The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

The interrogation room in the Magistrate's office brought back memories for Mirian. The first thing she noticed was that Sulvorath had been using illusions to make himself appear a bit taller and more muscular when he was in public. Without his illusions, he was the typical fair skinned Akanan, with brown hair and a slight build. If he was Akanan military, it was logistics or support, not front line combat.

When they entered the room, an enraged Sulvorath was busy swearing in Eskinar. "—and I'll fucking remember this, you ass-crowned peasants! You think this will stop me? You think this will even slow me down? Did the bitch put you up to it? When I find her, you'll have nothing left. You'll all bow before me or die, and I'll make sure you know what sins you're paying for. Fuck!" he roared, spittle flying from his mouth.

While Priest Krier joined Ada across from the Akanan man, Mirian stayed to the side, acolyte's hood over her head, standing in a silent corner. She had two wands up her sleeve if she needed them, but they'd already searched Sulvorath thoroughly for any arcane catalysts or weapons.

Priest Krier put his hand on Sulvorath's shoulder. The man bucked and strained against the shackles restraining him to the chair. "Get your fucking hands off me you shithead heretic!" He'd swapped to Friian, though his accent was still thick.

The priest closed his eyes, no doubt sensing the extensive marks plastered all over Sulvorath's soul. He nodded at Ada.

"We'll add necromancy to the charges, then. Why didn't you leave with the rest of the Akanans, Troytin? The guard is rounding up your spies as we speak. But perhaps we can extradite you back to Akana Praediar if we better understand what you were doing." Ada had no intention of doing this, but the idea was to give Sulvorath—no, Troytin—hope that he could talk his way out of his predicament. The more information they could get out of him, the better.

"Fuck you. You don't know who you're dealing with. I am the Ominian's chosen one. He chose me for His holy mission. Why should you release me? So He doesn't damn you to Carkavakom's fires!"

Ada shook her head. "Holy mission?"

"This only ends when the false prophets are cast down. And I will cast them down. My will is unbreakable."

Priest Krier took over from there. "Why do you think the Ominian has called for a contest?"

"The dreams. He doesn't give them to you because you're heretical swine. Akana Praediar is righteous. It's the nation of progress, with a church that has kept the faith. We embody all His aspects."

"Hmm," said Krier. She could see his jaw clenching at being called a heretic, but he was controlling his temper. "What do the dreams show you?"

"His Temple, of course. The lands promised to us—which is all of them. And the tree of ascension. Only one may rest on its crown. Only one may occupy a throne. Only one is called to fight the war against the five hells. That wall of fire approaches us. And Akana Praediar will face it, united, under my banner. And insects like you? They'll be crushed."

Troytin seemed to be enjoying his rant. He went back to threatening them all.

Mirian recognized the dreams he was referring to. The Mausoleum, the tree, and the wall of fire in the stars. The travels across Enteria. Only, he'd interpreted them differently.

Ada interrupted him. "How does the Divine Monument come into this?"

Troytin gave her a wide smile, and leaned back in his chair. "You'd like to know, wouldn't you? But the divine mysteries aren't for you, little bug. Maybe if you start serving me, I'll have mercy. You know, Ada, I know where your mother and father live. Nice little farm, east of Cairnmouth. It'd be such a shame if anything happened to them. And Krier—I know your sister lives in Palendurio. Alone, still. Do you know how easy it will be for me to order her death? No one will even know it was me. And do you know whose fault it is, for your suffering?" The prisoner leaned forward suddenly, pulling his shackles taut. "YOURS! For opposing ME!"

Gods above, Mirian thought. And I'd thought the time loops were driving me insane. He's absolutely cracked.

Of course, what consequence would he face for his outburst? He thought she was in Cairnmouth.

Mirian came over with a cloth with the excuse of wiping the spittle from his mouth. As she did, she briefly touched a hand to his shoulder.

"Get that away from me you prick," Troytin swore as she dabbed his mouth. She took pleasure in knowing she was annoying him.

As she worked, she looked at his soul. Marva had been right. He was covered in tiny soul marks. They weren't visible at a distance, but up close she could see them. Hundreds and hundreds of them. There was some pattern to them, but Mirian couldn't begin to know how many hours—or days—it might take to figure out what Specter had been trying to do with them.

What stood out to her, though, was the circular pattern of marks around the hole in his soul.

She wondered if the double-agent had made any progress on understanding it.

"Get OFF!" Sulvorath roared. "Don't touch me with your dirty hands. I don't want insects crawling on me."

Mirian moved away, because she didn't want the absolute jackass paying her any more attention. Once again, she had a conundrum. She could analyze the marks, and try to decode Specter's message to herself, but that risked Troytin realizing who she actually was. Specter must have had some trick she was using to make him sit still so she could work.

But how much could she have really determined? Each cycle she has to first relearn what she discovered.

She considered wiping his soul clean of the marks. And yet, if Specter was dead, her progress would halt, so what was the risk in leaving them?

She was being indecisive, she knew. But it wasn't at all easy to tell what the best path forward was. She heard General Hanaran's voice, saying, "If your enemy is making a mistake, let them." She decided to keep to that path for now. It at least kept the other ones open if she changed her mind.

The interrogation continued, though she could tell Ada's patience was being tested, and Krier's patience was completely run out. It didn't seem he was stupid enough to reveal anything of note. Mostly, he spewed threats. After a while, he grew bored of that, and grew silent. He ignored the questions, leaned back in his chair, and said, "Oh, whatever. Just kill me or something. Or better yet, just wait a few days, and find out what happens to you. Scurry along now, little ants."

Ada kept her face from showing emotion. Krier couldn't help himself. He slapped Sulvorath across the face before he left.

The interrogation was clearly over for the day, and Mirian met with Ada and Krier in the next room. She cast muffle sound as a precaution, even though the doors were already warded to be soundproof. "We'll hook up one of the Akanan communicator spell engines to a simple sound transference artifact that we'll hide in his cell. Listen in. I doubt he'll reveal anything, but it's worth a shot. Holy One, how do Troytin's, uh, interesting beliefs, we'll call them, line up with the Church of the Ominian doctrine?"

"That little rat. I hope he learns some manners." Krier gave an angry glance at the door, then unclenched his jaw with some effort. "There's no single Church of the Ominian. They all have a commitment to several key doctrinal points, and commitment to the break with the Luminate Order. The priests are all inducted into the Order of the Ominian. But after that, interpretation is left up to the second rank priests who oversee their group of churches. A group can be a single church, or it can be dozens or hundreds. He's obviously from a Third Adventist church. They believe there were only two genuine prophets, and the world still awaits the coming of a third prophet. That third prophet will unite the world, and expel the heretical orders."

"A nice little holy crusade. I bet those prophecies don't say anything about multiple prophets springing up at once," Mirian said, conjuring Eclipse into her hand. Ada and Krier both gazed at the blade.

"Ah. Ah. No. No they do not."

Ada chimed in. "There's a cultural component. Most Akanans are strongly individualistic and fiercely competitive. And proud of that. Troytin appears to be no exception."

"You still have my list of questions to try?"

"We do," Ada said. "We'll interrogate him, and we'll try to get the Akanan spies to tell us what he told them."

"Good. Some of the Akanan spies will be more cooperative. Especially Idras, if you can play to his patriotism. Meanwhile, Torrviol should evacuate across the lake. There's no way General Hanaran's division makes it up here in time, not with the train being melted to the tracks. I doubt he's figured out a way to launch the invasion early, so we still likely have until the 28th." Mirian turned to leave, already starting to disassemble the soul-bindings on herself. If she could be in her own body for a few days, it would be a nice relief.

"Ah… what he said. About my family," Ada said.

Mirian turned. "I have a plan to stop him. Don't worry. Either of you."

It was silly to worry about one madman's threats when the world was going to end. For all Mirian knew, Ada's family got blown apart by an eruption by the leylines. But none of them needed any more hard truths right now. They needed to be assuaged. She could do that for them.

Mirian left.

The Akanans were bringing the perfect opportunity to study an airship right to her door, and she had preparations to make.

***

"…and that's how you make a 'seed of chaos,' Mirian finished telling the group of artificers.

One of the artificers looked up at her. "That's terrifying," he said. "This takes almost no materials. Anyone could make this if they knew the glyphs. Even a novice!"

"Well, that's why levitation glyphs are banned. Any questions? No? Great. The good news is, we have all the fossilized myrvite you could want, and I doubt we'll run out of copper wire. If the inks run low, there's some myrvites in the Studies building. Just let me know if you need to kill them, because I'd like to charge my soul repositories with them. Have fun!"

Mirian had practiced mobilizing Torrviol enough that falling back into it felt natural. Soon enough, the temporary spellwards would be finished, and the people that wanted to evacuate would get their few days of peace across the lake. It was just a nice thing to do for them. Irabi would approve.

Her primary objective was to board the Republic's Justice and access the engine room. The engine room would not be easy to get into—she'd never once done it in the previous cycles—so she needed to make sure both airships were far too busy to worry about her.

She made her way back to her dorm room. Her dorm room. She'd had to clean the bog lion hair out. When she saw Lily, though, she knew the cleaning could wait.

"Hey," she said to Lily. "Want to go for a walk? I've missed you."

Lily had been crying, she could tell, but she was trying to hide it. "Y-yeah. Let me just grab… oh we can go now. I can always use a warmth spell."

They walked for a bit, taking the winding paths past the dorms. For all the loops she'd been through, she wasn't sure what to say to her roommate. "I'm sure you heard we captured the other time traveler."

"Yeah. Valen caught me up on a bunch of stuff. I think she probably exaggerated some of it. You know how she is."

"At least half of it was probably true." Mirian saw a few students passing them. They looked frightened of her. "He's not really saying anything useful." There was another lull in the conversation as they passed under the old trees and entered the grove. "He's not as cunning as I first thought. Maybe he got overconfident. It's annoying. I want him to… I want to make him suffer, like he did me. Get him some proper justice. But if I do that, it'll alert him to what I'm doing. So I have to wait. So that when I do take care of him, it's for good. Then he never gets to hurt anyone again."

"That's good," Lily said.

Mirian thought back to her first encounter with him. How scared she'd been. Now, she knew she could handle him. His reported spell power was below hers, and he'd been easy to pin down and imprison. Another memory sprang up as she was reflecting.

"When I was young, our cat used to hunt bone rats that liked to nest in the nearby farms. Sometimes, I would watch it hunt, and it would hide in this one bush, then spring out of it and instantly get a claw on their throats, where there was no bone armor, then bite down. The rats died immediately. That cat must have been the ultimate terror to them."

Lily was silent. It was late enough that the shadows were growing long.

"Only, that cat was the biggest dummy ever. It ran into walls all the time. Sometimes it'd be walking from one room to another and it'd just trip over nothing. It had figured out that bush was a good spot, so it hid in the same one every time. When Sulvo—nah, I'm gonna call him his real name, because it's a stupid name. When Troytin first started attacking me, I had no idea where he'd come from. He was like a nightmare. But now I see it was only because he'd done so much reconnaissance first. I wonder how many cycles he'd been stalking me before he struck. Dozens? More? Gods, he would have seen me back on the 5th loop when I tricked my way onto the airship for the first time."

They walked quietly, Mirian appreciating the way the evening light scattered in the canopy above. Lily had her eyes fixed on the path. "You never told me you had a cat. What happened to it?"

"A bone rat finally got it. At least, that's what my mom thought. There was this trail of blood, where the cat had dragged itself from the fields to our door. Then…" Mirian narrowed her eyes. Shit. What was that cat's name? And she had the strangest memory of the cat, walking around again. Maybe it hadn't died? But as soon as she started trying to remember, the scenes and flashes evaporated, and it was like she was trying to grasp a shadow. That damn memory curse again. She had to steady her breathing.

"I'm glad you're not scared of him anymore," Lily said. "I mean, the time traveler. Not your cat. Sorry about your cat."

Mirian saw that Lily was starting to shiver, and cast a warmth spell on both of them.

"Oh. Thanks."

"He's still… he's scary because he's unhinged. Rabid. I… I saw him in the earlier loops, before I realized who he was. Marshal Cearsia's assistant. He tried to stop her from blowing up the Divine Monument once. What I worry the most about is… what if he wasn't always like this? What if the time loop eroded all his morals?"

"Maybe," Lily said. "But if he stalked you for that long, it didn't really take that long for him to go from nice to nasty, did it? I dunno. There's some people who, laws and stuff are the only thing holding them back. Take that away, and maybe you're just seeing who he was on the inside all along. Or, I mean, maybe he was okay as a kid. People aren't born messed up. But something along the way… you know. He probably was a violent asshole before the loop, is what I'm saying."

Mirian smiled. "Maybe. Thanks, Lily. It's… good to see you. I don't get to talk to you much anymore."

Lily swallowed. "It's… so weird. One day, you wake up and go to class like normal. The next day, you're a Prophet! You can fly! And summon swords! And—and... it's just a lot to suddenly lose your best friend in an instant like that."

"I know."

"Valen said you went to Frostland's Gate."

"Yeah, that was a while ago. Beatrice is doing fine," Mirian said. "She said to say hi." She's labyrinthine horror food right now, Mirian thought, but didn't say. Lily didn't need to hear that. "I wish I could say something more comforting at the start of the cycles. I just… I don't know what to say."

"I… I don't know either. What can you say though? It's the kind of thing that simple words aren't enough for. And I feel useless. I hate feeling useless."

"I wish I could be there for you, every cycle. But I can't."

"I know," Lily said. "I wish I could… wish a lot of things. I mean, I feel guilty because right now you could be doing something to save the world, and I feel like I'm stealing from that."

Mirian looked at her roommate, and her heart broke. She gave Lily a hug, and her roommate burst into tears. She held her until her trembling had calmed.

Lily sniffed. "Oh gross, I got snot on your jacket. I'll—"

"It's fine. Don't worry about it. Just… never think you're wasting my time. Friendship is one of the things that makes life worth living."

Mirian started telling her about Beatrice and some of their adventures together up in Frostland's Gate. They walked until it started to grow dark.

"Tomorrow, take one of the boats across the lake. And do something nice for yourself, okay?" she told Lily.

"I will. Promise. And… take care of yourself."

"I will," Mirian said, and gave her a sad smile.

***

Three days later, Magistrate Ada gave Mirian her last report on the second time traveler. "Not much, I'm afraid. Before we executed him, he just reasserted his special status and reiterated we were all going to die. There's a transcript of his rants," she said, handing over the stack of papers. "But I wouldn't waste your time. Anyways. The last boat is leaving."

"Thank you. If all goes to plan, you'll have a few days. I'd spend them playing games and sharing good food and conversation with friends."

Ada looked at her. "Make sure you stop him. A man like that…"

"I will. Go."

Ada departed, and Mirian surveyed the town. Torrviol was largely deserted, except for a few people who had refused to evacuate, and Mirian finalized her preparations. She had herself, her gear, and, thanks to the artificers of Torrviol, several hundred modified seeds of chaos laid out across the gardens.

She looked to the sky. It would be a few hours before the Akanans arrived. She crossed her legs and began to meditate.