The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

The second airship may not have been sure what just happened to the first one, but the pilot on board had been watching. The skiff accelerated, then started doing evasive maneuvers as it approached, randomly weaving through the sky as it passed the manor again, sending out another bombardment of fireballs. The return fire from the manor was meager; a few beams and bolts either missed entirely or just fizzled on the ship's shield. The estate guards and armed servants were in no way prepared for this kind of firefight, and whatever reinforcements Enrico Allard had called for would be too late.

Mirian descended to the ground, hiding in the garden. She kept her camouflage spell up, but dismissed everything else. Then she drew from her soul repository, healing her arms. There was barely any soul energy left at that point, which was concerning. At least her auric mana was doing better.

The airship's new tactics would mean she needed to change hers as well. She might be able to use levitation to ambush it, but she just as easily could exhaust herself as it maneuvered away from her attempts. Mirian flipped through her spellbook. There was a distinct paucity of the kinds of destructive spells she would need to bore through an airship hull or pierce a spell engine generated shield.

The skiff has to be moving at top speed. The amount of inertia it has—I wonder if I could use that against it? she thought. Her gaze narrowed in on the debris around the manor. There were sections of solid stone. If I could get it to collide with that—I can move a stone wall of that size faster than I can fly. But the pilot would just adjust course. Unless….

Mirian got an idea. She moved towards the manor until she was closer, hiding behind one of the fires in the garden she'd set. A few meters away was a hunk of stone wall. She flipped through her spellbook, fingers marking the pages she'd need. Coordinates for a rectangular prism, lift object… and my improved camouflage is the last piece.

She'd never tried to improvise a spell this complicated, but she did have all the glyphs she needed. Mirian rapidly switched back and forth, needing to use six different flux glyph pairs to stabilize the light-bending spell around the new coordinates. The result was an illusion spell that bent light from behind it and projected it forward, centered on the chunk of marble wall. It wouldn't be perfect, but the stuff behind it would be a sky full of gray clouds, and the illusion itself would be shrouded in smoke. She finished casting, holding that spell in her mind as she then applied lift object to the stone.

As the airship approached, she started lifting the stone wall. The skiff predictably accelerated as it made its approach, and while it could evade, it had to bank before it started to turn. There! She saw the wings tilt, and repositioned the wall to be in front of the new course. Find more to read at empire

The pilot didn't even slow. Mirian released the spell as the airship impacted the thick marble, and inertia did the rest. The shield flared and broke. The bow of the ship crumpled so fast it looked like it vaporized, and the hull cracked down the center. The left wing was sheared off entirely. The spell engine broke apart, either from being pulverized or overloaded, and the ship ignited in a burst of arcane fire, orange and violet ribbons of light spiraling madly behind the ship as it plummeted to the ground. The impact was visceral, and she felt the ground tremble.

Mirian dismissed her personal camouflage spell and made her way to the manor, using air manipulation spells to smother the fires in the garden, then heat displacement spells to stop the small fires she encountered in the manor. This time, she didn't use a window; she could just enter by stepping through a gaping hole in the wall.

She found Sire Nurea, slumped over by a window, pistol empty and discarded, wand cracked open, and hand over a bleeding wound in her side. From the damage to the wand, Mirian guessed Nurea had lost control of her mana and ruptured a conduit. Despite bleeding out, her eyes still held unrestrained fury.

Mirian knelt by her side, gently mending as much of the bleeding as she could until her soul conduit was completely empty. "That's all I can do for now," she said gently.

"This is all your fault," Nurea snapped. "We should have never got entangled in—"

"Fourteen days left," Mirian said. "It was always going to end like this. Do you know what the alternative is?"

Nurea said nothing, but grit her teeth as she stood.

"Without my intervention, you and Nicolus flee Torrviol and are on a train that is next to a leyline when it erupts. You die. He lives. He holds your corpse for hours, weeping, trapped in a train car until myrvites eat him alive."

That broke Nurea. She fell to her knees and wept, tears full of fury.

Mirian knelt by her and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. "I promised you both that, when it matters most, you'll live. I intend to keep that promise. Take the time you need to grieve, but this isn't over. Another you will see him again." Mirian turned to go, thinking the knight would need some time, but Nurea's tears abruptly cut off, and she rose again. Her face twitched, and her eyes were still red. She looked like a mess. Mirian wasn't foolish enough to believe she'd gotten herself under control that fast, but she could at least mask it, it seemed. Wordlessly, they headed back down to the safe room.

"Who took out the airships?" one of the Allard guards asked. "We didn't see any—"

"Me," Mirian said. Everyone in the room turned to stare at her. She raised an eyebrow. "Unless you think airships just do that on their own?"

One of the Allard arcanists turned to Enrico and said, "Sir, the airships both came under attack by… something. I was unable to determine what, but both ships were destroyed in short order. I do not believe it was our efforts."

"She has a levitation wand, which implies a certain capacity. And certain connections," Enrico said, still looking rough around the edges. To Mirian she said, "Naluri, what in the five hells was that? Why was I attacked?"

Time to change my cover story. "You are aware of the wide-reaching… negotiations among the Akanan and Baracueli… heights?"

Enrico glanced at his guards. "This discussion needs to be private," he said.

"Sir…"

"If she wanted to harm me, she had the perfect opportunity. See to the house. I am informed it is still on fire?"

"Yes, sir." The guards left.

Sire Nurea sat down, clenching her jaw.

"She is…?"

"Aware. She was the one who contacted me. The Akanans never intended to fulfill the bargain, just divide Baracuel up before conquering it. They've betrayed the Sacristar family already, so they came to the Praetorian elements they knew they could trust. There's selective purging going on, and I got a tip your family might be next. I needed a pretense to get people over here, hence the negotiations. But I thought we had more time."

Enrico Allard looked concerned. "Why would they target me of all people?"

"My tip didn't include that information. You tell me."

He moved to rise, winced, clutched his side, then settled back down. "I've been coordinating distribution of donations to our favored Parliamentary candidates," he said. "And scheduling meetings of interested parties. And working on the funding side of galas. All perfectly legal activities. I've only heard about the project through small talk at the galas. In no way am I key to anything."

"Someone seemed to think you were. Or perhaps there's something here they wanted." Mirian glanced over by the cabinets.

Enrico followed her gaze. "There's a great deal of financial records. With enough time and accountants, someone could certainly make something out of them, but it would be information, not control. The Allard family has embraced modernity. Gold ingots can be stolen. Stocks and letters of credit use magical seals that are marked with the owner."

Mirian saw her opportunity. "And how sure are you the seals can't be broken?"

"A great many people have thought they could do that. They are dead or shackled in labor camps. Even the underworld appreciates financial stability."

"Adria Gavell, one of my colleagues, brought to my attention a program within the Deeps. And then she showed me a Florinian ingot. The bar was gold coated over lead. It had the wrong weight, but the seal was a perfect forgery."

Enrico blanched. "Impossible!"n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"I saw it with my own eyes, or I wouldn't have believed it myself. So, take that information into your calculations," Mirian said, wandering over to the display case. "Do you know why they'd attack you here now?"

The Allard man stared blankly at the wall, deep in thought. Then he said, "They really have compromised the seal system? The public can't know. It would be a disaster."

"Of course not," she replied, but her attention was now on the spellbook and wands that were in the case. This is some quality craftsmanship, she thought. That black hide with a slight prismatic sheen—that must be treated glaciavore hide. No one even makes that anymore. And unless I'm mistaken, it's using a titanium protective lace. Already primed for transmutation into mythril. The glyphwork is impeccable. Perhaps I could use it. She turned her attention back to Enrico. "Perhaps the Praetorians can assist. You want your assets to be secure. We want monetary stability and to curtail the Deeps overreach."

"I'll need to talk to my superiors," he said.

"Make sure to mention the attack," she said. "If they're amicable to the deal, I can start immediately. My expertise is in glyphkeys, wards, and building security, so I'm sure I can apply that here. I don't know how much other aid I can pull. The Praetorians are… stretched thin, to put it lightly."

Enrico gave a nervous laugh. "You have a handle on that, ah, unfortunate mess by the border?"

"By the grace of the Ominian, we can only hope."

"It's gotten that bad?" he said.

"No," Mirian said, thinking of what was to come. "It's much worse."

***

The Allard telegraph system reached down into another of their estates just outside Palendurio. From what she could tell from what Enrico told her, the shockwaves from Troytin's attack on the Allard manor spread from Palendurio to the Florin Principality. His strike had disrupted her initial plan, but he'd inadvertently sundered the tenuous alliances of the noble houses and the Akana elite entirely. For once, Akanan battleships didn't appear along the Rift Sea by Cairnmouth. From the second-hand rumors, it seemed General Corrmier's coup failed. He might have fled the city, or he might have gone into hiding—no one was sure.

When she casually investigated the origin of the spellbook, she learned it was made by the only Allard who'd made it to archmage; Enrico's great grandpa. He hadn't survived the Unification War, but they'd recovered the spellbook, and it had become a family heirloom.

The real victory was that Mirian was given unfettered access to a high security workshop owned by the Allard family, where the artificers there showed her some of the key glyph sequences they used. Mirian was surprised to learn that she could give them advice on improving the security of the sequences, even given incomplete information.

She was fascinated by the ideas they were using, both with glyphs and materials. She made a mental note to check with Professor Seneca about the chemistry of the clay and glaze they used on the seals. The special clay allowed scribing, but once glazed and magically fired, scribing pens no longer worked. The seal also bonded chemically with the paper somehow so it couldn't be removed except by a second special process that allowed the transfer of ownership.

She also learned the names of more conspirators as Enrico asked her questions, assuming she knew more than she did. One "Silou Westerun," an older Baracueli man living in Vadriach, seemed to be a key player. The name seemed familiar, though she couldn't place where she'd heard it before. She did what she could to commit all the names and positions to memory.

Three hours before the apocalypse, she broke the case containing the archmage's spellbook and did a detailed study of it, including analyzing the titanium alloy and the minuscule wards that were incorporated into the binding. A standard spellbook had small wards that waterproofed the pages and made the book fire resistant—critical for something that had arcane energy constantly pouring through it. Small imperfections in the glyphs often led to heat energy bleeding out into the pages, and so a spellbook without fireproofing was liable to burn.

The Allard archmage, though, had thought of a dozen more contingencies and made his spellbook resistant to divination, cutting, material-component spells, and acid, as well as wards that locked the book against intruders. I can improve on that sequence, she decided. I can link the lock to a celestial rune imprinted with my soul. That should be impossible to override. The only way to open it would be to break it. Specter's lockbox with the curse wand does something similar.

First, the relicarium. Then, I can use this for the binding. Then to Palendurio for the Holy Pages. Last, the myrvite titan.

With only a short time left, Mirian examined the wands in the case as well. One was a fireball wand that really was a masterpiece; it used three parallel conduits, with crystals so fine she had to assume Zhighuan arcanists had made it. The other layered both force and fire shields together. Impressive, but Archmage Luspire's prismatic shield spell is better. I really ought to get him to teach me that one. But how to do that in the limited time I have in Torrviol?

A realization dawned on her. Or… I could just steal his spellbook. Huh.

***

Mirian spent the early days of the next cycle disguised as Micael again, then used her apprenticeship with Professor Endresen to get tutorials on glyph-chemistry interactions with Seneca.

She waited until Troytin arrived with his contingent of Akanan professors. He'd added two people to the mix, both of whom pretended to be professors, but seemed like obvious agents to Mirian. One of them kept tripping over divination wards in Bainrose while skulking around in places he shouldn't have been, while the other was often shadowing Jei or Torres.

With her two long-term allies under such close scrutiny, Mirian avoided interacting with them altogether. Instead, she gathered some hair samples from a chair Troytin had sat in. That night, she bound up her own hair and used thin caster's gloves so she'd leave no trace of herself. First, she hit a store of zephyr falcons the Akanans were keeping over in the Myrvite Studies building, releasing them all with notes written in Eskanar all giving out questionable instructions.

Then, she used illusion magic to disguise herself as Troytin and levitated up to Luspire's quarters in Torrian Tower. She smashed the window, deposited the hairs, and snatched the Archmage's spellbook from its stand. An incredulous Luspire bursting out of his bedroom in his nightclothes caught a glance of her as she flew back out the window.

Perfect.

Quickly, she flew across town, broke into an Academy workshop to destroy the tracking glyphs on the outside of the spellbook, then she fled town. She landed on the roof of the midnight train as it began to chug away, then snuck onto the train and into one of the empty cars.

Talk yourself out of that one, she thought.

With the other time traveler now distracted and missing his ability to rapidly give out orders, Mirian headed back down to Cairnmouth. She spent two days buying up chemistry and alchemistry supplies and setting herself up a workshop in a rented apartment. Then, she set about fabricating one layer of an official Allard seal. When she was done, she paid a visit to the Allard workshop and told them she'd discovered a fatal flaw in their process. Her evidence was necessarily very convincing, as she could discuss their trade secrets while pretending like it was something she'd reverse-engineered.

Her offer to fix the problem—at a premium wage—was accepted. That got her an in to see another part of the process that she otherwise would have been barred from seeing.

In the evenings, she read Luspire's spellbook and copied down the glyph sequences she'd need for his advanced fire spells and prismatic shield. After a few days, though, she destroyed the spellbook, having discovered that he'd embedded tracking glyph sequences throughout the pages. I can always get the book again, she reasoned.

The minuscule glyphs the Allard workshops used and the finicky nature of the special clay they had to scribe in was by no means easy to learn, but by now she had been practicing precise artifice and glyphwork for almost a decade. She quickly impressed the other artificers with her ability, and the master of the workshop raised her salary to make sure they didn't lose her. Mirian found it mildly amusing. As the crisis developed, the arcanists all got very focused on the security of their building, and dismissed the eruptions outside town entirely.

When it all came to an end, Mirian repeated the broad strokes of her tactics. Three cycles later, and she could fabricate an official Allard seal from scratch.

Late in that cycle, she brought her own custom-made letter of credit for three thousand doubloons down to a random bank in Cairnmouth. The bankers ran the letter through their spell engine twice, then got an artificer to check it as well. It passed.

Mirian left the establishment with a grin. That should solve the gold problem, she thought.