Chapter 83 – Specter

The next morning, there was a stir across campus. Students huddling to talk in hushed voices, then disbanding. Paranoid glances cast out. A tension in the air. It was mostly sixth years gathering, but the talk was spreading to the lower classes.

“…heard they found him dead,” she heard one person say.

“In his home?”

“Yeah. And all the neighbors all heard the screaming. But by the time the guard got there, whoever did it was gone.”

It didn’t take a genius to start putting together who it was. Mirian was hiding in Valen’s room when she burst in and said, “They killed Nicolus!”

“Yeah,” Mirian said, and continued staring at the floor.

“This wasn’t an assassination. I mean, it was, but they’re not trying to be subtle. They could have disappeared him, that’s the usual thing to do if you just want someone out of the way. No, they were trying to send a message.”

“To me,” Mirian said.

With her aura nearly depleted purely from how much she was using her major illusion spell just to walk around Torrviol, Mirian knew she needed to change something. The problem was, the person hunting her knew her name, knew where to find her, and could easily leverage that to find out more. Likely, he knew her entire class schedule; the registrar’s office wouldn’t exactly be hard for the dozens of spies to infiltrate given they already had keys to the whole damn Academy. And clearly, he knew her friends as well.

Simply living under an illusion spell wouldn’t be enough. She thought she had an idea of how Professor Marva was doing it, and it wasn’t just ‘more practice.’ If she could obtain a more permanent disguise….

Mirian went to visit Xipuatl. She needed to get his help before it was too late.

When Xipuatl opened the door to his apartment, Mirian first felt relief.

Then, she saw the smirk on his face. “Just give up,” he said, in a voice that wasn’t at all Xipuatl’s.

Mirian raised her force shield as the pistol came out. It wasn’t strong enough to stop the bullet entirely, but it did absorb most of the first shot, and by now, she was used to that spike of pain—she could fight through it. She lashed out with a lift object that snatched away his pistol, and that’s when she felt the line of fire stab through her back.

She lay on the doorstep in agony. With tremendous effort, she turned her head to look back. There were two cloaked figures opposite the building, one wielding a wand, the other a rifle. The rifle cracked out—

***

Mirian woke, teeth grinding, and stared at the wall.

One thing was becoming clear: the cycles clearly didn’t end when she died, and this other time traveler was using the extra time to figure out more about her and plan out counter-moves while she was dead. It was also clear if he kept doing this, he’d end up with an advantage in information and power. The why didn’t make sense to her. She was trying to stop the apocalypse. What in the five hells was he trying to do?

The other question was: how many time travelers were involved? Most of the people involved were Akanan spies, the Torrviol Guard, or people on the Akanan blackmail list. None of them had done anything to indicate they had foreknowledge before. Right now, she only had firm evidence for at least two: This new intruder, and someone who was leading a revolt in Persama. However, there was no reason to assume that was it.

It meant she had to fundamentally change her strategy. Right now, she’d been outmaneuvered, and it was because she’d been burning through the cycles like a forest fire. Even if she’d learned about another time traveler, she would have assumed they’d be trying to stop the end of the world with her.

It was no longer safe to assume anything. First, she had to find a way to hide in the shadows.

Then, she had to find a way to fight off the man who was hunting her. That he had attacked her seemed utterly nonsensical to her. Why hadn’t he offered to help stop the world’s end? They could have worked together, and bolstered each other’s efforts. They could have exchanged knowledge and skills.

Instead, he’d chosen war. Her fury at him was compounded by what could have been. It was bad enough the moon was going to fall, and he was making it worse.

Mirian did her best to bury her anger so that it wouldn’t impede her thinking.

She had time to prepare. At least a day or two, because whoever this new traveler was, he didn’t awaken in Torrviol. Then, she could lay low and try to figure out more about her opponent. Mirian vowed not to make contact with Nicolus, Xipuatl, or even Lily. She reformulated her ‘Vera’ disguise, since she’d been assassinated while under that illusion spell on Xipuatl’s doorstep. But she hadn’t died in Valen’s room, so as far as she could tell, this new nemesis of hers hadn’t figured out that Valen was a contact, or that she was staying with her.

Mirian went to take out a loan, then spent the next two days in a flurry of scribing spells and working on artifice. She also bought a quilted silk undershirt that was supposedly bullet resistant. She’d overheard soldiers singing them praise, though many of them also wore steel breastplates, so how effective it actually was she didn’t know. Hopefully, if her force shield could slow the velocity of a bullet, the silk could do the rest.

She worked with Valen to plan out casual routes they could both take to look for suspicious movements. This opponent was obviously comfortable with illusions and intelligence operations, but Mirian had at least a pretty good sense of the normal movements she could expect around town. The man was coming from somewhere and making contact with the Akanan spies—she just had to figure out the when and where.

She told Valen to go wander the Academy grounds. She took her position outside the spy’s headquarters, and waited.

And waited.

By the 4th of Solem, she thought she was seeing a change in the pattern of spy movement. By the 5th of Solem, the spy network had clearly been redirected to a new purpose. Valen saw spies shadowing Nicolus and Xipuatl between classes, while Mirian watched as the Torrviol Guard’s patrol routes changed. Frustratingly, the spies seemed to know their headquarters was being watched, so her stakeout of the place had turned up nothing. After the first few days, they apparently abandoned the building, but where they had relocated, she had no clue. Based on where some of the spies suddenly appeared, they were using the Underground for movement. Likely, they’d used tunneling spells to remove anything they needed in the headquarters and left a bunch of traps.

Either Mirian’s routine trips to the southeast side of town hadn’t been as subtle as she’d hoped, or they’d found some other way of discovering her. On the 10th of Solem, Mirian was sitting on a bench pretending to read a book when she found herself getting hit by a sudden dispel and her illusion shattered into shards of light.

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

She immediately pulled a wand from her belt and raised an enhanced force shield, but when she looked around, it wasn’t Akanan spies approaching her, but four of the Torrviol Guard. She recognized Roland and, of course, the false captain.

“Mirian Castrella? You need to come with us,” Nathanial said.

She thought about asking ‘why?’ and getting them to name whatever crime she’d supposedly committed, but decided there wasn’t a point. If they wanted to charge her with something, they’d just make it up. There would be no justice in Torrviol, just theater.

Perhaps there was still a chance for her to learn more about what the other time traveler was doing. Perhaps in private, when they thought they had the advantage, one of them would reveal something. The guards searched her for any sort of magical items and weapons. They missed the arcane catalyst on the inside of her belt, but seized her spellbook and wands.