The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Chapter 129 - Breaking Through

Mirian dismissed the force shackles holding the engineers to the wall as she cast her magnetic shield. She'd need every bit of mana she could get.

The Akanans started with a volley of force blades, reluctant to bring their full force to bear while she was standing next to the engine. The engineers were screaming something about not damaging it, while the heavy assault team was yelling about precision spells—it all became jumbled, and when the cracks of gunfire started echoing about in the enclosed room, no one could hear anything but that.

The force blades dissipated on Eclipse, as did a followup spell that was probably supposed to bind her. Mirian cast hide in shadows, then flipped to extinguish light in her spellbook. The spell shifted all visible light in the room deep into the infrared. Mirian then cast darkvision as she moved around the engine, using the armored conduits as cover.

Panicked shouting followed, but the reason she'd chosen the spell was she knew the heavy assault teams were poorly prepared for it. Battlemagi had diverse enough spells that they could either counter it, apply their own darkvision, or use a detect heat source spell in a pinch, but these were almost all sorcerers. Their specialized wands hit hard, but only had the single function.

She cast greater lightning right at the center of the group, then immediately dropped to the floor. There was more gunfire, and several spells. Mirian crawled under a tangle of steel pipes, then got back up. She could see her spell had taken down at least one soldier, but there was an auramancer with them. The heavy assault team attacked again, laying down broad fire. A glyph panel nearby exploded, and the engineers' pleas for caution rose to a peak. Mirian felt several pings! on her armor, but her magnetic shield was doing the job. The problem she was going to run into was the mana drain; her aura was rapidly depleting.

Mirian ran sideways and unleashed another greater lightning, this time coated with soul energy, then cast a succession of magnetic detonations in the midst of the group, causing their gun barrels to explode. The auramancer screamed and went catatonic as the foreign soul energy ravaged her, and two more soldiers dropped. Better, though, Mirian had taken out several of the rifles, and those soldiers were scrambling back.

She advanced to the side of the door, pressing her back up against the wall. Then, she cast a greater illusion spell that resembled herself over by the engine and dismissed the extinguish light.

"There she is!" someone called as she had her illusion duck around the far end of the engine.

"Move to surround. Rifles company, hold fire. Precision spells only!" shouted the leader. In the darkened engine room, they missed the slightly darker shadow flanking them.

Mirian waited for them to get farther into the room, then dismissed the illusion and cast muffle sound on the threshold. She rounded the corner, moving through the door into the hall. To the three men left standing there, it must have been a terrifying sight: Eclipse would have seemed to come out of a solid block of shadows, suddenly flashing forward and slicing right through their armor. When they tried to use direct attack spells on her, they had no effect.

In three quick strokes, she'd cut two throats and impaled a third. She left behind five members of the assault team who, thanks to the sound-dampening spell, didn't even realize their companions were dead behind them. She sprinted down the hall, then dismissed all her spells and quickly chugged a mana potion. The levitation, breaking down the door, sustained force shackles for five people, then rapid succession of high intensity spells, several of which she'd needed to sustain, had nearly depleted her auric mana. Mirian caught her breath for a moment, then continued through the ship, making her way to the deck.

If the airship had crashed because of her meddling with the engine, she would have been fine with it, but she was intensely curious about what would happen next.

"What's happening? Are you alright?" a soldier asked.

"Fine. Just got cut up a little. The assault team is dealing with a sorceress in the engine room," Mirian said. "They could use support."

"The heavy assault team needs support?"

"Yes. Contact team two. And if you see an officer, we need two engineering teams heading towards it for repairs. I'm gathering my team now."

The soldier rushed off, and Mirian continued.

Topside, the deck and superstructure was covered in little blackened craters where the seeds of chaos had rained down. There were still teams running around making sure all the fires were extinguished and doing spot repairs. Meanwhile, spotters were using divination spells to peer into the dark sky, looking for more.

Mirian headed to the aft deck, then hopped over the railing, plummeting silently for a few hundred feet, then activated her levitation wand.

She noted that Torrian Tower had been split in half again by an artillery assault. Another constant. I still need to figure out why they find that tower such a threat, Mirian thought. They must have known it was empty. And they already have Luspire taken care of. So what is it?

***

Four days later, Mirian used her arcane eye that she'd originally learned from Viridian to monitor the Akanans on the far shore of the lake. She was pushing the extreme range of the spell to the point where even a single eye was incredibly draining on her auric mana, but she could make out the general trend of the army's activity.

The Republic's Justice had landed for repairs, and workers were hoisting pallets of materials onto the decks while others swarmed about. Might of Liberty circled above the town lethargically like a watchful cloud.

Across Torrviol, the army was digging trenches and fortifying houses as if they expected a counter-attack. The warehouses Troytin had prepared with supplies seemed to have satiated them, though. Smoke rose from the Academy's dining hall as they used the facilities. On the far side of town, she could just make out the dots of the distant vehicles that made up the logistical tail of the army.

This becomes a forward supply base. While the Akanan navy sieges Cairnmouth from the west, Cearsia's army comes down the river and cuts off supplies from the east. They already expect to take Palendurio through General Corrmier's treason. With Cairnmouth cut off, they then occupy the heart of western Baracuel. Troytin shouldn't have bombed the train tracks, though. Hanaran's division is routed and annihilated when it's caught deploying to Torrviol. Now, it can hold up in Fort Aegrimere and prolong the siege.

Mirian dismissed the arcane eye and brought her gaze back to the surround. Akanan scouting teams had found their town's encampment, but hadn't attacked. Either they'd lost their taste for slaughtering civilians, or the journey through tangled forests and across the marshy river was just too inconvenient for the army to bother with. Or perhaps, Troytin had told Marshal Cearsia something that changed the way she was viewing this whole thing. Or maybe Mirian had made a credible enough showing that Cearsia actually was afraid of her.

In truth, it was probably just too annoying to cross the wild terrain around the lake, though Mirian sort of hoped it was the last reason.

"Where do you want this?" an artificer asked her, gesturing to the leyline energy detector.

"Right here. I need to put the celestial warding runes on it or it'll just fry."

He stared at her. "You really… you can just use celestial magic like arcane magic?"

"Basically," she said, then waved him away.

The Torrviol encampment was a bit of a mess. There hadn't really been a plan as it was being established, so while in some places the tents and temporary shacks were in grids, many of them were haphazardly strewn about. The good news was, there were a lot of arcanists from all the students, and so they'd quickly carved out latrines and used shape wood to turn some of the nearby forest into the structures they'd need. Some of the spellward engines from Torrviol now kept the wildlife at bay.

It was a messy little refugee camp, but everyone was alive, and at the very least, they could commiserate together.

Past noon, Mirian found herself neurotically checking the Divir moon for movement. She already knew it wouldn't fall yet because the Monument was intact, but it was a habit at this point. The auroras above were weak, indicating leyline activity still had a few days before it peaked. How many days, she was eager to find out.

***

On the afternoon of the 6th of Duala, the Republic's Justice lifted off. The spectacle was visible from their position across the lake. The day was overcast, the high clouds pregnant with snow flurries that had been coming down off and on.

Then, the airship suddenly halted midair.

Mirian's leyline detectors went berserk. She rushed over to one to take a look at the readings.

Across the lake, the Republic's Justice slammed into the ground, shaking the earth and sending out a plume of fire and arcane energy. The Might of Liberty followed, plummeting from around three thousand feet up. That crash sent people sprawling from the impact as a colossal fireball erupted in Torrviol. A shockwave that raced across the lake smashed into the boats lining the shore, causing several lines to snap and battering the smaller boats. Several poorly constructed tents collapsed.

The sky brightened as an orange and violet aurora filtered through the heavy clouds, glittering off the snow on the ground.

People gathered to watch, but Mirian kept her eye on her leyline detector. Jei was analyzing the southern detector, while Professor Endresen and two of her apprentices were analyzing data from the eastern detector. The data wasn't as easy to analyze without the visualization artifact she'd found down in Palendurio, but with that as a baseline, she could make sense of at least some of the data as she compiled it.

They brought together the results into one of the student-crafted shacks, where Mirian laid it out on some broad tables that weren't quite flat.

Respected Jei started finding correlative points in the data, while Professor Torres worked with a team of artificers to create the illusionary visualizer that Mirian had described.

Professor Endresen soon joined them. "Absolutely fascinating phenomena. I mean, it was theorized that leylines could move, but getting actual data on one? What a treat!"

Mirian raised an eyebrow at her. The leyline shifting meant the world was about to end. But, she had told people who asked to enjoy what time they had left, and she supposed this was what Endresen enjoyed.

"Ah, I just wish we had proper tools to take readings on this stuff. For future reference, my arcane physics lab is on the third floor of Torrian Tower. I suppose it might be intact, but I suspect the Akanans won't let me access my research notes," she continued. "I usually am doing research on the microscopic things, including the microstructures of glyphs. Sadly, funding got cut for a lot of the leyline research, so our geoarcanology department is tiny, and it's all staffed by industrialists who think the entire purpose of the profession is to find new fossilized myrvite deposits. Sad state of things. I don't remember who was working on leylines before the coin evaporated, but I at least know some of the basics of the field. Do you know what to make of these smaller seismic readings?"

"Nope. Only just started really looking into this a few cycles ago. I've been… busy."

Endresen tapped her chin. "Do you think it's the Labyrinth rearranging itself?"

Mirian stood back from her work. "Huh. What's the relationship between the Labyrinth and the leylines?"

"The Elder Gods have something to do with both of them. Otherwise, no one knows. One paper I read theorized the leylines are traveling through the Labyrinth's lowest layers. Others have said the Labyrinth parallels them. And still others think there's no correlation at all and people are just using insufficient data to draw inappropriately large conclusions. What an exciting opportunity you have, to find the truth."

Mirian couldn't help but chuckle. "The Ominian should have stuck you with one of the time loop thingies. I'd have made so much more progress by now. Say… what are your theories on the Divir moon?"

Endresen looked up at the ceiling. "Well, it's been giving material physicists conniptions because it's one of the things their theory of gravity can't explain. But maybe their equations do describe gravity, and the Divir moon isn't being held up by gravity at all. An object that close to Enteria shouldn't be in geosynchronous orbit. I hope I'm not stating the obvious, but maybe it has to do something with the leylines."

Mirian blinked. "The Akanans found a device that can use the leylines to float their airships. Maybe the Elder Gods used it to… put the Divir moon there." Her brow furrowed. "Though I don't know why they'd do that, or why they'd do it that way. But if the leylines shift out from under it…" She started laughing. "That's it! All we have to do is find a way to stabilize the leylines."

Endresen looked at her.

"Oh Gods, how do you stabilize a leyline? Right now, all I know is 'don't destroy the Divine Monument.' Has anyone…?"

"Never. I think there was an Akanan archmage who went looking for a leyline once. All his tools melted as they got close, so they started digging it up with spells. Then the archmage got fried by some sort of arcane feedback. Sadly, no data on why that happened or the physics behind that since all the equipment was slag already, and all the researchers who were with him who didn't die went off to go get cleansed by the church instead of continuing the research."

Mirian tapped her chin. Endresen wasn't a leyline expert, but she did know enough research and arcane physics to be a great help. She needed more than a few days with her. "Say, what sort of things might an Akanan transfer student need to say to get inducted into your research lab? What kind of skills might they need to demonstrate? Would Professor Jei vouching for them help?"

"Hmm. So let me tell you what we're working on…"

Endresen explained some of the details about glyph microstructures, the lensing spells they were using to look at them, and the crystallography-adjacent classification system they were developing. As she talked, Mirian connected it to what she already knew. This might make celestial runes easier to produce and analyze too, she thought. And I actually know several novel glyphs from the Labyrinth. She was sure Micael could make a convincing argument without giving too much away. Which in turn, would let me get more insight as to what's going on in Torrian Tower, and what the Akanans are getting up to when they arrive.

***

Mirian spent the rest of the evening collating data, then plotting the major movements on a map of Baracuel. She didn't even realize how much time had passed until Respected Jei brought her dinner. She hadn't even realized when her old mentor had left.

She started muttering to herself as she looked over the results. "No leyline breach down by the Casnevar Range. That means Palendurio probably is intact. But the leyline just moved." Her eyes scanned the data. "And there's that anomaly north of Alkazaria again. Strange."

She, Jei, and Endresen talked for another hour. Eventually, Jei and Endresen left to sleep. Mirian stayed in the shack, poring over paper readouts and graphs. That was where Lily found her.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," Mirian said, swallowing hard.

"They say it's… going to end soon."

"Yeah," Mirian said. "Was it… okay? These few weeks?"

"It's hard for anything to be okay when you know…" Lily gestured vaguely outside. "A lot of my classmates are in denial. They say the world can't end because… you know, it just can't. And if it could, there was something they could do about it."

Mirian nodded. "It's that feeling of powerlessness that's the worst part."

"Yeah," Lily said. "I had to… I had to spend some time and accept that. But then, the evacuation came, and there was all this stuff to do. It felt nice to be able to help out a little." She snorted. "You should hear the other students talk about you. It's all hushed whispers and rumors. They don't know you're secretly a huge dork."

She laughed. "You still know me."

Those last few hours, Mirian didn't get any great insights. She could have spent it rechecking data, or plotting more energy surges. She could have probed Professor Endresen's brain for more physics ideas, or had Respected Jei go over more of the math.

In the end, though, she just needed to chat with her friend. She found herself glancing southeast, to where Grandpa Irabi was, somewhere in the distance.

Friendship isn't a distraction. It's a necessity. She could do this. Lily and the others were important to her. The time loop had undermined it, but so what? She would persevere, because it was worth it.

The prelude to moonfall was different this time. With the skies overcast and the snow falling in flurries, the auroras and eruptions illuminated a pristine world of white. Violet, green and orange light sent the fields of snow glittering, and gave a strange depth to the flakes coming down.

As the moon fell, those fields of white brightened, so it was almost like the world was being washed of its details, until the only thing left was a single color.