Chapter 260 - Something of a Plan

Over the next month, the Prophets discussed the finer details of the plans they needed to try, as well as the research that needed to be done. In addition to that, Zhuan and Mirian took turns instructing them on use of the violet focuses and soul-communication. They still hadn’t solved the non-linearity problem of the dream, but it seemed useful to be able to start communicating directly instead of needing to wait days or weeks for zephyr falcon messages to arrive. Privately, Mirian hoped that the focus’s assistance in interpreting intention helped move people like Liuan and Ibrahim closer to her way of thinking.

There were still going to be problems, but Ibrahim was no longer trying to kill Gabriel, and they were no longer debating which nation should have hegemony. Xecatl and Liuan still didn’t trust each other, and Liuan was reluctant to even talk to Zhuan, but it seemed the Prophets were finally learning to work together.

Mirian wasn’t perfectly happy with the agreements, but she wasn’t unhappy either.

Liuan insisted the relics of the former Prophets were key and wanted to keep searching for them as she continued to hunt for Scebur. Mirian had studied the holy texts and what they said about each of the relics, and was skeptical that all of the former Prophets had figured out how to use relicarium or had done much in the Labyrinth. The Flesh of the Nameless God had probably just been a special focus; the one currently in the Grand Sanctum was normal stone. The Mask of the Fifth Prophet was probably just an excuse for how the Fifth Prophet had shifted his form because announcing it was soul-bindings would have had them branded as a necromancer. The Staff of the Third Prophet in the vault was a fake, but there was no reason to think the original was much more than a well-crafted staff.

Mirian already knew where the real treasures were. There was a bounty of mythril and a titan catalyst even more potent than Apophagorga’s sitting on Divir, waiting for her. In return for granting Liuan freedom to maneuver as she pleased, though, Liuan agreed to work on iterating on preventing the Akanan invasion altogether.

Jherica, now that they’d decided it made perfect sense for there to be a way to control the Labyrinth on the Luamin moon, had made it their mission to find a way to get there. They would work on that while continuing to assist Xecatl with instructing their nagual in standard glyph theory, as well as arrange for a research group to be transported to Mayat Shadr and back. To Mirian’s surprise, Ibrahim volunteered to be the one to escort the group. Emperor Xecatl would continue the spirit construct research and continue her search for the Tlaxhuacan Gate.

In turn, Mirian agreed to be the one who looked for any way to control the Labyrinth in the Labyrinth. That was easy enough. She was planning on examining more entrances anyways.

Zhuan had volunteered to work on mobilizing artisans and workers for production—whether it was Jherica’s moon project or Mirian’s leyline regulator—as long as she could do so in her own way. When Mirian wasn’t delving into the Labyrinth, she would also visit Zhighua and assist with research on the Viaterrian ruins, attempting to take their derelict technology and find ways to learn from it. Torrviol Academy and Benansuo’s Royal University, through Mirian and Zhuan, would head those projects. They’d pass promising projects over to Akana Praediar’s universities, where Jherica could incorporate them into their own project.

Gabriel, in turn, would try to unite southern Persama and make sure much needed resources for research continued to flow across the Rift Sea. “As long as I get to do it my own way,” he’d said, while smiling at Zhuan.

In the private conversations, Xecatl agreed with Mirian’s decision to withhold information about relicarium from Liuan specifically. She also was continuing to monitor the archipelago for incursions. Claimed agents of Scebur had continued to try to make their way to Tlaxhuaco.

“Perhaps there’s a relic there,” Xecatl mused. “We’re searching the whole island anyways, we might as well look for it. But I don’t think that’s the true goal here. I just can’t tell what it is.”

Zhuan, meanwhile, hadn’t needed Mirian to tell her that she should keep quiet about the nature of Sun Shuen’s soulbound scepter. She also hadn’t needed Mirian to tell her that Mirian’s excuse about storing her true spellbook in a dimensional storage space was a lie. She’d already gotten Song Jei to confirm as much previously, and was too smart to not immediately make the connection between the book and the scepter. Her caution was more over Gabriel than Liuan, but she pointed out that Liuan probably already knew the existence of soul-binding, hence her passion for finding the relics.

“She’s made no indication she does. And why, then, announce her search? That’s basically inviting the rest of us to look at them more closely.”

“My guess is that she suspects enough people know about the relics that she’s trying to get a better read on who knows what and who has what. It also may be that she has spies in place, so by provoking someone—say you—into searching for the relics, she seeks to find them by watching others search. It’s also a way to assess what information is being hidden from her. I believe your tactic of pretending you have no interest in them is best.”

“I have my own way of doing things,” Mirian said.

“Yes. And, between you and me, I would appreciate if you did not attempt to seize the relics of Zhighua. Before this all started, I believed that, in principle, archmages should not be allowed to exist because of how they influence the power structures of society. Now that I am an archmage, I find that I am not immune to self-justification and hypocrisy, yet I still am suspicious of just how much power can be centralized in a single person. I discovered Viaterrian saying you should know. I found it engraved in that ship we found. It roughly translates as, ‘When we traveled across the great void and beheld it, it beheld us too. No gift is not also a curse. No symbiote is not also a parasite. No saint is free from sin. Remember, we are all Viaterria.’”

At first, Mirian had thought the quote was a bit trite. There were similar sentiments in the sacred texts, after all. The more she thought about it, though, the more she became interested.

The gift was magic, wasn’t it? We couldn’t have survived on Enteria without it. Yet, it’s also become our doom. What gifts did the Viaterrians use before they found magic? And what curse accompanied them?

She considered the Ominian. Long had she beheld Them. Only rarely did she feel when They beheld her. Has that changed my soul? She felt like she was in control of at least that.

Some days, she felt closer to the Ominian than to people. Do you, too, look at us, scurrying around, and wonder why we can’t understand how to fix what’s gone wrong? Wonder why we fight over such petty things?

A few days later, the Council of Prophets ended its session, and they all got to work.

***

With the extended cycle, there was plenty of time to start setting their plans into motion. Liuan and Jherica would be returning to a number of crises in Akana. Ibrahim was in no rush to begin anything. Zhuan wanted to visit Tlaxhuaco, and Gabriel suddenly became extremely interested in visiting too.

Mirian went with the two of them to Tlaxhuaco, more to provide Xecatl’s ships an escort to deal with the hostile leviathans than anything. She acted as a screening force, levitating high above the ship, using detect life to spot them from a distance, then used powerful necromancy and lightning to pummel them until they either chased her—so she could lure them away from the ships—or retreat. She spent some time aiding the search for the Gate on the island, but the natural abundance of volcanic stone made it difficult to use divination to pinpoint any particularly promising area.

She explored Labyrinth on the island next, seeing if she could find any Vaults beyond what Xecatl had already discovered. She had no such luck; the Labyrinth was sparse beneath the island, adding more credence to the theory that the Labyrinth grew and positioned itself where it needed to move more arcane energy. Fortunately, the entrance was only a few miles from Uxalak, so it didn’t take much time.

Mirian left at the end of the month. She wanted to explore a few more Labyrinth entrances, then practice and refine the route she would be taking to craft her leyline regulator armor. I need a good name for it, she decided as she was slaughtering labyrinthine creatures near the town of Second Cairn. The third level of the Labyrinth had become rather boring to explore, so it left her a lot of time for her mind to wander. Godsilver Armor? Hmm, a bit pretentious. Maybe something about the focuses. Battlerobes of the Aspects of Salvation? No, too long. Duala’s Light? That’s sort of nice… You know, I never named my soulbound spellbook. Titan’s Wrath? No, sounds more like a hammer. The Luminous Grimoire? Hmm, doesn’t sound right. Pages of Salvation? Is that too pretentious? Ah, here’s the stair down. Finally, the fourth level.

She wasn’t sure when she’d picked up the habit, but at nights, she liked to watch the horizon for signs of leyline auroras. If she couldn’t find any, she’d turn her gaze to the sky. When Luamin was visible in the night sky, she found herself gazing at it. When it wasn’t, she found herself gazing out into the stars, wondering where they had come from. Wondering what else was up there, in that great void.

As the months went by, Liuan and Jherica were unable to restrain Akana Praediar’s more militant ambitions. The invasion was delayed, but once again, the Rift Sea closed to trade as warships patrolled the straits and armies marched on the western shores. Again, Mirian ignored it. It was a problem for another cycle.

At the end of the loop, she made another attempt at the moon.

***

Plan 2 - Interception during start of descent

This time, Mirian had modified the Baracueli skiff extensively, using a Tyrcast engine smuggled with help from Jherica across the sea before hostilities had started. Since she’d been practicing manipulating mythril, she had enough of the stuff to reinforce the skiff with it, making the airship frame lighter and stronger. This skiff had fewer anti-gravity sequences and more dedicated to force acceleration and heat shielding. Mirian knew the timeframe for moonfall once Divir started to descend, so she was able to use a bit of math to calculate when and where she needed to start. Intercepting Divir near the end of its fall was foolhardy—it would be moving too fast then. But there was a period of time when it was rapidly accelerating, but still not moving too fast to hit.

Now that she knew more about the lack of air that high, she’d incorporated a spell engine that would pull and hold air in a bubble near the controls. Then, if the skiff failed or the engine cut out, she’d be ready with her levitation spell.

It was one of those plans that was conceptually simple, but had required an absurd amount of preparation, and then there were tiny details in how the wind pushed around the airship at high speed that she hadn’t put much consideration into. Two hours before moonfall would begin, Mirian got ready to launch. By then, the artificers and artisans she’d hired or convinced to join were doing that thing people did when they thought they were going to die. She gave them an inspiring speech, but her heart wasn’t really in it.

An hour before moonfall, she launched. A leyline erupted only a mile away, and only a snap black shield cast around the entire airship prevented her plan from being immediately ruined. The people on the ground were flung some hundred meters to their deaths. So these things went.

Mirian ascended as rapidly as the airship would allow. She made sure the leyline hadn’t disrupted her timepiece. The mechanical hands continued to tick down. She checked the positioning of the ship using a second device. There was a deviation from her expected altitude and location, so she adjusted the ship’s course. As the air thinned out, the roar of bursting leylines below faded.

Above, she could make out Divir beginning its descent.

The timepiece’s hand clicked to a stop, and Mirian hit the acceleration glyphs.

This time, she’d designed the acceleration to be consistent and more tolerable. Just above, Divir began to flicker with flames as it hit the very top of the atmosphere.

The skiff was holding steady and Mirian had just activated the force and heat shields, when suddenly, Mirian saw a flash of green light. A piece of the Mausoleum was burning—burning, the way godflesh shouldn’t. It was the same kind of green light that she saw when Divir impacted Enteria, the one that traveled faster than anything should. As the light hit, she felt it shred her aura. The spell engine cut out, and the skiff began plummeting.

Mirian grit her teeth, but getting the arcane catalyst to link with her aura felt like swimming up a waterfall. She was a full kilometer short of her interception point as Divir began to pass in front of her on its way down.

She’d planned for the blast of heat and the bursts of wind. What she hadn’t planned for was the way her aura was stripped bare. She looked down, and the glyphs in her spellbook were deadening. She cursed and she snapped the book back into her soul as she and the skiff plummeted from the sky. Flames filled the sky, and even in the thin air, there was  a terrible roar.

There was another flash of green, and Mirian died again.

Notes: While Divir’s suspension above Enteria is analogous to two magnets repelling each other, the arcane force is not the magnetic force. The reason the arcane leylines are levitating Divir is because Divir is encompassed by an antimagic force. Must be a shell, or the spirit-construct binding us to the Ominian wouldn’t work, nor would I be able to open the doors inside the dream. Must be penetrable, or Troytin’s temporal anchor wouldn’t have made it back to the Ominian. Presumably, the temporal anchors are also immune, or they would be shut off by the killing field that erupts from moonfall.

Most likely an entropic antimagic field, not a suppression field. Are there different kinds of entropic antimagic energies, like there are arcane energies? More study needed.

Remains to be seen if impassible. However, enchantments and soul-infused metals protecting the spellbook did mitigate damage. Not all glyphs snuffed out. All information, thankfully, intact. Spellbook back to normal at start of loop, but benefit of Holy Pages also a drawback. Will take some time to re-scribe glyphs and runes.

Plan 2 Result: Failure