Chương 217: Chapter 290 - Even the Darkest Night

Cycle??? At last, the day came when there were eight holes left in the Ominian's flesh. In the dream, Mirian could count the forty-eight temporal anchors glittered in Their body. She could still see the pain in the contortions of the Ominian's wings and eyes, but it had lessened. In the dream, she sent a smile to Them. Peace will come to Enteria. Peace will come to you. Together.

Mirian arrived in Uxalak on the second day of what she had decided would be the penultimate loop. There was Xecatl, her eyes shut, dark face creased with pain, breathing ragged. A circle of nagual and bodyguards surrounded her. They watched as Mirian approached; Ceiba Yan had already told them of her. Mirian brought out her spellbook. She felt Ceiba Yan's soul gently mingle with hers. Together, they formed a spirit construct.

As Ceiba Yan provided the energy, Mirian provided the control, the bindings, and the detailed rune sequences. Where Xecatl's soul was tangled up with old and new memories, she soothed the currents. Where the new memories scoured her mind like fire, she gently healed the neural tissue. For the next three hours, they did nothing else. Around them, the Tlaxhuacan royal guard held their collective breath. At last, Xecatl opened her eyes, pale and shaking. She gasped for breath, then collapsed to the ground.

Her tears flowed freely. She tried to stand, but couldn't.

"I… I don't know if I can do that… again," she gasped.

"So many memories… so much… a lifetime. I can't." Mirian gently dissolved the bindings and flows she was using to steady Xecatl. She knelt down and looked at the Emperor of Tlaxhuaco with worry in her eyes.

"One more," she said.

"Can you do it?"

"Then… then we're finally there." Xecatl looked up at the sky and closed her eyes. The tears were still flowing.

"Some days, I thought it would last forever." Mirian put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"Even the darkest night always ends. We're almost there."

She met Zhuan in person in Benansuo. They greeted each other with a quick kiss, then each of them checked for divination and spies as was their habit. Mirian circled them with a veil of swimming illusionary light and a sound-nullifying barrier.

"Xecatl won't last much longer. This is the last cycle to prepare." Zhuan looked grim.

"If she can hold out a little longer…" Mirian shook her head.

"I took a visit to Vadriarch last cycle. Jherica has been working on four-dimensional tri-bonded sequences. Maybe it's just a contingency. Maybe not." The Zhighuan Prophet's eyes widened.

"Jherica?"

"They might not even be aiming to target one of us. They might be targeting themself. Xecatl isn't the only one breaking down. Celen's become reticent again. Gabriel is back to playing games. Liuan won't open up to anyone. Ibrahim is losing faith. People weren't made to live like this. Yourself included. We share a dream, Zhuan. I've felt your nightmares too." Zhuan looked away.

"Name a plausible contingency we haven't planned for and I'll delay it. But you've succeeded at plan twenty-seven several times. Tell me you haven't and I'll delay it, but if we delay much longer…" The other woman looked at her.

"I did. We're… ready. You're right. If we wait much longer, we might lose Xecatl. If we lose Xecatl, we lose the supporting spirit construct around the device, and that destroys half of our contingency plans and a key mechanism of the regulator. And if we go back to fighting…" Mirian nodded.

"It can't be risked. If relicarium use in the way I'm about to use it becomes widespread, the timeline may become impossible to navigate."

"Hmm. The Akanans won't be happy. Gabriel will probably complain too."

"They'll only be unhappy if they were planning to use those people in the final cycle—people they've promised not to use. People who have committed unforgivable sins. If they expose a different loyalty than the one they've professed, I want to know now."

"You don't have to convince me. I just… worry. For all that we've seen, what if we've missed something?"

"If I wasn't one hundred percent certain of the arcane physics, I wouldn't do it." Zhuan shook her head.

"You know I'm not worried about that part. It's people. I've spent my life—two lifetimes, now—understanding how they move. Yet for all that I know, there's so much I don't. I'd like to run a thousand more experiments. See a thousand more futures. There's one experiment in particular involving testing if a group instructed to spread knowledge of dialectics causes a qualitative shift in the propaganda—""Zhuan, that's life. There will always be things we don't know. Always a new frontier.

At least—there will be if we live. Enteria has waited long enough to live. These people deserve the chance at a real life." They were both silent. The sky lightened, and the first rays of light began to creep down the peaks of the Jiandzhi mountains. This wasn't their favorite sunrise, but Mirian loved it all the same. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. The other Prophets had been working on their own contingencies, of course.

Through the decades, Mirian had watched them practicing. She had considered removing several Prophets from the loop, but had decided against it. Planning for contingencies wasn't a break in their alliance; after all, she'd been doing it too. If they acted together, the world would be saved, and better yet, the world would be changed. Their primary plan was nearly bloodless. A few people in power were removed, and then the world went from one on the brink of total war to one embracing unity and peace.

Removing any Prophets now might lead to something far worse, especially if that removal caused the other Prophets to turn on her. She had decided to aim for the best possible outcome. For all the horrors people inflicted on each other, they were also capable of so much more. The Ominian had seen it in them.

Mirian arrived at Westerun's house in the evening. She landed gently by the front entrance, then disintegrated the door and seized the lone occupant with a total hold person. She quickly stripped the area around him of weapons, catalysts, and focuses.

"I killed the others quickly," she said.

"You… I want you to know why you're dying. Nearly everyone in Operation Zenith is already dead. The generals, the rich bastards, the RID assassins, the Deeps traitors—four hundred and thirty eight people. I knew exactly where they'd be and what they'd do. I weighed each one of their lives and found them irredeemable. Like you, they've climbed to the top using a mountain of corpses as steps, and would make another mountain of them just to climb a little higher."

Westerun's eyes were wide, but his jaw was clamped shut by the spell holding him. He was struggling, but he could hardly move.

"You are dying not just for the horrendous crimes you committed across three countries, but for the fact that you have and will continue to try to poison all life on Enteria with your insatiable greed. The new world has no place for it." Mirian opened up a satchel and pulled out a cube of relicarium. It was nearly empty—just a little left at the bottom. It would be just enough to bind a bit of his brainstem and a circle of aorta. She knew from Praetorian Voran the procedure would work.

Westerun was struggling more, and making undignified noises as he attempted to talk. Naluri didn't want to hear any of it.

"Voran killed my mother. For you, that wasn't enough. You tried to strip away any memory I had of her love. You wanted to create a mind-controlled empire of slaves unable to resist you. That your understanding of the mind and magic was woefully insufficient to ever approach that is no excuse for your intentions. I want you to know the price for your evil: you will die here and in every timeline. But first, I want you to feel the suffering you've caused." Mirian placed her hand on Western's sweating forehead.

She pushed her memories at him. She felt him trying to thrash against the bindings of the spell, heard his squeal of pain, and saw his soul writhing as she fed him more and more. The little girl he'd tortured—now he got to feel what it was like. The pain. Then the loneliness. Then the rage—and fear. His soul was torn apart. She let him drop to the ground, then used her last few drops of relicarium to bind those little pieces of him.

It was part of her final contingencies; if any of the others sought to go back on their word, they would find those levers of political power unavailable to them. The world that emerged next would have that many fewer monsters trying to steer Enteria into ruin. Mirian incinerated the body, then flew off.

Mirian made no preamble once they had assembled in Uxalak under the boughs of Ceiba Yan.

"The final temporal anchors have returned. The next loop will be our final one. We must return our temporal anchors to the Ominian. Once DIVITRIUS is restored, this will allow enough stability on Divir to prevent the Ominian's soul explosion. We have practiced our plan, and we know that it succeeds with the least bloodshed of all of them. Long have we labored for Enteria to know life again. Soon, we will all taste the fruits of these labors."

She raised a goblet to her fellow time travelers and looked around the table.

"You sure you don't want to do a few more. You know, for fun?" Gabriel asked, raising his own goblet. Seeing Xecatl's expression, he said, "Kidding. I think we'll all be glad to be done with it." Ibrahim didn't raise his goblet.

"It's probably time to discuss the glaciavore in the room. How do we ensure everyone actually lets their temporal needle be removed? Everyone knows everyone else has been making backup plans."

"I have planned for every contingency. Including Prophets going into hiding," Mirian said.

"I've just finished ensuring that deviating from our agreed upon plan is more difficult."

"Mmm?" Liuan said.

"The pro-war faction will die at the start of the cycle, which will allow Akana's path towards cooperation to be much smoother," she said.

"Oh. Thank you," Liuan said.

"That'll save me quite a bit of time dealing with them. I think… Celen, you recall the loops where we dealt with the early deaths of the war faction? It'll be even easier to paint it as divine judgment this time." Celen nodded.

"Won't be a problem." When she looked around the table, only Gabriel looked a bit concerned. However, no one brought up the possibility of Mirian being the one to derail the plan. They knew she could have ripped away their temporal anchors in the years prior. The celebrations were subdued. They spent the next few days reviewing the plan. Everyone knew their part. Mirian watched them cautiously, but began to relax as the week came to a close.

On the sunset of the final day, Mirian went to Ceiba Yan. I'll have something for you in the final cycle. It's too big to be coated in relicarium. Hopefully, you won't need it, she thought to the giant tree. But we will be ready for anything. Mirian felt the anticipation of rain, and roots thirsting in dry soil. The Sacred Tree was in agreement. Ceiba Yan's soul stirred like a storm moving across a distant horizon. By now, it was vast in a way that was difficult to comprehend.

He had learned to grow his body more quickly, and Xecatl had learned what he needed to speed up that growth. Even now, his roots were touching the framework around the Uxalak Gate. Mirian let her aura spin with his, their souls moving in harmony. It was a dance they enjoyed. Their very own spirit construct. Together, they watched birds flitting about through the gardens and the grand celebrations of life in Uxalak. Above, the auroras were mixed with dark clouds.

There was an old saying she'd heard: "To break a mountain, start by removing a single stone." Piece by piece, she'd done so. The mountain lay shattered before her.

"Now I know the shape of all things," Mirian whispered. She was ready. Time had been wrapped in a circle. At long last, it would unfurl back into a path—one that led to a real future for all of them. Far away above Mayat Shadr, Divir fell gently, more like a snowflake drifting down than a meteor. In a few minutes, the Ominian's soul would destabilize and the life-annihilation wave would trigger their temporal anchors to shoot into the Luamin device where they would be sent back. One last time.