The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Some recent law had made the Great Library remove all the modern maps of ‘secure buildings’ like Parliament and the Grand Sanctum, but Mirian used the trick she’d learned in Torrviol of scouring old, disorganized shelves for outdated editions. Sure enough, no one had bothered pulling every book in the basement stacks, and she was able to find a very boring treatise on historic architecture that had maps to go along with it. The Akanan Embassy was too new to get this treatment, but the Grand Sanctum was older than even the Second Prophet, so there was a lot written about it.

In a violation of one of her deeply held ethical beliefs, Mirian simply tore the pages she needed out of the book and folded them up in her pocket. She winced as she did it, but it was so much more efficient, and then there would be no risk the librarian would realize the mistake and refuse to lend the book out.

She next found an onerous looking tome on the Fourth Prophet that Arenthia had mentioned, but she hadn’t been able to locate up in Cairnmouth. It was written in archaic Cuelsin, which made it a pain to read or even skim. She ended up borrowing it just so she could spread the misery of deciphering it out over the course of a few more days.

Mirian next spent some time eating lunch across the river from the Grand Sanctum, using an eagle eye spell to watch people come and go. There was robust security outside the entrance, but it also had hundreds of people going and leaving every hour, including whole gaggles of pilgrims and faithful. There was a daily sermon, too. Getting in would be easy.

It was sneaking into the secure areas in back that would be significantly harder.

She went to a tailor’s shop.

“My brother just joined the Order as an acolyte,” she said. “I wanted to get him another set of robes to wear. How long would that take to make?”

“How sweet,” the woman who ran the shop said, paging through her orders.

“Well, and that way he can wash them more regularly.” Mirian cleared her throat. “You know.”

The woman snorted, stifling a laugh. “Looks like it’ll take about two days. Do you have his measurements?”

“We’re identical twins,” she said, then held still as the woman measured her. She thanked her, then left.

She spent the rest of that day and the next analyzing the wards around the Grand Sanctum. It was tedious, but at least this part of the plan she’d only have to do once. Then, she went to one of the daily sermons, just so she could get a better sense of the layout. There was a big difference between looking at a blueprint and being in a place.

The huge cave the Grand Sanctum was built into had been shaped by thousands of years of devout hands. Stalactites and stalagmites had been carved into beautiful totems paying tribute to the Saints, while the walls of the cave had been carefully chiseled and sculpted into reliefs of the Elder Gods creating Enteria, and then fighting for its preservation.

Walking into it was awe inspiring. The walls of the cave in the main sanctum were some 200 feet tall, and so the reliefs of the Gods hiding among the carved stalactites made it seem like she was being watched by giants as she entered, especially because the flickering torchlight that illuminated the cavern cast moving shadows on them.

Here, Eintocarst led a group of monstrous beasts forward holding his blazing lantern. There, Shiamagoth held his arms in front of a group of cowering humans, shielding them from a colossal creature. Even Carkavakom was depicted, razing an entire city to the ground. Mirian had always hated depictions of that God. His cloak of skulls and faces locked in endless screams had disturbed her as a child, going even beyond the usual disturbing imagery that the Elder Gods were shown with. But, it was appropriate enough for a deity associated with law and fear.

Of course, it was the Ominian whose statue stood tall behind the altar, impaled by a dozen blades, but unbroken. Upon his head was the crown of laurels, carved in malachite. Interspersed in the stone laurels were torches that burned green, which made the Ominian’s head glow with an eldritch looking halo. Professor Seneca probably knew what sort of chemistry trick they were using to get that result.

Mirian took her seat on one of the benches as the crowds filtered in. The benches were also carved directly out of the cave’s limestone, polished by a thousand years of use.

She let her eyes wander around the room, ignoring the people around her. Two Luminate Guards dressed in ceremonial armor stood by the entrance, and another two by the door behind the altar. If her maps were correct, that back passage led to the Eight Shrines that pilgrims visited—and also to the holy vaults.

Around the cavern, there were openings at different heights. Once, they had been connecting caves, but they had long since turned into balconies and halls. A few of those caves opened up by the floor, where they led to the living quarters and prayer rooms of the Luminates who lived in the Grand Sanctum. That network of tunnels and rooms was complicated, as it was in three interconnecting layers, and since the construction had followed the pattern of the cave network, the passages constantly switched among the levels. Navigating that was possibly more annoying than even the Torrviol Underground.

And yet, the maps seemed to indicate that it was possible to get to the vault from those rooms as well, and it would be easier.

Mirian had torn out two divination spells from her book so she could keep them in her coat. She started with her focus though. As the sermon began, her gaze unfocused as she meditated, letting her soul-sense cast out into the room.

There were indeed runes laid about throughout the room. They were on doorways, at the base of the statues, and in the altar. They were embedded in the floor, and hanging from the artistically carved stalactites. Their signal felt… weak, though. It seemed to her they’d been poorly maintained, like how an uncharged ward would leak power away until it became inert.

Mirian risked channeling the divination spell detect nyelu resonance. She’d chosen it because anti-divination wards usually targeted key detection spells that were looking for a different subset of glyphs. She already knew the Ducastil alarms and wards by the entrance of the Sanctum wouldn’t pick it up. She let a soft trickle of mana flow into the glyphs of the paper. The pulse went out.

Nyelu glyphs were a mainstay static glyph, used to change the functions of flux glyphs. It was used in a large number of spells and wards. The pages that contained her own came back as positive immediately. In the rest of the room, she could begin to sense that there were nyelu glyphs behind her at the front entrance, which she already knew, but she also detected them at each of the doors.

Just the doors? she thought.

The bishop spoke passionately as she continued to survey the room. “…many say, why worship Carkavakom? Are not destruction and fear things to be hated, to be avoided? Here, the Fourth Prophet’s words help us clarify our interpretation of the worship of such a God. He writes, ‘I have seen Carkavakom, and I have seen his jawless Unmoored. In their speechless voice, they spoke to me, and thus, I understood Carkavakom’s reason. A law must be enforced, or it is meaningless. Is it not law that holds our society together? What must be done to those who break it with impunity?’”

Mirian continued to scan the room, this time with her second divination spell, targeting a different static glyph. The feedback she got seemed to indicate the same areas. That was to be expected; the Luminates weren’t supposed to use magic at all, but she already knew from the Temple of the Four that they would for security.

The bishop was still talking. “‘…just as the guard enforces the law of the King, the Elder Gods must have one who binds all. Even the Prophets are bound by this higher law. No exception can be made. Thus I say, I am bound….’ He goes on, but the point is made. How can we love the whip or the cudgel, the jail or the shackle? And yet, is it not what truly binds society together? This is a difficult perspective to grasp, but we must reflect…”

The security was lax, though. There seemed to be no wards on the balconies at all. And the long shadows and flickering light of the room? It was perfect. The camouflage spell she’d made for flying at night had worked better than she’d expected. If she could use the same basic spell formula, but have the projection taking in information from all sides instead of just up…

Mirian’s thoughts drifted away from the bishop’s sermon and towards spell design. She started visualizing glyph sequences.

***

Mirian kept to her room the next day. Scribing such a complex spell would take two, possibly three whole pages, which meant consuming a considerable amount of expensive magical inks.

Her first attempt at the spell she was calling total camouflage was a disaster. She tried to get light projection information from six different directions, which seemed to work. When she tried to re-project that light, the light information clashed at the edges of the six boundaries, creating bright white lines that surrounded her like frozen lightning. It was a neat effect, but the opposite of hiding.

Her next attempt tried to mitigate this by defining the projection boundaries more precisely, but she quickly realized something like that would require hundreds of distinct coordinates, and the spell would end up being some twenty pages. Casting such a complex spell was a non-starter. A spell-engine might manage such complexity, but carrying around a spell engine of the size she’d need would be just as unwieldy.

After four more attempts, she ended up ditching the camouflage idea entirely, to be worked on another time. By then, she’d emptied several ink bottles, so went off to grab dinner (having skipped lunch) and resupplied at a different magic shop. No need for anyone to get suspicious about the amount of ink she was buying. As always, she kept an eye out for irregularities, people following her, or abnormal soul modifications. So far, her paranoia had been unnecessary, but since making a mistake might mean ending up incapacitated for all future loops, she was more than willing to be overly cautious.

The next day, after several iterations, she landed on using an elongated oval (which was easy to map the coordinates of, taking only two glyphs for defining the dimensions and center point) as the outer boundary of a light absorption spell that terminated around the outer layer of her body (which used the glyphs that let an illusion adhere to someone’s form). Since the light absorption was gradual, it wouldn’t stand out so much, especially in the dark and inconsistent light of the sanctum. It was a pity the application was so limited, but it would accomplish what she needed it to. She decided to call the spell hide in shadows.

Mirian arrived at the Grand Sanctum the next day, dressed in the simple clothes of a pilgrim. Beneath those clothes, though, was the robe she’d had the tailor make, and she’d hidden a wand and several spell sheets beneath her clothes, tied to her arms and legs by soft cord.

They waited outside the entrance until most of the pilgrims scheduled for their visit showed up, then a priest and a Luminate Guard escorted them to the shrines.

The shrines were beyond resplendent. Each one had yet another statue of the Elder God, but the altars and walls were dripping with rare jewels and gold wire. It bothered Mirian. The point of the Luminate Order wasn’t to hoard wealth, but to serve the people and the Gods. What purpose did the gold and gems serve? Beauty could be found in simpler materials.

Still, she said her prayers and went through the rituals at each of the ten shrines. Her questions to the Gods were real. She wished they could just tell her what she needed to do next, and how to stop this all.

After three hours of prayers, the group began making its way to the exit, back through the central hall behind the altar. Mirian moved with the group, checking to see where the priest and the guard escorting them were as she moved.

The guard stopped by the entrance to the hall behind the altar, while the priest continued to lead the group out. Mirian lingered in the back of the group, then stepped out of the central aisle, using one of the carved stalagmites to break line of sight with the guard. She double checked to make sure no one in the group was looking back at her and that no one was watching from the balconies, then cast her hide in shadows spell.

Then, she used the wand of levitation to zip up into the ceiling.

There, among the flickering shadows, she slowly moved sideways. People rarely looked up, and her slow movement combined with the shadow spell meant that she would avoid standing out in the guard’s peripheral vision. As she moved towards one of the higher balconies, she checked to see if the guard or any of the pilgrims were looking her way.

They weren’t.

Mirian landed on the balcony, then listened intently. As she suspected, the balconies weren’t warded like the doors were. After all, they weren’t expecting anyone who could fly.

Hearing no footsteps in the tunnel, she crept forward, then took off her shirt and trousers so the Luminate robe she was wearing underneath her clothes could unfurl. She stuffed the shirt and trousers in a dark nook of the tunnel. If there was one thing that was consistent across all the west Baracuel temples, it was that they loved their temples poorly lit.

Mirian dismissed the hide in shadows spell. Now, she should just look like another acolyte. There were several hundred acolytes serving in the Grand Sanctum at any one time, and Lecne had told her they were constantly having people come and go as the temple reshuffled its people around the country. Hopefully, she would be just another new face in a temple full of new faces.

She headed down the twisting passage to see what she could find.