertiary field.

However, it did give her something that plausibly could have taken as much time as she claimed to develop. On the fifth month of the cycle, Nerevain, the Prophets all assembled by the Palendurio Gate. By then, Mirian had dug a proper stone shaft and passage so that they could all take an elevator down. She’d drilled through the solid stone, then used stone shaping to make sure nothing was porous. The resulting passage could take them under the river without dealing with the water or needing to reform the drilled stone.

She arrived at the warehouse she’d bought to find Gabriel poking around at the steel cylinders. “What’re these for?” he asked.

“Air to bring through the Gate. If I don’t contain it in steel, when it releases during the teleportation transition, the violent expansion could hurt someone.”

“Interesting,” he said, and started messing with one of the screw-lids.

“Don’t,” Mirian warned. “I already filled them with compressed air.”

He stopped. “Oh.” After a bit of contemplation, he said, “You know, there’s probably a safer way to do it. A way to gradually release the air mechanically… hmm.”

“Yes, I’m sure there is.” The Viaterrians had clearly known how to manipulate air without magic. She wasn’t going to waste more time on mundane inventions, though.

Mirian then began redirecting the Gate to different destinations. First was Zhighua. As soon as the magic had settled, Zhuan stepped through with several scholars in tow.

“That’s going to make things crowded,” Gabriel noted.

“Yes, but I want to know if there’s variations in the subjective experience of viewing the Ominian,” Zhuan said.

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“Why?” Gabriel asked.

Zhuan pointedly ignored him and continued the conversation she’d been having with her scholars. The scholars were doing their best not to look shaken, but they’d just teleported across the continent and were now in the presence of three Prophets. Gabriel couldn’t help but exude a casual confidence that he was looking through you. And Mirian—well. She’d stopped trying to not look intimidating. Even without Equinox on, the fact that she’d taken to casually levitating around unnerved most people, and her glowing eyes only added to that.

If they were already frightened, things were going to get worse for them.

Mirian redirected the Gate to Uxalak next. Xecatl, always reluctant to leave Tlaxhuaco, had agreed that witnessing the Ominian and the strange energies on Divir was worth risking. She had communed with Ceiba Yan a few days prior, so at least some of her progress and memories of this cycle would be maintained. Mirian had already noticed that Xecatl’s communion with the Sacred Tree sometimes left out little details when the next cycle started. They were a point of vulnerability for the Empress. She didn’t like it, but there was also little she could do about it; the temporal anchor was not actually hers.

She arrived with a retinue of four nagual.

It is going to be crowded up there.