Chapter 217 - Cursebreaker

They spent the night at the old house, then headed back to the plateau. As the date ticked closer to armageddon, her father continued his instruction. Centuries of spellcasting had given him such a wealth of knowledge, and there were old spells he knew about she’d never heard of. He also had a complete mastery of technique. Magic to her was as easy as breathing, but for him, it was as easy as a heartbeat. There was an automaticity to it that surpassed hers.

“It was the war that really forced me to apply what I’d learned over two lifetimes,” Gaius said one evening, as they relaxed atop the plateau. “I’d had my share of arcanist duels by then, but war changes the way you see the world. I only wish you didn’t have to learn that firsthand.”

“There must be a way to prevent it all,” Mirian said again. Liuan could stop Kinsman’s assassination and unravel the conspiracy there. Ibrahim could unify Persama. She could cut away the conspiracy in Baracuel and stop its conquest of the south. Tlaxhuaco could continue its isolationist policy. Perhaps Gabriel could get to Zhighua in time and settle whatever was going on there. “It’s no coincidence that the Ominian chose us.”

“And yet, I think the failure of the Sixth Prophet is evidence enough that even the Ominian’s foresight isn’t perfect.”

She couldn’t argue with that. Many paths, the Elder God had shown her.

“What are your thoughts on the grand design of the project?” she asked.

“It seems these Elder Gates you’ve discovered can delay moonfall, but I can’t see how leyline collapse isn’t inevitable. It’s like trying to use your breath to keep a patch of sand still in an earthquake. There’s far too much instability. I think you need to know the nature of the Divir moon. Something is generating an incompatible arcane force up there. Enteria’s arcane energy is part of the myrvite cycle. What fuels such a potent force in such a small moon? And… if the Divir moon is really so unstable, it must be dealt with in the long term. The Sixth Prophet couldn’t see far enough into the future. You cannot afford to repeat his mistake.”

“Sio Jherica had some theories on that. You think you can break their curse?”

“I know I can. You could as well, but I fear it will take more than a few months to learn such precise control.”

She nodded. “You’ve reviewed my designs of the leyline conduit?”

“I have. I think there’s a way to incorporate the runes we discussed into it, though I can’t see how yet. I can’t wrap my mind around the tri-bonded glyphs yet. But you’ve done some amazing artifice here. At the very least, you should be able to triple the capacity of the device with the runic additions and some refinements.”

Mirian smiled at him. Left unspoken was the problem that they would need to increase the capacity of the device by a thousandfold. There was no research in Torrviol to check in this cycle. And incorporating runework will be beyond the professors there. They may be able to arrive at a better conduit crystal—maybe—but there’s simply too much to teach them for them to be useful in even a two-month timeframe. Another reason she wanted to break the curse on Jherica. They were perfectly positioned in Vadriach University. That was insufficient, though. The other Prophets needed to learn artifice.

“We’ll need to figure out how to get your ebonbloom lotuses to Viridian. Or, get Viridian and his equipment here,” Mirian said, looking out at the setting sun.

“Yes. The plant naturally deals with very high-flux toxic mana. An entire academy studying the magichemicals are sure to discover some new application. I only wish I’d visited Zhighua proper.”

Another aurora began to crawl across the sky, moving from north to south. They watched it together. The end would come in a few days now. Mirian didn’t want it to come.

“I wish you could remember with me,” she said.

“I know, little lotus,” Gaius said.

“It’s painful.”

“It is,” he said. “I watched my parents die. And my sister. And her children. And her grandchildren. And her grandchildren’s children. I lost countless friends. Each one was painful. Each one, a scar on my soul. And yet, for all the pain it caused, it was better to have loved with them, and shared the part of the road we got to travel on together.”

“I suppose so,” Mirian said. He’d only briefly mentioned that part of his life. Will I become so distant, too? She hadn’t talked to Lily in… a long time.

In the distance, she saw the telltale purple and orange light of an arcane eruption. The breeze was still warm from the day. To the east of them, a flock of two-headed vultures fled north. By now, all the myrvites were migrating. They could feel what was coming. There was no distance far enough for them to travel, though. “I’ll remember for us both,” she said.

“I know you will. And I’ll be here, whenever you need me. At some point, I’ll have to meet that Grandpa Irabi fellow you’ve mentioned.”

The day the apocalypse came, Mirian held her father tight, as if she could make up for the lost time by squeezing him hard enough. She’d heard his words, but she didn’t want to let go. That was how she ended the 212th loop.

***

And on the 213th loop, she woke to a terrible feeling of loss. Her first reunion with her birth father, after eighteen years for him, more for her—and only she would remember it.

“Mirian? What’s wrong?” Lily asked.

She shook her head. “You couldn’t understand.”

She sent her zephyr falcons to the other Prophets, updating them on the situation and calling them to convene in the next cycle. Then, she went through the Mahatan Gate. She reached Gaius’s hidden lair early on the 3rd of Solem, a day and several hours sooner. Part of this was Mirian using the new necromantic tricks she’d learned to better harvest the soul-energy of the myrvites on her path so she could fly faster for longer—and part of it was the soul ascension she’d achieved. Her soul had gained a great deal of stability, meaning she could incorporate foreign mana into her aura with less negative effect.

They travel back to Mahatan together. It was painful, both for him and her, to not have a proper reunion. She could tell this version of him so badly wanted to spend days catching up—but there wasn’t time.

At Mahtan, she visited Conductor, who reconfigured the gate connection to link with Palendurio. She thought of their words; as long as she was the only one who claimed authority over the Gates, she could manipulate them freely. The problem would be if someone challenged her on it.

Well, they have to learn simultaneous casting and four-dimensional glyph control a bit better first, she thought.

“A living Elder creature. Fascinating,” Gaius said as they emerged in Palendurio. Together, they bored through the stone.

That brought them to the coast of the Rift Sea on the 6th. Stuck in their coma, Jherica would die soon. Mirian had told Liuan to send priests to attend to them, but if she and her father didn’t make it in time, they would still perish. Presumably, she had a tight enough leash on the Akanan RID to keep their agents from making anything worse.

Together, they stole enough gold from a nearby bank to commission a cutter to cross the Rift Sea at top speed. Gaius mostly kept to the cabin as they made the crossing to avoid too many questions. It was unlikely that anyone would recognize him past his illusion.

As they approached shore, Mirian told him, “Once we’re in Akana Praediar, we have to assume Liuan is watching us.”

Her father looked sad. His jaw clenched slightly. “Understood,” he said.

Once in Vadriach City, their job was made easy. Liuan had already secured the house, and they were simply let in the front door and each given glyphkeys for the University. Liuan herself did not appear to be present.

“Convenient,” Gaius mused. “How is the patient?”

The priest at the door swallowed nervously. Mirian wondered what Liuan had told him about them. If he was looking at either of their souls, though, he’d know something was off. “Stable, if in poor condition. We’ve been dripping water into their lips to keep them hydrated and keeping them clean. We’ve done what we can with our healing,” he said, and then bowed.

“Good,” Gaius said.

The room looked just like Mirian had remembered. There was Sio Jherica, lying peacefully in their bed. The hole above it had been patched. Someone had brought another glyph lamp into the room so the lighting was better. From another room, there was the waft of soap. Presumably, they’d changed out the sheets.

Gaius sneered as he examined Jherica. “This is insidious. But yes, I can unpick it. Probably in about an hour or so.”

Mirian examined the curse herself. She furrowed her eyebrows, studying the way the apparent motions of soul energy twisted about. Did it always look like that, or have I just learned enough about curses now that I see it differently? “Will they have any memory damage?” she asked.

“Some, I’m afraid. I will minimize as best I can. Please be silent as I work.”

Mirian translated his wish to the priests.

He started spellcasting immediately, and Mirian observed his efforts as best she could to learn from them. Her father had estimated it might take a year of study for her to achieve such capabilities. Watching him, she thought his estimate might have been generous. He was casting such infinitesimal necromantic bindings to hold threads of the curse in place, then siphoning off the energies bit by bit, quickly suppressing any flare-ups of Jherica’s soul as he did.

Time seemed to pass at a crawl. One priest left, and another came in to attend. Mirian could see them glancing at each other. She wasn’t sure what the Church of the Ominian taught its priests, but whatever they learned, it wasn’t this.

Then, the last fragments of the curse were gone. Jherica’s eyes fluttered, then opened. They gasped and sat up, then froze, seeing the crowd gathered.

“Prophet Jherica, I’m Prophet Mirian,” she said. More gasps went up around the room, and muttering.

The other Prophet blinked at her, mouth opening and closing. “Is this… real?” they asked.

“Yes. You’ve been in the Ominian’s dream?”

They blinked again, still in some sort of shock. And no wonder, with how long it’s been. Jherica finally managed, “I thought… thought the dream had become real.”

In Adamic, Gaius muttered. “Anything I need to be concerned about, let me know.”

“This is… priests of the Ominian, if you cannot handle this discussion, you may leave,” Mirian snapped, annoyed at the mutterings going on behind her.

“S-sorry, Prophet,” one of them said, bowing.

“This is the 213th cycle, though I’ve found a way to extend the loops. It’s been roughly 17 years since the loops began. Depending on when Sulvorath pulled his nasty little maneuver, you’ve been in a coma for that time. Though your body would have died only a few days into each cycle from dehydration.” She paused. “I don’t know how that affects the apparent time you experienced.”

“God,” Jherica said. Then, “Sulovrath! Where—?”

“Removed from the loop. ‘How,’ we’re not sure. Perhaps by the Ominian.”

There was a loud crash. Mirian spun, already in the Dusk Waves dervish stance, ready to summon her spellbook—but it was one of the priests. He’d apparently fainted.

“That’s it. Leave us,” Mirian snapped. The priests filed out of the room, some of them bowing. None of them were quite sure what to do.

“You should establish clear ritual procedures for your underlings,” Gaius observed.

“What’s the point?”

“It makes them feel more comfortable, and helps establish your authority.” He paused. “I was briefly the head of a cult.”

“Some other time.” She swapped back to Eskinar. “Jherica, there’s a lot to catch up on. In short, I’ve called another meeting of the Prophets. I’m trying to establish a council that gets us all to work together. Liuan—who you may be familiar with, will attend, as will Gabriel and myself. Ibrahim has been invited, but I don’t know what his decision is. Celen is, to my knowledge, still committing suicide at the start of each cycle.”

Jherica’s face went through at least four different emotions, but settled on pain. “Celen…”

“Do you need some time?”

Jherica rubbed their eyes. “I’ve had… time. No, I need to move. I was working—I had a theory.”

“Research on the Divir moon, I believe.”

“Yes… it seemed the logical choice.” They rose from their bed, unsteady on their feet at first, then rifled around in one of the desk drawers. “I wrote it… well, no of course, it’s no longer there. I discovered something. Let me think what it was. It was…” They sat back down on the bedside, head in their hands.

Mirian looked at Gaius, who looked back at her.

“That was it!” Jherica exclaimed. “I built a device to look at the moons. A spell-engine telescope. I finally created a working prototype. It uses layers of lens spells, but uses a clever glyph-activated mechanical framework to stabilize them and correct for Enteria’s spin and atmospheric distortion. It made sense. The moon was falling. The most logical place to start looking was the moon itself.”

“And what did you find?”

They stared at her, blinking several times. Then Jherica’s face turned dark. “I used to… I used to be able to think clearly. What did that monster do?” they snapped.

Mirian turned to her father and switched to Adamic. “Will they recover the full function of their mind?”

“Possibly. The brain is a difficult thing to work with, and the disruptions to the mirrored function in the soul was deep.”

Mirian clenched her jaw and nodded slightly. She turned back to Jherica. “Can you build it again?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m sure of it. I made notes for myself.” They went back to the desk, searching for their notebook before realizing it was already on the table from earlier. “Ah. But I haven’t written them yet. I used to rewrite them from memory… as best I could. Conceptually, I know how it works. Do you have any skill in artifice?”

“Yes,” she said. “We’ll build it together.”

Mirian began to gather supplies that evening. In two days time, they began construction of Jherica’s device. They seemed to remember its design better as they made it. This was fine by Mirian, who rarely used design documents anymore, much to the chagrin of Torres whenever the topic came up. In between breaks, Mirian began to catch the other Prophet up on what they’d missed, and in turn, they discussed what they remembered.

From what Jherica could recall, Celen had quickly located them, since they began announcing the imminent fall of the moon in the newspapers, calling for academics to join in on studying the problem. In short, like Mirian in Torrviol, they’d made no secret of their foreknowledge, though Jherica had run into enough problems with the Church of the Ominian that they refused to even attempt to be declared.

Troytin seemed to have struck at Mirian first, then when Mirian went into hiding, turned on the other Prophets. Celen had disappeared, and Jherica hadn’t known what had happened. Then, the RID had started hunting them. They’d been captured quickly enough.

“Celen’s a writer. Dabbled in magic a bit. But what a way he had with the pen! He was a good man. Not very logical, but we all have our flaws,” Jherica said.

Over the next few days, they got to work. Jherica, who didn’t speak Adamic, only briefly questioned who Atrah Xidi was, and accepted Mirian’s answer of ‘a soul specialist, artificer, and researcher’ at face value. With the priests and RID agents hanging around, Mirian didn’t want Vadriach University to realize exactly who was present on their campus. It would inevitably lead to a lot of useless fighting.

Liuan corresponded by zephyr falcon, but made no actual appearance. She was apparently investigating a possible lead on a Labyrinth entrance west of the Ferrabridge eruption site. Still, she’d used her mastery of the loop to get them mostly unquestioned support from the professors, priesthood, and state, so Mirian was fine with her absence.

With Mirian and Gaius’s help, as well as the backing of the University, Jherica’s device was ready in only a week. 

That evening, they pointed it at the small moon.