The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

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 glasses and gave her a quizzical stare. "Uh, obviously. Are you… okay?"

"No. Gods above, no. Holy hells. What… that was not a dream. There was no way that…." Mirian looked around. Another drop fell from the ceiling, this time onto the center of her bed. She went over and looked up. The hole was back. "They fixed that. What in the hells?" But there it was. When she looked up, she could see the glint of outside light, all the way up past the third floor.

"Wait, is that a leak?" Lily asked. "We're on the first floor. How the hell did that happen?"

"I…" Mirian paused. Well, she still had no idea. "What's… what's today?"

"Fourthday," Lily said. "Did you have a nightmare or something?"

"Yes. No. I don't know. Holy hells." She was thinking: There's no way that was just a nightmare. This wasn't like a strange dream that felt real until she woke up. It still felt real. And it hadn't been a day, or a week, it had been almost an entire month. She remembered all of it—her exams, the break, the second quarter starting… the attack. "What… like, I know this sounds stupid, but what's the date?"

"1st of Solem. Fourthday. Year of Poclym 4851, if you need that too. Mirian, what is going on?"

"Nothing. Everything. Shit, I… I don't know. The Academy… it was attacked. Twenty-seven days from now." The tears came to her eyes. It had just happened. "We died," she said. "All of us. Gods above." She started trembling, and had to sit down on her bed. Another drop of water splashed on her head, but she ignored it.

Lily was staring at her. "Mirian, you're freaking me out."

"Sorry. I'm freaking myself out too. I'm… I don't understand." What did it mean? Had it been a vision? Or had the Gods listened? She thought of Yiaverunan's hourglass, of the God's statue overlooking the Kiroscent Dome's rotunda.

Of all the stories she had heard of the Gods, none of them were like this. The closest comparison was the Prophets, who heard the voices of the Gods. And the Prophets had been devout priests of the Luminate Order, they weren't some random student. No one would believe the Gods were talking to her. Worse, she could be branded a heretic and jailed.

She looked at Lily and wiped the tears from her eyes. Second chance. You've been given a second chance. She would save them this time.

"You really don't remember any of it?"

"Do you need… I can call a healer. Or escort you to the hospital. Or temple. Do you… Mirian, are you sure you didn't just have a terrible dream?"

"That must have been it," she lied. "Sorry. It was… vivid." It was real.

"Isn't your exam today?" Lily asked.

Mirian blinked, and noticed the clay cube with glyphs on it that was lying on her table. Right, she thought. None of the things she'd done last time had happened yet. She still needed to complete the quarter. There was no sense sabotaging her career by skipping classes. Besides, who was going to believe her? She needed proof.

Another drop of water hit her. Oh, and she needed to deal with the Gods damned hole again!

"Mirian?"

"Sorry, I need to stop the leak first." She picked up her spellbook, opened it to the page with shape metal and… it was blank. Of course it was blank. She hadn't scribed the spell to it yet. "There's a pipe that got hit up on the third floor, so it's going to keep spraying water even when the rain stops." She grabbed the storage tin from under her bed, added a wad of clay to it, and marched up to the third floor in her nightrobe.

The door was locked, but she used a lift object to get the latch on the other side up, and then opened. Had it been locked last time? She couldn't remember. But sure enough, the copper pipe was hissing out water. She stuffed the clay in the hole, then put the tin under the spraying water. That would last for at least a few hours.

She rushed back down. As she dressed for class, she said, "Lily, I think I'm just going to act strange for a bit. It's… I can't explain it. Or at least, I can't explain it without sounding absolutely unhinged. Sorry in advance," she said.

"Uh, alright," Lily said. "Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?"

"Maybe later," she said. "I'll think of some clever way to explain it all." Or maybe not, she thought. Her thoughts were still whirling with all the death she'd just seen. The sheer terror of it all, the panicked screams—so many people, slaughtered. And why? Akana Praediar was Baracuel's ally. As she grabbed her spellbook and cloak to leave, she thought of the cloaked figure. An Akanan spy? Then her mind was back on the pale faces of students who had bled to death in the Kiroscent Dome. The terror she'd felt, crawling away, knowing she was going to die. She left, and those images kept invading her mind as she walked. Gods, how was she going to do anything?

"Mirian. Miran!" Lily had caught up with her. "Your notebook. Your artifice project! Here! Wow, you really are out of it."

Mirian blinked like an idiot. "Wow. Right. Thank you!" Yeah, she was absolutely doomed.

The day was overcast, with a slight drizzle coming down. She remembered it would be cloudy all day, and everyone would have their heads down, cloak on until—

The cloaked figure!

Her stomach grumbling told her she'd forgotten to go eat breakfast. Whoops. But that meant she was early. She could… catch him? Probably not. But maybe she could cause enough of a scene to get someone else to notice. That was the problem. The only other person who'd ever seen the guy was Valen of all people. Gods, Valen had died too. She remembered her body, smoldering between the pillars.

She walked fast, passing a group of first years who were dawdling on the path, then made her way across the plaza. Deja vu struck. There'd been a first year girl crying in front of Bainrose Library. With a start, she looked back—and realized she'd just passed that girl.

She wondered what happened. But there wasn't time for that. She hurried into the Alchemistry building and headed for the stairs. The building was mostly empty at this hour, so Mirian sprinted up the stairs. The door to the roof was locked, but there was a window by the stairs. She undid the latch and threw it open. Where was he? She knew he should be approaching from the adjacent building's flat roof, which she could just make out. Then she realized a girl leaning out the window might discourage him from making an appearance.

Mirian pressed herself to the side of the window so she could just see. The waiting was interminable. She kept wondering if she was in the right place, or if something had changed. Another thought: Was she the only one who remembered? Lily hadn't remembered, but was it possible others had?

Then, she caught sight of movement on the roof. An idea came to Mirian. She couldn't stop him, almost certainly couldn't fight him, but maybe she could get some evidence. She readied her spellbook.

Mirian could just see the blond hair hidden under the man's cloak. He looked around, not seeing Mirian yet, but as he approached the lip of the roof, he stopped. Now he had noticed her.

She cast her spell. Lift object was a fast spell, only requiring three glyphs. It was harder, because the object was attached to his person, but she poured mana into the spell to overcome the resistance. The buckle on the satchel by his belt detached. She turned it upside down. A scroll fell out, drifting to the narrow alley between the buildings.

The man's eyes had locked on Mirian now, and he reached beneath his coat. A wand, she thought, but she didn't wait to find out. She dashed back down the stairs, then out the building, pushing past a group of students who looked at her quizzically.

There! Between the buildings, the scroll. She snatched it up and unrolled it as she dashed back inside the Alchemistry building. It had landed in a puddle, so half the writing was already smeared, but it was clearly written in Eskanar. Eskanar, that was, that she couldn't read. She rolled it back up and stashed it in her bag, then made her way to Alchemistry class. If that cloaked man was looking for her, he'd have a hell of a time picking her out of a crowd of identically uniformed students.

The bell tower rang out, and Professor Seneca snapped shut her pocket watch. "Alright, class!" she began. Mirian took out her notebook, but then she realized—she wasn't sitting in the same seat she had been in last time. And Nicolus hadn't sat next to her. That meant he wasn't going to see the notebook, and wasn't going to be impressed by her studiousness, and she'd never meet him at the study session. Shit, she thought.

Maybe she could fix that. She opened up her notebook, and was briefly disconcerted. The pages she had filled were blank. Of course they were.

As Professor Seneca lectured her way through mana classes, volatility, transformations, and then magichemical molecule types, Mirian diligently took notes—again. It all went the same as she remembered it, and none of the other students seemed at all like they had seen war come to Torrviol Academy. The exam was nearly a month ago from her perspective, so she needed the review as much as ever. She thought to her score. She'd gotten a C, and she thought she knew why. Her study session with Nicolus had been nice, but five of the questions were about glycomyriates, and she'd forgotten how to diagram at least four of them. Then, she had written a bunch of eximontar-shit about syncronated transformations hoping to get partial credit. Well, she knew exactly what to study, didn't she? The realization made her feel a pang of guilt. Was it cheating if the God Yiaverunan showed you a vision of the future, or sent you back in time, or whatever the hell had happened?

Mirian suppressed the emotion. There was no sense feeling bad about something she couldn't control. And 'saving you all from a horrific death' ought to be a reasonable recompense. It was a good thing she'd heard all of today's review before. She could hardly focus. She kept thinking of what had happened. She still couldn't wrap her mind around it.

Before getting Myrvite Ecology, Mirian stopped by the maintenance office. She could be late to class, as long as she made it before the end of class. The cloaked figure would be back. She wasn't sure what to do about that, but damned if she wouldn't do something.

"Hello," she said to the man at the maintenance desk. "There's a leak in my dorm. One of the water heaters got hit, and if it's not stopped it'll cause flooding and damage in three rooms."

The man looked up at her. "You need to submit a formal request to the Office of Student Housing," he said.

This had happened last quarter, too. "Funny, because they told me to go straight to you because it was an 'expedited request.' You know how water damage works, right? The sooner its fixed, the less hassle."

The man gave such a long and dramatic sigh it was like his soul was leaving his body. "We're busy," he said, after he was done.

"You can't send a single person with repair metal and a sheet of copper? Even a temporary fix would go a long way."

He gestured to the back of the office, which was full of empty desks and vacant spaces. "Do you see anyone else? It's just me, at the front desk. Everyone else is busy." There was a great deal of frustration in his tone. Her mind went back to Valen, saying don't pay attention to what people say, pay attention to how they say it. Or something like that. Come to think of it, she'd say that later today. Something was going on.

"Can I ask… what it is? The thing that's going on?"

He rolled his eyes. "Sure."

Mirian hesitated. "Uh, what's going on?"

"I can't tell you."

"Why?"

"Because I was told not to tell people. Especially students. Now if you don't mind, I have a lot of paperwork…"

Mirian decided to take a chance. Telling the guards was obviously going to backfire, because they either didn't care or were in on whatever was going on. But maybe an annoyed bureaucrat was the perfect person to tell. "Does this have anything to do with the weird guy I saw jumping onto the roof of the Alchemistry building? The cloaked guy who did not look like a student at all?"

The man opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and then raised a finger, then put his finger back down. Finally, he said, "When… was this?"

"Just before six o'clock class. He dropped this. I told a guard about it, but he just shrugged." She brought out the water-damaged scroll.

The man's eyes went wide. "May I see that?"

Mirian set her jaw. "Only if you give me three small plywood squares, some nails, and a copper pipe so I can put in a temporary fix. The leak is right above my bed. And no one is allowed to be mad at me about it if I accidentally put a nail through something important."

"Deal," he said.

Another realization struck Mirian. She already knew when and where the next break-in would be. "Also… the guy on the roof. I heard him talking, I don't know to who. He said something about being at the myrvite kennels at 9:40. Which, actually, I'm late for class there, was creepy as hell to hear some guy wanted to break in to the same building I was going to. And really weird that the guard in the plaza didn't care." Technically, she hadn't told the guard this time, and she wasn't going to. No way that ended well for her. She was pretty sure the guy on the roof hadn't gotten a good look at her, but the more times she interacted with these people, the more likely something bad might happen. She'd died once, and it was awful—she wasn't looking to repeat the experience.

The man looked at her carefully. Not with disbelief, she hoped. Finally, he said, "Our leading hypothesis was this was a fraternity prank gone off the rails."

Oh shit, Mirian thought. Maintenance was too busy to fix the leak because they were too busy fixing… stuff. Stuff all over the Academy, she guessed. And not just broken locks. "How many… uh… things…?"

"Dozens," the man admitted. "And all over the place, too. The Torrviol Guard is looking in to the break-ins, but they haven't turned anything up. Look, don't go spreading that around, I've told you too much as is. Here, the least I can do is get you what you need to do a patch job." He left the desk, and returned a bit later with a linen satchel that clanked about as it moved. "Oh, and please make sure to use the lever by the water heater to disable flow before you replace any pipes. There's a scroll in that bag with the spell you need for the weld."

"Thanks," she said. "And good luck with… all the stuff."

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