Chapter 50 – Things In Motion

“Mirian?” Professor Jei repeated. “You okay?”

She was staring at the ceiling. There were strange hourglass-shaped holes in it leading to more stone above. Near the glyph lamps, she could see the faint remnants of paint on the ceiling. Once, someone had taken care of this place. Now, it was stacked with Academy crates full of supplies, and the smell of cooked flesh wafted from the dead Akanan spy. “I should be asking you that.”

“What is going on?” Jei asked. “How did you get down here?”

“Followed you. Ugh, sorry, I ran to get here. Are there, uh, cloth wrappings in any of these crates? Gods this hurts.” She sat up so she could put her hand over the gash on her shin, which made her hiss in pain, but she knew she needed to put pressure on it. There was already a small puddle of blood on the stone. “He got my leg. I think… ah—think he hit the bone.” Her eyes were watering from the pain. Xipuatl had taught her several celestial runes used for healing; all of them involved healing plants. Once again, Mirian thought about joining the priesthood, purely for the practical knowledge. Of course, all that knowledge would be useless until she’d obtained an ‘elder reliquary focus,’ whatever the hell that was made out of.

Jei’s orb brightened and she let go of it so that it hovered in the air next to her. Okay, that’s a neat trick. Several crate lids opened, and she brought out what looked to be a cheap rug. With another spell, she sliced it into a neat strip. “Move your hands,” she commanded, and when Mirian did, she wrapped it like a bandage, telekinetically, with Mirian’s auric resistance seeming to give her no trouble at all with the delicate force spell. It still hurt like the hells, but at least the blood wasn’t running down her leg anymore. “Now explain,” her professor demanded. To someone who didn’t know her, Jei sounded angry, but Mirian could tell she was scared.

“That’s an Akanan spy,” she said, gesturing at the corpse. She limped over to start searching the body. Sure enough, he had a whole ring of glyph keys. “They’ve been breaking into the Academy, sabotaging things, and they wanted to kill you. Don’t know why, has something to do with the secret project under Bainrose. But neither you nor Professor Torres will tell me anything about it. I do know it’s all a prelude to an attack on the town in a few weeks.”

Professor Jei dimmed the light from her orb and watched Mirian as she continued searching the body. “That makes no sense,” she said. “Start making sense.”

“I’m a time traveler,” Mirian told her. Then she started to explain.

***

Professor Jei, it turned out, had received a message that there was an emergency meeting about the project. That note was obviously a forgery. Once she realized it, Jei refused to continue deeper into the underground and had them return to Bainrose.

Limping up what felt like a hundred flights of stairs was agony, and Mirian’s heavy satchel only added to it. The steps were all just a bit too tall, and each time she put weight on her leg, she felt sharp pain. Naturally, the designers of the secret spiral staircase leading to the secret underground passages had neglected to put a railing in their design. Not even a secret one. The narrow staircase meant that Jei couldn’t do much to help support her, so she just had to lean against the wall and suck in air through her teeth every time she took a step.

When they finally got to the top, Professor Jei locked the door behind them and led Mirian into a nice room where several plush chairs made a semicircle around a crescent table and a magical fireplace. The room oozed luxury, but by then Mirian would have given up her spellbook for the cushioned chair. She collapsed into it immediately, muttering, “Gods bless you.”

Jei replied, “Ah, not necessary. Stay here. I return soon.”

Mirian closed her eyes. “Get Professor Seneca,” she said as Jei started to leave. She heard the professor pause, then continue out. The door shut softly behind her.

The thought of going up or down any more flights of stairs filled her with apprehension. Then she wondered what Jei meant by ‘not necessary,’ and if she understood that ‘Gods bless you’ was more of an idiom than an actual blessing by priests, and then she realized she had no idea what Zhiguan worship practices were like. Probably her preparatory school history teacher had mentioned it, and she could imagine that Mr. Vasquez, wherever he was right now, had broken out in a cold sweat as the premonition that all his hard work had been wasted on students like Mirian settled on him.

She wondered who exactly Jei was getting. A priest, maybe? Were they allowed on the forbidden third floor? She considered pretending to be a Deeps agent like she had for Valen, but knowing her luck, one of them probably knew an actual agent.

It took about an hour for Jei to return—maybe more, Mirian wasn’t sure if she had nodded off. When she did arrive, she had Professor Torres and Professor Seneca in tow. Mirian could see the puzzlement in Seneca’s gaze as she peered at her over her glasses. Torres’s stony brown eyes, on the other hand, revealed nothing.

“Seneca, are you part of the secret project involving the giant doors beneath Bainrose?” Mirian asked.

“Did you kill that man on the roof?” she replied.

Mirian closed her eyes, trying to will the pain in her leg to go away. “Not on purpose. I knew he’d be there, though. I knew the second Akanan spy would be in the Myrvite Studies building. I knew the third one would kill Jei if I didn’t intervene. I know where their hideout is. I know about Torres’s 500 year-old Persaman spellrod, and I made one like it,” she said, waving her scepter about in their general direction. “I know that the guards were taking bribes from the spies. Captain Mandez especially, because he knows their plan. So reporting their activity to the guards without a public audience is useless. And I know the Akanan invasion attacks Torrviol on the 26th. What I don’t know, Seneca, is whose side you’re on. How do you know Bertrus?”

Seneca didn’t answer. All three of her professors just stood, looking at her. It was all very awkward and uncomfortable. Jei said something in Gulwenen to Torres, which she nodded at. Huh. Torres speaks Gulwenen?

“Did she tell you about the time travel? Look, is this how I acted a week ago? You’ve all taught me for, what, three years, off and on, in the various upper level classes? Torres, I know right now you’re searching for alternative hypotheses, and that you’re smart enough to come up with several, but I need you to entertain this one: what if I’m telling the truth?”

“The most likely hypothesis is you’re a plant by a third party interested in the research,” Torres said, voice flat.

Mirian let out a groan. “Gods above, I’m going to have to explain everything again, make a bunch of predictions, and then you’ll all still skeptically think something else is going on right up until the Akanan airships are on their way over. You’re all thinking ‘why didn’t she tell someone about all this,’ and the answer is I’ve tried it. No one ever believes me. I’ve had to do this all alone. No one wants to help, even though the world’s at stake. Gods, that sounds so melodramatic, doesn’t it? Of course it’s easier to dismiss me as a lunatic, I learned all about the mind preserving previous mental schema from Professor Viridian.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Mirian started listing things she knew now. The passage under Griffin Hall. How to make a cartography device. Basic Eskanar. What the inside of the jail cells looked like. When she got to the chimera and the corpse under the Bainrose catacombs, Torres said, “Wait, what?”

“Nope, not explaining. Not until someone says something and you all stop looking at me like I grew a second head. Did I already use that line? Also, I’d really like to see a healer.” The pain had removed some of the mental filter Mirian usually had up. It was easy to just say whatever came to mind, even if it wasn’t a good idea.

“Bertrus and I dated briefly when we were students at the Academy,” Seneca finally said. “We’re still friends, just not close ones.”

Torres asked, “Why didn’t you go to the mayor’s office? Or the magistrate?”

Mirian actually had thought of that during the ninth loop, and made that one of her side projects. “The secretaries won’t give out appointments to students, no matter how important I insist it is. The letter I snuck into his office never got a reply. Is the mayor really unaware of all the break-ins in the Academy and the guard’s lack of interest in solving it? Is that the problem?”

All three professors were silent, which told Mirian the answer. If the mayor wasn’t outright taking bribes, something else had bought his silence. Mirian had looked for him during the evacuation of Torrviol that second cycle, and he’d either made himself scarce or left the same way Captain Mandez had.

“So do you see the problem? All the ways I’m supposed to be able to do things are denied to me. At first, I thought maybe by pure chance, I was the only one noticing these things. Now I know everyone knows about it, but no one says or does anything–until it’s too late. That has to change.”

“I would like to believe you,” said Torres, “but the problem is it’s not believable. How are you traveling through time? Either Song Jei omitted that part of the story or you did.”

“I did, because I don’t know. It’s connected to the…” Mirian hesitated. How would they react if she told them the invasion didn’t even matter, that even if they stopped it they would all die anyways? That nothing they did right now mattered unless it affected her? Probably not well. “…invasion. That’s all I know,” she finished. “Sorry, my leg really hurts. Have you ever been hit by a sword?”

“Twice,” Torres said. “So I can commiserate.”

“Oh,” Mirian said.

“You were saying something about a dead Arcane Praetorian.”

“Tell me why it’s important first.”