The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Mirian hurled the book across the room and hit it with a fire beam spell. "Drivel!" she snapped at it as it turned to ash.

Gabriel, who was sitting at another table in the Mahatan Palace Archive, raised an eyebrow at her. "I thought you were the type to like books." He was eating a red vegetable curry and had gotten the sauce on every book he'd touched so far.

"It'll be back next cycle," she said. "If that author didn't want his book incinerated, he shouldn't have copied unnamed sources from the 3rd millennium and then pretended he'd done the archeology. Maybe I will have them incinerated in whatever the last loop is. An absolute waste of the time of anyone reading it."

Gabriel licked the curry off his fingers, one by one, then turned another page in his book, then another, skimming it like he did. "This is why you need to spend more time relaxing."

This was their third time visiting Mahatan together. The 200th loop had passed without much comment, though Gabriel had insisted that they drink a type of foul rice alcohol imported from Zhighua. Mirian preferred wine if she had to drink, but what she really preferred was not to drink at all. For two and a half months now, they'd been scouring the archives for any sign of the gate. They'd found references to a Gate of Fire in a place that sounded like the city, but the archeology revealed little she didn't already know about Mahatan. It had been abandoned for some thousand years at least, then the ruins were reoccupied. No one had anything to say about a colossal Elder mechanism or any deep secrets buried beneath it.

The most prolific writers had been the scholars of the Persaman Triarchy. The libraries here had thousands of volumes, ranging from important treatises to the most mundane things imaginable. At first, Mirian had thought of it as a researcher's paradise. Then, she'd begun to think of it as a researcher's hell. There was, she was learning, such a thing as too much information. Petty scholars seeking to further their careers had either copied or rewritten the same texts hundreds of times. Instead of revealing truth, they had obfuscated it.

Mirian leaned back in her chair. "So what soul magic do you know?" she asked.

"Mirian, my dear, you really need to learn how to make normal conversation."

"I don't feel that would serve me well. We are deviations from the normal, so far from an ordinary life that we will never be understood. I found the writings of an old Prophet, you know. A letter, hidden in the pages of a book, long forgotten. They too cried out to be understood. But what task did they have? And did they fail, or succeed?"

"Exactly what I'm talking about," Gabriel said, because he seemed to like being abrasive. Then, more diplomatically, he said, "You're right, to some degree. But wrong to worry. What's done is done. Whether or not the past Prophets failed or succeeded is irrelevant, in the same way that we don't have to care if past kings or generals failed at whatever the hells they were trying to do. The only path forward to us is our actions in this moment. There's no sense endlessly mourning what could have been."

Mirian took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "But what could have been… the more I read these histories, the more I learn, the more I think human existence is a long series of tragedies. So much death and suffering. And after we've experienced so much of it, will we ever want to return to it? Or will the Ominian's great Mausoleum attract us, where we can rest in a place of silence, away from it all."

"Listen, I know some great people you can fuck. You'll forget all about this stuff, at least for a few minutes. It's great for stress relief."

"I know some too. That's not the issue. The issue is that nothing I have with them will ever be shared. That's not how people were meant to live. To be alone is to live an existence antithetical to being human." And if you want a person to fall in love with you, it will never be, no matter how much time you spend with them, she thought. Because they forget.

"There's no right way to be human. You're alive each day. You live. That's how you stay human. That's all."

There was wisdom in that, she thought, but it wasn't what she felt. Perhaps the possibility of understanding that Liuan and Gabriel offered was a worse torment than all the non-Prophets. She expected nothing from the normal people. They were blameless; practically automatons in that they were helpless to change their own fate. But the other Prophets—they should be able to understand her. She should be able to trust them.

But she couldn't bring herself to open up. She was scared. A curse like the one on Jherica could still incapacitate her. And there was too much at stake.

"You were RID, weren't you?" she blurted out.

Gabriel looked at her, then closed the book he'd been paging through. He sighed. "Yes. Former. But some parts of it never leave you."

"So there really is no breaking the mind-curses that the RID and Deeps put on people?"

He grunted in acknowledgment.

"Are you on good terms with Westerun?"

"No," he said. "You tried talking to him? He revels in having secrets. He uses them to have power over people, and then he strings them along forever. Don't waste your time."

So he has been to Akana. "I didn't. Not much, at least. So what is Akana Praediar trying to do here?"

"The same thing every other great power has tried to do since time immemorial. Dominate as much as they can. You want my sad little tale? I grew up in Akana as a kid. Then my mother was deployed here. I liked Urubandar, but I hated how backward it was. When I grew up, I thought Akana would bring all their ideals about government and progress here. I thought we could topple all the corrupt bandits that wear the amulets of station here, consign them to ash, and then build a new Persama. The Akanan bluebloods that came here never could see me as like them. See, my mother was Akanan, but my father was Persaman. They would never treat me as an equal. I could stomach that, though. Takes a lot to bother me. Then, I watched as Akana lifted up a degenerate bloodless cur of a man named Lord Saiyal. I watched as all the obedient dogs that follow him around licked at his feet, and watched as everything I worked for turned out to be for the same Persama I knew, the one that was full of warlords and merchant princes lording over a land of misery. So I quit. Only, Empires don't like it when you say no to them. But the joke was on them, because the Ominian chose me."

"You helped hunt down Dawn's Peace, then?" Mirian inferred.

Gabriel gave another grunt of acknowledgment. "Now we're done with the topic. Though if you'd like to share your spells and soul magic prowess, we can trade. But you needn't make excuses as to why you won't. I can see you don't trust me still. Doesn't bother me. I wouldn't trust me either. Now if we're going to work, let's get back to work."

Mirian nodded. They got back to work.

***

On the 203rd loop, they started investigating the dunes around Mahatan. On the 204th, Mirian began to worry. She'd paid close attention to when Ibrahim had changed his tactics back when she was preparing for Apophagorga, and she began to worry that perhaps he was noticing that she'd changed her tactics.

"Relax," Gabriel told her when she brought it up. "He's not single-minded, but he's also too busy."

Gradually, their circle of divination had expanded outward, spiraling away from Mahatan. Again, there were plenty of tombs and caves, but there was no sign of the Gate at all.

On the 205th loop, their distance from Mahatan eventually brought them into contact with bandits.

"They must have contacts in the city. Perhaps part of a smuggling operation," Gabriel said as the bandits approached on foot. A large dune shielded them from view of the city, while a shallow cave system had hidden the bandits until they were practically on top of them.

"Maybe there's a clue in that cave they just came out of," Mirian said.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. "We're not going to flee?"

"No. We can try talking to them first, though. You're the better manipulator, right? You go first."

The other Prophet shrugged. "Sure. The signal word for if it's time to attack, though, will be 'marauder.'"

Mirian nodded.

There were twelve bandits. Nine of them had rifles, two wands, and the last a spellbook. The man with the spellbook was wearing two gold bracers, the kind that held wealth well but didn't stop blades. Mirian guessed he was the leader. The bandits didn't have their rifles raised, but they were loaded, glyphs glittering.

She could kill them all easily, but it seemed that Gabriel couldn't. This was a good opportunity to see what he was capable of.

Or maybe he wanted to hide his own capabilities too.

Gabriel strode forward. "Gentleman! I was just here trying to deliver this silver I found to its rightful owner," he said, waving his purse around. He tossed it towards one of the bandits, who opened it up to count.

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The leader could easily see Gabriel's wand and Mirian's spellbook. It was disguised so it looked like the sort of ordinary spellbook a working mage might have, but it was still obviously a spellbook. Unfortunately, those were highly valuable.

The man who'd counted the coins said something to the bandit mage, who announced loudly, "You were right to return the money, my friend, but unfortunately, there's a new fee in place for passing this area. I'm afraid one good deed isn't enough to waive it."

"Do you have anything?" Gabriel asked in a low voice.

"It's back at the inn."

In a low voice he said, "What're the chances they're using spellpiercer ammo?" Louder, he said, "Apologies, I can always return with the fee, but our tools of trade are all we have on us. Some defensive spells too, of course. There's rumors of bandits in this area, though we haven't seen any yet."

The bandit mage shook his head. "You're mistaken, friend. We patrol these areas and keep them clear of ruffians." Behind him, one of the sorcerers grinned.

"Are you sure? One of my friends saw a band of marauders just over the—"

Mirian's spellbook was open and the magnetic shield was up faster than the bandits could raise their rifles. Gunfire cracked out, but she froze the bullets in the magnetic shell. Gabriel pulled his searing fire wand and sent out a column of flames at the sorcerers, then started running for the cover of a mound of sand. He'd drawn his force shield wand with his other hand and was casting.

Stupid, Mirian thought. He was leaving the cover of her shield. Bullets slipped through force shields all the time.

The sorcerer had raised a fire shield—it was possible one of them had done some brief divination to figure out what glyphs Gabriel's wands had—so while the searing fire had burned him, it hadn't done enough to incapacitate him. Mirian added a force shield to her own defense, then used force blades to decapitate the mage. There was a lot of shouting. Gabriel cast another searing fire as he dove for cover, and a force missile spell exploded on his shield. Several of the bandits were taking cover too. One of the sorcerers had layered three defensive shields over himself, but he'd neglected lightning protections. She cast a chain lightning spell, powerful enough to pierce his force shield. The chained bolt shocked the one who was harassing Gabriel with force missiles and one of the riflemen.

The only threat left, then, was the last sorcerer. He sent a fireball right at Mirian, which detonated on her force shield and blasted her stumbling back. She felt the sear of the heat on her skin, and swapped from Dusk Waves to Lone Pine, then cast a proper heat shield so it wouldn't happen again. As she held the three shields, she cycled soul energy from her spellbook's reservoir to heal the burns.

Several of the gunmen fired another volley at Mirian, then seemed to realize it wasn't a fluke that the first volley hadn't hit her. Meanwhile, Gabriel was firing searing beams madly with his wand, holding it up from behind the mound of sand he was hiding behind so he didn't have to break cover. His accuracy was decent, and she estimated he was putting out a spellpower of around 75 myr consistently. Well above the average, but far from an archmage. A respectable amount of power to bring to a fight; he could easily kill anyone who was unshielded, and weaker combatants would find their defensive spells weren't as effective.

Another fireball hit her shield, though this time she had the heat shield so it did little. Mirian began decapitating the bandits one by one with force blades. Both sorcerers attempted to attack her at once, but the only attack spells they had were force and fire based, and they simply couldn't penetrate her shield.

"Do you want any prisoners?" she called to Gabriel.

"What!? No!" he shouted back.

It was then that the remaining bandits started to run. Gabriel had killed at least three of the riflemen, and Mirian calmly killed the last of them.

She looked at Gabriel, who was breathing hard. It reminded her of how she'd fought in the end of the second year, when she was raiding the Akanan airships. He was a veteran of combat, then, but he hadn't grown numb to it.

"Gods' blood," Gabriel swore. "You're a right monster, aren't you? I thought for sure you'd have a few new holes in you when you just decided to stand there. But no. How many spells were you holding simultaneously? Three?"

"Four," she admitted, and didn't mention she could surpass that. "I'm surprised you haven't grown numb to the fighting."

"If I'm in a fight, it means I fucked up," he said. "I try to avoid it."

"When you attempted the Labyrinth, did you do it alone?"

"Oh, could we not do an interrogation right this moment? There could be more of them."

Mirian cast detect human. The feces of the bandits were detectable in a nearby cave. Detect life, enhanced for distance, showed a few desert critters, but nothing human sized. "There aren't."

Gabriel sighed loudly. "Shall we go investigate their cave? Maybe it leads to this gate of yours."

"Probably not." They descended into the cave anyways.

The cave smelled absolutely rank. It was a mixture of body odor, excrement, and spoiled food, all baked into something truly foul by the high temperatures. The cave entrance seemed to be normally camouflaged by dozens of stretched pieces of cloth that were then covered in sand, though the bandits had left the cloth all rolled back and the entrance open when they'd come to rob them. The inside of the caves were a bit cooler. Interestingly, passages looked more like halls with how rectangular they were. The passages were large enough the bandits had used them for storage, but there was still plenty of room for people to walk. There were also regular rooms.

There were no stalactites, and the rock wasn't igneous so it wasn't a lava tube.

As they explored, Mirian began to wonder. Is Professor Holvatti the next person I'll need to bring down here? "This isn't a natural cave formation. But I can't imagine a small group of arcanists managed to carve this all out."

They went into a room, and Gabriel started sorting through the possessions, tossing most of them aside. Then he looked at the walls again. "I have a theory. Labyrinthine geography."

Mirian thought about that. It was intriguing. It also might explain a lot. "Tell me more," she said.

"The Labyrinth is always moving, readjusting, changing. We know it interacts with the surface, rarely, but often enough we can send explorers down there. Rarely does a passage down vanish. But what would it look like if it did?" The other Prophet gestured at the walls. "Rectangular passages and rooms. Large enough a Labyrinth passage could fit in them, with room for the wall." He paced off the distance. "It's not precise, but erosion and human activity would do the rest. Did your classes teach you about feedback cycles?"

Mirian had to think. "Yes, Viridian. I think he was talking about how the loss of vilelily in a swamp had led to three other populations being wiped out. The basic idea is that a system's output becomes a new input, which can either taper off or intensify. It's the sort of thing you generally avoid in artificing."

"I think the Labyrinth has a purpose. I did quite a bit of research. The hydrology of Persama has remained remarkably consistent over thousands of years. Shouldn't erosion within the underground rivers feeding Mahatan's oasis have caused collapses in the ground above? But it hasn't. I know from the loop that the Labyrinth's rearrangement isn't random. So perhaps it has a purpose regulating feedback cycles. Just a theory."

Mirian considered Torrviol Lake. Torrviol's elevation put it well above the lake, but the ruins and caves beneath the town were deep enough to go well below the water level. Then why weren't they flooded? But if the Labyrinth was there, beneath it… how much water could the Labyrinth hold? Would it even allow itself to be flooded? These were the same passages that somehow knew to evade a mining tunnel that sought to touch it.

She thought back to the first expedition down she'd been on with Beatrice. They'd activated a spell engine to block off a passage. And the Labyrinth had reacted with a greater horror. Another time, her arcanometer had detected elevated mana moving through it. That was after the northern eruption that sent the myrvites stampeding through Frostland's Gate. What would it look like if those mana levels continued to elevate, say, the further down one went? At what point would enough mana be flowing through the system to be considered a leyline?

"We need to understand the Labyrinth better," she mused. If that line of thought was right, the only way to access the leylines would be to get deep enough. But the Labyrinth reacts to us. What if there was a way to control it based on that? She still didn't know what some of the tools in the Frostland's Vault did. "Have you found any Vaults?" she asked.

Gabriel shrugged. "One," he said.

That was impressive. He'd done it with only around 75 myr, too, and without a sword like Eclipse. Maybe the challenges of the Vault were considerably different. "Did you make it to the end?"

"I did."

"Huh. And what did you find?"

"A bunch of strange things with strange properties. One of them was good for shaping any non-mana imbued metal. It couldn't touch orichalcum, but it could reshape hardened steel like it was a blade of grass. Another changed colors based on what glyphs it was near. One could absorb electricity—seems like it ate the damn stuff. Electricity went in, but I never detected a change in temperature. Most of the stuff, I couldn't make heads or tails of, like that cube full of multicolored liquid."

"Interesting," Mirian said, trying to keep her heart steady and her tone even. He found relicarium, she realized. "I found similar tools in a Vault. I still don't understand what most of them do, but the one that could grow crystals might be valuable for making perfect conduits. You'll have to show me how to get to that Vault sometime. Once we open the Mahatan Gate, we can move professors and experts from across the world. Together, someone will uncover something." And keep you far from the Luminate priests who know what relicarium is, she thought.

They continued rummaging around the caves. The bandits had little of value to them. If the Labyrinth had created the passages, it hadn't left any deep connections. The caves went down some hundred feet below the dunes, then stopped. Divination revealed no blocked off passages.

Gabriel had stopped talking. Every so often he would stop, as if he was looking at some part of the ceiling, or he would rest two of his fingers on his chin. As they reached the surface, he suddenly snapped his fingers.

"Hah! I figured it out."

"Hmm?"

A big smile split Gabriel's face. It was very nearly menacing. "I know where the Mahatan Gate is."