The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Chapter 88 - Seeds of Chaos

Mirian and Lecne worked to plan her return for the next cycle. She studied maps of Cairnmouth, and Lecne recalled the schedule he followed on the first three days of the month as best he could. More, they planned how to save High Priestess Arenthia.

"I probably won't succeed the first time," Mirian said apologetically. "I have to stay hidden in the shadows."

Lecne nodded. "Too much is at stake. I understand. That's why you'll appreciate what I'm about to teach you." He pulled out a thick tome that was packed full of elaborate illustrations of souls.

One could never actually depict auras, mana, or souls. They were beyond the basic senses; there was no sensory organ dedicated to it. The human brain came up with analogies as best it could, and everyone's was slightly different. Classic magical texts described assembling a spell as 'weaving' because it was a group of weavers who'd come up with the instructional system that came to dominate Baracuel. One could imagine it as a painting with a brush, or as assembling colored prisms, or growing plants—there really wasn't a limit—so long as it helped the mind put the mana in the right glyphs at the right time.

Souls were similar, though it seemed Mirian's conception of her soul as a flowing thing of light was common enough. The tome depicted the concepts as best it could, then tried to describe what each part of the soul was, and what changing it would affect.

"Classic healing just involves stimulating the soul with relatively simple energy currents near the wound. Finding the wound is easy, because you can see a disruption in the soul's current," Lecne said. "This is also why determining the kind of infection is important. Different sicknesses seem to be caused by different things—too small to see, but there's some amazing work being done on it in Palendurio. Maybe one day we'll know more. Some of those things seem not to be affected by soul energy, but other infections will get worse when infused. Hence non-intervenable diseases."

"That makes a lot of sense," Mirian said. "So since the body is a reflection of the soul, changing it in the right place could change… how you look."

"Precisely," Lecne said. "But it's not like an illusion. It causes an actual, physical change. Reversible, of course, but it shares the same mechanics as a curse—the modification of the soul. A great cure for body dysphorias. Most people only make the change once, unless they're like Marva. Ah, hope they're doing well." He gave a loud sigh. "Then of course, there's the people who try to get taller or make subtle changes so they better conform to beauty standards. That never goes well. The soul is as complicated as the body, and certain traits cannot be changed simply, and attempting those changes can cause one to accidentally cripple themselves. Or worse, there's the ones who can't leave the mind alone. They want to implant memories, say, of a skill, or forget something painful, or use it to control others. Messing with the mind generally has two outcomes: brain damage or death."

"Same as with arcane spells," Mirian said, though of course, there were the mental-component spells like illusions that seemed to tap into the mind. What makes one kind safe and the other deadly? she wondered. That said, it was a curiosity she was reluctant to indulge, because permanently screwing up her mind through her soul might very well be irreversible.

"There's other texts on the matter," Lecne said, gesturing around the temple library. "But this one is probably the best. Always preferred the books with pictures," he added with a laugh.

They spent the rest of the evening going through the diagrams, with Mirian working to map out her soul. Despite her knack for it, it was still an arduous process, and one that would take several weeks to complete, even at her accelerated pace.

The massacre in Palendurio set everyone on edge, and paranoia gripped the city. Rumors spread like wildfire.

When there was the magical eruption north of the city two days later, the distrust and fear only intensified. Some said it was Akanan sabotage, leading to riots by the port and the burning of an Akanan ship. Mirian ate up the newspapers, and compared them to what she remembered of the news that had made it up to Torrviol. She'd heard of the riots here before, but they were subtly different. That there would be riots seemed practically predetermined. Exactly how they played out seemed to have a random element.

Meanwhile, Cult's members doubled down in their dedication, the accuracy of her predictions fueling their faith.

"Blessing and a curse," Maruce, the former soldier, told her. "Pity that a new prophet should come in our time. More the shame it didn't start earlier. Plenty of other things I wish you could change," and when he said that, he got a distant look about him and muttered, "See our sanctuary, and have mercy. See our shrine, and help it light the path you have set for us."

"That's a Persaman prayer, isn't it?" Mirian said as the words sparked something in her memory.

"What? Oh. Didn't know you knew—yeah. Learned it down in the… well. Don't like to talk about it. I do wonder what the Ihseer and the Church of the Ominian think about all this. Most people in Persama don't believe in prophets the same way we do, and the Akanans think that there's just the two prophets. Lotta people are gonna have their faith shaken before this is over."

"Yeah," Mirian agreed. She was already one of them.

Before the cycle ended, Mirian went over Arenthia's execution again with Lecne.

"Tell me what you remember," Lecne said.

"The execution takes place at the Temple of the Four, in the plaza of Shiamagoth." She made a face. Having an execution in front of the statue of the Protector of Life seemed blasphemous to her. "The execution is at noon on the 2nd. There's a small crowd gathered, two Praetorians, and two priests." She went through the other details they'd discussed. Lecne had made her study a map of the temple and the streets that surrounded Second Cairn, the hill the temple sat upon. She drew it from memory, then together they compared it to his map and they made corrections.

"If I had any idea how to stop it…" he said.

"You would have. I know," Mirian said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I've only known you for this short while, but it's clear to me you're a good man."

Lecne gave her a sad smile. "Wasn't always. Remember that. Everyone can change. For the better, for the worse. I believe that even in the worst circumstances, we have a choice."

***

"Lily, I have to go," Mirian told her, much like she had the last cycle. "Do what you need to do. When people come looking for me, tell the truth: that I'm gone, and you don't know where." Then she added, "Also, could you spread a rumor that Professor Eld is having an affair with Mayor Wolden?"

Lily blinked several times. "You give me this weird speech about leaving and then—what? You want me to what!?"

"It's going to mess things up for the person hunting me," she said. "And what I just said will make sense later. Probably. Love you roomie, you're the best." Then she headed for the train station.

The first task was to figure out what was going wrong with the locomotive's spell engine that caused the delay. She didn't bother with any disguise spell, she just told the arcane engineers the truth: that she'd studied artifice extensively and she could help, and that she really needed for the train to be on time. One of them quizzed her on conduits and glyph sequences. When she answered his questions easily, he tried harder ones, and when she answered those, he said, "Alright. But if my supervisor asks, you tell him you just are interested in trains, yeah?"

The engine was surprisingly complex. Fundamentally, the spell engine just needed to transform arcane energy from the fossilized myrvite fuel into kinetic energy, which was a simple enough sequence. Early engines had done just that—and then gone out of control and crashed. This engine had all sorts of safety features, which meant feedback loops and physical switches that triggered if the divination wards in the engine detected any of the pre-programmed problems. More glyphs regulated mana flow and the rate the fuel was consumed.

There were also a lot of conduits and repetitive glyph sequences to make sure power was distributed evenly to the wheels, and then another set of wards that made sure the arcane forces the train was putting out wouldn't interfere with the spellward.

While the arcane engineers ran diagnostics, Mirian went through their diagrams of the engines and checked for broken glyphs. At first, it was frustrating because everything looked like it should be working. After several hours, though, she located the problem. "The rho-vin-sier sequence efficiency is too low. The glyphs are partially melted, which means the sier glyph's magichemistry was altered just enough to act like a tlur glyph. There's insufficient mana flow to activate anything else down the chain."

One of the engineers stared at her. "You really do know your stuff," he said. Then, "Of course. The tertiary divination wards would pick up the decreased flow and force a shutdown, but the diagnostic tools aren't fine-tuned enough to differentiate same-family glyphs like that. No wonder!"

Another of the engineers looked crestfallen. "We don't have any more of that part in inventory," she said.

"I can help make it," Mirian said quickly. So that was why it took so long to repair.

One of the engineers had to go get copper wire and a specific magichemical from the market forum, but with Mirian helping them with the artifice, that let them depart two hours earlier than they otherwise would have, which would give her that much more time to get in position in Cairnmouth.

More importantly, the next cycle, she could craft and replace the part before they even knew there was a problem.

***

As she sat on the train, Mirian thought through her plan. It would be a problem if this Sulvorath person noticed that a heretic previously slated for execution was saved in every cycle after a certain point. Executions were always noted in newspapers, and a heretic suddenly going on the run would certainly make headlines. She needed to find a way to save Arenthia without anyone knowing something was amiss.

She also needed to find a way to keep the other time traveler's eyes elsewhere. Filling the newspaper with other stories might certainly do the trick. It would be even better if she was nowhere near the locations of the incidents.

Mirian had probably spent more total time learning artifice than anything else, but rarely in a cycle had she put it to use. Sure, she'd helped Professor Torres craft her special artillery piece, created scrying devices, and made more wands than she could count, but artifice took a lot of time and materials, and when it had come to the battle to save Torrviol, strategic direction had done far more than a few extra guns or wands.

Now, however, it might become extremely useful. She knew the glyphs for levitation now. They were far more efficient than using kinetic energy to lift an object, especially if it was small. With Respected Jei's crystal-manipulation spells, she could create conduit crystals without any of the machinery normally needed, and make them with thread-like thinness. Fossilized myrvite was cheap, ubiquitous, and incredibly energy-dense. There were a lot of designs she could make with very few tools, meaning it could be done in the cult's hidden temple at no risk to her.

As the train rumbled on, Mirian sketched out drafts of her design in her notebook.

Her first few plans were overly complicated, and she threw them out. She would need to craft far too many glyphs, and the complicated mechanisms were sure to fail periodically. The next devices she designed were too heavy; she was so used to working with brass, copper, and steel in quantity, but her device didn't need to be resilient–quite the opposite, in fact.

Mirian finally settled on a design she liked. Most of its weight would be in the fossilized myrvite fuel it carried. It would need a thin brass frame to support it, quartz for the conduits, and a few dozen glyphs. The basic function was this: once it was activated, the device would levitate itself for about a half an hour in a random direction, then it would stop and plummet to the ground. Any hard impact on the device would shatter the spindly conduits, causing a rapid exomyric reaction in the glyphs positioned just above the fossilized myrvite. That, in turn, would cause the magical fossil fuel to burn rapidly. The arcane energy, without regulation, would turn almost entirely into heat, and would utterly incinerate the device–and make whatever it was next to catch fire.

Unlike a magical artillery shell, it wasn't designed to explode or kill, just to burn. Most of the time, it would just burn itself up, destroying the evidence of how it was made, which was key. Sometimes, it might start a small fire that any decent arcanist could put out in no time. The idea wasn't to do damage–quite the opposite. But every device would cause people nearby to act differently, and done early enough in the cycle, it would have unpredictable knock-on effects.

Better yet, she could set the devices to activate on a time-delay, then set them on the trains going south to Palendruio and beyond. Since the mechanism was internal, the shell of the device could be a canvas bag, or really anything lightweight. They would look totally innocuous, right up until they started flying.

Pleased with herself, Mirian titled her invention seed of chaos.

There were other seeds of chaos she could plant easily too.

Mirian started writing letters, addressed to random government officials. One letter demanded the Bureau of Royal Taxes audit one of the businesses owned by the noble Allard family. Another letter asked the Governor of Palendurio to investigate corruption in the Department of Public Security. Another was to a merchant Nicolus's uncle had mentioned a few times in his letters who she knew was going to be shipping out of Palendurio asking for details about a business investment, with a return address listed at a completely fake location west of Alkazaria. A few of the letters had to do with the conspiracy, but most she wrote with entirely random demands or messages, and with no idea what effect they would have.

But she knew that they would change the behavior of those people ever so slightly, even if that change was just to rant to a fellow bureau worker about how stupid some of the letters they got were. Mirian hoped the Royal Courier who read her letter about the birds actually all being secret spy constructs made by the dastardly Persamans found the letter funny.

At the end of the train ride, Mirian used a minor disguise spell to appear like a younger messenger, the kind who routinely moved letters for a small fee, then dropped them (and coin to send them) off at the Royal Couriers where they would slowly make their way across Baracuel.

Then she stopped by the market, changing her disguise for each purchase, to buy up the brass and magichemicals she needed for her flying 'seeds.' The market closed soon after, and she bought a room and meal at an inn just down the hill from the Temple of the Four.

In the morning, she'd head toward the temple and see what she could learn about the high priestess.