The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

The plebiscite was in full swing that evening, with various councils of interest groups that had formed overnight speaking to the importance of their issues and proposing their elected candidate as mayor. In between shouting and speeches, groups would spread out and talk to each other, forming ad hoc alliances and pacts, then they’d gather up in combined councils and the speeches and shouting would begin again.

It all seemed overly complicated and messy to Mirian, who was used to her village elders just appointing one of their own at the head of their own council, with no need for a separate ‘mayor.’ Of course, in a village like her own, there weren’t many outsiders. It wasn’t so small that everyone knew each other, but it was a close thing. By the time someone was appointed as an elder, they had a reputation of decades of work in the village behind them, and people knew what they were getting. It seemed to her that Torrviol’s mayor would just go to the loudest charlatan, which seemed to be what had happened last time with Mayor Wolden.

It was a moot point. She couldn’t vote until she was a full adult, and given how the time loop worked, that would never happen. Jei may have convinced the Academy registrar she’d grown older, but she doubted that the town censor would be swayed.

With everything closed, Mirian headed down to the Stygalta Arena for duels. There, a bunch of students were running their own competitions, with no referees and no Academy organizers. Mirian joined in, absolutely crushing four opponents before she sat down just to watch the bouts. A few people seemed to recognize her, but they didn’t approach. Neither Selesia nor Valen made an appearance.

The next day, the crafting station was finally back open. Ingrid spotted Mirian and raised an eyebrow at her. “Just doing a repair job on a wand. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten your offer. Things are just busy right now.”

“So I’ve heard,” Ingrid said. “A bog lion.”

“I mostly just watched.” Mirian headed over to one of the woodworking stations, then made sure Ingrid was back at her work and no one was paying much attention to her. Then she took out the wand. It was delicate work to remove the obsidian handle. A bit of divination told her what kind of glue had been used to cement it to the wooden shaft. Next, she got a vial of chemical solvent that would break apart the bonds, and carefully used move liquid to feed it into the gap between the wooden shaft and the handle.

Mirian’s wands were cheap and easy; she took two pieces of wood, assembled the core channels and glyphs, then glued them together. This one, the core of the wand was extractable from the base of the wood shaft after the handle was removed. It meant a more sturdy construction. The beautifully carved wood remained one solid piece, so it was less likely to break, even after years of usage. She removed the inner core next, using a thin brass hook to pull it out so she didn’t risk mana leakage from a spell triggering a glyph inside it.

Once it was out, Mirian looked at the glyphs with a frown. She recognized most of them, but had never seen them assembled in this order. Whatever the spell in the wand was, she’d never seen its like before. There were a dozen glyphs she was sure she’d never seen before. She couldn’t even tell what energy the wand was using. Arcane energy was being transmuted into… something. She copied down the glyphs into her notebook so she could look into it.

Given that this was the wand of an Arcane Praetorian, there was a distinct possibility that this was a wand of one of the forbidden spells.

Different spells had different levels of ‘forbiddenness.’ Necromancy was outright banned. No one was supposed to use it. For other spells, like certain combat spells and illusions, using the spell required authorization of the crown. A wizard researching new spells might get permission to use one as part of their project. The other people that got to use it were the royal guards: the Arcane Praetorians, the Department of Public Security, and certified military units. The idea is that they would always have an edge on lawbreakers and enemies of Baracuel. There were certain spells that you didn’t want just out there for general use. If everyone knew how to levitate, for example, walls stopped being a deterrent to thieves and assassins. If everyone had access to certain potent wardbreaker spells, people were less safe.

If Mirian’s hunch was correct, that meant it was a good idea to keep her investigation of these glyphs quiet. She was in a much better situation than she had been these past few cycles, but there was no sense accidentally sabotaging that. She reassembled the wand without gluing the handle and hid it at the bottom of her satchel. There were tests she could do on the glyphs she didn’t know, but she no longer wanted to do those tests out in the open where anyone could walk by.

***

If there was one thing Mirian could say about Respected Jei, it was that she was relentless. When it became clear that Mirian’s growth in casting raw spells would leave a half day open, Jei found ways to fill it. This was in addition to preparing for her lectures on the Artifice Design class she was teaching, and attempting to decode the cipher scroll the first spy had carried.

“Normally, an apprentice would help prepare and grade assignments and assist with busywork,” Jei said. “Waste of time for you. I will do it. You will train.”

They worked through the weekend, with Jei showing her previews of the lessons she planned to teach. Mirian took out as many loans as she could from the local banks so she could buy mana elixirs and artifice tools. Those were expensive, though, and Mirian hadn’t gotten the coins from the first spy’s stash this time, so she drank the elixirs in small amounts.

Even though many of the techniques used in Jei’s arcane orb were lost, plenty had been rediscovered. Jei showed her spells that grew crystals from different ingredients. They started with quartz, which just needed powdered silicon and air. Quartz, however, was a mediocre channel for mana, even when the crystal was perfectly formed (and Mirian’s were not). Corundum crystals needed melted aluminum, which Mirian had to extract from bauxite ore, which was relatively rare and annoying to work with. With her mana constantly depleted even with the elixirs, Jei ended up doing most of the work, but she described each step and spell and made Mirian recite them over and over.

The real challenge was enchanting within this framework. The glyphs couldn’t just be scribed with ink; a glyphic crystal had to be grown inside a second crystal, and that meant growing both crystals simultaneously. Even Jei, who had spent years on the technique, found it arduous, and unlike her other lessons, she had to stop talking just so she could concentrate.

“This is fascinating stuff,” Mirian said at the end of Seventhday, “but I don’t see how it applies to what I need to be able to do.”

Jei smiled. “Torrian Tower is not the only place where this technique was used.” Then she winked.

It took Mirian a moment, then she understood. Whatever the secret project beneath Bainrose was, it involved understanding this stuff. That still didn’t make sense to Mirian. It was hard to look at Torrian Tower and think it was made before the Cataclysm. She’d learned that the pre-Cataclysm world had advanced technologies, but how had the technology still not been fully recovered in the past four thousand years? It was curious enough to almost make her regret not paying attention in history class.

When the new quarter started, Mirian trudged through the fresh snow to the place in the north gardens. She started with a meditation, sensing only the faintest outlines with her soul. Like her aura, it was possible to sense it, even without a focus. That was all she could do, though. She measured the currents of her aura. Still not fully recovered. So it would have to be.

She pressed Jei’s amulet to her chest and practiced. Jei was busy teaching her two classes, and Mirian had advanced beyond the topics they’d be covering already. She went through the twelve exercises again and again, until her aura felt thin, the current slow.

Lunch didn’t do much to alleviate the lethargy she felt, but it did help a little. Mirian then made her way to the Bainrose library, and began her search for the functions of the unknown glyphs in the mystery wand.

Three books she checked turned up nothing. Even the Complete Encyclopedia of Glyphs and Their Functions (Fourth Edition) turned up only one of them, and it just appeared to be an obscure static glyph useful for linking flux glyphs.

She stopped by the Artificer’s Tower to skim through various item designs, seeing if any of them used the strange glyphs. A dead end, as she suspected. She headed back to the library. Several students waved at her. Mirian waved back, unsure what exactly to do with her newfound notoriety. As far as she could tell, it wouldn’t help her make any more friends. She had the feeling there was some way to use her reputation to help her, but she couldn’t figure out how. She’d never been famous before.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. She’d won that regional dueling championship, but then shortly after, moved away to the Academy, so it had all ended very quickly.

That evening at the dining hall, she and Lily chatted, though the conversation was awkward.

“I’m sorry,” Lily said. “I keep thinking–well, first, I keep thinking, ‘there’s no way this is true,’ and then I keep thinking ‘well I’ve probably said that before, she’s probably bored of it.’ I… I don’t know what to say.”

“I… yeah,” Mirian said. “I don’t know what to do about that.” They ate in silence for awhile. Finally, Mirian said, “Tell me about your sister. How are her expeditions to the Labyrinth going? Why’d she decide to pick that as a career, anyways? I hear it’s really dangerous.”

“Have I really not told you about that?”

“Not much. Mostly about, uh, class drama.”

Lily sighed. “Class drama is fun. Well, not the tenth time you’ve heard it, I suppose. You met Beatrice when she visited, right?”

“Yeah, she passed through. Is she still up at Frostland’s Gate?” That was a smaller fort, northeast of Torrviol. It was about as far away from them as Cairnmouth, but the mountain range between them made the journey to Frostland’s Gate significantly longer. Going north required going a rough and winding road up a pass that gained several thousand feet in elevation, then descended down treacherous snowfields and towering cliffs.

Going south required taking a train.

“Yup. She likes it there, the weirdo. It’s cold as the five hells and in the winter you have to cast heat spells just to be able to take a piss. I don’t know how we’re related.”

“She’s still exploring the Labyrinth up there?”

“Yeah, her team does exploration and defense. Well, everyone does myrvite defense that close to the frostlands. The spellward is constantly going down. She’s a hell of a fighter—she took down a wyvern by herself. Apparently, they’ve discovered a vault there. That’s the big study target. Torrviol Academy has dumped a ton of funding into it. If her team can actually figure out how the vaults do their thing… well, it would be big.”

Mirian blinked. “She doesn’t go in the vault, does she? I thought you had to be suicidal to even attempt one. And be armed to the teeth.”

“She goes in, but only to the outer rooms, and only occasionally. They keep trying to get measurements, but there’s an automaton in there that pulverizes anything they leave behind. They’ve named him ‘Scrappy.’”

The Labyrinth was constantly changing and moving beneath the ground. It required constant mapping and re-mapping. Sometimes it changed while an exploration group was down there, and usually, that group was never heard from again. The vaults, though, seemed to be immune to the chaotic changes that swept through the rest of the structure. The rooms and halls always stayed the same.

If you didn’t know anything about the Labyrinth, that maybe sounded safer. But the vaults were full of traps, myrvites, Elder automatons, and strange rooms that operated on different rules than the rest of the world. Make it to the end, though, and there was usually a celestial artifact and piles of rare materials. Any group that made it out with the treasure trove was set for life.

Of course, about one in every five groups actually made it out, and that was after they scouted and prepared for months or years.

Lily told her more about her sister’s escapades up north. It was a constant battle for survival, and not just from the constant myrvite attacks. Bad weather often stranded hunters, and the buildings and wards were in constant need of repair. Beatrice loved it all. “Because she’s psychotic,” Lily explained. “When we were little, a baduka boar got loose in our garden. We were running for our lives, screaming, dodging back and forth so it didn’t gore us. Finally, we got the gate open and shut it before it got out. When it was all over, I never wanted to go outside again. The next day, she was like, ‘that was fantastic. We should do that again!’”

Mirian had to laugh at that. “She likes the adrenaline rush?”

“Not even that, she likes danger. Which makes her perfect for Frostland’s Gate, I suppose. I, however, will be getting a career in the southlands, in a major city, where it’s warm and there’s no wildlife except songbirds and harmless insects.”

“Oh, so not Alkazaria,” Mirian said, smirking.

“What? Why not?”

“We have insects, but they’re not harmless. And don’t get me started on the scorpions. Spellwards can never quite keep them all out.”

“Oh Gods,” Lily groaned. “Is there a repel bug spell? I can not deal with scorpions.”

“You’ll have to invent it.”

It was good to have a new conversation with Lily. Mirian had missed her friend just being… her friend.

***

That night, Mirian dreamed of a tree. As she climbed through the branches, they split into more, and more, and no matter how high she rose, the branches seemed endless. She blinked, and found herself at the bottom again. She could see the path she’d taken, the broken twigs and scuff marks on the bark. Something drew her eye to the other branches, pristine and blooming with flowers. When she looked down, she realized she was standing on a platform of branches. Beneath her, the tree continued, endlessly. Other branches below were blighted or burning. Between the licking flames and withered flora, though, were spots of verdant growth. There was an emerald leaf, glittering bright in those branches. She reached for it—

And woke.

“That’s it!” she said, and jumped out of bed.

“Mirian, it is way too early for that kind of excitement,” Lily groaned.

“Sorry. Be back later!” She dressed and practically ran to Bainrose.

Bertrus was outside the gatehouse. “You’re up early,” he said. “Did you really… is Torrviol really going to be attacked?”

“Yeah. Akanan army. I’ve sent messages to the Baracuel forts before to warn them, and nothing ever comes of it. Maybe if it came from a respected guard, though…? Anyways, just had a brilliant idea.”

Bertrus sighed and unlocked the door for her.

Mirian rushed down to the first floor where there was a section about older editions. She wasn’t entirely sure what the dream meant—it might not have been one of the weird dreams she kept having, though it sort of felt like one. But when she’d seen that glittering leaf, she’d realized: what was true today was not always true in the past. Some of the laws about banned and regulated glyphs were new.

She eventually found what she was looking for, gathering dust on a lower shelf: Complete Encyclopedia of Glyphs and Their Functions. A first edition copy. Not so old the glyphs she was looking for hadn’t been discovered, but published before they were regulated.

A smile bloomed on Mirian’s face as one by one she found almost all the glyphs she was looking for. The last one made her eyes go wide. The energy type was one she’d never used before: gravity.

She still needed to test it, but she was pretty sure she’d just figured out what the wand she had did.