The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Mirian was sure of one thing: she couldn't outrun an airship. For one, she hadn't modified the conduits on her wand this cycle, so she could only levitate so fast. And, from what she knew from her research, a skiff could stay in the air for around four or five hours, depending on what they'd loaded it with.

The other was that, even with her mythril amulet, she was outgunned. There'd be at least two combat mages, maybe four, someone with a rifle, and the spell engine that kept it aloft could also burn fuel to power a shield. Also, some skiffs were armed with cannons. Blocking a bullet was one thing; blocking an artillery shot was another. And if Troytin is behind this, he's probably advised them to use spellbreaker ammunition, she thought.

I need to find a way to hide. But was that their only divination device?

She wasn't sure if the airship had spotted them, but staying above the roofs would make them easy to spot, and there were watchtowers around the city that might see them and send out flares. Mirian dove down so she was level with the third floor of the buildings, though she had to slow down so she could dodge the various laundry lines strung between balconies. Shouts of surprise and dismay followed her as people gawked and pointed.

"Can you cast that camouflage spell again?" Lecne shouted.

"Won't matter if they're using divination. And I think I'll need the mana."

She'd been going south. She brought them just high enough she could peer over a nearby roof. Yup, that skiff is heading right for us. She dashed east towards the train station for a few blocks, then went up again. The skiff had changed route, and was still on an intercept course, and gaining fast.

"Yeah, they have something. The machine is probably on the skiff itself." She headed south again. "But if they had something to track us with at the fort before… why would he deploy divination machines around town?"

"Oh, that's easy," Lecne said over the wind. "The bank probably sprayed us with a special substance that the guard can track. The detector on the airship is probably a really simple one. And it didn't need to have much range if it could start by following the flares."

"Shit," Mirian said, taking a left where the street turned. "How do we get it off?"

"Arenthia would probably know. My policy was always to never get it on in the first place."Nôv(el)B\\jnn

"We're not going back there to risk them." She zoomed down a different street, hoping the random turns might confuse her pursuers.

Lecne was silent for another block, then he said, "Good." Then, "Starting to tire. Not quite as fit as I once was."

Mirian dropped them down onto a second floor balcony, then used force push to shatter the glass. She looked back at the clothes line attached to the balcony. Several items were drying on it.

"The chemical's on our clothes, right? I didn't feel it go on, so it must be." She telekinetically pulled the end of the clothesline, snapping it and bringing the whole lot of drying garments with it. "Change jackets and pants. Fast. Just pick something, we can adjust disguises later."

Lecne hesitated, looked at Mirian, then blushed.

Really? Mirian thought. "Look, just face the other way. But we need to hurry."

They scrambled to change, Mirian putting on a plain-looking gray jacket and brown dress, and Lecne some blue trousers. He couldn't find a jacket, so he just said, "Good enough." Then he swore as Mirian set their old clothes on fire.

"Down the stairs, this way," she said, opening up her spellbook to major disguise. "I'm going to cast an illusion spell on you. It's very mana intensive to hold something like that so close to your soul, so we need to find a place to hide immediately. The fire will give us a chance to act like part of the scared crowd, so I'm going to spread it. Alright?"

Lecne was clenching his jaw, but he nodded. She cast, giving Lecne a distinct scar and larger nose, and herself an older face and different looking hair. She cast a few more fire spells by the windows so the smoke would billow out.

"Fire! Fire!" she shouted, running down the stairs and out the door. The residents and shopkeepers of the building quickly joined. Sorry, Mirian thought. She kept her levitation wand up her sleeve but stashed her disguised spellbook. She and Lecne made their way to the back of the crowd that was forming. When no one was paying attention to them, they walked away.

By then, the airship was overhead.

"Where's the nearest arcanist's shop?" she whispered.

Lecne looked around. Some of the street names were missing, but he did know the city quite well. "Uh… three blocks that way. Why?"

"Because if it were me, I'd be using divination to target searches for glyphs that are common to spellbooks, but not common in household spell engines and the usual ward schemes. We need distance, and we need enough light they can't find our candle. Metaphorically."

"Right. Let's walk a little faster then."

The airship stayed stationary over the building Mirian had set on fire, though they lost sight of both the building and the airship as they moved through the narrow streets and tall buildings. If it was moving toward them, she no longer knew.

There, she thought, catching sight of the shop sign. She dismissed the illusion as they walked in since plenty of shops had wards that would alert the shopkeeper to someone using one.

The man running the shop gave them a raised eyebrow, clearly noticing Mirian's ill-fitting jacket and Lecne's lack of one. "What can I get you?"

"I need a wand of cleanse bronze," she said, deliberately picking an obscure spell that wasn't likely to be in stock.

"No one makes that into a wand," he said.

"Ah. Do you have the spell pre-scribed on paper? Vellum is preferable, as I'd like it to match."

"We have scrolls."

"No, no, not a scroll, I'll need to cast it several times. Well, then do you have cindergold or moonlily inks?"

The shopkeeper let out a sigh as he realized what kind of customer he was dealing with. "I'll go check," he said. As he turned his back, he added, "The stock is all warded."

"I would never!" Mirian said, sounding as offended as she could manage.

As he headed into the back, Mirian brought out her spellbook and searched for the divination glyphs the skiff would be using. Naturally, there were several nearby in the shop itself. Channeling near her capacity, she could just make out what she thought were the signatures of the glyphs on the airship. She closed her book and started scribing a broad anti-divination ward.

For twenty minutes, Mirian bombarded the shopkeeper with requests for rare items. Each time he went into the back, she added a bit of progress to a ward. Then she finally paid him for a pile of the junk she'd requested. Mirian did one more check on the airship, which hadn't moved. As they left the shop, she applied an illusion again, this time of a different couple, and dressed nice enough people would be less liable to question them.

Shortly after that, a pair of guards trotted by.

They had made it outside the initial net, so now the search was being improvised. "Fastest route to the train station?" she asked in a low voice.

Lecne led the way.

***

Once they were on the train in one of the private cars, Mirian finally relaxed. She dismissed the illusion over them, then started setting up a few of her usual wards around the room, careful not to activate any of the wards already present.

"What now?" Lecne asked.

"Now, I work on other things until the cycle ends," she said, only half-focused on her scribing.

Lecne frowned. "Why not just… I understand this sounds crass, but if you kill yourself, you would start over immediately, right? That is how you explained it."

"Yes, but the current cycle would persist. I would experience almost no time passing, but the other time travelers would be doing things. I can't afford to give them an advantage in time." She thought of the Labyrinth. "There's times it's worth it to take risks that might kill me early, but no sense in wasting the time I've been given."

"That's wise of you," Lecne said.

Mirian took them south of Palendurio, then out east to one of the smaller towns that she hadn't visited yet. They found a nice apartment to rent. Mirian spent most of her time practicing dervish forms or spellcasting.

With Lecne's help, she also worked on practicing refining her celestial spellwork. Though he couldn't necessarily teach her anything, it was nice to have another set of eyes to assess her ability and give feedback.

One night he asked, "But why do you need bindings that are thin?"

Mirian raised an eyebrow at him.

"Right, yes, I can hear Arenthia scolding me." He let out a deep sigh. "I hope she and the others are doing okay. I'm trying to think—none of the priestly classes cover what you're talking about. It might be there's old texts that describe modifying a binding like that, but they're sure to be outlawed, and plenty of them were probably burned. I couldn't begin to tell you where to look."

"I'm sure they're doing fine. The ongoing search will tell them we escaped, so they'll know we're alright. Arenthia will take care of the faithful."

Lecne chuckled. "That's what I'm most worried about," he said, but she could see his shoulders relax.

Or Troytin found them, she thought. But there was nothing she could do about that, and there was no need to make the priest worry. A nice little lie, she thought. People loved those little lies, she'd found. If she told them with confidence, it buoyed their spirits. A little less pain to live with.

On the last day of the cycle, Mirian prepared to die again. She'd made another detector, this one attuned to light, arcane, and kinetic energies. She'd noticed that when Divir came crashing down, death was near instantaneous. The physical shockwave of the moon impacting Enteria wasn't killing her. Either something magical was being triggered, or it had to do with the force of gravity. She wasn't at all sure how to measure the latter force, but hoped she could get some data on the former just before the end.

She'd found a hill where she could look southeast and see the moon coming down somewhere over Persama. She was setting up the detector when she suddenly saw a dark shape moving overland, coming in from the west.

An airship.

It was a Baracueli skiff, probably from Fort Aegrimere. Troytin usually leaves Baracuel as the Akanan army moves in. Are these just people he's manipulated? I wonder how he convinced them to ignore the Akanan invasion to go after a common fraudster.

Maybe I can learn something from them. If not, best to keep them away from Lecne back at the town. Hardly any time left anyways. She manifested her amulet, drew her levitation wand, and opened up her spellbook to the page on shields, then waited.

The airship drew to a halt in front of her, hovering, front cannon pointed at her. Mirian stood straight and tall and waited patiently. That was another thing she'd found; she no longer feared death, and people picked up on that. It unnerved them.

Finally, a voice called out, "Are you going to come peacefully?"

"If you come down and talk, sure," she shouted back.

There was a brief pause, and then the skiff descended. Sure enough, there were four arcanists and—she could tell from the bindings on his soul—a Deeps agent. It was that agent who approached.

"You're a very difficult woman to find, Mirian Castrella," he said. The Deeps agent was a dark haired man, handsome, and dressed in a fine jacket. He was loosely holding a curse wand in his left hand, with his right hand in his pocket. The others stayed back, wands all pointed at her.

"And who are you?" she asked.

"Sulvorath," he said.

"No you're not," Mirian said immediately.

The agent hesitated briefly. Somehow, that wasn't the response he'd anticipated. "You're so sure?"

"I have no doubts at all. So what lies were you told about me?" she asked.

"Is that how you're going to frame it? I expected something a bit more… clever."

Mirian shook her head. "You're doing that thing agents like to do where you ask questions and keep putting the onus to reveal information on the suspect, while trying to prod their emotions to get a reaction. I'm thoroughly sick of it. Did Troytin talk to you directly, or did he manipulate one of your superiors?" She nodded her head at the arcanists who were ready to start slinging spells. "Do they know that an Akanan is ordering them about?"

"We were told to prepare for some very tall tales you might tell. I'm afraid I underestimated their height, though."

Mirian shrugged. "Well, you are a bit short. Did Troytin tell you we're both in a time loop and the apocalypse is in… oh about twenty minutes?"

"Now that is—"

"Look at the sky you dimwit," Mirian snapped. "Is it normal for arcane auroras to cover the entire sky? For leylines to erupt out of the ground, depositing chunks of the Labyrinth? For arcane eruptions to shatter trains and sunder the spellwards of a dozen cities? For the mass migration of thousands of myrvites?"

The agent was silent. He glanced back at the others. "I need you to drop your wand and spellbook—"

"You're probably part of the traitor faction that's helping Akana Praediar, or you'd be busy fighting off the invasion from the west or south, so I'm guessing you know Nikoline Brunn. Do you know what happened to her?" She caught a brief look of surprise on the agent's face. "Oh good, you do. She died in her bed, didn't she? Throat slit and corpse incinerated, along with all her operational documents. Why? Because I made her a promise," Mirian said, turning her gaze intense and her voice serious. "She decided that—even with undeniable proof I was a time traveler—that she wanted to lie to me. She decided the Akanan invasion was more important than the fate of all of Enteria. So I told her I'd kill her every fucking cycle if she lied again. And she did. And I've kept my promise. And I'll keep my promise."

The agent went slightly pale, and glanced back at the arcanists again.

"It's obvious a normal sixth year student doesn't just suddenly learn how to levitate and build something like that," she said, jerking her thumb back at the detector she'd made, "overnight. Certainly, I shouldn't know anything about General Corrmier's role in the conspiracy. Any honest evaluation of the evidence clearly points to the fact that your handlers have lied to you about me and what's going on. So you have a choice. I'll even offer you a bargain. We can trade information for the next twenty minutes, and then I'll come quietly. Or, I can add you to the list of the irredeemable who need to be put down like bog lions. Which will it be?"

"You said the apocalypse is in twenty minutes."

"I did say that," Mirian said, giving him a fake smile.

The agent glanced at the sky, then back down at her. She'd guessed right. His nerves were frayed, and he was full of doubts. "Fine. A trade. How did you know about the capture operation at the bank?"

"I've seen how those divination detectors work in detail. I just have to search for a key glyph. My turn. Who's the highest ranking Deeps agent in charge of Operation Zenith?"

There was a long pause as the agent looked at her, grinding his teeth. "Director Arturus Castill," the agent said, then upon seeing her reaction, said, "Wait, did you already know that?"

"Yes," Mirian said. "My turn again."

"Wait, that doesn't count as my ques—fine."

"How did you track me here?"

"You left traces of your ward scheme on the car down to Palendurio. Then we caught a lucky break because one of the conductors remembered you boarding the next train. Then we went through all the supply shops in the towns along the route until someone remembered two people loading up with magical supplies to go east. Once we got close, we could use the divination machine. We still have a piece of your hair."

Mirian scowled. "I need to start replacing it all with bog lion hair again. How annoying. I thought he'd given up on that."

"What's your endgame? Why are you doing this?"

"To save Enteria," she said.

The agent scoffed. "That's not a real answer."

"Yes it is. Just not one a traitor like you would understand," she spat. "Not everyone is so greed-poisoned as your kind. The Ominian didn't command us to seize power. They didn't command us to seize gold or lead armies. I, at least, listened. My turn. What code words confirm to you that you're talking to an ally, like, for example, Specter?"

"I can't tell you that!" he said.

Mirian shrugged. "Guess we're done, then."

"I'll answer a different one. We were told you're a Persaman agent masquerading as a student, sent to compromise the operation. The guards were told you were a murderous bank robber. Where did you get the levitation wand?"

"Fine. Adria Gavell's corpse in the Torrviol catacombs. Why is anyone listening to Troytin? Or Sulvorath, as he might be calling himself."

"He's envoy of the Zenith Council. One of the top Akanan collaborators. Why wouldn't we…? But I suppose despite what you know, you don't know how the operation is structured."

He's usurped the position somehow. Slowly, he is gaining power, just focused on the Akanan side now.

"Sir," one of the crew members of the airship shouted from the skiff. "We're getting arcane energy readings… these shouldn't be possible! The ambient mana has gone nuts!"

The agent turned back to say something, but just then, one of the aurora's flared out, violet and orange columns of light streaming through the sky, washing the entire world in surreal color. He whirled and looked at Mirian, then back up at the sky.

"You're starting to see," Mirian said.

The earth shook. Over by the distant mountains, there was a flash of light from an eruption. Then, more and more. The agent's jaw fell open, and he began to tremble. He looked back. The four arcanists had lowered their wands and were gaping at the phenomena.

"Now you understand. I really am telling the truth. I really am trying to stop this. Troytin thinks this is some stupid contest he can win. He's blinded by his ego, or maybe the truth is too hard for him to accept. I am trying to stop it. Hence the detector over there. Did Troytin—whatever, Sulvorath—ever instruct you to build arcane detectors like that?"

The agent's face twitched. He whirled again to look behind Mirian where the Divir moon was starting to brighten.

"God forgive me if I'm wrong. Specter's code words were… nightfall, cerulean, masquerade. Embedded in message, in order. The word lion is the tripwire word." He winced at saying it. "It's for a better world," he said. "It was all for a better world. One power. No more war… with the wise ruling over… it was all…." He trailed off, then fell to his knees and started praying, eyes locked on the sky.

"Thank you," Mirian said gently.

The earth shook, and the sky brightened, and Mirian died again.