The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Chapter 22 - Cycle Three

Mirian awoke with that raw scream still on her lips, and stopped.

Someone groaned. Selesia, she thought. She's wounded, but we can still—but no. It was Lily, saying, "Gods above, Mirian. You've got a real set of lungs. That must have been some nightmare."

Mirian sat on the bed and clutched her head in her hands. "I need—give me a moment."

"You okay?"

Mirian burst into tears, which hopefully answered the question. A drop of water hit her on the head, which made her burst out laughing. Of course. The hole was back.

Lily came over and put her arm around Mirian, which made her start crying again. She hugged her roommate back. It took a few minutes for her to stop trembling, and to find her voice.

"You don't remember, do you? Or we'd be having a very different conversation."

"Mirian, what is going on?"

She forced a smile. "Nothing. Don't worry about it. I just… I need some time." Another drop of water splatted on her hair, dripping down her face. She sighed. "And I need to shut off the water heater above us."

Lily looked at her like she'd grown a third leg out of her head, but Mirian just pointed up, then rose to grab the storage tin and her spellbook.

"What is… how did that happen?" Lily said, staring up at the perfectly clean hole running through all three stories of the dormitory.

"No clue," Mirian called as she shut the door behind her. Mirian used her lift object spell to get the third floor door open again, slapped the tin down over the hole so it would at least catch the rain coming through—it wouldn't be much, she knew the next few days would just be a light drizzle—then found the hidden panel with the switch to the water heater and turned it off. The water stopped hissing from the pipe shortly after. Everyone's showers would be ruined. Good, she thought. They could all suffer together. Someone else could go bother maintenance.

When she got back to the room, she dressed and grabbed her things in silence. She spent a moment looking for her spellrod, then belatedly remembered she hadn't made it yet. It was back to the minimalist clay cube. Lily was staring at her, but she just couldn't handle it right now. She needed time to process what had happened. Time to think. "We'll talk after classes today, yeah?"

"Yeah," Lily said, still looking concerned.

Mirian scarfed down breakfast in the kitchen. She was absolutely ravenous; the last food she'd had was—Gods, it had been that damned prison food, hadn't it? Absolutely disgusting. And that was coming from someone who made porridge every day to save money. Well, that can at least come to an end, she thought, throwing her cloak on. She could take out a loan from the Tower's Trust bank any time she wanted. The debt would subsequently be canceled by artillery bombardment.

As she walked across the path between the dormitories and the Academy, she considered what to do. There'd been no statue of Yiaverunan nearby this time. Was it even the Gods that had saved her? She had to believe it was, but the massacre of the Torrviol exodus had shaken her faith. Why would they let all this happen? Why would they let it all happen again?

There was something bigger at play. Viridian had talked about buried secrets beneath the Academy. It had to have something to do with that big stone door beneath the Bainrose library. Then, there was the attack. Torrviol didn't make sense as a target. If the Akanans could overwhelm the Fort Aegrimere garrison so easily, why didn't they just take Cairnmouth itself?

Her first year at the Academy, she had taken the mandatory History of Torrviol course. Torrviol was older than even the capitols of Baracuel; layers of ruins lay beneath the modern town, which had once been a great city that stretched from the hills that the dormitories were all the way to Lake Torrviol. Rumor was that old passages led to the Labyrinth, though those had no doubt been closed up. Maybe something big had been discovered down there.

She needed to find a way to spy on the spies. Whatever they were up to, it wasn't just preparation for the invasion. One spy had been on top of Bainrose on the day of the attack. It was the guard in front of Bainrose who knew the spy. Somehow, the library was the key.

The guards couldn't be trusted. It seemed they were loyal to the captain, and the captain of the guard was undoubtedly a traitor of some kind. Some random student wasn't going to change their minds any more than it had before.

What could she use? Predicting tests would just get people thinking she cheated. Predicting the weather could be dismissed as a guess, and not even a particularly lucky one. Oh, it's going to rain in Torrviol? Damn, how did you know that? The day after it gets cold, it snows instead? The Prophets have come again, she could hear someone replying. And predicting Platus's death would just get her charged with murder.

Not that predictions would do them any good. Akana Praediar had apparently created a pair of colossal airships that Baracuel simply had no defense against. Most of Baracuel's armies were in the south of the country by the Persaman border. But even if they could be summoned in time—a process that would have to start in the next few days, according to the logistics timetables she'd read in that textbook on battles—what were they going to do? It was out of range of any arcanist short of maybe Professor Cassius, and guns didn't seem like they'd do much.

More, what was the explanations for this happening a third time? Would she go back in time again if she died? She had her suspicion she would. She didn't plan on dying to test that out, though. She didn't like dying. It was painful and horrible.

Mirian passed the group of first year students whose conversation would eventually lead to one of them crying on a bench. One thing was certain: she wasn't going to hand that scroll over to some idiot from the Academy's maintenance section. It would probably just end up in Captain Mandez's hands. How the hell was his name Mandez, anyways? That was a south-Baracuel name, and Mandez had the palest skin she'd ever set eyes on, moreso than even Professor Endresen who was from about as far north as you could get in Baracuel without actually being in the frostlands.

This time, she didn't bother climbing the stairs of the Alchemistry building. She waited in the alley below, spellbook open, ignoring the students who passed by and gave her funny looks when they noticed her standing in the narrow gap between the structures.

The minutes ticked by. Then, there was a slight scuffling sound from above. She tensed, and started channeling the lift object spell. Mirian lashed out with it as she saw the man above leap, but at the distance, she missed the buckle over the cover and snatched the strap securing it instead. That was more securely attached, so she intensified the mana flow and pulled hard—hard enough that it set the man on the roof off balance. His arms pinwheeled as he fought for balance, and the satchel slipped down. The cloaked man above recovered. If he looked down, though, Mirian didn't see it. She snapped shut her spellbook, put the hood of her cloak on, and snatched up the bag, stashing it in her own satchel as she did and ducked into the Alchemistry building. Yeah, you mysterious piece of shit, Mirian thought. How do you like it?

Mirian by this time had a much better mental framework for how all the alchemistry concepts they'd been learning connected, and this would be the third time she would take the exam. She already had a pretty good idea of what she had gotten wrong last time, and none of it would be covered in the review session. She considered skipping the classes she didn't have exams in today, but the environment was relaxing. She liked school. She liked learning. She liked the familiarity, and how no one was trying to kill her.

Her mind kept going back to the battle on the hill. That had been a nightmare, just giant beetles skittering about, and she'd nearly died twice. Selesia had died. Well, they'd all died, in the end. Those damned Akanans. Just gunning people down without mercy.

She zoned out as students trickled into the classroom. The battle had happened less than an hour ago. How the hell was she supposed to concentrate after something like that? Belatedly, she realized she needed to figure out how to get Nicolus to sit next to her again. But she hadn't been paying attention the first time it had happened, so what had the reason been? She sat in a similar spot each day. The other thing she needed to check was for Xipuatl. Looking around, though, he didn't appear to be in the class. It was a prerequisite to the Spell Engines class, but he must have taken it sometime last year.

The bell chimed, and Professor Seneca lowered the lights. Mirian watched as Nicolus entered class—late, obviously—and sat in a random spot. There was a girl following him. Was that… what was her name again? Caldera? No, that was a volcano thing. Calenna? Calisto, she remembered. The seat he'd chosen had no seats nearby. That was what he'd been doing—evading Calisto for some reason.

She started taking notes in her notebook. One set was on alchemistry, the other, on times and days. Both would be erased again, she was pretty sure. Is that what the Prophets had gone through? Died over and over again until they got it right? What was she supposed to get right?

Mirian didn't like the consequences of if she was wrong. What if she skipped classes, failed an exam, and the month didn't repeat? What if she took risks and lost an arm or died—and it stuck? She had always been a cautious person. But something had to change.

She thought of the dream she'd had, the word still resonating in her mind: GROW.

Mirian didn't need some weird dream to tell her that. That was what she always did: growing in knowledge, growing in skill—but she did realize she needed to grow in new ways. If she was right, and dying would just repeat the month again, she could let go of some of her anxieties. She could take risks.

At the end of class, she strode up to Nicolus before Calisto could get to him. "Hey, I heard you were doing studying sessions and you knew your Alchemistry. Can I join? I have some extensive notes I've taken…." She opened up her notebook and started paging through so he could see.

"I don't actually… who told you that…?" Nicolus's eyes narrowed with suspicion. Then he said, "Hah! Oh, you mean the dr—social sessions. With my friends. We don't really do much studying," he admitted. He'd almost said "drinking," but that was technically banned, and Professor Seneca was still in the room.

"Oh," Mirian said, and made a disgusted face. "No, I mean actually studying. Sorry, I guess I've wasted both of our time." She flipped through one last page in the notebook, and Nicolus finally noticed it.

"Hey Nicolus," Calisto interjected, but Nicolus shushed her and said, "Wait, let me see that notebook. Wow. These are… okay, so you know what, I actually do study—don't go spreading that around, I don't want to tarnish my reputation or anything—but it's usually private sessions with a, uh, tutor. Last one for the quarter is tonight, actually. Listen, meet me outside of Bainrose at four."

Then he was off, with Calisto following him, pestering him incessantly about something, though Mirian couldn't hear what. Well damn, she thought. It worked.

Next, she had to decide what to do about the break-in to the Myrvite Studies building that was going to happen in about two hours.