Chương 226: Chapter 299 - Reprieve

Mirian hovered high above the world, surrounded by layers of lens spells, an eagle eye enhancing her vision. The world was spread out below her in miniature. She liked to pause and do this when she had to travel between cities without Gates. Here, she could watch the shape of history as it unfolded. She could feel the rhythms of it, and understand more about how events would move. After living through these months so many times, she knew them like an old friend.

To the west, she could see the two Akanan navy battlegroups withdrawing across the Rift Sea. Plumes of smoke from Cairnmouth and the towns west of Palendurio obscured her sight, but light manipulation allowed her to change light frequencies enough to get a decent picture of the retreat. That was expected. Liuan must have realized her attacks were doing more to galvanize Baracuel than they were doing damage and that her airship raids weren't as effective as she might have thought.

She had expected more raids on the Gates. Perhaps a multi-pronged attack, with Liuan sending airship raids to Palendurio and Torrviol, while Gabriel struck at Mahatan. She had groups positioned, guarding each one, but the attack hadn't materialized. No doubt, both were biding their time. Gabriel would be building up his forces with as much secrecy as he could muster, while she could observe Liuan gathering her forces across the narrow Rift Sea.

Neither Selesia nor Idras had reported in, yet, but she knew what Akana was capable of. She and Zhuan had studied its industrial capacity. She knew the population numbers. More people lived in Mercanton than in Cairnmouth, Palendurio, and Alkazaria combined. When Akana did strike, it would be a heavy blow. Below, she could make out clusters of tents and the glow of heat engines. Refugees, moving east. The lines were thinner. The camps smaller.

She could make out two trains moving across the scrublands towards Alkazaria. Each would be packed full—but not as full as they usually were. Instead, despite all the people who had left Palendurio, more were gathering there. The forts were full, and camps had spread around the city all the way to the spellwards. If she pointed a layer of lens spells at the right place, she could see recruits drilling with rifles.

The distance was too far for her divination to pick up, but she knew the factories would be churning out both pieces for the leyline regulator and instruments of war. To the north, Frostland's Gate had held against the first wave of the coming myrvite migration. Lily and Beatrice would be arguing, but in the end, the evacuation of the town would proceed. Several dozen disciplined, high-myr arcanists would be arriving in Torrviol soon. Some of them would make their way through the Gate.

Others would stay, adding to the town's defenses. Far to the south, Rambalda waited like a held breath. Ibrahim's forces continued to gather. While he held his primary force on the Ibaihan River west of Alkazaria, his secondary force was moving along the Persaman coast, easily sweeping aside the opposition and raising the flag of revolution. Inoculated against Gabriel's influence, there would be a barrier of loyalists that would also prevent his words from reaching Baracuel.

Mirian's own loyalists would keep Mahatan secure. With the sea cut off by leviathans, that meant Gabriel would be building his forces along the Setarab River, from Urubandar eastward. Even now, there would be fighting in Alatishad as the city decided between joining one faction of Chosen or another. Ibrahim's confidence was no doubt robust; after all, he'd quickly gotten the second most powerful arcanist on Enteria on his side, and one that came with a powerful army.

The necromancer Atrah Xidi was slowly expanding that army, using corpses willingly donated to the cause. Mirian closed her eyes, feeling the ring on her finger. Perception through Meu was difficult, but she only needed a simple message. Yes, he was still watching the hostages. No, Ibrahim still wasn't marshaling his northern forces. All was well in northern Persama. Zhuan would be securing the Jiandzhi corridor, and she could consolidate all of Zhighua the same way that Liuan held Akana in an iron grip.

It was Xecatl she worried more about. Bouts of intense fatigue and nerve pain still plagued the Emperor of Tlaxhuaco. Neither she nor Ceiba Yan knew how to heal the damage. Still, Tlaxhuaco was preparing its part of the project on schedule, and fortifying its shores against incursion. As long as Uxalak held, that was all that was required. If Liuan did strike there, she wouldn't go after the city directly. She rightfully feared the Sacred Tree's might.

Even Apophagorga would be wary of the power of Ceiba Yan, whose roots were now growing closer and closer to both the Gate and the Labyrinth nearby. Meanwhile, across Baracuel and parts of Persama, the chaos of change was helping sow the seeds of new forms of social organization. Ad hoc groups that had formed in response to Mirian's speeches were evolving, essentially, into a second informal government. Baracuel's was based on the plebiscite, like the kind that Torrviol launched any time the mayor had been cast out.

Persama's was based on the pejuen, the neighborhood gatherings that had turned into more formal councils. The governors and mayors were required to respect the Prophet's dictum, but they would find it difficult to reassert control later. Right now, all the people on the leyline regulator project were learning from each other, and learning how to govern themselves.

Normally, there would also be more militias supporting the construction, but those militias were now staying in west Baracuel; yet another wedge that would crack open the old powers that had led Enteria to ruin. Like a Tlaxhuacan spirit-construct, their roots were intermingling, and the seeds of new life were sprouting. She had watched them grow many times. Even though these were new events, it all moved in familiar patterns. Not like clockwork; the flow of history could never be so predictable.

It was the music of the wind through a forest. The crash of the tides on the shore. She could hear when the leaves rustled wrong. She could see when shadows moved beneath the waves. Right now, events were moving within acceptable tolerance levels. With the initial conditions set in motion, she'd unleashed an avalanche of change, and even with foreknowledge it was difficult to stop. Now, she had time to take a breath. And time to work on one of the biggest issues: the missing temporal needles.

Five missing needles was the maximum she'd planned for. She'd thought at least a few Prophets opposing her would kill themselves, thinking their anchors would become unreachable. That they hadn't yet was actually inconvenient. It meant she needed to obtain five chthonic needles. The first would be easy to get: it was on the fifth level of a remote Labyrinth entrance in east Baracuel, several kilometers from the entrance. First, though, she was going to stop by a different Labyrinth vault.

It had Elder relics on the fifth level she needed for an artifice piece she was making for Ceiba Yan. Mirian let her surveillance spells drop and cast supreme levitation. An aerodynamic cone of force materialized in front of her, and she rushed through the air like a zephyr falcon. She left a trail of vortices as she streamed through a cloud. She still felt joy as the wind whipped by and beautiful Enteria was laid out before her. In a few hours, she'd be at Second Cairn.

Then, after hitting the vault she needed, she'd move towards east Baracuel, which would take another few days. Then, she'd return to Torrviol via Alkazaria's Gate, where the second needle was, and reassess the situation. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. The fourth needle was some two hundred kilometers south of Urubandar, while the fifth was actually west of Ferrabridge, not too far from where the first major arcane eruptions had taken place.

That would be the riskiest one to get. It was on the eighth level, and leyline fluctuations often breached up into that portion of the Labyrinth as the mana overflowed. However, it might also be an opportunity to catch Liuan off guard. If she couldn't get it, she had a contingency for that, too. One she'd do everything in her power not to implement.

The Labyrinth too had become as familiar as the months. She remembered her first time delving into the depths. A few swarming labyrinthine horrors had seemed overwhelming. Even the third level had scared her. Now, it had become another thing she did. It was probably comparable to things normal people did, like chores or cooking. That's the way it felt, at least. She had vague memories of doing chores for her parents.

When the loops had quieted and they'd waited, she and Zhuan had tried living a "normal" life for a cycle, opening up a quiet little artifice shop in Saising. It had been amusing, and she'd felt she understood other people better afterward, but it wasn't something she was interested in. She was much happier doing research. Even after all these decades, she still had endless questions she wanted to investigate, and not just in the domains of magic.

Mirian periodically stopped and checked her spellbook for the route to take. When she'd first mastered the Labyrinth in Frostland's Gate, she'd done it enough times to know every turn by instinct. Now, it was more like doing a familiar dance, but one that blurred together with so many other dances. She still felt at ease in the twisting passages and dim light, but everything was half remembered. It was a strange way to grow old, and yet, it was the only one she'd ever experienced.

As the loops had dragged on, Mirian had wished that Carkavakom's Unmoored would visit her again, just because she wanted to talk to someone who knew what it was like to live an experience so far outside of what was normal. She wanted an elder's wisdom to lean on. Her father was still older than her, but he'd still lived his life linearly. She wanted to ask if he'd ever lived after his work was done, and what it was like. But the Unmoored had told her they would not meet again, and she believed him.

So these things went. Mirian had come to accept her life, and had embraced it with as much grace as anyone. Gone was her rage at the world. The change she would bring far outweighed the burdens she'd carried. She did wonder just how far the Ominian had seen. Had They known the Prophets would split? Mirian had to believe it served a great vision. That all the struggles and death meant something. That the pain and violence now was a catalyst for a brighter future. And it would be a bright future.

She could see it so clearly. Social traditions and governments that tampered down humanity's worst impulses, and encouraged its best. A world full of plenty, where they could grow and thrive. A world she would be proud to present to Zayd. As Mirian descended to the fifth level of the Labyrinth, a centicerator tried to ambush her from a hollowed space in the ceiling. A barrage of force and fire spells ripped it apart and she levitated on. This far down, she could feel the difference in the mana.

With her soul ascension that allowed her to consciously incorporate ambient mana, she could regenerate her auric mana faster in the depths. A group of causters and greater horrors attacked her next, spewing acid and flailing at her with soul-infused tendrils. As she ripped them apart with force spells, it all seemed vaguely familiar, but she only started to worry if she wasn't getting deja vu. When the Prophets had been waiting, Mirian had spent much of her time continuing her research of the arcane.

Her growth in power had eventually stagnated, as eventually happened to all arcanists, but she'd never stopped pushing the boundaries of their understanding of arcane physics. Both the Labyrinth and the artifacts on Luamin had shown her just how much humanity still had to learn. For nearly two decades, she and Jherica had studied the artifacts of the Labyrinth that they still didn't understand before they'd gradually drifted apart. At the time, she'd thought Jherica's interest had waned.

In retrospect, that was when Liuan must have started influencing them. Mirian reached the entrance to the Vault, smashing apart a carapace-crusher that tried to ambush her, and began to make her way in. By now, glyphs and runes were like another language to her. The puzzles and trials of the Vaults had partial explanations and a logic to them.

Now that she'd seen them enough and attempted to map the pieces in the arcane dimension that she couldn't see, she thought they were more like tests of ability, and had never been intended to be particularly mysterious. One trial called for her to demonstrate mastery of four-energy combination spells, which she trivially passed.

Another room closed when a single person had passed, then required her first to show her ability to simultaneously cast two spells at once, then her ability to hold the mana flows of nine spells for an extended period of time. It was no challenge. There was another room that was much like the room she'd discovered near the end of the Frostland's Vault that modeled an ecosystem. It too had the mysterious glyph. She knew from experience now that feeding energy into the glyph caused an uncontrollable type of energy.

Studying that energy had been impossible, as it quickly degraded into thermal and kinetic energy, which is to say, it exploded. It was one of the few times Mirian had died mid-loop after the Council of Dead Futures had agreed upon their course. Here, the trial wasn't looking for balancing energy, but for balancing matter. Thermal energy needed to be added under a mountain to cause eruptions, which in turn caused lava in equal proportion to the amount of stone that was being eroded by a miniature ocean.

Mirian had asked Eyeball, once, if they'd trained on the Labyrinth trials. It had said, "Not the ones on Enteria." Well, it had shouted that, but Mirian was used to the shouting. The little Elder Gateling also had let slip at one point that it could make most magichemicals using a specialized organ. Mirian had begged to study it, but of course, that would have violated the Pact. Though, Eyeball had also been strangely embarrassed by the request, too.

Thinking of Eyeball, it reminded her that she had a joke to finish telling them. Mirian reached the end of the Vault a few minutes later. Most of the items here she didn't need, though she figured she'd bring them up anyways. What she was here for was more of that strange substance that allowed two enchanted structures to be linked across distance. She carefully extracted the substance into a crystalline container she'd brought with her for the task, then departed.

As soon as Mirian exited the Labyrinth, she soared high into the sky again to peer at the world. Clouds shrouded many areas, but her instincts told her she could continue her task. She flew east again, then dove into the second Labyrinth entrance. Soon enough, she'd reached the Vault, leaving labyrinthine horror viscera splattered throughout the passages she'd traveled.

This Vault had a short section of rooms with an antimagic suppression field in it, which gave her a good excuse to practice her dervish forms with Eclipse. Then it was on to an obstacle course. This series of rooms did allow magic, but nullified most types of shields. The Vault walls then hurled different spells at her while she flew from spot to spot in the room activating a glyph sequence. She easily produced the required counterspells. Another room involved doing battle with Elder golems.

As she fought them, she thought of suggestions she'd make to whoever designed the trial to make it more interesting. Another hour later, and the Vault was open to her. She placed the first chthonic needle in a warded sheath at her belt. No matter what the traitor Prophets did, she would see Enteria saved. Mirian exited the Labyrinth and started flying for Alkazaria.