The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Chapter 116 - Secrets of the Sanctum

The archbishops' and pontiff's quarters were in a special section of Charlem Palace. There was some debate on whether or not the passages of the Grand Sanctum still linked up with the lower levels of it. Mirian thought it probably did, since the Pontiff emerged from the Sanctum when he made his speech, but there'd be too many active guards up there. Down here, everyone was still evacuating.

More and more, she was beginning to understand how lucky she was in encountering the Cult of Zomalator. Those were people who had encountered hell in their lives, but they had fought through it and reckoned with themselves. From that came faith, but more, had come people who were unflinching when seeing truth. Here in the very heart of where truth should be sacrosanct, she had just seen three Order officials who would rather die than admit what was before their very eyes. Worse, from her other encounters in Palendurio, that didn't even seem to be uncommon.

Despite that, Mirian still felt like she was dirty, and it had nothing to do with the layer of dust coating her robes.

She made her way down to the lower passages. She had scribed a complex cavern-detection spell earlier in the cycle, and it was one of the eight pages she'd strapped beneath her clothing for use. It had several enhancements, including a mental component that could help her visualize the structures she was seeing. That, plus the range enhancement made it mana intensive, but there could be no replacement.

The widespread collapse hadn't made things any easier. At least one section of the Sanctum near the dining hall had cracked apart and sunk down, falling into the canals below. She didn't want to know how many people died from that alone. Another section in the east had shared a similar fate.

It took at least an hour to both map and navigate the passages down to the lower level. Several times, she had to dig through rubble, and rescued three more acolytes by chance.

"How did you do that?" one asked.

"I trained as an arcanist before I joined the Luminates," she lied. And since that was forbidden, she added, "I'd appreciate if you kept that secret."

"Of course," the man said before limping off.

Mirian kept digging.

After another hour, she rested, leaning up against the tunnel wall. She pulled out one of her canteens and the dried food she'd packed. Her last two spells she had with her were disintegrating force beam, which was her own creation, and gather water from air, which she used to get at least a bit of water back in her canteen.

She dismissed her light spell and closed her eyes, exhausted from channeling and crawling through debris for hours on end. She still hadn't dropped the filter air spell because the dust in the air was terrible, so there was only so much relaxing she could do. After some time, she stood, recast her light, dusted herself off, then got back to work.

Mirian cast her divination spell again. One of the unmapped rooms was finally nearby. As best she could tell, the stair to the room had been hidden underneath a statue in one of the altar rooms, but the passage to that room had collapsed entirely. Instead, the easiest path forward was to drill a diagonal tunnel through about ten feet of solid rock, which would open up a hole in the ceiling.

She got to work, using disintegrating force beam to crack a hole down the center, then following it up with a persistent force drill. The work was monotonous, but at last she broke through. Mirian slid down the passage, then activated her levitation wand midair, slowly descending to the ground. She brightened her light spell.

The room she was in was nothing like the other rooms in the Grand Sanctum. There was none of the gaudy decorations, no gold leaf, and no crystal lamps. The furniture was old wood, darkened by age and a thick layer of dust. They seem to have forgotten about this room altogether, she mused.

Over by a small altar, there was a bookshelf, and Mirian's heart pounded faster. The books themselves were starting to decompose, so she ever so gently lifted the first out, setting it gently on the table.

The first book was written in a language she'd never seen before, probably one of the many languages used in Baracuel before the Unification War that had since fallen out of favor. The next one used an archaic form of Friian, and that, she could understand, even if it took time and she sometimes had to say the words out loud to make sense of them. She skimmed through. The second volume seemed to have been written contemporaneously with the Fifth Prophet. No doubt, her history teachers would have broken into spontaneous dance, but it held little interest for her.

She looked for details about the Fifth Prophet's mask, an artifact that supposedly allowed the wearer to transform their identity. There were plenty of descriptions of it, but little on how it actually worked. She moved on to the other books.

Another book covered the duties of the priesthood. It contained no new runes for her, but what it did contain was several rune sequences. One protected against curses, which must have been much more common before the necromancy ban in Baracuel. Several others were specific healing spells, focusing on either repairing internal bleeding, broken bones, or healing each organ. So… the Luminates are using the celestial equivalent of raw magic to heal most injuries. They directly interface with the soul, but the energy usage must be horribly inefficient. No wonder an entire myrvite's soul can only heal a few wounds. These dedicated healing spells must be far more efficient. So what happened to the Order that caused them to lose this knowledge?

She had a feeling the answer was in those history books she kept ignoring. Maybe it came from the ban on necromancy. With current practices, they can pretend their work is distinct from magic, but if they'd used these formulations, it would have led to too many questions. Which means most soul magic has probably been lost to time. No wonder there's so little about it.

Several more books contained far more information about priestly rituals, but included a few more examples of simple celestial spells. She transcribed them carefully, then spent time committing them to memory.

It was in a book about the Fourth Prophet that she came across a note, stuffed between two pages. It used the archaic spellings, and the handwriting was atrocious, but she was able to make sense of it by transcribing it. It read:

Curse Pontiff Maxaminus. He claims the ninth binding is lost, but I have seen his true face as a liar, and you should reject his decrees as such. He seeks to preserve the Church's power, and demands I heal the split. As if that is why the Ominian called to me.

But he has not seen Their face.

I have.

The dreams tell me nothing of the Church. They demand I find the Mausoleum, but I have searched from Jiandzhi to Rambalda and found nothing. The princes claim it is in Mayat Shadr, but I have walked those desolate streets, and it is a ruin. The Mausoleum must have been destroyed, as there is not even a trace. If only it had not been. The records claim the Second Prophet wrote of all the bindings but the ninth upon its walls. Maxaminus must be lying, because the Fourth recovered them. I do not wish to relive so many frustrating years again. The ninth binding must be the key.

You cannot understand the feelings in the dreams. They tear through me, and no one else understands, because the words do not exist. They cannot understand.

I have traveled these lands alone longer than you can know. I beg for your aid so that this can finally end. Will you not lend it?

Mirian found herself trembling as she read the text. Quickly, she reread it, then read it again as if the note might suddenly evaporate if she didn't hurry. "He knew what it was like," she whispered to the empty room. She clutched the note to her chest and breathed in deeply. "We travel alone, together," she told the note.

She read it one last time, then gently placed it back in the old tome.

***

She spent the night sleeping down in the room, finally dismissing the filter air spell so that she could take a break from spellcasting. Another day down in the secret room revealed two new runes and instructions on their formation and function, which by itself saved her days of experimentation. She then investigated the secret door, carefully examining the mechanical device from her side. Because the ceiling had collapsed on the other side, there was no opening it, but now that she'd identified the mechanism, she was fairly sure she could open it in future cycles before the quake, using magnetic spells if she couldn't find the hidden switch.

Mirian levitated back up the way she'd came. A small tremor had caused a minor collapse in one of the passages, but she was able to clear it quickly. Then she headed for the holy vaults.

She found two acolytes going at one of the collapsed passages with pick axes, which was a sorry sight. She told them she was there to relieve them, then as soon as they'd left, drilled through the rock in a few minutes.

Everad was there, as he had been, standing watch.

"I am Everad, and I… I stand guard," he said.

"Mirian Castrella, Seventh Prophet. Good to see you again. I brought water and snacks," she said, and offered him a canteen.

He blinked at her. She could see how red his eyes were, and how cracked and dry his lips had become. He had been standing guard without relief for at least two days.

"Go on. Drink a bit, and I'll tell you a few things to confirm I'm a Prophet."

Hand trembling, Everad took the water.

Some of her annoyance at repeating herself had faded when she'd read the note, and it helped that she already knew that Everad had the heart of a good man.

Everad allowed himself to rest, and Mirian started by cracking open the door she'd ignored last time. Inside were reliefs and paintings of the Fifth Prophet. Unlike the Fourth Prophet, there was no sarcophagus, and no body. There was a pedestal, though, and on it, behind a glass case, was an old mask.

The Mask of the Fifth Prophet, she thought. How surreal. I just read your note.

It looked like the same mask the Palendurio Guard wore, except the smooth face of the mask was marred by a thin cut down one eye and across the mouth. The face of the mask was made of orichalcum, not steel, but the helmet it was attached to seemed mundane. The glass case protecting it was surrounded by runes as the sarcophagus had been, but she could walk around it and examine it.

Strange. No glyphs, no runes. The mask was just an excuse then. Perhaps he wore it while using the soul transformations Arenthia taught me, and people attributed to the mask what was really his power. The look of it was equally mundane. There was some indescribable quality that the sword had that the mask didn't.

She examined the runes, then moved on.

The other holy vaults were buried in rubble, but this time, Mirian had left herself enough time to start rectifying that. As Everad watched, she broke apart the stone and shunted it off to the side.

"How has it come to this?" Everad said at last.

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," Mirian said. "Part of it is… a short-sightedness. I suppose I was guilty of it once. Everyone's just concerned about getting by. Making their wage. Paying their rent. If they're ambitious, it becomes a game of power, but they feel their power is only secure when other people don't have it." She made a face. "Or something like that. I abhor reading political theory. It all seems like a bunch of excuses for why everything has to inevitably be terrible for most people. It's right up there with history. 'Ah, today we're going to read about some man who slaughtered thousands and why that was fine, actually. Make sure to remember the date he was born.' Spell engines were always far more interesting. And a better means of doing good in the world."

Mirian tossed another boulder aside, then worked on breaking apart another one. She paused to evaluate the ceiling stability with her divination, then continued. "But something far worse has happened. It didn't start recently, either. That Arcane Praetorian told me the eruptions have been going on for decades, but they never found the cause. Which is insane. That's like if there were volcanoes going off, but no one bothered to learn why. If there's an effect, there must be a cause. Somehow, the Divine Monument is connected. But even stopping that won't be enough. The Divine Monument was a relatively recent discovery."

"Sacred One, do you wish for my commentary?"

"Sure," Mirian said, continuing to drill.

"What if it is like a volcano? Perhaps it is a natural thing that happens. We know about volcanoes, but we cannot stop them from erupting."

She paused her work. "Eugh. Now there's a nasty thought. I certainly hope not. And I don't think the Ominian would have bothered if it couldn't be stopped. Well, you certainly know how to cheer someone up."

"Apologies. I have had, perhaps, too much time alone with my thoughts."

"I know the feeling. There," she said. "Time for another door."

Mirian's disintegrating force beam burrowed through the third door, then she broke the rest apart and stepped through.

Another relic sat in a glass case. This one appeared to be a bundle of paper. This is it, she thought. The Holy Pages. If Arenthia was right…

She approached them expecting to see old writing, perhaps the words of the Fourth Prophet himself.

Instead, they were blank. Pristine.

Now that… that is strange. The runes around the case were untouched, and the paper itself was made out of more than just wood pulp. There was a golden hue to it, and when she looked carefully, she could see tiny threads of something metallic running through each page.

One by one, Mirian shattered the doors, pausing only for a lunch break.

The relics of the fourth and fifth doors were, in her opinion, forgeries. The fourth vault was supposed to contain the Staff of the Third Prophet, but the glyph sequences running along it were, in a word, incorrect. A priest might not know the difference, but she certainly did. If someone tried to channel through them, the thing would explode, or worse. It had clearly been made by an amateur who knew how to pair glyphs, but didn't actually know very many spells. The runes around the case were also different than the ones around the other relics. Almost like they were destroyed, then replaced, but by someone who had lost the knowledge to properly replace them.

The fifth holy vault was supposed to contain the Reliquary of the Nameless God, which made her expect another piece of material like the focuses that Xipuatl or Lecne and his heretics wielded, but the material looked wrong. And, like the fourth vault, the protective runes had been replaced. Everad said they had an unbroken record of security going back to the Unification War, so it was possible the theft had happened a long, long time ago.

In the sixth vault was the bejeweled Skull of the Second Prophet. "Hm. Couldn't get the whole mummy for you, could they?" Mirian whispered to it. She had no idea if it was genuine. The runes around the case were different than both the genuine vaults and the ones that were probable forgeries, but that might have been because of the relic's older age.

The same was true for the seventh vault. Stepping into it, even the architecture was different. Everything about the room felt absolutely ancient. "The first finger of the First Prophet," Mirian whispered. Again, the runes were unfamiliar. Is this really over 3000 years old? she wondered. I wonder what it was like so long ago.

Mirian studied the runes for several more hours, using the four bindings she did know to siphon them into her specially designed repository where she could measure them. She took notes on the 'resonance intensity' as she was beginning to think of it and made notes on which ones she thought she could reproduce. Binding a rune for study also had the added benefit of destroying it, so piece by piece, she could strip the relics of the defenses around them.

That night, she slept on the floor of the second vault while Everad continued his vigil.

Unsurprisingly, no one came.

One by one, she deconstructed the runes around the Fourth Prophet's sarcophagus. As the cycle neared its end, Mirian carefully surveyed the room, meditating with her soul sense first, then carefully using her last soul energy to check for anything she'd missed. Satisfied at last, she grasped the Sword of the Fourth Prophet.

It was a beautiful blade, balanced perfectly, and surprisingly light. She gave it a few test swings, then tried a thrust. When she slashed it along the tomb wall, it left a deep score in the stone.

Mirian raised an eyebrow. Usually, stone blunted a sword. Experimentally, she sent the tip into the wall.

It was the wall that cracked.

She admired the web of fractures in the stone. Oh, I want so badly to take this with me.

She cast the four celestial bindings she knew on it. If it had been a normal object, the bindings would have found no purchase. Here, they attached to the sword—for a little bit. After a moment, they slid off. The Fifth Prophet mentioned nine bindings. I must need to find them all first.

Mirian held the sword aloft, watching the blade glisten. She could feel the rumbling outside that meant the end was near.

"And I do it all again," she murmured.