Chapter 265 - Drifting Further

The next cycle, Liuan re-exerted her control over Akana Praediar, and Mirian was pleased to see that Akana Praediar’s aggression was restrained until late in the month of Nerevain, which meant the attacks on Cairnmouth and Palendurio were just starting when moonfall annihilated all life on Enteria.

Two cycles later, Xecatl had found a way to use spirit manipulation to control a kind of colorful myrvite bird found on Tlaxhuaco. A zephyr falcon was faster, but these birds could carry something as heavy as a focus. Xecatl could send three of the birds to meet them in Palendurio, allowing Zhuan’s violet focuses to be distributed more quickly to the Prophets in Akana. However, their contact in the Ominian’s dreamscape remained inconsistent. There was no way to predict when they might encounter another Prophet, or who it would be.

Mirian was always busy now, either diving into the Labyrinth, progressing research in Torrviol, or recently, mapping out the factories and artifice production of Baracuel and planning out how a city’s worth of material could be moved deep into the Persaman desert.

She uncovered another entrance to the Labyrinth near Second Cairn, then another in the Casnevar Range. She found two more cubes of relicarium, putting her well above the amount she’d need for her regulator armor. She spent time contemplating what the best use for it was and landed on the leyline regulators. Those strange silver tools, the same ones used by the Akanan dreadnoughts, could exert pressure on the leylines. They seemed to be identical to the tools Eyeball and Conductor used, but neither of the Elder creatures would discuss them due to the ‘pact.’ The Akanans were using the repulsion and residual magical energy as a way to float their ships, but the same phenomena might be able to move leylines closer towards Gates, allowing more energy to be redistributed, or perhaps had potential for lifting another heavy object—Divir.

That gave her three plans:

1. Build the leyline regulator in Mayat Shadr to keep the Divir moon aloft; 

2. Look for some sort of leyline control mechanism on the Elder construction on Luamin;

3. Use the Akanan dreadnought artifice to keep the moon up.

The third plan had the benefit of two of the leyline levitation engines already existing in Arborholm. Liuan sent a grumpy reply to Mirian’s message about them. She could keep the airships grounded, but convincing the military to gut their superweapons and send them up into the void—that was going to be tricky. Jherica liked the plan, but brought up the problem Mirian had already discussed with the other Prophets through letters or their brief contact in the dreamscape: to install the leyline levitation engines, they’d have to pierce the entropic antimagic field around Divir.

But if I can reach the Gate….

After several messages back and forth, she got the weight of the Akanan airships from Liuan, then started the calculations and initial designs of a construct that might be able to levitate the moon. Such a device would still require leylines beneath it, just with a higher tolerance for instability. However, if that reduces the complexity and size of the regulator below, it could be the more efficient solution. 

Mirian spent entire days poring over glyph sequences. Sometimes, she would emerge from one of the labs in Torrian Tower and realize she hadn’t been thinking in any human language for hours, just glyphs and runes. Then, she would be off to test how much weight a steel beam could hold and how much arcane energy draw a reinforcement enchantment was pulling from a repulsor. Often, she found herself discussing experiments she’d forgotten to tell the wizards about, or conflate  an investigation Endresen was running with one she’d run a year ago. Her memory tricks and her notes in her soulbound spellbook could only take her so far. There was simply too much to know, and still too much left to be done.

When Zhuan contacted her in the dreamscape for assistance, she first wanted to tell the other woman that she was too busy. Then, she realized that she’d been busy for years. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d visited Arriroba. When she thought back, it was hard to remember Zayd’s face. She’d avoided her second family to protect them from being targeted by other Prophets, first to make sure Troytin wouldn’t touch them, then out of fear that another Prophet might.

Very well, Mirian told her through soul-speech. I’ll meet you in Palendurio.

***

It was now standard practice to keep the Palendurio Gate buried beneath the river where it stayed hidden and safe, so she met Zhuan by the riverside. By then, it was Merisheth. Without Akana Praediar’s invasion to back him, and with plenty of Baracueli army divisions free since Ibrahim wasn’t pinning them down in the south, order had been restored and General Corrmier was awaiting execution for treason. However, because of how many powerful people would have been implicated in an investigation, it was just Corrmier, his brother, and a handful of other conspirators who had been imprisoned. Gabriel had mentioned something about the Deeps pressuring Parliament, but as long as it didn’t involve open fighting on the street, Mirian didn’t want to deal with it.

“We’ll fly east into the Casnevar,” Mirian said as soon as Zhuan emerged from the river. Several people were staring at the Zhighuan woman who had just levitated out from the Magrio. She paid them no mind. In a moment, they were about to see something a lot more shocking than that.

“What’s the political situation here?” Zhuan asked.

Mirian waved a dismissive hand. “Stable. I had the Luminate Order declare me a Prophet in secret. They know I’m working on something to stop the crisis, but that the project benefits from staying hidden. It keeps things quiet, and it’s less for me to deal with.”

Zhuan shook her head. “You should be working on that part.”

“Later,” Mirian said. “First, I need something for them to build. Then I’ll worry about how they’ll build it. The prototypes in Torrviol are making progress. I’ve worked out how to efficiently get rotating shifts of arcanists to grow quarter-scale conduit crystals. Ready?”

Zhuan clenched and unclenched her jaw. They’d had this conversation before. “Ready.”

Mirian used lift person on her then cast her own supreme levitation, then added a minor force cone to shield them from the wind and cut through the air. Hundreds of people probably saw her, but whatever effect that had on the timeline, she didn’t care. There wasn’t enough time for it to evolve into anything significantly disruptive.

Besides, plenty of them probably thought they were seeing a zephyr falcon.

They left the city behind quickly, then were passing over farmland until the reached the foothills. Mirian looked over and realized Zhuan was grinning. When she noticed Mirian watching her, she said, “This is fun.”

Mirian let a small smile show. Many years ago, she’d been enthralled by her first flights. When did it lose its novelty? she wondered. And at least Zhuan would remember the joy, unlike the people below them. They would remember nothing.

Mirian had gone hunting enough for myrvite parts in the mountains. She didn’t remember exactly where the wyvern nests or rock drake caves would be, but she had a general sense, and detect life did the rest. Within a few minutes of landing on the slopes, Mirian had bound a wyvern in force shackles.

Nestmate showing dominance, she told it. Submit.

It stopped its thrashing, but still looked confused. Mirian was very clearly not a nestmate.

“Xecatl is getting better at speaking in the dream, and she has those spirit-constructs. But this is different. How?”

“It’s like any language,” Mirian explained. “You just have to speak to them in glyphs and runes. Xecatl is doing it, she’s just better at having conversations with trees.”

Zhuan raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Do you think it can work on the greater myrvites?”

Mirian contemplated that. “Some of them, probably not. But others… hmm. That would certainly make moving people through the Jiandzhi a lot easier if we could, say, recruit some petal demons to patrol the route. It helps if you understand how it relates to the world. Most drake species work with at least one kind of scavenger to locate prey. A desert drake won’t attack a two-headed vulture unless its starving. They’re more hostile if protecting an egg clutch—that sort of thing. It helps if you can make it understand you can hurt it, are stronger than it. It’s only the smarter ones you can bargain with, but in any case, you can train most myrvites that you can give them a good source of food and souls. The problem with the Jiandzhi myrvites is that they need a lot of food and strong souls. You can’t just feed a lesser titan a few pigs and expect it to be satiated.”

“Yes, I know. I had to lure those lesser titans into the Gate for your ambush, and the pigs didn’t work. I would rather not talk about what was required to properly get their attention. But the myrvites of the Jiandzhi are smart. Perhaps they can be reasoned with.”

She doubted it. Even most people couldn’t be reasoned with. Might as well try, though. A lot of magical material is going to need to pass through the southern parts of the jungle.

“Alright,” Mirian said, handing Zhuan an extra graystone focus she’d gotten from the Luminates. “We’ll work on conveying rune-meaning through your aura. It often helps you close your eyes….”

They spent several hours working on Zhuan’s technique together. She was adept at moving the surface currents of her soul already, but hadn’t had the dervish training that let her consistently hit different patterns. Combining that with aura extension was, Mirian had to remember, difficult. But it had become like breathing to her.

Eventually, it was the wyvern that was growing tired. Fly away. Return later for food, Mirian told it. She then flew off and hunted down a stonehide deer, splitting open its rocky armor with a spell, then expertly dicing chunks of the meat off to roast with raw heat magic. The rest she left for the wyvern. She brought the cooked meat back, levitating behind her in the air as she landed.

“You are just going to eat hunks of meat?” Zhuan said incredulously.

Mirian shrugged.

The other woman shook her head and unslung her pack. “I brought spices and vegetables, you barbarian.” She had several small ceramic jars, each inscribed with little wards for preservation, as well as a steel pan for cooking.

Mirian laughed. “I do whatever’s fastest, usually. If there’s someone to cook my meals, I’ll eat that, but when I’m in the Labyrinth or out hunting myrvites… why bother?”

Zhuan shook her head. “The enlightenment is in your eyes, but wisdom is not a single revelation. It is an ongoing practice. Just as the currents of your soul must be maintained, wisdom of thought and action must be maintained.” She used a spell to mix the different spices in the air, then set them into the cookware along with purified water from the air. “That we exist, that we are alive, is improbable beyond all belief. We have been given a gift of life, and that life comes with marvelous sensations. A peasant eats unflavored gruel out of desperation. An emperor who does the same is a fool. Remember what you have learned, Mirian Castrella.”

She sounds like Song Jei, Mirian thought. She could see why the two women had become friends. Neither of them would ever dull their razor tongues, and she respected that. Neither of them would ever stop pushing their thinking. Mirian still thought of those two needles stuck in the Ominian’s flesh. Another reason to reach for the moon, she thought. She still didn’t understand why the Ominian had chosen fools like Troytin.

As Zhuan added the meat to the pan, expertly maintaining a magical flame beneath it, she said, “I see how you look at most people now. It is similar to how one might observe a chair of poor craftsmanship.”

Mirian took in a deep breath, feeling the chill of the mountain air in her lungs. She needed to center herself, and listen.

What the other Prophet had said was true. Watching people make the same mistakes, hearing them say the same words each cycle—she’d lost respect for them. They often felt more like the golems she sometimes found in the Labyrinth. “What we need to do is beyond them.”

Zhuan shook her head. “What we do will only be possible because of them, and what we do is only for them. If you simply want Enteria to exist, you need take no action. It is preserved, like in amber, frozen in this sphere of time. But you don’t love Enteria because it merely exists.”

Mirian closed her eyes. “No,” she whispered.

“Humanity deserves a future. For all our flaws, the Ominian must think we can overcome them.” She shaped a nearby rock into a table and set the pan on top of it, then withdrew two plates from her pack.

They were silent as the wind whispered over the mountains. The clouds were building again. It would snow again, Mirian knew, as inevitably as the moon would fall.

She had grown numb to so many things.

Why bother noticing the way the flakes drifted down, or that first white powder across the landscape? It would happen again, exactly the same way, and she’d seen it before. Could see it again any time she wanted. Why bother with conversations when she already knew the outcome? The only novelty she found was in pushing new research, in the satisfaction of progress. And even in that, it felt like she was moving about puppets. Jerk that string to make the wooden arm flail about. Tell Torres that to focus her research on conduit-facilitated energy transformations. Have Endresen read that book to prime her for the discussion that will let her make progress on arcane field theory. She could make Archmage Luspire dance to a tune of her choosing. She could get all of Torrviol working for her.

It was easier to see them as something less than human, because then their pain and death didn’t matter. No person was meant to see death as such a regular thing, nor to see the horrors of armageddon over and over. How was she meant to endure with empathy intact when reality itself sought to bleed it out of her?

Words were entirely insufficient. She let the message form in her soul and pushed it out at the other Prophet.

Zhuan froze, the spells she’d been maintaining dissipating like steam in the wind. She closed her eyes, then sucked in a breath between her teeth. Mirian watched her. It took her a moment to bring herself under control. “I can’t do that little trick of yours. But I’ve felt that. We all have. You are not alone,” she said finally.

Mirian looked at the nicely set stone table. The smell of cooked vegetables and spices was better than just the unflavored meat alone. Logically, she was not alone. Zhuan sat across from her. She had endured her own trials, and dealt with her own pain from the loops.

“It’s… difficult,” Mirian said.

“Of course it is. Which is why you don’t try to conquer Mount Sheafung in a single day. Plan for the great tribulation, but begin with a single step. Today, your single step is to enjoy a meal on the slopes of the Casnevar, looking out at the beauty of the Palendurio Valley.”

Mirian gave her a soft smile. “Thank you. I suppose I can do that.”

She tried to focus in on the sensation of every bite, tried to savor the chill of the wind as night fell, tried to remember the way the snowflakes glimmered in their light spells—but her thoughts always drifted away. She was thinking of Divir. Thinking of Luamin. Thinking of the Ominian, and the void above. Wondering if Enteria was all there was, or if other people had survived their journey across the void. Wondering where they came from, and what it must have been like. The flavor of the food simply couldn’t compare to such questions.