It was two hours later. By that point there wasn’t a single person over fifty and below twenty in the entirety of Valda. Natalya couldn’t quite pinpoint the moment she’d stopped even trying to save her patients, it had been at some point in the first hour, when the ambient mana in the air had begun to drop from just how much she was using.
Evan was still going, and the necromancer was fairly sure he was using his own vitae and an expensive store of mana crystals to power through. She was tempted to try telling him to stop but every time she opened her mouth to try she’d make the mistake of making eye contact, see the despair, the desperation and the sheer fanatical need and shut up.
“This time. It has to work this time.” The healer muttered, hand on another patient’s chest. He wasn’t using panacea anymore, Natalya wasn’t sure what he was using and in any other circumstance she’d have been fascinated. It was some sort of vitae shield from what Evan had said as complex a spell as any she’d ever seen, and she’d watched elementals think new life into existence, seen the Queen of Ice raise a fortress fully enchanted from the snow and listened as a orc shaman negotiated with a storm.
She’d even helped him test it, on himself, and been unable to drain a thing even when they’d gone so far as cutting open his palm and letting her stick her fingers into the wound. The man was quite simply a genius, and it didn’t matter a damn.
Somehow the life was still leaving the victims. With a growl of frustration Evan pulled away as the young man on the table passed into the hereafter. That was his only reaction, already moving over to the next patient, reconfiguring the shield on the fly.
Reluctantly Nat had to step in, “Everyone’s waiting on us Healer. Maybe they’ve found something that will help?” She managed to sound a lot more optimistic than she felt.
“But-“ Evan began, eyes on the next patient on the verge of death.
“You’re not going to find it.” She told him bluntly, “If what you’re doing should work and isn’t, then you’re missing information. Unless your plan is to wildly guess until the town is nought but corpses you need to figure out what you’re missing first.”
The healer, slowly, reluctantly, nodded. “Fine. Just wait outside while I store my equipment.”
Even that proved a ruse and five minutes later she had to take him by the arm to lead him to Guardian Mill’s house where the others were waiting, with the exception of Susan, the shadow was being kept hidden as only a shadow could. No orders had been given but then again none were needed, Susan knew her business and if there was a rogue mage lurking in the town she was best suited to find and eliminate them.
Natalya pretended not to notice the hope on the faces of everyone other than Lana and Erebus as she walked in, though one glance at her face was enough to kill that.
“Nothing?” John asked, the geomancer appeared to have aged a decade in just a few hours, the defeated slump of his shoulders and the weariness in his voice doing what time had not. The difference had been stark enough they’d tested him to see if he was being drained. He was, though the siphon was weak enough that so far it was just pulling from his magicka.
That had at least clarified why it was the young and old dying first, as a general rule they had the smallest magicka supply, once it was emptied then whatever this was started on vitae. And the drain was only getting stronger, more ravenous as the strain was being shared between fewer people.
“Nothing.” Evan told him before adding, “Arronn died.”
“I’m sorry Evan.” The Guardian said, the words so terribly hollow and empty as they tried to fill a gap that could never be filled.
“Arronn?” Erebus asked Evan, polite but not mournful.
It was John who answered, the healer’s voice failing him, “His son, Owain,’s best friend.” The words were a sigh.
Natalya decided to change the subject. If his son’s best friend was dead then it was fully possibly the missing Owain was dead as well by now, whether upon the barrier, drained of life or simply dead for hundreds of years.
“The only new information out of the infirmary is that every countermeasure that should work hasn’t even slowed it down. Everything about this screams blood magic but how it’s linking to people I couldn’t tell you. Evan even constructed a vitae shield spell, I don’t think it even hit the shield.”
“We’ve confirmed none of us are being drained.” Amara told her, indicating the rest of the team. “Which backs up thaumaturgy of some kind. No channel, no spell.”
“That makes no sense.” Olivia protested, John’s apprentice hadn’t been faring well surrounded by so much death. Noone could blame her, as first brushes with mortality went this was a bad one, especially since she’d been put in charge of stopping people from fleeing the town, as Erebus had feared a number had tried, a handful had even succeeded, though about half of those had come running right back as they watched their fellows turn to less than dust upon hitting the barrier.
The young mage noticed the way people were staring at her. “What? It doesn’t? To do that the mage would have had to collect blood samples from every man, woman and child in Valda!”
“The mageling raises a good point.” Lana noted, “Tell me John Mill, do you recall any incident or accident where someone might have obtained your blood?”
“Nothing comes to mind. Except Evan’s yearly blood tests.” The geomancer replied gruffly.
As one being the team turned their gazes to Evan.
“You can’t honestly suspect me?” The healer protested, backing away with understandable fear.
“Two minutes ago I’d have said you were above reproach.” Erebus told him, “Now though, well, at minimum we have to ask a few questions, starting with what you needed the blood for?”
“Just medical check ups, I do know some blood magic, but all I use it for is letting me do some basic healing and checks at a distance. It saves time that’s all.” He nervously explained, more than a little crowded by the hostile mages.
“I believe you.” The necromancer assured him, “What happens to the blood once you’re finished with it?”
“I burn it in the fireplace.”
Erebus nodded, “Good. Final question, do you have any active samples right now?”
The healer nodded slowly, worried he was signing his death warrant, “Well yes, I always have active samples, but they’re kept in a triple-warded cabinet. Tell them John.”
“He’s right, anything potentially dangerous in the infirmary is kept safe, if someone unauthorized tampered with it we’d know, if they were lucky enough to survive the tampering.” Guardian Mill told them calmly.
“You both knew and you didn’t tell us?” Natalya growled, beyond disgusted at this revelation. “People are dying!”
“Of course I didn’t tell you!” Evan protested. “Everything points to a blood mage and I practice blood magic, do you really think I’m going to admit that to a Council kill-team?”
“That’s fair.” Amara butted in before Natalya could say or do something Evan would regret. “How about we clear this up by just inspecting the samples?”
“That’s certainly something we need to do.” Erebus agreed, “But we should probably make sure we’ve shared anything relevant before we check. Mage Illvere’s interview work has at least given us something of a timeline to work from. At current rate of progression everyone who isn’t a mage will be dead by nightfall. Illvere two hours after that. Mill and Evan by midnight. That isn’t a lot of time.”
“I went house to house, no sign of any power source like you described.” John added helpfully.
“I’ve got a theory on where all that magicka and vitae is going.” Erebus admitted, “If I’m right we’ll never find it.”
“What do you think it is then?” The geomancer growled, terribly aware that every second they spent talking the people he was sworn to protect were getting closer and closer to death.
“I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”
“And as you can see I’m about to faint with shock.” John replied dryly.
“You’re right our response was a little too fast, from your perspective. From our perspective it was several centuries too slow.” Erebus told him, ploughing onwards. Now that he’d made the jump there was little choice but to try and stick the landing, “We believe that Valda is being kept in a section of looped time, unmoored from Reath and doomed to repeat the same day endlessly.”
“You’re joking.” The geomancer scoffed, “You can’t just… mess with time, it’s not possible.”
“I assure you it’s quite possible. As forbidden as any magic gets, but very possible. Frankly if you survive this you’ll be expected to submit yourself to a memory edit.”
“Great Gaia wept. That’s… horrific, why should I get my mind wiped just because you told me something I shouldn’t have heard? That’s your fault, not mine.”
“I said you’d be expected to.” Erebus replied calmly, “If we survive this I intend to lie flagrantly on the report so you can relax there.”
“Say I believe you, how does this help us?” John demanded, and it spoke volumes of the last few hours that he was even entertaining the idea.
“I think this spell was started with a mass sacrifice. Our blood mage stole the life force of every person in Valda and used it as the fuel to drag the town back in time by a single day. The problem is if you have to be very careful with chronomancy, either our blood mage didn’t know better or just didn’t care enough to avoid it, and now that spell is echoing back through the entire loop. The effect preceding the cause.”
Erebus stopped talking just long enough to make sure everyone was following along. They were. John was listening with grim horror on his face, lips pressed so tightly together it was a miracle he wasn’t bruising them. Natalya was more composed, his friend had always been good at putting things aside until she was able to deal with them – part of why her earlier outbursts had been so concerning.
Amara was the most openly horrified, even more so than Holly. That didn’t surprise him, he knew that she’d fought in the Purge of Night and blood magic was almost a vampire’s birthright, he’d only read accounts of some of the things she’d seen in that war and even he had found them disconcerting.
Alice, he had to conceal a smile when he glanced at Alice, he knew that set in her jaw, no despair or horror here, just a smouldering fury that hoped more than anything that when they finally caught the scumbag responsible for this they’d be foolish enough to make it a fight.
Evan and Illvere looked positively ill. He could sympathise, it was one thing to face death, but it was another entirely to realise you’d already been killed.
“That’s why none of us can sever the link, we’re trying to sever it in space when we need to be severing it in time.”
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“You can do that?” Evan asked tentatively.
“No.” Erebus admitted, “But if I’m right there will be a point where we exist in the same time as the link, if I’m right we can sever it then, though to sever it for everyone we’d have to do it at the point of casting. The problem is there would likely be energy available to recast the loop a final time and our blood mage just sets it back up next time through.”
“But you could be ready for them this time.” Illvere declared, and it almost killed Erebus to hear the hope in her voice.
“No. They can’t.” John’s words were barely a whisper but they might have as well have been a scream with how they carried. “Because they won’t be here.” His gaze met Erebus’, practically pleading with the necromancer to tell him he was wrong. “I’m right aren’t I? The Council are a buncha gits on the best day but they ain’t stupid. No way they wait hundreds of years to send a team. How many have died trying to save us?”
“I don’t know.” The necromancer told him, “At least a hundred living. The initial response was… large. When a First Response and Second Response team vanish without a trace, people take it seriously. I know the Necropolis lost two skeletal legions.”
“Gaia wept.” John shook his head as if trying to dislodge the thoughts there, and it very much was John Mill, slightly battered and world-weary mage looking to retire peacefully, rather than Guardian Mill, the resolute defender and final line of defence for Valda. “We’re dead then.”
“Not necessarily. We’ve no way of knowing what those other teams found, but I know what we’ve found. All we need is to find the blood mage and sever the links, do that and we live.”
“Except we’re all going to be dead long before we can even find the links.” Illvere muttered bitterly.
“Not necessarily.” Amara declared, “We can keep you topped up on magicka until midnight. It will be unpleasant but we can do it.”
“What about everyone else?” The young mage protested.
“Too small a well, we’d have to be in near constant contact with a non-mage.” The vampire confessed. “That and as more people die the burden gets greater, if it doesn’t slacken near the end… well we’ll keep you alive but I can’t promise you won’t gain a few years.”
“Alive will do.” John rumbled, “For now let’s focus on catching this scum.”
“Maybe I can reconfigure my vitae shield to block a temporal link?” Evan suggested, “Erebus you seem to have some knowledge of these things, perhaps you could assist me?”
“I’d be delighted to, but I’m going to warn you now, you do not want to mess with temporal runework, you’ll have to power the spell yourself.”
The healer’s brow scrunched in befuddlement, “Why not?”
“Because runes affecting time aren’t static things, they’re constantly changing and if you haven’t got the pattern down you’re going to blow something up.” The necromancer said as if it were obvious.
From Evan’s reaction it certainly was obvious, the healer facepalming, “Of course it never worked. I never even had a chance of getting it to work.” His exasperation palpable.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself.” Natalya assured him, “I mean no exaggeration when I call you a genius, you’ve worked miracles in just a day. No one seriously expected you to unravel the mysteries of time itself by nightfall.”
“She’s right.” Erebus agreed, “Master healer, alchemist, runesmith, sanguine lord and an expert in defensive magics. I certainly hadn’t achieved half as much by your age.”
“That’s kind of you but I’m a healer, we’re all older than we look.” Evan deflected, the mage fighting hard not to blush.
“I know I was accounting for that.” He replied gravely. “Now let’s check on these blood samples and once you’re cleared we’ll talk about how to sever the links when the time gets close.”
That drew the meeting to a close. The group filing slowly out of the room, though not before Natalya gave Erebus a knowing scowl.
Sure enough the necromancer placed a gentle hand on John’s shoulder as he stepped past, “Guardian Mill, could I perhaps have a moment?”
The weathered geomancer gave him a weary nod, settling back down in his seat as Illvere and Lana left, leaving the office empty but for them. “This had better be good.”
“I might have been underselling my own skills with chronomancy a tad.” Erebus began, “One way or another this loop has gone on long enough, so if we fail I plan to take out a little insurance.”
“Ominous.” John noted. “Please continue.”
“I believe I can alter things so that you remember the events of this loop. It won’t be an ongoing thing, so you’ll only really get one chance but it’s the best I can give you.”
“I’ll take it.” His fellow mage assured him, “So what does this- Ow!”
“Sorry. Didn’t want to risk you moving.” Erebus explained, lower his hand, the spectral blue lance of light fading. “And that was it.” He gave him a smile, offering his hand, which John shook. “If this doesn’t work out, good luck.”
“It’s going to work out.” The geomancer replied, though even to his own ears the surety in his voice sounded strained.
“Of course.”
*
The infirmary was barely a couple minutes walk from the Guardian’s office, both needing a fairly central location to be most effective, still even with such a short walk John and Erebus found they had missed a lot.
Their fellow mages were crowded by the door though Natalya and Evan were missing, Lana barring access to anyone else as everyone tried to argue their way past. These weren’t frightened townsfolk either, at least two of them if they decided they were going to move Lana could do so. The resulting fight would likely level the town if Lana took offence, but they could do it.
As Erebus quickened his pace, noting his companion of the moment doing the same, not quite moving up to a run. It was one of those balancing acts the necromancer had long practice with, if a perceived leader ran then it was liable to unnerve those around them, a more steady pace was reassuring and implied the situation was well in hand. However sometimes situations were urgent enough a dead sprint was required.
With no information as to what was happening they’d both settled on a brisk walk.
“What’s the trouble?” John asked, taking the lead.
The imperious demoness stared down at him before stepping aside, utterly inscrutable, “It would be best you see for yourself. Just yourself and my necromancer.”
Erebus stepped through the doorway after John, almost bumping into him as the geomancer came to a sharp halt.
Peering around him the dark robed mage took in the room, Evan was slumped against the wall, his head in hands as Natalya talked quietly to Susan, the two of them sat on infirmary beds.
His fellow necromancer was weeping freely, the tears rolling down her face even as she carried on her conversation with not even so much as a hiccup in her voice. It was the kind of self-control he’d admired in her back when she’d led his squad, he still admired it now in fact. The ability to feel her feelings without letting them control her one jot.
It had never been his path, emotions were something to be held at bay, to be packaged away into a box that would be taken out every now and then to be sorted during moments of quiet and safety. There had been precious few of those lately.
Which was why his calm smile didn’t fall by even a gnat’s wing as he saw what had moved Natalya to tears, or rather realised what he wasn’t seeing.
The bed where Sato had lain was empty, the now familiar, slightly rumpled, collapsed bulge of bedding that had had its occupant simply vanish.
It wasn’t Sato’s empty bed that had attracted John’s attention though, it was Susan. The geomancer’s gaze not leaving the shadow for even a moment as he slowly reached for his lightning wand.
Erebus silently caught his wrist, giving a sharp shake of his head as he walked over to them. “What happened?”
Susan shrugged slowly, “When I arrived here it was just Sato present. He was looking… aged. He died so fast, and there was nothing I could do.”
The necromancer nodded. It was arguably even worse for Susan than it had been for Evan. Evan could at least attempt to save someone, but all but the absolute greatest healers, true one in ten generation mages, could not heal someone without direct contact. Even he was careful when touching her, the spell to survive contact with a shadow was incredibly delicate if not powerful.
“How long did it take for us to arrive?” He asked, running the timeline in his head. It certainly couldn’t have been long.
“Between five and ten minutes.” Susan told him.
Erebus glanced at Natalya, “We were gone what? Fifteen minutes at most?”
“Yes. Martyr’s blood, this is my fault Ere. I forgot to ward the door.” His friend lamented.
“I doubt it would have made a difference.” He assured her, aware how empty the words sounded. “For now let’s get Amara in here, see if she can catch a scent, it’s a long shot given the competence our mystery mage has shown so far but we have to try.”
Natalya nodded, still crying as she stood up but eager to throw herself into the task. Whilst he waited for the results Erebus put an arm around Susan’s shoulders.
“Nothing you could have done Sue, and not for the reasons you’re thinking. See Evan there, the guy is a genius, a certifiable master of the healing arts and its adjacent magics, and he’s had to watch over a hundred people die today. If he can’t save them then you never had a chance. It is not your fault.”
Susan laughed, the sound hollow, strained and just a little bit raspy, “I know all that. It just doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“Yeah. I know.” Erebus lapsed into silence after that.
A minute later he got his answer, Amara walking over, the vampire’s face practically grey, that surprised him a little, he hadn’t known Sato and Amara were close.
“Nothing. The only recent scents are all in this room.” She said sadly.
He just shook his head, it was afterall what he’d expected. “Thanks Mar, right then let’s get this over with. Healer Evan, let’s see to these blood samples please.”
Evan slowly got up from the floor, the healer quite despondant and Erebus would judge just a little nervous that he was about to be summarily executed for letting their friend die. It was an almost laughable worry but one the necromancer could at least empathise with.
The healer pulled aside a section of carpet, revealing a trapdoor, “My lab.” He explained simply enough.
As trapdoors went it was fairly imposing, two heavy bolts, a lock and a full set of wards, he’d at least taken the security of it seriously. With four muttered spells, one of which Erebus was fairly sure was just a password and contained no actual magic, the wards were disabled. The click of a lock and the thud of bolts later and he was staring down a ladder at a dimly lit basement.
“Any other wards?” He asked Evan, receiving a quick shake of the head, “Then I’ll go first, just in case.”
“The wards were armed.” The healer protested, moving to go first only to be held back by Guardian Mill to his surprise.
“You aren’t thinking about this clearly Evan,” John told him firmly, “time loop remember. If this guy’s really been here a couple of centuries then they’d know the wards. Where do you want me Response Leader?”
“Second in line, I hold my staff on the left so go right to have a clear line of fire.” Erebus replied quietly, “I’ll be leading with entropics and kinetics on the assumption he has a shield.”
“I’ll go with lightning and wait for a fracture then.” John acknowledged. “Evan, keep your shield up.”
Preparation finished Erebus entered the laboratory, not using the ladder, the slow climb down would have made him a sitting duck. Instead he just jumped down, aegis shield glowing a brilliant azure and the tip of Yew’s staff glowing the dreary green of a entropic spell.
As he landed he rolled, partly to reduce the impact but mostly to clear the landing zone to let the grizzled guardian behind him in. John landed in a crouch, wobbled for a second then stood up, stepping right as agreed as their eyes swept across the dimly lit room.
Nothing. With a murmur of effort Erebus sent out an invisibility purge. There were a number of way to end an invisibility spell, you could try to overload a spell with light, Amara had flames that could literally burn mana (which conveniently killed the person who was invisible in the process), you could send out a gentle pulse of chaos that would unravel and tangle such a delicate spell (the standard method).
Erebus used what he already had, taking the blast of entropic death prepped in his staff and reforming it to send a general pulse of decay. Evan wouldn’t like it much, anything that wasn’t warded had probably been artificially aged by the pulse, but it was the easiest way and few people knew how to stop a spell from decaying once the rot had truly set in.
The pulse revealed nothing. They were alone. That or trapped with an archmage beyond their ken, but if that were the case then they were already dead; there was no point in worrying about it.
“That was anticlimactic.” John noted with a dry chuckle, starting to relax. “All clear everyone!”
Now that he wasn’t actively searching for a hostile mage, Erebus allowed himself to examine the lab while his colleagues began to descend after them.
He’d seen a lot of laboratories in his time, the rune-inscribed walls of demonic cultists, the beauty and artistry of their tools of trade all but hidden by dried blood they hadn’t bothered to remove – that was one of the really bad signs with demon summoners; a clean floor. He’d seen the pristine steel and huge vats of Triple A as lumbering golems carried out experiments to standards so exacting a human heartbeat would have ruined them.
He’d even seen his master’s lab, the imperator of shadows and madness had woven ideas out of the aether, nothing staying the same, or possibly even existing, for more than the moment needed to add it to what she was creating.
This was none of those things but it was certainly well cared for. There was the obligatory desk in the corner, a filing cabinet next to it. A table filled with alchemical glasswork and though he was certain not a single piece of it was younger than a decade (small town budgets being what they were) they’d been cared for meticulously enough he couldn’t tell by looking. An oak cabinet glimmering with wards and full of potions on the opposite side to ensure that if, Martyr forbid, an experiment exploded it wouldn’t reach the cabinet and take half the town with it.
There was a small summoning circle in the corner, the floor swept clean and a cage of human height drilled into the concrete around it. This wasn’t the red flag one would imagine, a lot of alchemists traded for demon nail clippings and blood with their owners and the circle wasn’t large enough or complex enough to handle something seriously dangerous. What was interesting was that the circle was inert, further confirming their time-removed status.
Finally there was a much larger cabinet. Row after row of phials of blood, each one neatly labelled. Some of them were glowing but not many. Not anymore. The rest had dried out, though one phial in particular caught his eye where it lacked a label. At a guess Evan had enchanted them that way so it would be clear from a glance if a patient had passed away. It truly was a glorious project, with this he’d be able to check the entire town for a disease with a single spell, possibly even heal them remotely if he’d practiced enough.
“Oh dear.” The healer said as he took in his magnus opus.
“I take it they shouldn’t be glowing.” The necromancer concluded.
“They most certainly should not.” Evan agreed, rushing over to his life’s work and beginning to unlock the wards, John stepping up to help him. That spoke of a paranoia Erebus could certainly appreciate, Evan knew just how dangerous this project was, dangerous enough he’d made it so it took both the town’s mages to unlock it to ensure neither of them could misuse it.
“Well that answers that. I do have one question though.” He began, smiling broadly, “which of these phials is Sato’s?”