The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

They made it back to the surface two hours later, having fought through a scattering of labyrinthine horrors and a chimera that seemed to have come from an undiscovered eco-node on the first level. Mirian went through the motions of denying that she'd done anything special.

She went on patrol, killing several myrvites. With the split profits from selling their spell organs, she got her own room again in the lodge and rebuilt her workshop, this time adding the tools she'd need to continue her work on soul magic.

Then the arcane eruption in the Endelice took place, and Mirian spent the evening slaughtering myrvites, which fully charged the soul repository she'd built. During the fighting, she continued to check the souls of everyone in town. With Beatrice's group consumed by the Labyrinth, the myrvites broke through one of the streets, stampeding over four people who subsequently died of their injuries. Again, the local priest was wholly inadequate for the task. Mirian confirmed he didn't have a soul repository. In future cycles, she could use hers for healing the wounded, but for now, she kept it hidden. She continued to do nothing to indicate her foreknowledge.

On the 22nd of Solem, Mirian went down with Aelius's group again. There was a great deal of swearing as they realized the Labyrinth had shifted again and they had to re-explore the first level. Mirian had known it was going to happen and couldn't bring herself to feign surprise or annoyance. Oh, you have to do something you've already done again? she found herself thinking. Darn. That must be so frustrating for you.

The labyrinthine horrors on the first level were small, but persistent. They killed several dozen as they remapped the rooms.

When they took a break to eat lunch, the other mage tried to strike up a conversation. "So, Niluri, what got you started in the arcane arts?"

"They're interesting," Mirian said.

"Yeah, that's for sure. What do you like the most?"

"All of it, I'd say."

There was a slight tinge of annoyance from the other arcanist. "Well, where are you from?"

"Cairnmouth," she lied.

"Oh yeah? That's neat. So am I. Which neighborhood?"

She shrugged. "We moved around a lot."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

A long pause. "You don't talk much, do you?"

"Sometimes."

Mirian had killed the conversation in record time.

She just couldn't bring herself to care. The only thing she wanted to know from the team was what they knew about the labyrinth, and the small talk just didn't interest her. She knew she was being cold and rude, but it wouldn't matter. None of them would remember.

She could always go through social niceties if she needed something.

After several hours of mapping, they found the entrance to the second level again, now a few hundred meters north of where it had been. Interestingly, Mirian noticed the new layout had several long corridors running north to south that hadn't been there before, and ambient magic levels in those corridors was elevated, but not in the adjacent rooms.

Mirian captured a small labyrinthine horror in a force cage, remembering Elsadorra's request for a live specimen. As they moved up the elevator shaft, though, the rest of the team eying her and the specimen nervously, the horror suddenly went rigid and then limp. Mirian poked at it with some raw force magic, but it didn't react. She let it out of the cage to see if it was faking death (which Aelius shouted about), but it stayed limp.

Interesting. Aelius had mentioned the yellow substance from the puzzle became inert when it left the Vault, but this was a living creature. Ambient mana levels hadn't changed significantly. The environment wasn't fundamentally different—the Labyrinth was basically as cold as the surface. So what had killed it?

Elsadorra did appreciate how fresh the sample was, and immediately dissected it. Mirian watched and took notes.

She continued to work on and off with Elsadorra the rest of the cycle, helping her analyze samples, distill magichemicals, and decipher the function of some of the glyphs they'd found down there. On the outside, Elsadorra appeared to be about as affectionate as a pile of bricks, but Mirian started to discover there was a beautiful honesty to the woman. When she said, "Thank you. I am grateful," it was in emotionless monotone, but she really did mean it.

Part of her appreciated it, because the way Elsadorra sounded was the way Mirian felt. Her conversations didn't exist to further a bond between two people, didn't create any friendships, wouldn't ever lead to a mutual love; they were something she had to get through, in the same way she had to piss in lavatories and eat three meals each day.

It was hard to find genuine joy in any of it. Instead, she only found satisfaction in learning something she hadn't known before, making progress on a problem, or opening up another line of inquiry to investigate. Certainly, she wasn't running out of things to learn.

When the end came again, she watched Frostland's Gate dispassionately; one last check for any hiding agents or anomalies. The people clutched each other and wept and asked why? to the heavens.

Mirian had no answers for them yet.

***

The next cycle, after grabbing the wand and focus from the underground and changing the resonance of the orichalcum pieces, she visited Professor Viridian during his office hours. Outside, the Torrviol was still on the hunt for someone that matched her pre-transformation description.

"I have a bit of a strange question. What's the relationship among all these hieroglyphs?" she asked, handing him the sketch she'd made.

The old professor looked at her, then back at the drawing, then back at her. "Where did you see these?" he asked.

"A book about the Labyrinth. It's been bothering me. They talk about puzzles that make sense, but I can't figure this one out. The puzzles all seem to have an ecology theme, so I thought you might know."

"Does the book explain what each hieroglyph represents?"

"No."

"That would be what I would research first, then. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with Labyrinth hieroglyphs, but there should be several books on the subject in the library. Perhaps, Translating the Elder Gods, or The Hollow Bones Of The World would be a good start."

Mirian wrote down the titles, and thought about how many books from Bainrose she could comfortably fit in her pack. Four? Five? "Do you know much about the labyrinthine horrors?"

Viridian sighed. "It's a rather thought-terminating name for a family of organisms, isn't it? All I can tell you is they're under-studied, and I don't see that changing. I'm afraid I can't recommend magical ecology as a focus to anyone choosing a career path. It is an… uphill struggle." He smiled, then said, "It's a joy to learn about and teach, though."

"Thanks," Mirian said, smiling back as she stood. She was about to ask if he had any other myrvite studies books, then realized he'd probably just recommend the texts he already assigned to his classes. Her eye caught the titles of the books on his shelf. His name was on several of them as the author. I wonder what he wrote about, she thought, but she didn't ask the professor. She had enough to do already, and doubted it would have any relevance to any of the problems she needed to solve right now.

Mirian checked out the books Viridian had suggested in the library, plus two more bulky volumes about the Labyrinth that she hadn't read yet. She left two seeds of chaos on top of the train heading down to Cairnmouth.

Then she gathered her supplies and left for the north again, having prepared several more surprises for Sulvorath.

The second spy made it too easy; he went right up to the myrvites in the Studies building before he killed them, so it was a simple matter to bind the souls of the myrvites he was already going to kill and use that necromantic energy to remove his soul mark. He'd never even known he was being watched.

The next time he went into the spy's headquarters, everyone was in for a nasty surprise.

She also left a note for Magistrate Ada telling her where to find the listening devices in Mayor Wolden's office and the counterfeit Florian ingots, then an anonymous warning for Archmage Luspire warning him about a man who would be seeking to manipulate him named 'Suvlorath,' who would know too many secrets and appear to have foreknowledge, but was actually just seeking to seize the Divine Monument and all the research associated with it.

The other letters she sent to Palendurio and Cairnmouth were random. The less predictable each cycle, the more Sulvorath would struggle. It pleased her to imagine all the countless hours he was putting into finding her or untangling whatever mess she'd left him. Maybe he would abandon Torrviol. Maybe he already had. She didn't think so, though. By her estimations, he'd needed to dedicate dozens of cycles to learning about Torrviol and the dynamics at play. The first time she'd seen him, he had been targeting Nicolus specifically. He'd learned Mirian's exact routine so that he could ambush her and Jei in the underground. It all betrayed an unhealthy amount of focus on her.

So she'd stay a ghost for as long as it took.

She did decide to shed the soul-disguise midway through her journey north. She could always reapply it before the journey ended, and Frostland's Gate seemed safe enough. This time, she wanted Beatrice to trust her.

Mirian spent some time hunting down the den of the glaciavore. This time, she could levitate above it and drop trees on it at her leisure.

The extra time finding the glaciavore plus the full two days she'd spent in Torrviol put her arrival on the 10th of Solem again. Next time, though, she was sure she could cut a day off her preparations and a day off the travel time. She rented the really nice room in the Kivinotsuur lodge again. She kept the anti-divination wards to a minimum; anyone trying to find her with divination would have to be nearby, and she was confident she knew Frostland's Gate well enough now that she could detect any anomalous activities. Even Luspire's divination spells probably could only reach a mile out at most, so the distance between her and the rest of civilization was its own protection.

The next morning, she headed to the tavern to meet Beatrice.

***

"Mirian!?" Beatrice said, jaw dropping when she saw her enter. "Don't you have… classes?"

"Good to see you," Mirian said, smiling. And she meant it. The feeling she had for the people she already knew, who already knew her—it was like a warmth bubbling up in her. This was the Beatrice she knew.

"Please tell me you didn't bring Lily. If she's also skipping class—"

"She's fine. She's in Torrviol. Listen, I'm working on some research, related to what you're doing in the Labyrinth. Grimald, Cediri. Good to see you both." She sat.

"How did you know…?"

"Time travel," said Mirian, and then she began to explain. She gave them the short version, and included the warning about the other time traveler so that they'd stay careful. The fact that she already knew a detailed layout of the Vault, including its four-dimensional nature and how to solve several of the puzzles, helped lend a great deal of credence to her story. The four glaciavore eyes she put on the table next probably helped too.

Beatrice leaned back in her chair. "I need a drink," she said.

"This still seems… well, ridiculous, don't you think?" Cediri said.

Mirian raised an eyebrow in his direction. "Did you want me to tell them your secret? Would that help you see the truth?"

Beatrice looked at Cediri. "You have a secret?"

He blinked, considering Beatrice, then Grimald, then Mirian.

"Tell you what. Cediri, I want you to be talking to your contacts anyways. Have them keep an eye out for the other guy I was talking about. Figure out what he's up to. How much is that worth to you?" Mirian jangled her pouch of coins.

"Contacts? What?" Beatrice said.

"If she's telling the truth, money is worthless," Grimald said.

Mirian gave them an evil grin. "And yet, people have a very hard time saying 'no' to it. It's one thing to know something, and another to understand it in your bones."

"Cediri," Beatrice said, "We don't keep secrets from each other. We're buddies. What did you do?"

Mirian dropped her voice, because this part, she didn't need going around town. "He's been smuggling myrvite parts to the Cairnmouth Syndicate for extra coin." She raised a finger as the smuggler in question opened his mouth to protest. "I've met Numo and Ravantha, so please don't bother denying it."

Beatrice went white. "You… you… I can't believe… we have an ethical responsibility to…." She stood up to leave, but Mirian grabbed her arm.

"Forgive him," she said. "You don't have time to hold onto that feeling of betrayal. He's still your friend. Hold on to that."

Beatrice looked at Mirian. The table was silent. Grimald looked sad, but he didn't say anything. Finally, Beatrice sat back down and said, "You have changed, haven't you? You're not the Mirian I knew. She was… funnier. More carefree. And stressed. And awkward. And not nearly as smart as she thought she was."

Mirian gave her a sad smile. "All true, I suppose. Everyone changes, though. Or at least, they used to."

Another silence came over the table. Behind them, there was the pleasant sounds of chatter and the clink of utensils on plates, of the tavern door opening and closing, of steam hissing in the kitchen.

"So what do we do?" Grimald said.

"'To break a mountain, start by removing a single stone,'" Mirian quoted.

"And how many stones have you removed?" asked Cediri.

"At least seven," Mirian said.

Beatrice snorted.

"See, I still have some of the old Mirian in me. So here's my plan," she said. They had eighteen days, and Mirian outlined six different expeditions into the Labyrinth she wanted, with the primary goal of tracking leyline movement beneath the Labyrinth, the secondary goal of retrieving and studying both antimagic entropic glyphs and and celestial runes they could find, and the tertiary goal of making progress in the Vault.

That would require heavily modifying the divination equipment they did have, but Mirian's expertise in glyphs and artifice would streamline the process significantly. Having a team that was on-board with the plan was critical, because Mirian would need to build and then charge a soul repository with myrvite souls, then not freak out when she started doing soul magic.

"You trust her?" she overheard Grimald whispering to Beatrice.

"She's a good person," Beatrice whispered back. "And how else do you explain what she knows?"

***

After the weeks of expeditions and research, Mirian and Beatrice watched the world end from the village at the end of the world.

"How long will it take?" Beatrice asked. They'd hiked up to a hill outside town for a better view. Beatrice had cried for a bit, then her tears had dried.

"Everyone always wants to know. I wish I had an answer."

"It's beautiful, at least," she said.

Mirian wasn't sure if she meant the bright auroras dancing across the sky and the prismatic glow of arcane energy erupting across the frostlands like fireworks or the frostlands themselves, dripping with glaciers and soft blankets of snow. She nodded.

"Who will you save?"

"Lily," said Mirian instantly. Then with a sigh, "And as many as I can. But I'm just one person."

"You can't do it alone," Beatrice agreed. "No one could." She was silent for a long time. The crashing thunder of a leyline breaching the Endelice echoed across the land.

Beatrice said, "When you come back here, tell me… tell me that you have to cut apart a rose bush to see its flowers bloom again."

Mirian put her hand on Beatrice's arm.

"At least I won't remember. But you… stay strong, Mirian."

The moon fell again.