The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Chapter 34 - Escalation

Worried conversation filled the train after the eruption.

"Did you see that—?"

"—looked like a magical explosion of some sort—"

"—too big to be a spell. Could a monster do that?"

"—Labyrinth under there? Maybe some old artifact—"

It was clear no one had any clue what was going on, and everyone was scared. Over the next few hours, they saw four more geysers erupt across the countryside, though none so close or so large. Then, for a time, there was nothing. The train got quiet with anticipation. It felt like everyone was holding their breath, waiting for the next geyser.

Finally, Sire Nurea said, "Does this have to do with the attack?"

"I… I don't know. I've never seen these before."

Gradually, the tension on the train let up as more time passed uneventfully, though the conversation was still subdued, with people paying far more attention than usual to what was out the window.

That evening, they stopped at one of the stations along the route. The train stopped long enough for people to disembark, stretch, and buy food. Apparently, in Akana Praediar, the trains only stopped to let people off and get more on; if you wanted food, you just bought it on the train itself. Baracuel, as Selesia had put it, was too relaxed for that. Selesia, Mirian thought. I hope you're doing okay.

Nurea and Nicolus bought a sleeping unit in one of the back cars for the night, while Mirian just slept in her seat. There'd be a stop in the morning where they could stretch and buy food again. Whispered voices in the train woke her that night. She blinked back sleep, then saw the lights in the sky. Here in the low country, clouds and forests didn't block so much of the view. The horizons were long, and sky seemed bigger. High above in that sky, Mirian could make out what looked like faint crackling lines that arched across the sky, like cracks spreading in glass. The strange glow crawled from one horizon to the other, then disappeared.

"You're a mage, from the university, right?" one of the passengers asked. "Do you know… anything about that?"

Mirian shook her head. It took her some time to get back to sleep. In the morning, she saw the train conductor talking with the station master.

"…the light signals east of us cut out," Mirian overheard him saying. "I can't send the car until I get confirmation the track ahead of you is free. Especially because of what you just told me happened out west."

Train stations used light signals that were relayed across a glyph-and-lens system to talk to each station. Communication was based off a series of flashing codes that meant things like, 'halt all trains' or 'train arrived.' The other way they could communicate was messenger birds. Not zephyr falcons—those were too expensive—but there was a kind of orange parakeet from down south that could be trained to fly between two places. Only two places though; for whatever reason, the birds got extremely surly if one tried to make them travel anywhere else.

A clever artificer had invented a system with wires that seemed at first to be the perfect communication device. A scribe could write a message on a glyphed tablet, and the words would appear on the other side. Unlike the glyph-and-lens system, bad weather didn't affect it, and unlike the birds, the wires could reach multiple destinations along the line. This 'magical telegraph' had been laid down between Cairnmouth and Palendurio at great expense, only to break a week later. Investigation of the wire found that stonemoles had burrowed past the spellward barrier, which had no effect on them underground, and chewed it to pieces. They'd gotten so fat off feasting on the magical energy in the wires that they didn't even burrow away when the magi found them, just sat there in a stupor, purring like cats.

Several other attempts were made to protect the magical wire, but each was defeated by some hungry myrvite. The last attempt involved keeping the wire suspended over the ground and encased in a pipe, but somehow a magical mushroom had managed to get inside. Mirian had learned about it in one of her artifice classes as a warning as to how tenacious myrvites could be, and how every good item had defenses against just being eaten. A few cities still used the telegraph system, but only within the city, and only for important things since it was far more expensive than just hiring a runner to deliver a message.

Mirian had plenty of time to sit at the station and reflect. What was the explanation for either of the things she had seen? The only thing she could think of was the leylines, but those were deep conduits of energy, deep enough they were usually below the Labyrinth. Magical surveying had mapped most of the major ones, and they sprawled across the globe in a complicated network. Viridian had said something about leylines at some point in his lectures, but only about how the myrvite ecology's connected to them. There had been some talk among the industrialist wizards of trying to harness the leylines as a source of unlimited energy, but that would involve building and maintaining conduits that stretched from the deepest parts of the Labyrinth to the surface. If the magical telegraph couldn't be sustained, there was no way such a device could. And that assumed the leyline didn't just annihilate whatever device tried to harness it. Likely, whoever tried would be like the wizard who tried to harness lightning: a cautionary tale to others.

Flipping through her notebook on anything about sources of extreme magical energy turned up little. The Labyrinth was the only other possibility. The Elder Gods had placed artifacts of tremendous power there. But she'd never heard of any of them doing anything like that. The instruments of the Gods were powerful in their complexity, not their total energy output.

If it was the leylines, then… what did that mean? As far as she knew, the leylines were poorly studied. They had been created when the Elder Gods had created the world, along with the divine Labyrinth. So if they were doing weird things… were the Gods responsible?

"Any word?" she asked Nicolus when she saw him.

"We're out of our network here," he said. "And the Couriers are… well, let's just say they're not taking any more orders right now. I mean, they didn't say that, against the king's law for them to refuse an order, but there's at least a hundred people from the train all trying to get messages out and only five messenger parakeets and two riders."

"Any word on the light signals?"

"No. They sent a repair-car down the track to figure out why."

Mirian had missed that. The repair-cars were little more than four wheels, a platform with two chairs and some cargo boxes, and a little spell engine. The repair-car didn't even have a roof; if it rained, they got wet. Not that it looked like it was going to rain. From the edge of the northern horizon to the Casnevar Mountains to the south, there were only the faintest wisps of clouds. Apparently, they all gathered around Torrviol year round in a conspiracy to steal away the sun and immiserate her.

Word got out there was a break in the tracks down the line where a magical fissure had formed. The rail mage and maintenance worker were working on fixing it, but they'd asked for a second team to be dispatched to figure out what was going on with the magic rift, and if it would return.

They ended up spending the night in town. With the inns immediately overwhelmed, most people slept on the train. Sometime during the night, a second train from Cairnmouth pulled in behind them.

Finally, late the next morning, they departed again. For hours, the journey was routine, and it seemed they'd left behind whatever troubles were going on. Then someone spotted a near constant stream of lightning pouring out of the earth into the sky. It went on for minutes on end, a rancorous thunder filling the air for miles, and then it stopped.

A sense of foreboding settled on everyone. No one talked much. A few prayed. They were all on edge, waiting for the next thing. Mirian realized that marshaling a defense of Torrviol would be even harder than she thought. If this was what had been happening down south, it was a miracle anyone had even shown up to defend Torrviol at all.

An earthquake rattled the train, and twice more people saw strange lights moving across the sky. By then, the prayers had intensified, and the priest on board was leading sessions where they held hands and recited poems of the prophets. After the last stop before Alkazaria, Nicolus and Nurea made their way to the sleeper car for the night.

It was evening when it happened. They were maybe only an hour or two from Alkazaria, and Mirian had been looking forward to seeing the safety of its white marble spires and domed palaces. She'd thought if she could reach the city, its majesty might protect her in some way. It was a foolish thought, but it had comforted her. All her delusions vanished when she saw the breach.

She was looking out the window, and there, along the scrublands, the view was unblemished by any mountain or cloud. It started with a flash, and column of energy like lightning that linked the sky and ground. Then another, and the earth shook. Then the ground erupted, but this time it wasn't like a geyser. When Mirian had been a child, she'd played a game when it rained. She'd put a hemp rope under the mud, patting it down until it was flat, then lifted the rope all at once so that the grime splashed everywhere. Her dad had laughed—or maybe he'd been furious, and she'd laughed. When she saw the coruscating line of arcane energy smashing through the landscape, she thought of that rope breaching the mud, except at an impossible scale. It was a leyline, actually emerging from deep underground. It could be nothing else. If there had been mountains nearby, the blazing line of light would have sheared off their tops. As it was, it danced through the air wildly, at first, not making a sound. But like lightning, the thunder came, and when it came, it wasn't a simple clap of rolling thunder, it was continuous and deafening. The train shook, and then it shook harder, and then Mirian was sure they were going to die. Even though she couldn't hear the screech of metal over the overwhelming sound of the leyline storm, she felt it, and then she was flying through the air. By some miracle of reaction, she had pulled out her spellrod when the light began, and more on instinct than anything, channeled mana into a force shield. She was only just in time. As she was hurled across the train, the force shield shattered, but that absorbed the worst of it. A second later and her head might have smashed into the ceiling, which was now perpendicular to the ground.

Mirian tried to stand up, but the shaking was too intense. The window, now above her, had shattered, and her right hand had been lacerated by the glass. She hardly felt the pain, because there was pain in her bones, and her ears, and everywhere. Arcanists learned to tune their senses to arcane energy. Always before, that energy had felt insubstantial, like the faintest whisper in the air, or the lightest touch imaginable. Now, the arcane energy was palpable—she was pretty sure even the untrained people on the train could feel it. It was as loud as a scream and as sharp as a razor. Another shock-wave smashed into the train, this one a blast of heat, and the sideways train car screeched as it was pushed across the ground another few inches.

And then, just when she thought she might die of it, the noise stopped. The feeling of arcane energy battering down her senses stopped. The lightning-bright glow stopped. The shaking stopped. She stood, trembling.

The derailment had caused the different passenger cars to tear apart from each other, so even though it was sideways, Mirian found she could scramble out the door.

She threw herself down onto the hard-packed earth and managed to scrape her left hand on the needles of a nearby cactus. Again, she could hardly feel the pain; there was too much adrenaline coursing through her. Mirian stood back and surveyed the damage.

The train had been derailed and flipped sideways. She'd figured out that much. What she hadn't realized is that it had been thrown a full hundred feet from the tracks. Without the force shield, she was sure she'd be dead. Even with the force shield, she should have been dead. Bodies were strewn about everywhere, and several train cars had been torn open like they were made of tissue paper instead of steel.

Beyond the train was utter devastation. The land had been flat before; now it was covered in jagged hills of rock. In the evening light, she could see cracks running throughout that rock that glowed an eldritch green, like some sort of otherworldly lava ran through it. Behind those hills, there was something else. In the choking dust and sand that the leyline eruption had left behind was a tangled mess of shining metal. At first, Mirian couldn't tell what she was looking at. The long rectangular bars that criss-crossed each other in a maze-like array seemed too much like a blacksmith's puzzle glistening in the sunset that had grown to extraordinary size. The colors that played across the metallic skin of it didn't seem to properly reflect the light around them. Then, she realized what she was looking at: a chunk of the Labyrinth. The leyline eruption had brought it up to the surface.

The feeling of dread grew in her. This wasn't just about some attack on Torrviol. She coughed in the choking dust that was everywhere. Survivors, she realized. Did anyone else live? She checked the car she'd crawled out of. No one in that car was moving. Belatedly, she realized her satchel with her spellbook and clothes was still in there, and dragged it out. She tried casting a collect dust spell to clear the air around her so she could breathe properly, but there was too much of it in the air. For every little ball of dust she collected in her palm with the spell, more just came in. She set her things down and checked the other cars.

It was horrifying. People's limbs had been severed in some places, and their bodies lay contorted, often with bones poking out. She had to take a moment to steady her breathing, which was hard when the air was so dirty. In the fifth car she checked, there was an older woman whose ragged breathing she could hear. "I'm coming to get you," she said.

"Thank you, dear," rasped the woman, and she smiled at Mirian. Then her head lolled back, and the breathing stopped. Mirian drew back, eyes wide. Then she realized that there was a metal beam that had pierced the woman's gut, and her blood had pooled beneath her. Gods above, she thought.

By the eighth car, Mirian was ready to give up. It was getting dark, and the dusk light streaming through the dusk gave the sky a reddish glow. Then she heard noise coming from the nearby railcar and muffled shouting. The nearby cars on each side of it had pinned the doors shut. There was no moving them; even Lily's greatest lift object wasn't going to do anything. Lily, I hope you got out, she thought. I hope you're safe. But was anyone safe?

Mirian got out her spellrod and switched the dials around for her shape metal spell. She channeled, but the thick steel of the car was too much. She thought she might have been able to thin the metal in a small section, but even repeated casts would barely open up a hole in the car. The spell was designed for work on crafting projects, not anything this big. There was no way she was making a space large enough for a human to get through. The force blades wouldn't do much to cut through steel either, and they might hurt whoever was inside.

"—out there?" she heard the muffled cry from inside.

"Yeah!" Mirian said, then inhaled enough dust to start violently coughing, delaying the next part of her response. "I'm—I'm trying to get you out. Can you climb out through the windows?"

The reply was hard to hear, but she thought she heard "nothing to stand on," and something about "jagged metal." It was up to her then.

Mirian started by using the spellrod's enhanced lift object to gather nearby rocks and debris into a pile, then realized she might need her mana for other things and started lugging about the rocks herself. She used repeated casts of her shape stone spell to stabilize the rickety pile, then hoisted herself up on top the car. Finally, she could look down.

Oh Gods, she thought. It was Nicolus down there. He was a mess, his eyes red from crying, and it looked like his leg was broken. He was holding Sire Nurea in his arms, rocking her gently back and forth. Nurea's face had gone totally white, and she wasn't moving.

"Nicolus," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. "I'm going to help get you out of there."

He looked up at her, and she could see nothing of the confidence and humor he usually carried. His spirit had been broken as badly as any of the train cars. "She's gone," he said, voice tender. "How can she be gone, Mirian?" Mirian felt sick. Nicolus had known Nurea his whole life. She'd probably been by his side since his first memories.

Nicolus's spellbook had gone missing, buried under something or flung from the train when it crashed. His leg was certainly broken, and his right arm wasn't working well either. Her lift object spell wouldn't work on him because of the spell resistance of his aura, never mind his weight, so she used the spell instead to move the seats into a pile one at a time. Her auric mana was rapidly thinning, so she climbed back down to check her bag for the mana elixir she'd bought, but the crash had shattered the bottle.

She climbed back up, every part of her sore and aching, but there was no way she could leave Nicolus there. The last light of dusk vanished as Mirian worked, the red glow fading to dark. She cast her light spell, then finished making a pile tall enough for Nicolus. With his broken leg and hurt arm, she needed a way to make the pile of seats not fall apart as he dragged himself up it, so like with the rocks, she used manipulate object and shape wood to give the makeshift ramp some stability by linking the wooden pieces of the seats together. Then, she used phantom sandpaper to file down the jagged glass around the nearby section of window so Nicolus wouldn't be lacerated as she pulled him up. At last, Nicolus was able to balance on one leg, leaning against the wall of the car and reach up with his good arm. Mirian leaned down, and with two hands heaved him up. Her muscles strained as she leaned back to get the best leverage she could. She grunted with the effort, and then at last, she was able to drag Nicolus to a point where he could use his arms to help.

"Gods you're strong," he said. "Thanks. I…" He looked back at Nurea's corpse, pale and peaceful. "I'll come back for her," he vowed. "Give her the hero's burial she deserves. She—she saved me," he sobbed. Mirian gave him a moment, as sobs wracked his body again, then helped him down, using her arms to cradle his good foot as he stepped down onto the debris pile, then lower it. Despite their care, Nicolus put pressure on the broken leg as he climbed down. He clenched his teeth and hissed in pain, face going white and breathing ragged. Then he continued down, and collapsed onto the dirt.

The Luamin moon was nearly full as it crept up from the horizon, and above they could also see the Divir moon, nearly straight above them. When Mirian's light spell went out, they took a moment to gaze at the full sky of stars around them. Then, Mirian heard something moving nearby.

"Five hells, we need to get back in a car."

"What?"

"The spellward. There's no way it's still up after a magical explosion like that. Anything with active mana flow would have—we have to move. Let's go!" she said, dragging Nicolus up.

"Shit," Nicolus said, "You think there's myrvites out there?"

"With this many dead bodies? Come on. Can you hobble faster?"

Mirian heard something growling outside as they went into one of the cars that had only one door exposed. Things could still climb in from the broken windows above, but at least the narrow entrance by the ground would make it less likely for desert drakes or manticores to get in.

Mirian dragged some more seats that had broken off to barricade the door. Already, she could hear creatures crawling about the cars, claws scraping on metal as they went about scavenging for carrion. If there was anyone still alive, Mirian prayed they died quickly as a mercy. Something flying above let out a wailing call. The desert air was getting cold. Mirian took the cloaks off some of the dead, though they were torn and caked with drying blood, because they'd need them to stay warm. She couldn't keep casting heat spells. They huddled together as the night's chill descended. It hadn't been so long ago that Mirian had idly wondered what it would be like for Nicolus to wrap his arms around her and give her comfort, but here she was doing that for him. Had it only been three months? It felt like years had passed.

They settled down in the dark and prayed they'd survive the night.