The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

The next cycle, Mirian saluted Rostal and they began their bout.

Rostal liked to tell her to go all-out, but Mirian knew he didn't really mean it. Otherwise, she would just fly up and hit him with lightning until he gave up. Instead, she started with The Spear That Cuts Water, turning back Rostal's initial attack. As soon as he relented, she switched to The Dance of Dusk Waves and came in with several rapid cuts that demanded answers. That pushed him back across the courtyard and left him with a gash across the arm.

Rostal took the initiative back, using the strength of Last Breath of the Phoenix to try and disarm her when their blades crossed (such a hypocrite, Mirian thought). Then he switched to The Sinister Hand of Shadow, pulling a dagger from his belt and attacking her with both rapier and off-hand in an unrelenting deluge.

Mirian kept her stance as water, flowing across the courtyard, making sure he couldn't pin her in place. Their bladework became incidental to their footwork, and both vied for superior positioning.

"Hmm!" Rostal called. "I don't believe I taught you. Your footwork is sloppy. Your bladework is abominable!"

Mirian grinned. Only a fool listened to taunts during a duel, and anyways, she'd heard that one before. She switched again to the lightning form, uncoiling with a powerful lunge that Rostal only just avoided. It forced him away from the center of the courtyard, though Mirian got a slash from the parrying dagger for her trouble.

They recovered, both sweating in the afternoon sun, then engaged again in a clatter of steel. "You must be getting old, if young girls are giving you such a problem!" she taunted.

Rostal stifled a laugh, then came at her again. "Alright, I'll stop going easy," he said.

He feinted an overhand slash, but used The Dance of Dusk Waves to enhance his speed and threw his parrying dagger at her.

Only Mirian's own use of the stance gave her the reaction time she needed. She deflected the dagger with a burst of raw magic, only to find that Rostal was coming in with the Phoenix's strength. He smashed his blade into hers, once, twice, then a third time. If Mirian had been able to swap to the Lone Pine stance, she might have weathered it, but her rapier went flying from her hand as Rostal smashed it from her numb fingers.

Mirian dodged back.

"Yield?" Rostal asked, raising an eyebrow.

Mirian gave him an evil grin and summoned Eclipse. The bright blade materialized in her hand, and she came at him with the speed of lightning. Rostal's eyes went wide. He backpedaled rapidly under the onslaught, deflecting Mirian's flurry of blows. That put the courtyard wall to his back. Mirian swapped to the stance of stone, putting some real power behind her next swing. Rostal blocked it—

—but his blade snapped in half, and Mirian leveled her rapier at his throat.

Rostal looked at the mythril and adamantium blade. "This is gorgeous," he said. "May I look at it?"

"Sure," Mirian said, and flipped it around to hand to him.

Rostal sighed. "I am getting old. In my youth, I would have had you on the followup after the disarm. Never grow old, Mirian. It's simply a terrible idea. All you get are strange aches and pains, and the hard work you put into your body falls off twice as fast." He glanced up from Eclipse to look at her. "Actually, you have that covered, don't you?"

"I do," Mirian said. "It's at least one of the things I can be thankful for."

Over eight years of loops, and none of it showed on her face. Thirty. I should be thirty years old now, she thought.

Rostal ran his finger across the blade. "A masterpiece. Simply a masterpiece. And the classic Alatishian basket-hilt." He flicked Eclipse around, feeling the weight of it. "Fascinating. I want one."

Mirian laughed. "I did try to see if I could get duplicates. Alas." When Rostal went to hand the sword back, she closed her eyes and let it dematerialize back into her soul.

"I wonder if the old hierophants knew how to do that."

"Doubtful," Mirian said. She was fine showing people Eclipse, but there was no way she was going to even mention the word 'relicarium' to anyone. If there was one thing she didn't want the other time travelers knowing about, it was that. "Say, you mind going on a trip? There's a phenomenon north of Alkazaria that keeps happening. I want to check it out."

Rostal's face stayed passive, but Mirian could tell what he was thinking. She'd already mentioned Ibrahim's presence near there.

"We have a few days before Alkazaria is besieged. Besides, I intend to travel overland on the old northern route to avoid the capital. It's outside the spellwards, but there should be traveler's obelisks I can repair. We can ride eximontar."

Rostal shivered. "I will not be riding one of those."

"No? I can manage feeding mana to both…"

"Absolutely not."

"Camels?"

"Beasts were not meant to be ridden." He paused. "Camels don't like me either. I suspect they can sense…"

Gods, he's afraid of riding, Mirian realized. The great warrior Rostal. "How do you feel about… flying?"

The dervish pondered that, running hand through his peppered hair. "I've… never tried it?"

"Great, we'll try it. I can only do it in bursts, but it'll save us several days of travel. Hmm… if we're not going to take beasts of burden, we're going to need to cram a lot of supplies on our backs. Do you know how to cook desert drake?"

He grinned. "I'll make sure to pack my spices."

With that settled, Mirian went around to various shops, gathering traveler's packs for the two of them and comfortable tents. Rostal packed his traveling cooking set, and Mirian spent the evening scribing most of the utility spells they'd need such as gather water, then made sure her scribing inks were topped off in case the traveler's obelisks were more damaged than usual. She also bought Rostal a replacement rapier.

Mirian assumed her Micael disguise, and offered to do something similar for Rostal.

"No thank you," he said stiffly.

"Alright," she told him. "Let me know if you change your mind. I don't know for sure, but we might encounter Ibrahim's men. I hope not, but it's a possibility."

"I'll talk to them as I am," he said proudly.

Mirian slept in one of his many empty guest rooms. In the morning, they departed for the train station.

***

They only looked a little ridiculous carrying their huge packs onto the train. The journey up to Cairnmouth was quick. As they arrived at the station, Mirian kept her eyes out for Deeps agents or Praetorians, but only saw the usual guards.

While waiting for the train heading east, Mirian picked up a few broadsheets. Word had just reached the city of the colossal defeat of the Baracueli forces a day ago, and of Dawn's Peace's rapid advance towards the second capital.

Interesting. He's been iterating on the initial victory. This time, it's shocking enough that they might even send Hanaran's division.

There were a few towns on the train tracks before Alkazaria. It was possible that if they continued towards Alkazaria, they'd be just in time to arrive and depart before the siege. However, it seemed that Ibrahim had figured out how to seize the trains by the Southern Range intact, and somehow prevent the line from being sabotaged. His initial force, then, had a shorter distance to move from Rambalda to Alkazaria than they did. That, and it was quite possible he had agents and spies moving ahead of his forces.

Mirian didn't want to risk it.

They got off the train at a town small enough Mirian forgot its name by the time they'd left the platform. She was tempted to count houses to see if Arriroba was bigger.

The locals thought they were crazy for setting off on the old trader's route, but they were happy enough to sell them food at inflated prices. Mirian was happy enough to unload her excess silver because all it would do is weigh her down.

She used the Blooming Red Iron form even as they walked. The increased physical endurance would help her cross the passes to Frostland's Gate faster, and was always handy in a fight.

Near evening, Mirian flew them to the next obelisk. Rostal, it turned out, didn't like flying any more than he liked riding. "Every man should be afraid of heights," he said. "God gave the birds wings and humans legs. It's enough for an honest soul," he said to Mirian's light jabs at him.

After he'd settled down and Mirian had repaired the traveler's obelisk, they practiced again, with Mirian maintaining the training form as she went through her lunges, parries, and then the various footwork exercises. That night, she ate most of their packed rations.

It took them three days to make it to a village behind a spellward. By then, the place was in a panic because Dawn's Peace had besieged Alkazaria. The trains on the northern line hadn't been cut yet, but they were afraid they might be.

"Have there been any suspicious travelers coming from down south?" Mirian asked. "Perhaps… Persaman-looking?"

"Just you," one of the villagers said with a suspicious glare.

"Ah, we're about to leave anyways," she told her. "Anything I should know about the northern road?"

"There's no spellwards that way," the woman said.

"Obelisks?"

"Maybe. No one goes there. What's north?"

"A strange reading. We're magical researchers," she said. "There's a competing group. Just hoping we're ahead of them."

Rostal raised an eyebrow at her. He looked less like a magical research than anyone ever. Well, maybe Zayd looked less like one, but it was a close thing.

"Oh? One of our wells has a broken pump. Can you fix it? We have the silver."

"I'll do it for lodgings and a hot meal," Mirian said. "The Academy is funding our expedition generously, so don't worry."

"Which Academy?" she asked.

"Torrviol."

"You don't have much of a western accent."

"Originally I'm from a village east of here."

"Does he talk much?" the woman asked, gesturing at Rostal.

Mirian shrugged. "When he wants to. Mostly he's into books," she said.

The village pump ended up being an easy fix. It was simple glyph degradation. If someone had been by to charge the glyphs on the spell engine, or the engine was using a Sudel transformation sequence to replenish its own glyphs with the excess mana, it would have been an easier fix, but rescribing the glyphs was no problem, and it made the villagers happy enough.

They set out the next morning with full bellies and full waterskins.

Two days later, they found a traveler's obelisk. Every glyph on it was dead, and it was weathered enough that Mirian could only think the damn thing hadn't been used since before the Unification War. She had initially planned to use one farther north, but farther north there might be nothing left at all.

"We will head back, then?" Rostal asked.

"No. I want to repair this and take it with us. I want to test something."

"Take it… with us? The stone monolith? I couldn't carry a thing like that even in my youth. Maybe with the fire form, if I wanted to hurt myself badly."

"It's not that big. One ton, maybe? Two tons at most."

Rostal gave her a look.

"Okay, maybe I could do it, but not for as long as I'd need to. We'll buy a cart from the village. I can reinforce it with shape wood if I need to.

"And I suppose you want to use your levitation again."

Mirian grinned at him.

It took another two days to head back, then three to return with the cart. After that, Mirian released her disguise bindings, again relieved to be back in her own body. Then, it was a matter of digging up the obelisk. She used shape earth to remove the sandy soil by the base. Then with the cart prepared, she took the form of Blooming Iron as she cast her lift object spell.

Mirian gasped as she cast. Her aura flared and spun, the mana becoming far more difficult to control, but she steeled herself and kept her focus, and kept pouring mana into the glyphs in her spellbook. With a tremble, the obelisk lifted from the ground and into the air. Carefully, she turned it sideways and set it down. The cart groaned.

She exhaled, then sat down hard on the sandy ground.

"You okay?" Rostal asked.

"Fine. I can use Blooming Iron when I cast," she told him.

The dervish looked at her and frowned. "I don't even know enough to tell you if that's a bad idea. But it feels like a bad idea."

"It makes it a lot harder, that's for sure. Give me a moment, then I can start pulling the cart along."

For the next four days, Mirian used her magic to drag the cart through the scrublands to where the hills began and the climate shifted to something halfway between a taiga and highland desert. Their progress was glacial. She constantly had to rest, and eventually Mirian risked drinking her third mana elixir of the week just so she could rest less. It seemed to her that her work in soul magic should allow her to drink more mana elixirs without a problem, though it was something she intended to test carefully.

As they traveled, she killed two boreal drakes and a scimitar lion. The two-headed vultures were happy to circle above them until Rostal was done cutting them steaks, then they would gleefully swarm the carcass. Each night, Mirian charged the traveler's obelisk.

By then, the roads had entirely disappeared. What little paths had survived the years had been washed away or overgrown. At least out of the scrublands, water became less scarce again, and Mirian could stop using gather water each night and instead just use cleanse water, a much more efficient spell. Fortunately, the vegetation was sparse enough there was always at least some path they could take, though their progress slowed to a crawl. Her aura had never been more robust, but she had also never dragged around a cart with a two-ton rock on it for several days.

Finally, by the 22nd of Solem, they made it to their destination. Mirian checked, then rechecked her maps. They were fully free of human civilization. Mirian had expected to find a lot more myrvites. There were plenty, but nothing like in the numbers she'd read about in the old stories. Maybe they exaggerated, she thought. After all, a mercenary group that let their caravan get ransacked by a hungry manticore might want to keep its reputation intact. Or maybe the merchants added the drama to make sure the insurance paid out. Did they have insurance back then? she wondered idly.

Either way, while the area was wild, with no human civilization in sight, it lacked the primal touch she'd been expecting.

That night, she stayed up in the light of the full moon. "There," she said to Rostal. "That's strange. The mushroom trees are glowing. I knew they drew a bit of mana from the ground, but I've never seen them glow."

Rostal shrugged. "Perhaps you should have brought an actual magical researcher with you."

Mirian pondered that. "I wonder if I could convince Viridian to take a trip with me. He would certainly know something about it."

The next day, she moved the obelisk up to the crest of a hill where they had a bit of shade from some twisted looking conifers and a much better view of the surrounding area. When it was clear, she could just make out what she thought were the Endelice mountains, though it also could have been distant clouds. Hunting myrvites was easy when she could levitate, see their souls glowing with magic, then instantly kill them with a single spell. Rostal added his combination of spices and vegetables to the drake meat they cut. Stewed for several hours, it was an exquisite dish.

In the meantime, they trained.

Rostal put her through the exercises again and again, but eventually, he told her, "You are pushing me too hard. Relax a little. Your body and soul need time to recover and internalize their changes."

The old dervish seemed to enjoy the scenery. For him, there was an exotic quality to it. He especially liked the birds.

Mirian got a little more information about Ibrahim out of him.

"He was always going to be a revolutionary," Rostal said about the southern time traveler. "He was obsessed with tracing who was responsible for the deaths in his family. He needed justice like a man needs air."

"Did he find the killers?"

"Hmm. In a sense. There was a militia group that did it. Persaman through and through. But he wanted to know why they did it. So he found who was paying them, and it was a Baracueli mining company. A private one. But that wasn't good enough, so he wanted to find out who funded them. Turns out, most of the old noble families. The Palamas first, of course, but also the Bardas, the Allards, and the Sacristars. And, many of the members of Parliament. He holds them responsible."

Mirian considered that. It made sense. She didn't blame the Akanan soldiers as much as she did the generals, and worse than them were the conspirators. How much difference was there between actively plotting a war and just letting one that served your interests… happen? "Do you agree?"

"I dislike following the chain of responsibility. It feels to me like it absolves the individuals. A dozen people could have changed their actions and his cousins and aunt and mother and brother would still be alive, but they didn't. But the bigger problem is that you cannot carry fire in your heart forever. In the end, it will burn you to ash, and the legions of those who have not faced justice will still be endless. I just wanted peace."

Her thoughts drifted. How much did the time loop change the equation? I could make so many face justice for what they've done. For what they will do. But I also might be able to change it. What punishment would General Cearsia deserve if I could manipulate her to fight by my side? Or are our beliefs so different I could never change her?

There were no easy answers. If I could save everyone in Torrviol, but it meant she never accounted for her crimes… would it be worth it? Of course, that was the kind of hypothetical she'd heard in philosophy class. The real world was never so simple. But unlike them, I can know the outcomes of my choices, then go back and make sure I make the right ones.

And, for all that Ibrahim hated Baracuel, and for all that his hate was justified, who had actually suffered? The soldiers and the civilians along the border. The farmers along the Ibaihan River. The people of Alkazaria.

That night, she didn't sleep, but it wasn't the distant calls of the nightmelders or the hissing hoots of the stygala owls. She was simply thinking, until at some point she faded into dreams.

The Ominian was there to greet her again. Together, they walked across the land in silence.

***

On the 28th of Solem, Mirian woke to the ground trembling. Earthquake? she thought, sitting up from her bedroll. Is that what causes the anomaly?

Then her arcane sense started tingling. Then it started growing in intensity.

Adrenaline shocked her out of her grogginess. She threw on her jacket and boots and scrambled outside while Rostal was muttering something as he looked for his shoes.

She looked out from the cliffside. There was a patch of mushroom trees and a bare area with a bunch of rocks.

No, that wasn't right. There had been a patch of glowing mushroom trees, but they'd been churned up and knocked over. She caught the sight of black carapace and something moving, but something wasn't right. It was moving through the solid rock like the rock was liquid, only the stone was still solid.

There were some myrvites who could move briefly through the fourth spatial dimension, but this one—

Nothing can be that big! she thought.

Five more trees tipped over and crashed as more of the black-shelled creature emerged from the ground. Rostal stood next to her and gaped. "Might of God, what…?"

Mirian's arcane sense was still going off. It was like Luspire was casting a fireball right next to her, only she was looking at this beast from nearly a kilometer away. There was a grinding sound, and the earth shook again. Arcane geysers erupted around the colossal myrvite as it climbed out of the ground.

The beast had eight elephantine legs, but was covered in a huge shell that swirled with black and white like dark marble. The shell was covered in rows of spines that now swayed as the creature stretched out. It let out a tremendous roar, and Mirian had to cover her ears. It wasn't just a roar, though. She felt it scrape away pieces of her auric mana with its pressure, and it felt like her arcane sense was burning. Mirian screamed herself as she dropped to her knees, hands still pressed against her ears.

Mercifully, the roar ended, echoing across the cliffs and hills like thunder. Then, the beast turned to face them.

She could see rows of predatory eyes glowing red under the shadows of its dark shell, and see two sets of pincers glinting in the light. The front of the shell was raised up like a hump, and from the front of its body that wasn't sheltered by the thick plates, dozens of thin tentacles covered in more razor-like spines flailed about. One grabbed a nearby tree. It didn't eat it. Instead, the tree began to wither.

"Burning hellfire," Rostal whispered. "What in the hells is that?"

Mirian had no answer. The thing was the size of a leviathan, except it was on the ground.

And it was moving towards them.

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