Uranium Phoenix's Projects

Chapter 22 - Cycle Three

Mirian awoke with that raw scream still on her lips, and stopped.

Someone groaned. Selesia, she thought. She’s wounded, but we can still—but no. It was Lily, saying, “Gods above, Mirian. You’ve got a real set of lungs. That must have been some nightmare.”

Mirian sat on the bed and clutched her head in her hands. “I need—give me a moment.”

“You okay?”

Mirian burst into tears, which hopefully answered the question. A drop of water hi...

Chapter 21 - Extermination

They were, Mirian knew, fucked. Even if they did want to rely on ‘we’re innocent, don’t shoot us,’ which the Akanans clearly didn’t give a bog lion’s ass about, they’d just become a major target.

“Tell them to retreat somewhere else!” someone shouted.

I’m going to die again, Mirian realized. Nicolus must have known. Who else had known? And how had they found out? It hadn’t been through her, because Nicolus had done the same thing the first time. He�...

Chapter 20 - Exodus

“So what in the five hells is going on?” Mirian asked. Selesia looked nervous, while Xipuatl looked surprisingly calm.

Lily said, “You were right. I… don’t believe it, but there really is an Akanan army—”

“I know that part,” Mirian said. “I mean, what’s the plan?”

“Torrviol is being evacuated,” said Xipuatl. “It’s just… very short notice. There’s a lot of people to get moving, and we can’t use the train because it’s busy moving the gar...

Chapter 19 - Predicament

The interrogation room was surprisingly spacious and well decorated. A copy of the letter sat on the table. A man wearing the pauldrons and striped tabard of a captain was reading a copy of another of the identical letters.

“Captain Mandez? Here she is,” one of the guards escorting her said.

“Hm? Good. Have a seat, Mirian.”

Mirian sat. Captain Mandez was silent as the other guard left and shut the door behind them. She heard it lock and expected Mandez to start inter...

Chapter 18 - Predictions

In the dream, there was nothing to hold on to. Indescribable colors burst around her, shifting formlessly. They seemed to writhe about, lunging out to snap at her. Eventually, they did become things she could understand. The colors and shapes coalesced into a volcano, the lava slithering down the slopes, hardening into a rock that was full of blinking eyes that stared at her. The rock turned from dark gray to yellow, and it became a slime mold, marching across a log, only when it approached, ...

Chapter 17 - Preparations

The rest of the day went about the same as it had. Geoarcanology reminded her she needed to go look up those maps she’d found in Bainrose again, and Artifice Physics was the same combination of high philosophy and practical arcane physics it had been the first time.

She kept her eyes open during lunch and between classes, looking for any sign of the spies. Nothing.

Valen hadn’t said anything to her in Artifice Design. Though she hadn’t left her name with the Couriers, she’...

Chapter 16 - New Quarter, Again

Mirian didn’t have to wait long in the Myrvite Studies building before Valen met her in the hallway.

“Did you go by maintenance?” Mirian asked.

She nodded.

Mirian accepted that as good enough and went to Viridian’s door and knocked. They heard Viridian’s muffled “come in,” and entered.

“Hi, sir. I brought a classmate, if that’s okay. She saw what I saw. Or at least, one of the incidents.” Mirian then recoiled as she saw Viridian’s office. The plac...

Chapter 15 - A Plan

Step one of the plan involved starting rumors. This was something Mirian had, funnily enough, almost no experience doing. Lily was a lot better at it. On Seventh day when they visited the dining hall again for lunch, Lily joined a table with several other sixth year students.

“Hey, do any of you have maintenance requests in?” Lily asked.

One of the girls at the table said, “No.”

“Okay, sorry for bothering you. It’s so weird though, it’s been days and nothing. A...

Chapter 14 - Letters

Lily was still out when Mirian went to sleep, and when she woke, Lily was asleep, and she didn’t have the heart to wake her. She left a note saying she’d gone to the library.

Mirian had something of a plan. With her letters in her bag, she went to the front desk. “Hi,” she said. “I was trying to send a letter to my brother. He said he was summoned for duty at… well, and that’s the problem, I can’t remember the name of the place! It’s so embarrassing. He’s part of the...

Chapter 13 - Small Changes

Mirian had a plan for finding out where to send the letters. She would visit Bainrose Castle and get the librarians to help her. However, there was a problem: She’d seen the librarian who had chatted with that guard tomorrow (that felt weird to think about that way) was the same one working the library today. A different librarian was working over the weekend, so she could visit the Bainrose library Sixthday.

Tonight, she resolved to study for Alchemistry. It was exhausting work. She ...

Chapter 12 - Small Fixes

It was a bit awkward to walk across campus with two bags, one clanging about, but she felt quite satisfied with how things had turned out. If she could get maintenance, or some guards that weren’t on the cloaked-people payroll to confront the spy, things would go so much better.

She slipped into Myrvite Ecology as quietly as she could, though she could see from Professor Viridian’s glance her way that he had seen her. For a moment, her heart raced, and she was deeply unsettled. A fe...

Chapter 11 - Begin Again

Mirian sat straight up, gasping for air, heart pounding. She looked around, tears falling from her eyes as she remembered. She’d been shot. She’d died. Gods, she’d died horribly!

Then she looked around. She was—in her dorm room?

A drop of water hit her in the face.

“You okay?” a voice said. Lily. It was Lily!

Mirian burst into tears and scrambled out of bed. “You’re alive! Oh thank the Gods.” She gave her a big hug.

Lily put on her glas...

Chapter 10 - …And Then It Ends

Mirian didn’t scream, but plenty of other people did. Instead, she crouched down and got ready to run. For a fraction of a second, a brief memory surfaced. Something like this had happened before. There’d been an explosion, just nearby—

She looked around, ready to fight someone. But there was no one to fight, just broken glass spread across the cobblestones and smoke pouring out of the third floor window.

At least this time, the guards came. Two of them approached, one from ...

Chapter 9 - Life Goes On...

The rest of Mirian’s week went smoothly. Each day she went to her classes, each night she studied. Fourthday, she met Xipuatl and Nicolus again who split their time between debate and study, while Nurea loomed in the corner.

That weekend, Mirian went dueling again. During one of the bouts, she noticed Selesia watching her from the crowd, but when the bout finished, she couldn’t find her. She was curious to talk to her again, but it seemed the feeling wasn’t mutual. That was only s...

Chapter 8 - New Quarter

The break passed far too quickly, and soon enough, Mirian found herself walking to class with Lily. By now, the weather had finally turned, so a light snowfall had coated Torrviol in a beautiful blanket of white. Lily, who had grown up with snow, found it annoying. Mirian, who had only ever seen it in the mountains of her home province, couldn’t stop appreciating the beauty of it. The way the snow muted the sounds of the morning, the way it turned the pre-dawn world gray and smooth.

S...

Chapter 7 - The Quarter Ends

Mirian spent four hours of Sixthday, which was supposed to be a day off, harassing the staff at Housing, then another two hours in Maintenance. She could not begin to fathom why it was so hard to get them to send someone to deal with a broken pipe and a flooded room, but at last she got one of the workers to follow her out to the third floor. Immediately upon seeing the severed pipe and the sagging floorboards around the hole, he said, “This is terrible! Why didn’t someone come out sooner...

Chapter 6 - What A Mess

There was a lot to be done after that, but doing it all did little. Housing services was closed, maintenance was closed, and none of the custodians could be found. The sheets needed to be washed to get the clay and plaster out, and not just by a machine, so Mirian set those aside.

The curses of “where the hell is this water even coming from?” ended up being answered by an exploration of the third floor: The empty room directly above was part of the building's utilities, and...

Chapter 5 - Nightmare

She awoke to Lily shaking her, saying “wake up! Wake up!”

Mirian clutched her chest, hand trembling.

“Gods above,” Lily said, shaking slightly herself. “I hope the whole dorm didn’t hear that.”

“Huh?” Mirian said intelligently.

“The screaming. You were screaming. You were screaming really loud.”

Mirian blinked. “Oh. Shit. Sorry. I… was having a bad dream.” As she said it, though, she was thinking, I’ve never had a dream ...