The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Chapter 41 - Seeker

Mirian jerked up from her bed with a very short scream, then quietly muttered curses to herself while holding her head in her hands. Seeing that she'd woken Lily, she said, "Sorry, nightmare. Also, just remembered I have to do something, be right back." As if to punctuate her sentence, a drop of water plopped on her forehead.

She had tried not to shout, it was just that getting shot was painful. Even though the wound was gone by the time she woke, the primitive part of her brain didn't understand, it just understood lots of pain, must act.

When she came back downstairs, Lily said, "Mirian, why is their a hole in the ceiling, and how is there a hole in the ceiling, and did I see it going up to the roof before you covered it?"

"I don't know, I don't know, and yes, but don't worry I'll fix it after classes. Exams today, gotta go. You're the best though," she said, and quickly changed and left.

The month had started again, and Mirian continued to act as if this was going to be a long term thing. There was no other way to act—the Gods damned moon was going to come down, so planning for any other future was pointless. What was up with that, anyways? It all seemed far too big to even think about that part. She had to focus on the little things she could control.

The acceptance that she was in this loop for good had given her an idea. After stealing the scroll satchel from the first spy and meeting Nicolus again, Mirian skipped ecology so that she could go buy a pocket watch and stand at the base of the Myrvite Studies staircase and wait for spy two to make an appearance. She already knew he'd be taking the stairs because she'd hear him come up them.

Sure enough, she saw dark cloak number two approaching through the gardens east of the building. She mentally marked the part of the walkway where she'd first seen him and the time. She'd stand there next time. He approached with his cowl down so it was hard to get a look at his features.

"Hey," she said in Eskanar (which was one of the few words she now knew) as he walked by her into the building. That caused him to start and look up, and she got a good look at his face, though he quickly lowed his head again and rushed by her without speaking. Mirian sketched down what she had seen in her journal as best she could, making notes about the shade of blue his eyes were, a few of the freckles on his pale face, and the way his hair was styled under the hood.

She finished her exam early in Enchantments again, enjoying the baffled look of Professor Eld once again as she did. This gave her a few minutes to improve on her absolutely awful artifice project just before her presentation. Gods, what an embarrassing piece of work. She wondered how many more times she'd need to present it. Passing Artifice Design was required for three of the classes she still wanted to take next quarter, though. After that, she told Torres the story about the leak and absconded to go visit the scrap piles by the crafting stations and open her bank account again. She stocked up on supplies, then found a quiet place to start copying down the designs of the glyphkeys. The glyphs they used were incredibly tiny and made using specialized equipment that wasn't sold in public markets, but eventually, she might find a way to copy them. She also risked getting out the seeker-stone so she could quickly copy down the glyphs it was using.

It turned out 'quickly copy down the glyphs' wasn't going to work. Some of the glyphs were inside the device; she'd need to spend more time with it later. Examining the stone, she wondered how the spies had gotten them. They obviously hadn't made them. These would require the same kind of specialized equipment as the glyphkeys. Was there a supplier she could track down? Torrviol made a lot of magical items for its small size, but she was pretty sure it was illegal to make anything like this. Maybe she could track down these 'syndicates' that everyone kept yammering on about. Mirian had been an embarrassingly old age when she'd finally learned the 'black market' was not a physical place where thieves hung out to sell things, and had no idea how to do this.

In math, she took notes again. She had started drawing little diagrams for herself that represented the truth path of different mana conduits. She thought she might be able to start applying the new theories to some of her designs. Actually, now that she knew that Torres and Jei were working together, they were almost certainly doing just that. Mirian resolved to talk to Torres about the design implications for artifice when she got a chance.

After meeting with Nicolus, she finished repairs on the hole, chatted with Lily, then told Lily she was going for a walk, which was sort of true. She implied to her she was going to the Mage's Grove, but instead, she wandered Torrviol looking for any other spy activity. She walked quietly, cloak on and hood up, sticking to the side of the streets where she was less obvious at a quick glance. Plenty of people moved about at this hour, but she was on the lookout for any more of the break-ins to the academic buildings. She turned up nothing, but the misting rain and peaceful streets gave her time to clear her head.

Day two, she met Selesia. It was hard not to smile and move too quickly. She yearned to hold her hand again, to experience that irreplaceable warmth of connection. It stung to have to rebuild it from scratch, again, but at least she could return to it.

She decided against heading into Bainrose for the night. She was pretty sure the third spy would be coming through one of the passages the soldiers had used. She also didn't want to risk losing to him in a fight and being trapped down there. She was also pretty sure the northern portion of the underground wasn't connected to the other parts directly beneath Torrviol. What she needed was a way to map that too.

Over the weekend, Mirian continued her independent studies of divination spells. She scribed reveal iron, which contrary to the name, actually just sensed all magnetic metals. It then created a faint blue glow along the path of the metal. That should allow her not just to find the steel mechanisms of hidden levers, but what path they took behind the wall, and therefore, where the switches were.

Next she scribed detect aura and detect passage, each which seemed promising, though the latter had the same problem as the cave-detection spell, and the former a radius that was a bit small. Her other project, though, was creating her own seeker-stone. Reading up on them, they were more complicated than she'd initially thought. Some seeker-stones were designed to be generically findable, which was mostly useful for expeditions, couriers, or Labyrinth delvers who might get lost in some dangerous area. These were the ones designed to reflect certain light frequencies. The kind the spies were using were not the usual kind.

For spycraft, she needed to make something she could detect, but others couldn't. The one she'd taken off the spy used something called a glyphic bridge, something they hadn't covered in any of her classes. A specific sequence of flux glyphs in the middle of the spell could cancel each other out in effect, but still be uniquely detectable by a device that used the same sequence. Apparently, the first telegraphs had tried to use these, but the linking of the two items only worked over short distances. This appeared to be what the Akanans were using, though the books she could find on the subject were sparse, stating that most of the research was done "by spy agencies, who then kept their results secret for obvious reasons." The ones the Akanans were using probably were much better than what she could make, but like the glyphkeys, the glyphs they'd scribed were too tiny for her to replicate, and the stone was actually two stones cemented together, with the main glyph sequence inside the stone. Breaking it open broke the glyphs too, as she found out. Oh well, she thought after cracking it open. At least they can't track the stone anymore.

Before her math exam on Firstday, Mirian thanked Professor Jei for a wonderful class before slipping her own seeker-stone in her bag. As usual, Jei left early while the proctors took over. Mirian scribbled down answers for a minute before requesting a bathroom break. Once outside, she activated her seeker device, a rough fan-looking thing of brass, wood, and silver wire. Lights along the edge of the fan shape lit up in the direction of the stone.

The lights pointed her towards Bainrose. She hurried over to the courtyard, and just caught a glimpse of Jei walking into the castle before the lights in the device went dead. Either the thick stone walls were interfering, or the distance had grown too long.

She stashed her device under her cloak and walked quickly, trying to catch up without looking too suspicious. The guard in the plaza was usually not standing in front of Bainrose—no guard was posted there until night, when the doors locked. Today, he was standing right in front of the barbican. He leaned his halberd against the wall, adjusted his belt, then stood at attention again. It looked like normal behavior—but maybe not. Was he in charge of signaling when Jei passed? She recognized him as the guard she'd talked to that first cycle, the one who had been totally apathetic. Was he a spy, or just a traitor?

Mirian walked past him into the library, quickly passing the front desk to duck behind one of the towering shelves. She pulled out the tracking device again. The light in the center blinked faintly, then stopped again. She probably went to the basement already, Mirian decided, and hastened her steps. When she got to the second basement level and pulled out the device again, it was dead. She wondered if she'd jostled lose a part, and traced the silver wires to make sure their connections were intact. Seems good. Maybe there's too much metal in the walls. Or maybe she has some spell that disables them. But if she did, wouldn't she have used it on the Akanan seeker-stones?

She'd lost Professor Jei though, so she reluctantly returned to Griffin Hall. "Sorry," she told the proctor. "Last night's dinner did not agree with me."

The proctor sighed. "I really didn't need to know that."

Mirian sat back down and resumed her work, though she spent most of her time thinking about the problems in the back half of the exam. When she looked at the first few problems, her mind automatically started thinking about what steps she needed to take to solve them. When she looked at the last problems, there was no mental tool that came to mind. It just looked like there wasn't enough information. And maybe there isn't, she realized. It's using one of the four-dimensional coordinate arrays, but half the information is just… missing? How did she get the first half? And why don't they know the second? If she could just get Jei to tell her about the secret project….

But already, her questions for Jei would have to wait for the next cycle. If Professor Jei wasn't already dead this cycle, she soon would be.