Chapter 151 - Apophagorga Redux

As soon as the beast emerged, Mirian sent up the flare. To her dismay, Apophagorga didn’t react like it had the first time.

After a roar of annoyance, it charged the first team. No amount of rifle fire or spells could get it to turn around, even after she launched flares ordering an advance of the other teams. Instead, the beast kept going, pushing through the barrier rocks and ripping up the trees. This time, the team scattered in all directions before it reached them, but the titan still devoured one of the arcanists. The others were ordered to loop back around and join other teams, but Mirian doubted they would. Something about being charged by a 15-meter tall myrvite had a way of disarming people’s courage.

Even with the advance, the beast’s charge had brought it out of range of everyone but the specialized riflemen who could still snipe at it. It made straight for the hill again.

But why? We’ve barely scratched it from our position. She ordered the retreat anyways.

As she met its red glowing eyes, she felt a sense of familiarity. Is it my soul you’re hungry for? Guess I’ll be bait again. This time, she had two extra soul repositories, and had practiced using soul energy while levitating and casting. She shot into the air and started casting greater coruscating beam every chance she could, chugging two mana elixirs as she darted around the clearing to bring the beast into range. Apophagorga tried its phasing charge again, but she increased her height so that she was well above it. 

With the flare-assistant running for his life, Mirian used enhanced light spells to send her signals, ordering the pincer strikes she thought might prevent it from phasing.

This time, Apophagorga paused its chase in the clearing, then cocked its head. Then it charged the second team’s position, ignoring Mirian even as she flew back down, sending searing beams into its legs. Her mana was rapidly depleting, but she didn’t relent.

Second team made their way through a rocky outcropping, but the myrvite titan phased through it like it was wading through water. Four more hunters died.

One by one, it repeated the tactic, relentlessly charging each team until it was completely scattered and partially eaten. Annita’s hurled boulders and fireballs did nothing to slow it; she was stuffed into the beast’s maw. Mirian drank her third mana elixir, flying forward to try to gouge out its eyes with flames.

Apophagorga’s hide was blistered and bubbling with its black blood, but as it finished scattering the last team, it turned to face Mirian. Then it phased into the ground, wiggling until its legs were beneath it and face was burrowed so only its shell was showing.

And it waited.

Mirian landed to conserve mana. She picked up a discarded rifle and took a few pot shots at it. The bullets clanged harmlessly against the shell. She looked around for the surviving hunters. None of them had regrouped.

She threw the rifle down in disgust. “So you’re smart, then?” she told it. Something else was off. Is it like Viridian in that small changes lead it to radically different behaviors? There was another possibility, one she didn’t like at all. How connected is an Elder beast to the Gods?

Her auric mana was too thin. She simply couldn’t overpower the beast alone. Mirian sat down in the dirt and embraced her focus, examining its soul.

It was like watching a storm cloud pass across the scrublands. The size and power had an unfathomability to it. Its soul moved in the same way that thunderheads grew and churned in the sky.

Eventually, the beast lifted its head from the ground, red eyes glaring out from under the humped shell. Mirian considered sending another beam of fire at it out of spite, but thought better. It had apparently spent at least a month hunkered deep underground. She didn’t think she could out-wait it.

“Fine, you win this round,” she said, and flew south to contemplate her defeat and consider what she needed to do differently. She felt a pang of guilt for abandoning the hunters she hired, but they would be dead in six days anyways. Besides, most of them were experienced enough in the wilderness they could make their way back without problems. Despite her warnings, there actually weren’t all that many myrvites in the area.

***

Mirian convinced Torres to sabotage Troyitin’s spell engines again, then also hired an assassin. She didn’t think that either attempt would succeed since the Akanan was usually alert to her most recent tactics, but hoped those attempts plus all the other annoyances she was throwing at him would impede him until he flew off in the Akanan airship prior to the invasion.

This time, she had them set up a camp around the derelict obelisk and abandon the wagons early, speeding up their journey over the rough terrain considerably.

They gathered at the spot on the 25th of Solem, this time having assembled an even larger group of myrvite hunters. In addition to the small bump in numbers from hiring a few small groups, she added in a small team that specialized in using high-powered rifles to take out extreme myrvites like manticores and larger chimeras. She tweaked her tactics and distributed even more detailed contingency plans, warning the hunters that the titan would charge them at some point. This brought uncomfortable glances around the group, especially since she’d shared more details with them about its size. Better that they’re prepared, she thought.

Then, just before midnight on the 27th, she awoke to the ground trembling. Shit! she thought. It’s too early!

She burst out of her tent, calling, “To arms! To arms!”

Her arcane sense began tingling. She looked out to the open area. The mushroom trees were still glowing. But the tremors…

The hunters were blearily emerging from the tents. Mirian readied a flare, then froze. Something’s wrong, she realized.

But by then, it was too late.

Apophagorga’s huge leg emerged from the ground and slammed the hillside right next to her, knocking Mirian off her feet. Another leg slammed down to her left. Which means the head…

She had time to embrace Lone Pine, just so it wouldn’t hurt so much.

***

She saw the Ominian surveying the world again, gazing out at the horizon. Again, the words came to her: This place…

This place…

She wanted to ask Them so many questions. How do I defeat the titan? How do I remove another time traveler that’s gone berserk? Why did you choose the other Prophets? How do I stop the world ending?

But there was only silence, only Their gaze, so tender and intense, across the world. Carefully, the Ominian walked across the land, crust of black ichor on Their shoulders where the knives in Their flesh had once been.

This place…

***

She bit her tongue on waking, eyes squeezed shut, body trembling. In some ways, dying had gotten a lot easier. In other ways, it hadn’t. The memory of pain was so visceral. 

Mirian rented a private room in one of the bathhouses and spent the morning soaking in a tub in total silence. The conclusion was clear. She couldn’t deny it.

Apophagorga can learn lessons from other timelines.

It explained a lot. It explained why the beast kept emerging on the 28th. For over a hundred cycles, the leyline disruption from the Divine Monument rupturing would have passed right through that area, so it had learned to crawl the surface. Then, it had quickly learned how to counter the tactics Mirian had in mind, willing to take incredible punishment to its body in the short term to avoid being exhausted in the long term. She’d heard of leviathans being clever like that too, so that ships hunting them were tricked and smashed to pieces.

Only the Elder Gods had mastered the magic of time, but it made sense that their greatest beasts had some dominion over that magic.

It never can be easy, can it? No wonder the First Prophet had such issues with a titan. If only more records of that age had survived.

She needed time to think.

I’ll need to come at the beast with overwhelming force, but in a way that it can’t anticipate. Annita was strong enough to hurt it. Most of the myrvite hunters can hardly scratch it, though. The rifles worked well, but they’re too small. I can’t imagine getting artillery through that terrain, but that’s the kind of caliber I need.

So where do I get a bunch of high-powered spellcasters and giant mobile guns…?

A realization struck her. She stood up from the bath, splashing water everywhere, in such a rush she nearly forgot to dress. Not that it would matter much, she thought as she threw on her clothes. Everyone who saw would have no idea in the next loop. 

In her quest for relaxation, Mirian hadn’t gone through her normal morning routines. That meant Specter, disguised as Adria, was still alive and probably awake by now. She headed over to the student crafting center to work on a tracker. First she had to make the soul repository and grab a few smaller myrvite souls. Then her divination device could use the tri-scribing technique to incorporate a rune needed for detect life. Combined with a specifically tuned heat detection spell that mostly picked up only humans, she could have the device only output a reading of living things with a weak soul output that also matched the heat profile. The only two people in Torrviol that would match that profile would be her if her mythril amulet was out—and Specter.

Range would be an issue because the heat detection spell had a smaller radius than the detect life spell, but she’d made the device small enough it could fit in her bag.

Mirian retrieved the levitation wand and killed the bog lion, then got to work on filling out her spellbook. Specter was trained in counter-espionage, and would eventually pick up a tail. But she’s only prepared for the usual things.

Viridian’s remote eye spell was quite complex already, but it had a problem: it was very obvious when it was floating around. Due to the nature of the spell, it would always have a telltale glow; the mental component interacting with the soul caused some of the mana that was inefficiently lost to transform into light. The communication between the spell and the caster went both ways. Also, the eye couldn’t take in sound. The ‘sound’ problem was easily fixed, and while that would cause the spell to also output a humming noise, she could lower the frequency so it was too low to be picked up by the human ear.

Her work on camouflage spells offered a solution to the excess light problem. She could create a perfect sphere around the “eye” portion. It required significantly fewer glyphs than her improved camouflage spell. Obviously, the mana cost was now significantly higher, but it meant she could snoop around without anyone knowing unless they were actively divining for low frequency sounds or arcane energy anomalies. Especially sensitive casters like Luspire would no doubt feel their arcane sense tingling, but Specter was an expert in spycraft and paranoia, not spells.

Once her spellbook was a bit more filled out, she began searching about, though she already had a pretty good idea of where Specter would be. “Adria” had spent a great deal of time inside Torrian Tower. She knew that Archmage Luspire’s early days in the cycle looked different without her interference. The wards in the tower would make spying on her inside there difficult, but she’d have no issues once she left. Mirian camped out in one of the study rooms by the plaza and set her divination device by the table.

She caught sight of the spy leaving the tower exactly one hour after noon and marked down the time. Then she launched her newly developed hidden remote spy.

Mirian tracked Specter with one eye, using the other to navigate back down to the street level where she could follow nearby so that the spy didn’t walk outside the viable range of the spell. Specter was still doing that trick where she shifted her multi-part illusion disguise one piece at a time, but Mirian knew to look for it.

She’d expected her to go meet with her spies, but instead, Specter made her way to one of the nicer restaurants and sat down with a group of local arcanists. Mirian recognized them as running several of the shops around town, though she couldn’t remember their names. She brought the eye in to watch Specter specifically.

Adria was dead; she couldn’t learn how to impersonate her. But she could learn how to impersonate her impersonator. 

***

On the night of the 5th, Mirian went down Specter’s secret passage and killed her, then took the files with notes and letters about Adria. Briefly, she reflected on how nonchalant she’d become about the whole thing. Sometimes, it worried her. Sometimes, she thought she wasn’t going far enough. She left Magistrate Ada her usual notes about the Akanan agents, then shifted to her Micael disguise. In the early morning, she stole Mayor Wolden’s ingots and left for Cairnmouth.

Her next work was more delicate. She got an apartment in the New District of the city because that was the one closest to Fort Aegrimere.

Fort Aegrimere was a star-fort. The defenses had rapidly gained in popularity during the Unification War when people realized how vulnerable even the thickest castle walls were to earthshaker artillery. And just normal artillery, for that matter. The wide earthen walls were splayed out like the blades of a diamond. Decades ago, the fortress would have dominated the surrounding landscape from the hill it rested on, but Cairnmouth had grown around it like so much ivy until houses and streets wrapped around the fort’s feet.

This was good news for the economic development of Cairnmouth. This was bad news for the security of operations.

Mirian’s first task was to figure out what sort of ward schemes they had. This was painstaking, but by now, she was quite good at it. The fort’s detection machines and anti-divination wards were more complex than the Temple of the Four, but they also didn’t incorporate runes.

The fort also wasn’t on high alert, though Ibrahim’s attack on Alkazaria had stirred it into more of a state of readiness than it would have been at peace. Mirian used her hidden remote spy to watch the patrols and maintenance teams. General Hanaran had mentioned that most ward schemes got checked monthly, so at nights, Mirian started venturing out to disable wards along the southeast section piece by piece, starting with the ones she’d already seen the patrols check.

Over several days, she created a corridor that she could move through without detection; improved camouflage got her onto one of the earthen walls without being seen, while shape earth helped her make a little burrow. Taking a page out of Lecne’s book, she used practical camouflage, since an illusion engine or wards would easily be detected. Mirian put adhesive on the outside of a small hatch, then covered it with dirt and placed it over the burrow. The resulting door blended in with the rest of the sloped wall when the hatch was closed.

That gave her a position to cast hidden remote spy.

She brought a few cushions into the burrow to make it cozy. Then, she began to watch and take notes.