The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Palendurio was built on an old karst landscape, so there were stone spires throughout the city that people had encircled with houses anchored into the rock, as well as large hills riddled with caves that had been colonized with structures. Professor Holvatti had gone on about it at some length in one of his lectures, but Mirian could only vaguely recall karst had something to do with limestone's solubility and cave formations. Palendurio had a long history of holes opening up and swallowing buildings, until the city finally hired enough geomancers and construction crews to turn the cave system beneath the city into an underground canal network. Once in a while, there would still be a sinkhole, but it was much rarer.

The Magrio River ran through the center of the city, dividing the canals into the northern and southern networks. In between the smaller delivery rafts moving in and out of the cave-canal system were larger barges, moving upriver with spell engines as they transported cargo that had arrived on the Riverport docks at the west end of the city.

During the Unification War, Palendurio had been sacked and burned twice, then rebuilt using more modern designs. Unlike Cairnmouth, it had broader avenues, and because a small army of barges moved about under the city, there was little cart traffic. Despite this, it still managed to have its own pungent smell.

Palendurio was also much bigger. Spellwards had been protecting the city since their invention, so the city had long ago sprawled out beyond the tall medieval walls that surrounded the city core.

The train settled to a halt at Riverport Station, just in front of the Grand Bridge that crossed the Magrio River. As people got off, the platform swarmed with people. Mirian waited a bit to disembark. Going from depopulated Frostland's Gate to the crowds of Palendurio was something of a shock. She then headed through the Chimera Gate into the inner city. Instantly, the city's architecture morphed from the more modern buildings to the medieval style, complete with gargoyles that loomed above at the tops of the limestone pillars that dotted the area. Some of them were actually preserved from that era, but most had simply been built to match the old architecture. Kingmont Hill, the largest lump of limestone in the city, loomed high above the streets.

When her family had visited the city years ago, she had gawked at Charlem Palace atop that hill, seat of the now symbolic monarchy. Each of the dozen buildings that made up the palace were of gleaming white limestone, while the orange and white lion banners that draped down from the circular towers flapped proudly in the breeze. Elaborate calligraphy written in the ancient language Lorcadian framed the walls, done in a special orange paint that glimmered like something between bronze and gold in the sunlight. It was still beautiful, but it didn't stir her sense of awe like it once had.

At the base of the hill, facing the river, was the Grand Sanctum. It was far more ancient than the palace above, but just as well cared for. Framing the colossal entry door were statues of the Elder Gods, decorated at great expense with onyx and colorful marble stonework. The inside, she knew, was even more elaborate. Somewhere inside lay old artifacts of the Prophets.

Across the river was Ducastil, resting on a smaller bit of the karst formation atop sheer limestone cliffs. Once a proud castle, it had been refurbished with outdoor sculptures and a hanging garden. Its inside was now both the governor's mansion and hosted the parliamentary offices, though parliament itself met in a modern domed structure by the river.

Just west of that was Tenedor Plaza, which hosted the embassies of Akana Praediar, Zhighua, and Tlaxhuaco. There were also three empty buildings that the three different Persaman governments had once occupied, though they had abandoned them even before the war broke out.

On the 20th of Solem, she knew everyone in the Akanan embassy was scheduled to be slaughtered.

Mirian took a room at the Bard and the Lion Inn. It was expensive because it had a balcony overlooking the river, but most importantly, it overlooked the entrance to the Grand Sanctum. Also, its location wasn't far from the embassies or parliament. There was a fancy bed with down pillows and a luxurious washroom that had a stone tub with its own fountain supplying it with fresh water. It was also the only kind of room they sold with an attached room that she could convert into a workshop.

Mirian started by signing up on a list of pilgrims seeking prayer at the Grand Sanctum. She was told the wait was seven days, which she found acceptable. She had a late dinner, bought a few basic tools at the market, then reinforced her room's door with a magnetic repulsion ward. Then, she tried something new.

She'd gotten the orichalcum to resonate with her soul, meaning the spell resistance it provided was unidirectional. Obviously, it worked great when in contact with her body, and close proximity to her soul. But would it work even when separated from her? If so, how long?

She used one of the metalworking tools she'd purchased to shave off a small bit of orichalcum from the belt piece she was wearing, then used force magic to place it inside the door's locking mechanism. Even if it lost its resonance, it would still make using magic to force open the lock very difficult. Of course, someone could always break down the door. She wasn't going to bother reinforcing it. If she attracted that much attention, she'd done something wrong, and would be levitating out of there in record time.

Mirian knew only the outlines of how the attack on the Akanan Embassy would go down. She'd read conflicting stories in newspapers carried up north by zephyr falcon, then heard from Mayor Ethwarn what he had been told by the Royal Couriers. The news that made it up to Cairnmouth was a bit faster to travel, but no less confused or sparse. Then, after a few days, all information coming from Palendurio had ceased, probably representing a break in the rail lines.

There were several things she wanted to get information on this cycle: who were the guards that attacked the embassy, and why did they do it? Who ordered it? What happened to Governor Quintus Palamas, who was never heard from after the attack? What happened to King Aurelius Palamas? What was Parliament doing? What was the Department of Public Security doing? Were the retaliatory attacks on Akanan businesses spontaneous, or provoked? How did information about the attack propagate so rapidly to Akana Praediar?

There was one thing Mirian was absolutely sure of: whatever answers she found would just lead to more questions. That seemed to be how things went.

As Mirian walked around the streets of Palendurio, getting a sense of Tenedor Plaza and the security around the embassy, she noticed that people were looking at her differently in her changed body. For starters, men smiled at her a lot less. Other men—usually on the heavier side—seemed to deliberately ignore her existence, even as they bumped into her. Changing her apparent gender had done nothing to change her stature, so it was easy to get jostled by a crowd, which was quite annoying.

And crowds there were in Palendurio. Unlike Cairnmouth, where she only heard Baracueli languages unless she went by the docks, Palendurio had people from all over, speaking Eskanar, languages from the semi-autonomous republics, Adamic, Tlaxa, and Gulwenen. Hearing two Zhighuan traders speak the latter language instantly made Mirian think of Jei.

Once she'd scouted the outside of the Akanan Embassy, she made her way to Ducastil. The governor's mansion was in the old keep of the castle, which was surrounded by the smaller buildings where various parliamentary representatives had their offices. The walls had long since been torn down, and a spell engine pumping system brought water up into long aqueducts that split apart like petals, each running through elaborate hanging gardens. Only the myrvite flowers were blooming this late in the season, which meant at least one of the garden tenders was an arcanist. Graceful stone bridges connected the buildings to each other, and she could see several well-dressed people looking out from those bridges at the view below.

The Palendurio Guard patrolled the area regularly. The cobblestone streets here were as clean as any Mirian had seen. Several stairs spiraled around the natural limestone pillars and cliffs that the Ducastil complex rested on, leading up to the buildings and gardens. Two guards were posted at each staircase, and anyone attempting to go up the stairs had to talk to them first. Only someone like a member of parliament was waved through.

Mirian headed back to the market to buy more supplies. Throughout the evening, she worked on divination spells, including divination detection spells and a device for measuring arcane energy flow in an area.

She returned to Ducastil first in the evening. Since standing around casting divination spells would immediately bring the guard down on her, she used minor illusion on her spellbook to make it look like a boring treatise on the construction of furniture. Then, she could sit on a nearby bench and flip through the pages.

The first problem she encountered was that there was a fairly sophisticated divination suppression ward, maintained by spell engines up in Ducastil. It worked by targeting a subset of glyphs commonly used in divination spells, so she was able to cast a few detection spells by avoiding those specific glyphs. At her range—some hundred meters—she wasn't getting good information, but she could tell most of the standard guard wards were in place. At least one ward would detect illusions, and if the designers had any sense, it would also trigger an alarm. Most importantly, she could tell that the ward was using some sort of glyphkey detection system. Merely using a disguise would be insufficient; she would need to either make or steal one of the proper glyphkeys.

It seemed like a huge hassle.

She started working on probing the wards of the Akanan Embassy next, but as soon as she did, her detection device registered a change in the magical currents. She'd triggered some sort of alarm.

Mirian stood up and walked away, casually, then ducked through an alley to make sure she wasn't being followed. The embassy appeared to have extremely robust anti-divination wards, including an alarm system in place to let people know when it detected divination magic, which couldn't be cheap to maintain. The embassy also had its own guards.

Whoever is running the attack must have needed to plan it for some time, she thought.

Her next stop was the Royal Couriers.

"Do you have a list of the names and addresses of the people in the Akanan Embassy?" she asked.

The man behind the counter looked at her, eyes narrowing. "No. They're not Baracueli citizens. And, they're protected by quite a few treaties."

Mirian sighed. "Sorry, I have a friend from Akana who got an appointment at the embassy, and I was so excited to see her, but now I don't know her address. Do you know how I'd get it?"

The man sighed, suspicion evaporating. "You go to the Akanan Embassy," he said.

"Well, that does make a lot of sense," Mirian said, smiling.

The man shook his head as she left.

She wasn't quite ready to head into the embassy because she wasn't sure what Sulvorath had instructed his people to do or what to look for, and an appointment that happened only in one cycle might be suspicious. Likely, he didn't know the cycles that well—it had seemed to have taken him several cycles to be able to manipulate Specter into cursing her—but there was no reason to risk it.

One of the advantages to having so many people from all over was that the restaurants had diversity. She was able to find one that employed a chef from Alkazaria, which was a godsend. He spiced the food just like she remembered from back home, and she found herself wistfully remembering her family. By now, it had been years since she'd seen them. She felt the urge to visit Granpa Irabi again, but she didn't want to risk getting too close to the southern time traveler. In a few days, their armies would be threatening Alkazaria again, and she had no information on how they were deploying their spies or scouts and what kind of capabilities they had.

And since Sulvorath knew her name, he no doubt had his proxies looking for anyone in the "Castrella" family, and searching for them might send a signal. No, it would be better merely to dream of that reunion. Too much was at stake to actually attempt it.

After dinner, Mirian spent several hours working on a new spell. She combined the coordinate systems that major disguise used to create a spell that wrapped around the caster with absorb light, light detection map and project light map. The latter two spells were generally used to build an astronomical spell engine for teaching students, but Mirian had a different use for them.

Combining spells wasn't a simple matter of just mushing all the glyphs together. She had to sequence them just right, changing up binding points, altering the mental component, and then adding linking glyphs so that the flux glyphs in the spell weren't changed by the new patterns. The new spell was significantly more complex than the sum of its parts, but her precise scribing techniques had been honed more than any other skill at this point, so the spell only just fit on a single page.

She tried it out that night.

With her spellbook turned to her new spell and the levitation wand in her offhand, Mirian went out to her balcony and cast it. The absorb light portion created a veil of shadow around her, while the astronomical spells detected the light patterns above her and then re-projected them within the veil. She was pleased to see that it worked. Though she stuck out like a sore thumb on the balcony, once she was up in the air, she'd be well camouflaged. Even hunting spells that let people see infrared light wouldn't work because she'd used enhancement runes to broaden the absorption profile of the absorb light portion.

As she levitated herself above Palendurio, she decided to call her new spell night camouflage.

Levitation was still a taxing drain on her mana, but she was able to spend a full hour scouting out the Ducastil ground. More importantly, she confirmed what she'd hoped: they had absolutely no defenses against flying. That would save her some time.

The next morning, she picked up several news broadsheets and skimmed them all for any important details. There were stories about bar fights, ships arriving to port, another regiment getting shipped off to Persama, gossip about the wealthy at a gala, and a report on the monthly ceremony held by Pontiff Oculo. None of it seemed out of the ordinary.

One paper seemed purely dedicated to gossip about the noble families. The Palamas featured the most prominently because—well, the family had a king and governor, so of course—but the Bardas, Allard, Corrmier, and Sacristar families all were mentioned. It was strange to see Nicolus's father, Marduke Sacristar, in the newspapers. Apparently, he and General Kallin Corrmier had an argument at a fancy dinner in Charlem Palace. How that was news, she didn't know.

Whatever was going to happen, she suspected it would be easier to disentangle closer to the actual events. Then, once she'd figured out the most proximal events to the massacre, she could follow those threads back in time as far as she could.

Until then, she could continue her research on the Sword of the Fourth Prophet. She headed for the Great Library of Palendurio to scour the archives.