Chapter 82 – Hunted

Mirian tried to figure out what in the Gods’ names had just happened. She’d won. She’d finally fucking won. The Divir moon had stayed in the sky another day and then—

Then Nicolus had shot her.

Only, it hadn’t been Nicolus. But then, who in the five hells had it been?

“Mirian? You okay?” came Lily’s voice.

“No,” Mirian said with a sigh. Dying was always something of a shock. When she woke up at the beginning of the cycle, she almost always made some sort of noise that her roommate picked up on.

She looked around her dorm room. Same as it ever was. She picked up her spellbook, and with a wave of her hand, she telekinetically shut off the water heater on the top floor, then used the tin under her bed as fodder for a metal plug, heating the metal until it was soft, then funneled it up through the holes until she sensed it was by the roof. Then she shaped the tin and rapidly displaced the heat so there was a nice tile there. The rest could wait until Archmage Luspire’s scribes updated her spellbook with shape wood.

Lily stared at her. “Since when can you do that?” she said, mouth agape.

“Time loop,” Mirian said, quickly dressing into her Torrviol Academy uniform. “I’ll explain later. I have to go stop a bunch of spies and then… look, I’m not crazy. I’ll talk to you later. Good luck on your exams!” It won’t matter in the end, she mentally added, and then rushed out the door.

***

Normally, she killed the first spy by pulling him off the roof, then stopped the second one as he broke into the Myrvite Studies building, then stopped the third spy four days later as he attempted to ambush and kill Professor Jei in the Underground.

As she walked with Jei through the Torrviol Underground, Mirian gave her the usual explanation. “It’s just the one spy, and he only has the one lightning wand. Once he’s captured, the spies go into hiding, and I work with Magistrate Ada to bring about their mass arrest.” She paused outside the secret passage and lowered her voice. “Ready?”

Jei nodded.

Mirian cast a grounding ward on both of them, then opened the door. Jei strode forward while Mirian crept around to the side as she usually did, waiting for the spy Idras to launch his desperate ambush.

She only had a moment’s warning that something was wrong. She felt the tingle of arcane energy building up behind her, and then the fire ray seared through her back.

The now familiar feeling of lethal pain ran through her, and she fought through it to look around. As she did, she saw more spells flash around her. She saw the silhouettes of at least six people, hoods covering their heads. Fire and force spells went off all around the room, directed at Jei, who deflected the flame spells, but wasn’t able to stop a force slash from taking off her arm. As her mentor collapsed to the ground screaming, a cloaked figure approached her, gun raised. A spell had distorted his voice, but she could still hear the accent. “Just give up,” he said, and shot her.

***

Mirian sat up from her bed. In all her time loops, nothing like that had happened. Nothing. She was trembling, she realized, with fresh adrenaline—and fear. What was happening? What had changed?

The answer was starting to tickle the back of her mind. A thought she’d tried to dismiss as foolish. Something she didn’t want to be true because it would change everything, and she didn’t want to change everything. Everything had been going so well! She’d stopped the bloody Akanans, brought their airships down from the sky, and shattered their army. She’d saved the Divine Monument. She’d saved Torrviol!

It can’t be, she thought.

Lily said something as she dressed, and Mirian didn’t remember what she said in reply. She was too focused on what she needed to do.

She made sure the two first spies were dead and jailed respectively on the first day. She recruited Nicolus to her cause that evening, but this time, the next day she handed Sire Nurea a list of the spies to start keeping an eye on before they were arrested. “And if you have any contacts down south, I need to know how the Persaman revolt near the border is going.”

“There’s a Persaman revolt near the border on top of all that stuff you just told us?” Nicolus said.

“Yeah. And if you don’t have a trusted source, a newspaper will do. Though I never really did follow up on what you know about the Syndicates.”

Nurea and Nicolus looked at each other. Nurea raised an eyebrow. Her ward said, “I didn’t tell her about it.”

“Not in this timeline, anyways,” Mirian confirmed. Actually, it had been Nurea who’d let that nugget slip.

Then Mirian worked on a new schedule for Jei. Even with preparation, she wasn’t stopping six people who had spells and firearms—not with just the two of them. Later in the cycle, she’d have more people who would believe her about the time loop, but it was still too early. Professor Torres, for example, usually only really started believing her when all the spies were rounded up.

All her previous planning had been in service of winning the Battle of Torrviol. She hadn’t planned for—whatever this was.

As to what this was, she was still hoping she was wrong.

On the 5th of Solem, Mirian and Jei avoided the Underground entirely.

***

Mirian didn’t wake up on the 6th of Solem. She woke up on the 1st again, disoriented. She looked over to Lily, then up and the ceiling. I already fixed the ceiling leak. That’s the first thing I do, she thought, and then she realized, fuck, someone killed me in the night.

That was disturbing as hell. She hadn’t even heard anyone. And that meant…

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Mirian didn’t want to think about it.

She rushed to kill the first spy, then spent a great deal of time pacing about in the garden outside the Myrvite Studies building thinking about what she needed to do.

She recruited Nicolus and Jei again, but this time, she went to Valen.

“What are you doing here?” Valen said with her usual phony disgust.

Mirian pushed her up against the wall and aggressively kissed her, then as Valen stood there, dazed, Mirian said, “There’s more where that came from, but I need your help.”

Valen tried to act casual, like her breath hadn’t just been taken away. “Yeah? What makes you think I want you hanging around me?”

Mirian locked eyes with Valen, then whispered, “I know how to make you squirm.”