Chapter 267 - Persistence

Mirian stood over the corpse of Scebur. He’d bound a silver mask to his face, and when the RID had taken it off, some of the flesh had come with it. The mask was nonmagical, but mimicked the pattern of jewels embedded in the Skull of the Second Prophet. Why the obsession with the Second, though? Nothing she’d found in the histories of the Prophets had given her any clues. The historical Scebur remained as much a mystery as this present one.

There were some features she could see, at least. He’d had blue eyes, blond hair, and there was a notable scar on his forearm. As far as she could tell, she had never interacted with the man whose corpse lay before her. She opened up her spellbook to one of the pages full of tri-bound glyphs and runes in her spellbook and began examining what was left. Strange. Fragments of soul energy lingered by the corpse. Parts of his soul must have spalled off from bindings severing the pieces before the temporal anchor activated. If they were using curses that aggressively, no wonder they triggered the temporal anchor early. That would mean that in addition to having curses binding him into unconsciousness, he’d have soul damage that would make his recovery even slower. Plenty of cycles to find him, then. After all, Jherica was never able to shed the curse on their own.

Mirian was eager to be done with the matter. She mentally noted several more distinguishing features, then said, “Good work, Liuan.”

The other woman gave a stoic nod. “One less thing to worry about.”

Their meeting lasted an hour longer as Liuan discussed ways she was attempting to settle and delay the Akanan attack. Mirian listened, but part of her mind kept drifting. She’d gotten several new ideas on how to try to influence the leyline repulsors. She also had some ideas on how to create an elevator beneath a goods warehouse in Palendurio that would reach down to a second passage connecting the Gate, but needed to test out more ideas on how to move those goods up from the Mahatan Gate. Only the gates in the Jiandzhi and Torrviol had working elevator mechanisms. If she couldn’t get that to work, there was always the possibility of shipping the materials through Alkazaria instead, overseas to Falijmali, then south to Mayat Shadr. And, she had been making progress on analyzing the dissolution of Divir’s entropic field as it descended, mixed in with her attempts to reach it.

When she said her goodbye to Liuan, it was a relief. She could stop pretending to care about the nuances of politics in Akana Praediar, and instead, focus on something interesting.

Zhuan stayed in Vadriach to study the social dynamics. Zhuan insisted she stay longer, but Mirian stayed only another two days. Again, she had trouble focusing on the lessons the other Prophet was trying to teach her.

Soon enough, Mirian made her way back across the Rift Sea.

***

Plan 6 - Interception at low altitude (4th iteration)

Notes: The entropic field seems to only fully dissipate on Divir’s impact. At high altitude, the entropic field is still too wide and strong to be penetrated. At mid-altitude, the field is smaller, but seems to be ‘compressed,’ strengthening it.

The entropic field cannot be the field moderating the repulsion of Divir, or at the very least, cannot be the only arcane (or anti-arcane) force at work. The equations simply do not work. A third field type is at play here, one I haven’t been able to measure. Otherwise, we would expect Divir to fall only at a) greater leyline instability than I have measured by at least 312 major units [see notes on Endresen’s arcane field scale] or b) only after a larger breach in the entropic field [see notes on Labyrinth antimagic studies].

Regardless, the leyline instability is eroding the entropic field, which intensifies as the field is put directly into contact by a leyline breaches in the 4th, 8th, and 7th regions around Mayat Shadr [see map with measurement data].

Thus, despite the difficulties of my last attempt, this is still the plan most likely to succeed.

Mirian sequestered her soulbound spellbook, then checked her pocket watch. She had synchronized it to the leyline eruption in the 3rd region around Mayat Shadr, then positioned herself on the southern axis. The watch was currently ticking down. 

She had prepared four mythril-sheathed wands. One was for levitation, but that would just be getting her to the starting position. The second was for the shaped cone shield. The third was for black shield, which would be absolutely necessary for surviving the attempt long enough to reach the Divir Gate. The biggest challenge would be regulating how much energy the shield would be absorbing. She’d met her father to practice several times, but he couldn’t put out anything close to as much power as the flames and force that would be engulfing Divir. The fourth was a wand designed for pure directed force. Unlike her first attempt at this plan, she would be starting at height and heading down at an angle.

She’d prepared two leather bracers made of reinforced drake hide, enchanted, and then wrapped with orichalcum wire that would keep the wands in contact with her skin while acting as another layer of protection. She strapped them on. The desert sun had heated the wands slightly, so they felt just a bit too warm, and they bit uncomfortably into her forearms. She tightened the straps.

Next, she had procured goggles. They were a rare enough sight, but merchants traveling across the desert who were too poor to hire arcanists to manage sandstorms sometimes used them. With Endresen’s help, she’d found a way to darken the glass. Then, she put on her armor. It was based on the antique designs of bygone years, not the modern armor worn by infantry. It had a quilted layer that was enchanted for insulation, with thin steel plates. Again, she’d used orichalcum wire and what little mythril she could manufacture to reinforce the design. Most of the reinforcement was in the helmet, breastplate, and arm armor. If her legs were shredded, so be it. She only needed to survive a few seconds without them. It might very well speed her up.

She finished tightening the buckles, then checked her pocket watch again.

Time to get in position. She began to levitate up. By now, the research camp that had been in the ruins was destroyed and any survivors had long since departed. She’d stopped bringing people with her; it only complicated things, and didn’t have much of a benefit. Zhuan might scold her, but she’d gone back to eating drake meat that she roasted in the air, with just a little bit of salt drawn by spells from the nearby rocks.

Mirian looked up. The auroras danced across the sky. The air rumbled with the rolling thunder of distant leyline eruptions. To the west, the Casnevar Range still smoldered, having had the tops of several peaks lopped off by a leyline. As she ascended, she could see the magical eruptions dotting the land like an arcanist’s light show. 

Wisdom is in daily action, she thought, and checked the flows of her soul. She needed to remember each lesson. Everything is connected. Each piece of me, each decision, has its origins in our long history, in my childhood, in the cycles of life and nonlife. Even the way distant mountains look has entered my mind as a thought and changed the slightest thing. She closed her eyes, rising higher. I have remembered the turbulence of moonfall. My skin has felt the fires of Divir as it burned. Each memory is painful because pain is a great teacher. I will not flinch, but I will remember. Memory guides action.

As she opened her eyes, she saw the moon begin to move in the sky.

She had studied the angle at which the moon came in. Studied the great Mausoleum in the dream, and knew what her angle of approach would be, had practiced it.

One more try. Should I fail, I simply try again. I am just as inevitable as it is.

The auroras spread across the sky with vengeful colors now, majestic and terrifying. Divir hit the upper atmosphere, and the first licks of non-magical flames swelled even as the more intense fire of arcane meeting the anti-arcane force splashed out in waves.

The roar of leyline thunder was constant now, and it downed out whatever roar now also came from above. She activated black shield as the 1st region leyline breach erupted as scheduled, sending wild waves of arcane energy past her. The bursts of energy trailed swirls of force and fire, dancing electricity, and swells of light and sound. She collected as much  transmuted energy as she could from her black shield. The mana consumed to maintain it would always be less than what she gathered, but there was no avoiding mana loss at this altitude.

Her pocket watch ticked down.

There was nothing as primal as the last minutes of Enteria around Mayat Shadr. The fundamental forces simply swirled about. All matter was transmuted. The ruined city below became ash, ash became smoke, smoke became swirling clouds. The ground was transformed as a child might mold a muddy patch; great globs of it were flung into the air. In these last moments, any touch of civilization on the world was erased. The only laws left were those of gravity, acceleration, heat—and raw magic.

The fires above brightened, the mundane fires now seamlessly mixed with the arcane ones. Sound ceased to have meaning as the world become engulfed in a single roar. As the world brightened, she checked her pocket watch one last time.

Thirty seconds.

Mirian cut mana to her levitation wand and summoned her cone of force. Then she assumed stance of the Burning Tempest Sunders the Sky. She’d shaped the conduits in her force wand with the devices of the Labyrinth so they would be flawless, then used Torrviol’s most precise equipment to make each glyph perfect. Now, she poured mana into that wand.

She plummeted down at a steep angle to gain speed. Above her, Divir was coming in fast. She counted the seconds in her head.

The 7th region leyline detonated and a moment later, she felt the remnants of the entropic field brush against her spells. She cut and reconstituted them as fast as she could. It was only for a fraction of a second, but she could feel the heat on her skin from that, feel the waves of force blasting out. She adjusted her course to compensate, then leveled out her angle.

The 4th and 8th region leylines detonated within two seconds of each other, and this time, the entropic field around Divir blasted out in force as it was severed. Her spells were shattered, and again, the heat scoured at her. Divir was coming down fast now, the wild lights bleaching its dark stone. She gritted her teeth and reestablished her spells, adjusting her course again. The pocket watch was behind her in the air somewhere, probably incinerated. The count was purely in her head.

Ten seconds.

She dumped more and more mana into her force spell, steepening her angle again. Divir was now wreathed entirely in arcane fire. It was still above her, but descending fast. It would pass her in a moment.

Mirian’s world became one of instinct. Fire cascaded outward, and with it, blasts of turbulent air. Her black shield became a solid color. Her cone of force was stripped away entirely. She was flying blind.

What she did have now was a sense of how the colossal forces changed as she approached. Last time, her angle of attack had been too shallow, and the bottom of Divir had crushed her. This time, her steeper angle meant she would just miss the outer lip. She felt the hurricane of fire blast at her and adjusted her flight path ever so slightly. It was all she could do.

Five seconds.

The arcane force being salvaged from the black shield was overwhelming. She guided as much as she could into her wand’s conduit, but the titanic forces involved couldn’t be contained to the conduit. Unregulated arcane energy splashed out around her arm. The orichalcum wire was heated and began to burn her skin. She felt the pain moving through her arm as her shield flared and then flew apart.

Two seconds.

Her armor was scoured away like wet paper. As the wind and fire cut into her, she hardly had time to feel the pain. Her helmet cracked apart.

She stopped counting the seconds. She put everything into pushing the force spell into a new angle and reaching out a single hand in front of her. That was all she could do, as her skin was scoured away, as the green light of the last burst of the apocalypse began to build.

She saw something, in that last moment.

Mirian knew she shouldn’t have been able to. Her eyes must have been blinded—they must have been burned into nothing. Perhaps the pain had caused her to hallucinate. Perhaps it was something about her connection to the Ominian as Their Mausoleum split apart. Perhaps it was that time between the cycles, and she only dreamed it.

But there was a moment that stuck in her memory. It was breaking through the walls of fire and the endless roar and seeing a fragment she’d only seen before while sleeping. It was her own hand in front of her, scoured to the bone. It was the Mausoleum itself, split with fissures of green light that shot out like fires from the sun.

It was the Divir Gate, surrounded by those walls of fire, perched atop the Mausoleum like a leaf atop a volcano about to erupt, like the silhouette of Luamin in front of the sun. It was the strangest thing, to see something intact amidst so much destruction. The Mausoleum itself was unfurling like the tentacles of a kraken erupting from the depths, green fire ready to end the world.

She woke in her bed in Torrviol in silence, cradling the impossible memory.