The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

She was four. She was running through her home, feeling the glee of movement. The hot desert air blew between the sandstone pillars of the open hall. Beyond them was a garden of hardy desert plants. She didn't like it as much as the courtyard garden, the one with the pond and all the pretty lotuses. The black ones were her favorite, because the petals had a rainbow sheen.

There was a noise, and she turned her head to look. She caught a glimpse of the distant mountains to the north, the ones with the big long name she couldn't pronounce.

Then she was sprawled on the ground. She'd tripped, and the sandstone floor had shredded her knee. She began to wail.

"Little lotus," came the kind words of her father.

She kept bawling. "Daddy!" she said, clutching her knee. It was scraped, but not that bad. Still, the blood was trickling out, and it stung.

He kissed her on the forehead. "Heal it, daddy!" she said between sobs.

"You can. Remember? Hold onto this."

She grabbed his finger so she could feel the ring beneath it. Both the ring and his finger were cold. "But it hurts!"

"Close your eyes and feel it, little lotus," he said.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

"Breathe in. Breathe out. In again. Out again. Feel your inner self. Search for the part of you that hurts. It should be easy to feel."

"I feel it," she whined.

"Keep your breathing steady. In slowly, just like me. Out slowly. Good. Now remember, push the rest of you into that hurt. Feel it move the way you want. Like watching the ripples in the pond calm."

She'd done it so many times. It was just hard when it hurt. "I'm doing it," she whispered.

"Yes you are, darling," her father said. With a flick of his finger, a trickle of water came out from one of the nearby jugs and washed away the blood. He then bent down and gave the healed knee a kiss. His lips were dry. "All better," he said.

She giggled.

"And what did you learn?" he asked.

She groaned. He always asked that. "Be careful when running," she said, showing her exasperation with her whole body the way toddlers always did.

"But do keep running," he said with a wink.

***

She stood in the courtyard garden while her father tended the jeweled lotuses, holding her mother's hand. She heard a muffled "mraw!" and up came Meu, carrying another bone rat.

"Ohh, good kitty," her mother said to him. "Gaius, the cat found another. I thought you cleared the fields of them."

Her father sighed. "I did, beloved, but there are two constants in this world: war and bone rats. We can either avoid one or the other."

Her mother sighed. Telekinetically, she disassembled the exoskeleton of the rat. Meu paced about excitedly until the bone rat corpse hit the ground again, and then the little terror of a cat started going at it.

"Gross!" she shrieked, but she kept watching the cat.

Later, she found him perched up on the balcony licking his paws in between surveying his domain. She could see the farm. Here and there, she could see the mummy guards, posted around the field and the perimeter of the house. They were creepy, but she also knew they wouldn't harm her.

She ran her fingers over Meu's mottled fur. "Good kitty," she said.

In the distance, something drew her eyes. A flash of light, far out in the desert. Purple and orange. It was pretty. "What's that?" she asked the cat.

"Mreew," the cat said, annoyed that she'd stopped petting him. She resumed.

***

She sat across the table from her mother. Each of them had an abacus. Her mother wiggled her eyebrows in a way that always made her laugh. "Ready for another round, flower?"

"Yeah!" she shouted.

"Okay." She flipped over a clay tablet where she'd scrawled a math equation. "Go!"

She froze, trying to remember what the symbols on the tablet meant. Her mother started moving beads, which meant she had to hurry. "Twelve," she read carefully, and started clacking beads over. "And four!" Clack clack clack! went the beads and then she started counting them.

"Fifteen!" she shouted with elation.

"Count again, sweetie."

She scrunched up her face, touching each bead. "Six…teen?"

"Good job!" her mother said.

"Yes!" she cried out, and ran around the room in a victory lap before returning to the table. Her mother was already smoothing the clay, ready to write new numbers. "Again!"

***

She stood at the front door and screamed.

Meu was there, fur far too red, dragging its way through the threshold. There was a trail of blood.

"Meu! No!" she rushed forward. She could hear her father telling her to slow her breathing. But she needed his ring. She couldn't heal Meu without it. "Mooooom!" she shrieked. She started petting the cat, making sure she was gentle.

Her mother came running, but by the time she got there, it was too late. "I'm sorry, little flower. When your father gets back, we might be able to do something, but he's gone."

She pressed herself into her mother, sobbing for a long time.

When she had sobbed herself dry, they went out to investigate the field. She clutched her mom's hand tightly.

There were three bone rat corpses laid out around the bush.

"Well, he certainly went down fighting," her mother said.

That made her feel a little better.

***

"Concentrate, Naluri," her father said. "The flow must go through the circumference of the ring. The runes do the hard part. You just control the flow."

Naluri squinted, holding her hand. She'd grown frustrated several times before, and her father had let her run around and get the frustration out before she returned to it.

"That's my stubborn lotus," he said, and then he put the shining black ring on her finger again where it adjusted itself to fit snuggly. Naluri let her thumb trace the initials carved on it: G.N. Gaius Nezzar, she knew, her father's real name. The one he used only at home. The world had forgotten it, he'd said. Dad said a lot of weird things. Mom was constantly telling him that, in that lighthearted way she did.

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"Feel the flow," her father repeated.

Naluri squeezed her eyes shut altogether. She imagined her soul was a river made of light, just like he'd taught her. She just needed a trickle to thread through the ring, like a string going through the eye of a needle. Only, just like putting a thread through an eye, it was frustrating. She grit her teeth. There! A tiny trickle. She pushed at it. She gasped. "Daddy! Daddy it worked! I think it worked!"

"So it did," he said, and he had this huge grin spread across his face, his gray eyes shining with pride.

Below them, the corpse of Meu, wearing a collar engraved in runes, stirred and sat up.

"Meu!" she shouted excitedly. "Oh Daddy, thank you," she said, and hugged his leg.

"Of course, little lotus," her father said, stroking her hair. Naluri spent hours playing with her now-undead cat, using the ring to give it commands. When they went to the village, he took her aside and said, "When we go to the village, do not mention the cat. Ever. Do you understand?"

"Yes," she said seriously. They were still hiding, she knew. It had been repeated enough. As far as the village they visited knew, they were farmers. Best that they didn't know just how far away that farm was, or what tended the fields.

When they got to the village and she saw the other children playing, she looked at her dad. He was wearing his 'disguise face,' as he called it. Illusion magic. He nodded at her, and Naluri went tearing away to go play.

She was good. She never mentioned the cat once. It earned her a scoop of dessert when they went to the market later.

***

Naluri woke from an after dinner nap, only to hear her mother and father talking in harsh whispers. That was how she knew they were talking about something important.

"Another violation of the treaty. What they're doing to Falijmali—I can't stand by and just watch."

"Gaius," her mother's voice warned.

"I've seen this pattern play out before. They can't leave well enough alone. You should see the history books they're writing about the war now. No, I take it back, you shouldn't. As if their hands weren't drenched in blood too."

Dad was angry. He was scary when he was angry. But she didn't understand what he was angry about.

Her mother was tapping on the table, which meant she was nervous. "Be smart about it," she finally said. "But—"

"She's up," her father said. She still didn't know how he could see her through walls, but she did know it was totally unfair for when she was trying to sneak around. "Come here darling. Did you have a good nap?"

"Yeah," she said. "What were you talking about? Did someone get hurt?"

Her mother sighed. "A lot of people, Naluri. But don't you worry. We'll tell you about it when you're older."

***

She was five. Dad had gone on one of his trips again, but she'd whined enough that he'd let her borrow his ring to play with. She'd spent some time playing math games with her mother and more time adventuring around the farm. "Bone rat. Get it!" she'd shout, and if she channeled in the right spot on the ring, Meu would dart off to go get it. Then she'd pretend she was in a library. "I'm going to be a historian, like my dad!" she told a wall she was pretending was a bookshelf. She picked up a rock. "Hmm, this book has secrets! I'm going to find them alllll out."

In the evening, over dinner, she said, "When's Daddy coming home?"

"Two days," her mother told her, brushing a strand of dark hair out of her face.

"Alright," Naluri said. "Can we go to the village? I wanna play there."

"No."

"Please?"

"No. You can play with Meu. Or we can play a game together."

She grumbled, but they ended up playing a game together, the one with letters and tiles.

That night, Naluri woke to a loud noise. She grabbed the ring off her nightstand to have something to hold onto. "Mom?" she asked.

Another loud noise. Then another. Then a scream. Her mother.

"Mom!" she shouted, running for her. She needed to get to her. She'd be safe with her.

She saw her in the hall. Beyond her were a bunch of people. Strangers. But that wasn't right. People never came to their house.

There were scary flashes of spells, and Naluri froze, ready to hide. Then a terrible noise, wet and sickening, and her mother collapsed. Naluri ran to her. One of the people yelled at the others, then started moving toward her. A strange man. The emotions were too much. She was terrified, but it was her mom.

The man said something. As he approached, Naluri froze, too scared to move. She could feel her mother's warmth beneath her left hand. Her right hand was squeezed tight around the ring.

Another gruff noise. A bright light. The man loomed over her.

She hadn't recognized him at the time, but now she knew him. She'd seen him plenty of times. He was younger in her memory, and larger, but he had a distinctive face.

Voran. Now First Praetorian.

He wrapped her in a dark sheet that covered her face, and picked her up, carrying her like a bag of flour. She'd kicked and screamed then, but it didn't help.

Desperately, she'd called for Meu.

***

Then a haze of memories. Being moved around a lot. A lot of strangers talking to her. Most of the time, she was scared. Sometimes, the fear erupted, and she was angry. A little ball of impotent rage.

Then there'd been Doctor Westerun. Talking so soothingly to her. Helping her forget her fear.

One day, she'd put the ring she'd held onto so long, kept hidden so long, in a drawer and then forgot it existed. Remembering anything became so hard. Sometimes, the rage seized her, and she didn't know where it came from.

She remembered meeting her new father. Her new mother. They'd been kind to her. They gave her sweets. They helped her remember to breathe when she was angry. She liked them, even if some days she couldn't say it.

But there was a wound in her, and it had never been healed.

Just covered up.

***

"Dad," Mirian repeated, and the tears came cascading down.

Naluri. Her name had been Naluri Nezzar. Somehow, her mind had conjured up that name from her memories when she was searching for aliases, first incorrectly, then the exact name.

She found herself in his embrace. He was thin and bony, but he clung to her desperately. "My little lotus. You came back. You came back." They stayed like that for some time. His body was cold, she realized.

Mirian wiped her eyes and stepped back.

"Let me see you," her father said. Then, he looked down at her heart, and his eyes grew wide. "Gods above. You're a Prophet."

"I am," she said. "Gods, there's so much to say. Where do I even begin? There's another Prophet on his way. Ibrahim Kalishah. He's been using you each cycle for your army. To what point and purpose, I don't know—he's obsessed with destroying Baracuel, but it's useless, because the world ends on the 25th of Duala at the latest."

"Hmm. I know him and Dawn's Peace by reputation. Likely why… but the world ending? Then it's worse than anyone suspected." He smiled. "But the Ominian couldn't have chosen better."

Mirian started laughing. "I… I wasted so much time. I thought—I worried—but all this time… because I didn't remember. Fate… what a strange path it's taken me on."

"I hope there is no such thing as fate, for if there is, it is a cruel thing. What happened to you? Where did they take you?"

"Doctor Westerun—a Deeps agent—developed a memory curse. I was raised by an adoptive family in Arriroba. They gave me the name Mirian. It was only after the time loop started that I began to put together pieces that didn't make sense. Seeing you… it must have activated too many connections at once."

"Arriroba. I searched there. I searched half the eastern continent."

Several dots began to connect in Mirian's mind. "Dhelia and Jeron took me on a trip when I was young. Six, I think, maybe seven. Because they came into some money… Gods. How much of my life was manipulated?"

The necromancer's jaw was clenched tight. "They'll pay for what they did."

Mirian—or should she think of herself as Naluri now? But that didn't feel right either—nodded. "They will. Just not yet. First, we must save Enteria." She looked over Atrah Xidi—Gaius Nezzar, and examined his soul. It wasn't as bright as she might expect. The lines wove in on each other, and they were retracted, like they flowed along the bones, rather than the flesh. His skin was clammy and cold, and in the center of his chest—

"You have an anchor," she realized. "But… you're not part of the loop."

"A chthonic needle. Quite different than a temporal one. It anchors my soul to my body, or else I would have died long ago. We should sit down somewhere nicer. I designed the war catacombs to be functional, not pretty," he said, gesturing at the room.

They walked through the far door and up a staircase. The room looked familiar.

"Our old dining room. You rebuilt it," Mirian said. The table was sandstone instead of wood now, and instead of looking out on the farm, the windows now looked out to a blank wall.

"I did," he said, and cast a spell. He had glyphs worked into his robe, she realized, and was casting through them. That was… really clever, actually.

Light filled the room, and then a large illusion covered the wall on the other side of the 'windows.' She could see the Southern Range and the rest of the house, just like she remembered it. In the other room, she could hear the trickle of a fountain. Gaius was rooting around in the cupboards.

Her father the necromancer—it was still a strange thought, both new and old in her mind—sat down and handed her a steaming cup of tea. "How much time do we have before the other Prophet arrives?"

"Half an hour, perhaps. Maybe a bit less if he—"

Gaius looked up suddenly, his gaze towards the door. "Never mind. He's here. He just killed Lizzie."

"…Lizzie?"

"The drake."

"You know, that seemed to me the worst way to start a diplomatic talk. Kill someone's pet on your way in?" That was followed by a crash that echoed through the chambers. He'd smashed the door too.

"To be fair, it wouldn't be the first time she's died. Now, I hope you have a plan."