The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

The next loop, Mirian stopped by Cairnmouth, saved Arenthia, then introduced herself to Lecne again.

After a brief introduction, Lecne said, "So… you need us to teach you some more secrets of the priesthood?"

"No," Mirian said. "I need your help in stealing a great deal of gold."

There was a pause, and then Arenthia let out a howling cackle, slapping her knee several times.

Mirian thought she should clarify. "So, I need the gold to bribe the Ennecus Guild so that they can help me hire the gang of myrvite hunters I need to go kill an Elder titan so that I can use its arcane catalyst to cast more powerful spells, which I'll certainly need to stop the leyline crisis. Specifically, I think this unique arcane catalyst might be critical in casting hybrid rune-and-glyph spells, a kind of magic I know the Elder Gods used in the Labyrinth. And I think the Labyrinth is connected to the leylines, which—right, you get the idea." And, such a spellbook might be critical for using the kinds of spells that might permanently take Troytin out of the picture. She was still working on the theoretical pieces, and a lot of guesswork was involved. She hoped it was possible.

"Won't you just lose the arcane catalyst as soon as you get it? Arenthia, don't look at me like that, it sounds like at least a month-long project."

"You think people did that to the First Prophet? 'Hey, that's a neat plan you have, mind if I question it?' The poor girl's probably tired of explaining."

"Oh Gods yes," Mirian muttered. Then, louder, "And I can't tell you everything. Operational security and all that. This is step one, in my, ah, nine step plan." And I don't know what steps two through nine are, she mentally added.

"Exactly how much do you need?"

"Twenty thousand doubloons ought to be enough," she said.

Lecne's eyes went wide.

Arenthia let out another cackle.

"I can get 2000 doubloons fairly easily." She'd tested the bank she deposited Mayor Wolden's fake ingots at, and two-thirds of the deposit was about as much as they liked to hand out. They got too suspicious otherwise.

"Hah! That's more than you ever had for your little heists!" Arenthia said.

"Really didn't want to rehash that part of my life," Lecne said.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

"It's quite literally to save all of Enteria. I think Zomalator would approve. I certainly know the Ominian would." She hesitated. "Actually I think 'approve' is probably the wrong word. More like, 'not understand why it was a problem at all to begin with,' much like we wouldn't understand if one ant in a colony lied to another one."

"I never was much of a consequentialist," Lecne said.

"I don't know what that word is," Mirian said.

"Philosophy, my dear," Arenthia said. "You might look into it at some point. After all, if you're going to be the hand tipping the balance of fate, it might be nice to know a bit about the means and ends."

"After I kill the myrvite titan," Mirian promised.

At that point, Lecne and Arenthia went off to discuss Mirian's request. When they returned, Lecne said, "Alright. I'll help. The time limit makes things harder, because there's less time to prepare, and easier, because all you have to do is not get caught immediately." The priest paused, looked at Arenthia again, then sighed. "The way I used to do it was the confidence scheme, but it takes awhile to build up the trust of the person you're scamming. If we go with that one, you'd need to find a real rich bastard."

"The Palamas? Or some Akanan merchants?"

"The Palamas are still the richest family, but their assets are all tied up in properties, businesses, schemes—you know. Most of the really rich families don't actually have a lot of coin, their wealth is in other forms. The Allards are the ones who have the most gold they can actually provide on short notice. Westcrown is their family bank."

Arenthia added, "They were supposed to divest themselves from it as part of the Unification treaty, but they got their claws back into it." That was one of the reasons Mirian had saved her this cycle; the old priestess had worked at the Department of Public Security, so of course she'd know about that kind of thing.

"The Allards are part of a conspiracy the other time traveler is paying attention to. It might be best to avoid them."

"You could just take out a bunch of loans," Lecne said.

"I've done that here and there. Even if I swapped illusions around, without letters of reference, they'll only lend out small amounts."

"Can you get letters of reference?"

"Yeah, but I used it already to open up an account to deposit some fake Florinian ingots." Mirian paused. "I could get Nicolus to write more, I guess. I'm starting to run up against the hard limit of how much I can accomplish in a short time in Torrviol. The more time I spend up there, the higher chance I get caught."

"They're going to want to confirm the reference. They might even want to compare her records to the census for any loan of an appreciable amount. Not worth it," Arenthia said, yawning.

"There's always robbery," Lecne said. "If you can crack a bank's vault—only, that's a very hard thing to do. Security is built with arcanists in mind. And they don't keep much physical gold in the vaults anymore, at least not most of the vaults. It's all done with letters of credit and exchange notes, which use a seal system similar to what the Florinian's are doing. Which is a tough nut to crack."

"You dabbled in trying to get a genuine Florinian seal. You know about this sort of thing," Mirian said.

"I told you that?" Lecne said, startling (which drew a guffaw from Arenthia). "When did I tell you that?"

"Several cycles ago," Mirian said vaguely.

"Right. Well. Hmm. It was quite a few years ago, I don't know how much I remember," Lecne said, scratching his head. "How much do you know about flux glyphs and glyph-pairings?"

This time it was Mirian's turn to laugh.

"Hey, it's a fair question. Plenty of arcanists are more casters than theorists, you know. Right, so here's the gist of it. You know how a glyphkey works?"

"Intimately."

"Same thing with a bank seal or ingot seal. The primary function of the glyphs is to signal or respond to a signet ring or some other minor divination artifact that the bankers use to verify the seal. Some of them even use little spell engines now, so no one in the bank even needs to be a certified arcanist. The rest makes sure you can never figure out what those glyphs are, because trying to study it will cause it to destroy itself. They use very small glyphs, then put a substance over them so you can't see the glyphs. If you try to remove that substance, you'll trigger one of several sequences that will break the whole thing, usually starting a small fire."

"They use the special seals on all the major transactions and letters," Mirian said. "How many arcanists work on them?"

"Several. It's expensive. But if you're thinking of bribing a single person, it wouldn't be enough. Don't think I didn't think of that. They don't let one arcanist know the whole sequence. They do it in layers. Except the Florinians. Rumor has it they cracked how to get a spell engine to scribe the glyphs."

"Can't be done," Mirian immediately retorted.

Lecne raised a finger. "I know. I know! Just a rumor. Me, I don't know if it's possible, never knew enough about the theory. Just—maybe worth looking into."

"Arenthia?" Mirian asked.

The older priestess startled slightly from her chair. "Hmm? I wasn't nodding off."

"The Deeps can forge a Florinian seal, can't they? That has to be how Specter got the fake ingots to bribe the Torrviol mayor with."

"Hmm. Not my department. And a bit after my time. Does seem like the sort of thing they'd do though, eh? That's the thing about spywork. You have to be able to throw money around, a lot of money, but sometimes you don't want your enemies getting real money. So yes, they do quite a bit of forgery in one of the departments. Which is technically against Crown Law, but they'd actually have to enforce that law if they wanted them to stop, wouldn't they?"

Mirian leaned back in her chair, thinking. She'd stayed away from the Deeps, fearing their curses. But now, she had a permanent focus, and mythril that would help resist anything. But, Troytin, despite missing Specter's contacts, had no doubt reestablished some control over them. But maybe that was good. If he thought she was going after the Department of Public Security, maybe that would draw his attention away from other things.

Lecne started to fidget in his seat. "Which one will it be?" he finally asked. "Break into a vault? Forge a seal? Or infiltrate the Deeps?"

"Hmmm?" Mirian said, sounding a bit like Arenthia. "Oh, I'll probably try all of them."

"Hah!" said Arenthia.

***

They spent a few days talking and planning. Mirian had a lot of questions for both of them, but she was especially interested in learning what Arenthia knew of the Deeps and how they functioned. While some of what she knew was no-doubt out of date, certain practices of spycraft hadn't changed. She learned about the informants, dead drops, and non-magical listening techniques.

Then, it was time to start testing the waters. Mirian started by seeing just how easy it was to get letters of credit from every major bank in Cairnmouth. That was also a good opportunity to 'case' the building and see what kind of visible security it had. The most obvious defense was an alarm ward that detected illusion, but Mirian was well past using such a primitive trick. She used her funds to buy different outfits, then used the soul-binding techniques to modify her appearance at each bank.

Lecne used makeup and wigs, like stage actors did sometimes when they couldn't afford an illusionist. "Wards don't detect it, and it doesn't take any mana or soul energy," Lecne said. "Just takes a bit more time."

The first five banks Lecne and Mirian visited, they had no problem. Lecne still knew how to fast-talk a bank attendant and make sure they didn't look too closely at the papers. They were also taking out silver at a fifteen percent loan, which the banks were willing to take risks on.

The sixth bank started asking them to "wait a while while we check a few things," after they'd already waited quite a while while they checked a few things, and Lecne was the one who said, "I'm afraid I'll have to decline. I have an appointment in ten minutes, and it can't be rescheduled." When the bank guard moved to block them from leaving, Mirian used a bit of raw magic to pull his leg out from under him so that he sprawled out on the floor while they left.

"They must have had a copy of the city census records on hand," Lecne said when they were out. "The guard will be showing up soon. Left here in this alley. Right down here. Now let's stop for pastries here. The owner doesn't ask questions."

They laid low the rest of the day, Lecne stressing himself out as he constantly checked for tails. Mirian watched his emotions curiously, trying to remember what it felt like to feel fear over something so minor. I guess I used to feel like that about exams. I wish I hadn't spent so much time worrying about something that didn't matter at all.

Mirian got new disguises ready, while Lecne kept his ear to the wind that was turning the rumor mills. When everything stayed silent, they set out again.

Several days into the surveying, Mirian stopped Lecne before they even entered the next bank. "I just remembered, we have an appointment at the factory," she said, closing the spellbook she'd disguised to look like a ledger. That phrase was code for, 'we need to get the five hells out of here immediately.'

As they walked, she caught sight of two guards coming down the street, looking right at them. "Down this alley. Now," she said. Then, Mirian cast extended camouflage, a modification of the old camouflage spell she'd used so many times, then grabbed Lecne and levitated them both up to the roof before dismissing the spell.

"What is it?" Lecne asked. "I didn't notice anything."

"I was doing a brief anti-divination check and caught a sequence used in a substance detector. The same one I've seen Troytin try to use up in Torrviol to look for me. It's probably on right now. They've zeroed in on something, either a hair sample or something similar. It would have been easy to miss leaving behind a single hair at one of the other banks we visited, so that's probably it."

"So what now?"

Why would Troytin have the devices deployed to banks? He must be setting up nets at what he considers strategically important places. Spy agencies. Money. But why would he think I need money for anything? I haven't needed any substantial sums before. Did he learn it from Calisto last cycle?

That would be unfortunate. Except, he should have already departed Torrviol by the time Calisto returned.

The ingots! she realized. I take them from the mayor's house almost every cycle now, just because it's fast and convenient. But he's interpreted that to mean I need lots of gold. He was wrong before, but now he's right. Damn.

Mirian glanced down from the roof. The two guards who had been moving to intercept them were looking around the alley. One ran to the end and looked up and down the next street. Two more guards approaching from that end shouted something that she couldn't make out. None of them bothered to look up.

"The divination device is still active in the bank. And we're still in the radius."

"Can you stop the device?"

"Easily," Mirian said. "But not in a way that's subtle." She summoned her amulet for the extra spell resistance, then embraced her focus, looking for modified souls. She hadn't exactly expected anyone, but there was a man with a disguise binding on. "The Deeps are already involved. Damn! We must have slipped up days ago. This isn't an ad hoc net." At least I've been using different pseudonyms and disguises this whole time. 'Micael' can still operate in Torrviol.

Lecne swallowed hard. "What happens next?"

There was more shouting down on the streets.

"We had the disguises. Your identity is still probably safe for now," she said, but what she was thinking was, If I kill you and burn the body, he won't be able to connect us in future cycles. If Lecne is captured… you did it to Everad, Mirian. How is that different?

She looked at Lecne. He was scared, she knew. Even if he knew the world would be ending soon, bodies were visceral things. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She couldn't do that to him. That was at the end of the cycle, with minutes left. There's still so many days left. I can't. I can't.

Mirian shed the soul-bindings of her disguise, rapidly sending pulses of her soul swirling. She'd found they interfered with her dervish forms, so she needed them gone.

"I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere."

"Go anywhere!? We're on top of a roof and—"

But Mirian was already levitating around the corner, spellbook open. She opened up with fire spells, and the nice thing about a bank was there was a lot of paper to burn. The workers there started running around screaming, while the guard was busy falling on his ass because Mirian had just hit him with a bind person. The bank wasn't one of the older constructions, which meant it was more plaster and brick than solid stone. Mirian used force ram to smash a hole in one of the thin walls. And there was the spell engine. She used magnetic detonation to rip it apart, then sent a disintegrating fire spell across it for good measure. Then she smashed open the window and flew back to the roof.

"Divination engine won't be a problem anymore. Can you hold on tight?" she asked. "We're going to do some flying."

"Gods above, may you watch over this humble servant," Lecne mumbled, clutching his holy symbol.

She felt his thin bony arms wrap around her. Having a priest clutching onto her piggy-back ride style wasn't exactly dignified, but as far as she knew, there was nothing in the holy texts expressly forbidding it. She took off, flying low across the roofs.

She heard shouting, and a flare moved past them, bright orange, followed by a green one.

They're signaling our direction. But to who?

She looked back, but there were no close pursuers—she was moving too fast for that. Then, she saw movement by the distant Fort Aegrimere as a skiff airship rose up from behind the walls and started moving in her direction.