The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Calisto, when she wasn't arguing with or attempting to manipulate Nicolus, was a surprisingly pleasant person to be around. She also found Bainrose an intolerable place to study.

"That musty old castle is fifty percent dust and twenty percent spiders by weight. No thank you! This is much nicer," she said when they sat down at the place she'd chosen. There was a little cafe north of the old theater, but south of the restaurant Torres liked to eat at. Mirian had probably walked by it a hundred times without paying it much attention, but it was a cozy little place. The cafe was set in a little courtyard with a cherry tree and a tiny but well-kept garden. Three little warmth spell engines kept it comfortably heated despite the arrival of winter.

They'd agreed to meet on Fourthday so that they had more than one lecture to review, but also so that Calisto's end-of-the-week plans with her friends wouldn't be interfered with.

"Do the cherry blossoms ever get in your teacup in the spring?" Mirian asked. She missed spring and summer. They were the only two tolerable seasons in Torrviol.

"That would just be romantic," Calisto said. "I'd be more worried about a bug dropping down from the tree. Let me see that notebook of yours."

It was a new notebook, since it wouldn't do to be carrying around her old notes. Mirian handed it over.

"You have really neat handwriting for a boy," she said, flipping through it. "No offense."

Mirian chuckled. "I know how we can be."

"I like your little diagrams. And your glyphs are practically perfect. Better than Viridian's on the chalkboard." She smiled haughtily. "I have a good eye for these sort of things."

The self-importance must have driven Nicolus insane, Mirian thought. "You do," she said. She didn't even need Nicolus's advice to understand that Calisto liked flattery. "How do you know so much about myrvite ecology? Almost any time Viridian asked a question, you had an answer ready."

"Well, I couldn't answer all the questions. Gotta give some of the other students a chance. But I guess you could say it runs in the family. We've run one of the myrvite hunter guilds for generations, so I was learning myrvite names before I could walk. You've heard of the Ennecus Guild? That's us."

"I'm afraid not," she lied. It sounded familiar, but she was still having trouble placing it. But Micael would have no reason to know anything about it.

She waved a dismissive hand. "Well, of course you wouldn't have. I'm sure in Akana Praediar everyone's fawning over those big companies and their fancy spell engines. But what do they run on? Not just the fossilized myrvite. Virdian's new machine needs thousands of glyphs, and those don't grow on trees! Not all of them, at least."

Mirian frowned thoughtfully. "Does the Ennecus Group have any business dealings with the companies across the Rift Sea?"

Calisto rolled her eyes and gave a dramatic flourish. "No, of course not. They're so hard to deal with. You really have to know somebody..."

Mirian nodded along as Calisto continued, taking mental notes. I just need to learn a bit more about Akana Praediar's joint stock companies and I can drop references like I know them. She won't know enough about things to challenge Micael's knowledge. That can get me access not just to her myrivte knowledge, but to another Labyrinth entrance. Though she might know something about it already…

Then, the realization struck her. Ennecus Group! Oh Gods, that's why I recognize the name. They run one of the expeditions in Frostland's Gate, too! She tried to keep her face passive, and tuned back into what Calisto was saying.

"…and that's why Sylvester Aurum's companies are going to hit a growth limit. Akana is already wiping out their native myrvite populations at completely unsustainable rates. It's just stupid, short-term thinking. I don't know why everyone thinks he's so smart," Calisto finished.

"Hey, I'm doing archival studies, and Endresen gave me this paper… well, long story short, it didn't have anything to do with glyphs. But it did describe this absolutely colossal beast that was sighted at the border of the scrublands…"

Mirian described the creature as best she could, including its life-sucking capabilities.

Calisto's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Where did you get that paper? Can I see it?"

Mirian gave her what she hoped looked like a sheepish smile. "Uh, it's in some secure archives in Torrian Tower. Removing it would trip an alarm ward and… uh, I mean I can ask her, but probably not."

"Damn," Calisto said. "If you could find a way to get me it… I would be very grateful." She leaned forward and waggled her eyebrows. Is she trying to be seductive?

"I'll see what I can do. But what do you know about it?"

"Ah, not much. It was my grandfather's research project. Sire Ennecus, before he pissed off the Bardas patriarch. Frankly, I think our family should still have the knight title. It has a nice ring to it. But the myrvite… it's got to be a Cataclysm Beast. Apophagorga, from the sounds of it."

"Cataclysm Beast?"

"Yeah. You know, like the one the First Prophet sacrificed his life to kill so that the people of Viaterria would be free to reestablish the old cities again? 'Blah blah blah, now with my blood I consecrate this land and free us from a thousand years of terror, etc. etc.' The Elder Titan."

Mirian thought about that. "I'd sort of assumed some of the… fancier stuff in the oldest writings were… exaggerated?"

"I mean, it's a reasonable assumption. The farther back you go, the less stuff survives. And it's not like they ever found the bones of the Elder Titan or anything. Unless the Luminates have something stashed in a vault or something?"

They don't, Mirian knew.

"If we found one… ugh. I can't believe the Triarchs lost it."

"Lost what?"

"The arcane catalyst the First Prophet got off the Cataclysm Beast. It was handed down for generations, and then there's the collapse. With all the fighting and destruction, all the records of where the catalyst might have gone were destroyed. It could be languishing in the desert somewhere." She sighed. "My grandfather was obsessed with finding it, or another Cataclysm Beast. Because, you see, there's sightings of titanic myrvites after the First Prophet, cross-referenced from different sources and everything, and some historical fragments about the different ones. He spent decades, first on research, then on expeditions. But he never found one. He would tell me stories about them when I was little. Those were always my favorite."

"I'd love to hear about them. The records don't really talk about how the First Prophet defeated the Elder Titan. Or much about it. And the, uh, my church priest always made it sound like it was a metaphorical beast."

Calisto took a sip of tea. "It's not in the official records. You have to search the apocrypha and weird archives. A bunch of the archives are in Persama. I always wanted to go adventuring there when I was a kid. Pity what's happened to the place. I hope the Baracuel Army teaches those bloodthirsty rebels a thing or two. We should get back to studying, though."

Mirian acquiesced, though she was only half considering the material. Her mouth was watering, and it wasn't for the cafe's food. That's the arcane catalyst I need to use for my soulbound spellbook. It has to be. That myrvite titan was using both soul magic and arcane magic. If there's anything that can make a breakthrough in Xipuatl's unified theory… that has to be it. Then, I'll just need to locate the relicarium.

Eventually, she brought her thoughts back down to the present. After all, as exciting as it was, she would need to find a way to kill the massive thing.

As she skimmed through the texts Viridian had assigned, one of the textbooks they'd checked out from the library gave her pause. "Are these heritability traits here based on the latest research? This isn't like one of those philosophers who thought women had an extra tooth but never bothered to check, is it?"

Calisto peered over her shoulder. "The eyes example is a bit simplistic, but it's basically true. Characteristics like height are highly variable, but eye color is pretty straightforward."

"Are you sure?" Mirian asked. It was weird to think of her body as containing thousands of glyph-like structures, so tiny as to be invisible even with several layered lensing spells, all which carried traits with mundane chemical signals. We're not myrvites, but we do have magic. And the chemical explanation is so complicated!

"Yeah," Calisto said. "My aunt breeds eximontar. Eye color and carapace shading are two of the simple heritable traits. Red eyes is recessive, orange eyes is dominant."

Mirian stared at the textbook. "I met someone who had gray eyes, but she said neither her parents nor grandparents had gray eyes."

Calisto shrugged. "Oh, that's easy then. She's adopted."

Mirian's heart caught in her throat, and she felt a strange tingling sensation. That can't be right.

The other girl saw her reaction and said, "Uhh… does she not know that? Awkward. Well, maybe don't tell her. But if you write about exceptions to that rule, be prepared for Viridian to mark it wrong. You can plead your case during his office hours, but if you don't bring a convincing research reference he'll very, very politely tell you to piss off."

They finished up the study session, but Mirian was paying even less attention.

Gods, what do I even say to my parents when I do find them? she wondered. What happened to me? And why… why would they keep it a secret? Why would…

She had the urge to head down to Palendurio and ransack the Department of Public Safety offices until she found answers.

Patience, she could hear her dad saying. Except, that wasn't who he was, was he?

The discomfort wormed through her for hours, and her thoughts kept turning back to the revelation. She felt her soul in turmoil again, though this time the damage wasn't from the outside. That night, she levitated to the top of Torrian Tower and let the cold wind scour her as she meditated.

There's no point clutching those emotions. The shock. The hurt. The fear. There's no point rehashing all the questions I have, she told herself. I'll find answers, it'll just take time. Until then… I have a mission. I can't let anything distract me from it. What's at stake is too important.

She forced her mind to turn from her distress to the myrvite titan she'd encountered. Apophagorga. What kind of spells will I need to bring you down?

It wasn't a fight she was winning alone, that was for sure. But she had some ideas about that.

***

The Akanans were working on a divination device that was ostensibly for the Divine Monument, but clearly had applications for hunting her down. It mostly seemed to be targeting specific anti-divination glyph sequences. Mirian noted which ones so she could avoid using them in her usual wards.

After Troytin and the Akanan delegation left Torrviol, Mirian left Torrviol as well, heading down to Cairnmouth so she could learn more about the magichemical trade from the merchants there. Troytin hadn't bothered to destroy the train going down there this time since General Hanaran's force was already committed to defending Alkazaria, so the only delay was because of a hole in the tracks caused by the usual arcane eruption.

As the crisis developed and Akana Praediar blockaded the port, there were thousands of sailors with nothing to do but trade rumors and get into trouble. An especially drunk sailor tried to recruit Mirian into a half-baked scheme to smuggle alcohol across the sea to dodge the usual tariffs. Mirian politely left him as he puked his guts out in an alley, next to a different drunk sailor who was pissing on the wall.

Eventually, she found a more subdued tavern where the ship and warehouse bookkeepers congregated and learned a bit more about how magichemical exports worked. Calisto had been right: it was lucrative, but the big Akanan companies liked to set long-term contracts with the major suppliers, who in turn only bought small time hunter's goods for suppressed prices. Mirian was completely unsurprised to learn that the Bardas noble family had pressured the legislature to make the trade of magichemicals highly regulated, then made sure their competition was constantly tied up in endless inspections and minor fines. Somehow, the inspectors never found any flaws in the Bardas warehouses or ships.

"So there's also the smugglers," one bookkeeper explained over a pint. "And you'd think that'd be unregulated, but the Syndicate keeps a close eye on it. So you gotta decide: you like paying taxes and bribes, or you like paying protection money?"

"Don't the Akanans want to find a way to get the prices lower?"

"Well, don't matter much now," the man said, gesturing at the window. "Both sides of the Rift Sea are gonna be hurting if this keeps going. Can't just go to war with your biggest trading partner and not suffer something, you know? Wish we knew what in the five hells was going on. Seems unnatural, you know?"

Mirian nodded along with that.

As the cycle came to a close, she assessed her soul as fully healed, and began to prepare for her next task.

***

Mirian spent three days of the next cycle in rushed preparations. She made sure the Akanan time traveler would encounter his usual difficulties, then headed for Frostland's Gate on the night of the 3rd.

As she headed across the trails and up the passes, alternating between hiking and levitating, she immediately felt the difference Rostal's dervish training had made. Even though she'd tripled the rations in her pack (and ditched most of the water, relying on gather water and filter water), it didn't feel as heavy. It took much longer for her to tire, and her legs didn't burn when she reached the top of the Littenord Pass. When she wasn't using the Lone Pine form for endurance, she maintained the Blooming Red Iron form, since it was helping improve both her physical and auric capacity. Rostal had warned her she would eventually encounter diminishing returns. She was already beginning to run up against them, but she still had a lot to gain. And unlike her body, her aura capacity didn't have the same hard physical limits. Mirian hadn't been bothering to measure the gains precisely because depleting that much mana took a great deal of time, and then it would take a long time to regenerate.

However, she could use her levitation time as a rough estimate of her capacity. She could now maintain the spell for two hours and still have a relatively robust aura. With her increased auric mana for levitation and her increased stamina, she could make what used to be a seven day journey in just four days, making it to the frontier town early on the 8th.

With the change in times, she wasn't able to find the glaciavore, but did kill two wyverns and a bastion elk, which would give her enough coin for her purposes.

Mirian sold her scavenged myrvite parts to Elsadorra, then found Beatrice's crew going over their maps.

"Hey Beatrice," she said.

"Mirian!?" Beatrice said. "Don't you have… classes?"

"Nah. We'll skip the boring parts. I'm a time traveler now—though lets not spread that around just yet. And I have a proposal for you. Any of you have any issues working with Aelius and the Ennecus Group?"

"Beatrice? You know this, uh, child?" Cediri asked.

"You're a time traveler?" Beatrice asked in a loud whisper.

"I think that was a joke," muttered Grimald.

"I'll take that as a no," Mirian said. "I have a plan for getting deeper into the Vault."

All three of them blinked at her.

"I've got a way to get through the suppression room with the two greater labyrinthine horrors. I just need you and Aelius to work together."

Beatrice stared at her. "Mirian, you had trouble using lift object on a chair last time I saw you."

"A lot has changed. You want to go set up the tripoint detector?" She grinned.

The fact that she'd made it to Frostland's Gate by herself already lent some credence to her claims, so after a few more minutes, she was able to get the group to drag out the tripoint meter and set it up safely outside of town.

Mirian stood upright, wand of greater lightning in her hand while Cediri finished setting up the third detector by the target. By tradition, the target was a bundle of hay in front of a boulder that was dripping with ice. When he was safely behind her, she waited for a moment, letting the anticipation build. She could almost feel the soldier sent to certify the results holding his breath. Beatrice looked worried.

Mirian leveled her wand, bringing the tip in perfect alignment with the device, posture perfect enough even Rostal would have had a hard time critiquing it. She focused in on her aura, watching it swirl about her, then she focused in on her soul. It was strange to think about, but within that swirling gyre was everything that made up her. Every memory and emotion was somewhere in those silver bands.

She could imagine one current was her despair, the one that questioned her very belonging and family now. Another could be the rage she felt at watching so much death and pain, over and over. They were a part of her though; she couldn't reject them. For now, she watched them pass by, embracing that truth of who she was, holding it tight. When she did that, she could feel her aura accelerate. That was the moment to grasp.

She channeled.

Lightning ripped from her wand, and anyone who didn't know any better might have thought the thunder was from a stormcloud. The straw target, predictably, was incinerated. The rock behind it glowed red, the sudden heat injection causing several fissure lines around it. Mirian turned to look at her audience.

Grimald's eyes were wide. Beatrice and Cediri's jaws had literally dropped. The soldier looked at the meter, then looked at the steam that was still coming off the now dry and ice-free boulder.

"97 myr," Beatrice whispered. "Mirian, what the fuck. You're almost an archmage."

"Well," Mirian said, unable to suppress her smile, "I guess I've got a bit of work to do. So, as I was saying. Who wants to see what's at the end of that Vault below us?"