The first thing Mirian thought, looking at the Labyrinth glyph sequences she’d brought back, was that the sequences were impossible. Glyphs had to be in a specific order for mana to flow properly. An ulic glyph could never precede a flen glyph, for example. Yet here was an example of just that.
She discovered how it was possible by grinding away the first layer of glyphs, only to expose a second layer. That led to another impossible sequence. Scribbling down notes, the only thing she could think of was that the glyphs weren’t linked in a linear sequence, but in multiple co-dependent linkages.
She thought back to Professor Eld’s enchantment lectures. Maybe if the glyphs were all scribed at the same time… and these glyphs from the Labyrinth are so minuscule. You’d need precision equipment, and something mechanical. Plus you’d need to be in contact with all three arcane catalysts, then channel the mana evenly.
Maybe the wizards in Torrian Tower were working on something like that. She’d have to check if she ever got back there.
She also found two glyphs she didn’t recognize, which was impressive, because at this point she’d memorized several reference manuals. Elsadorra, Beatrice, and Cediri also didn’t recognize them, which gave Mirian some consolation.
“The Academy will be happy about that, yeah?” she said to Beatrice.
“Maybe if we delivered the magichemical composition too. But we don’t have anything that could do that with such a small sample size.” She sighed. “Maybe it’s beyond us. The Elder Gods can do things humans will never be able to do. Maybe this is one of them. Maybe humans are reaching their limits of understanding.”
Mirian didn’t think so, but then again, she’d also gone from having trouble lifting up an empty desk to being able to stop bullets and kill greater horrors in only a few years. And she also saw how much work there still was to do in finding the connections between soul magic and arcane magic.
Perhaps there were limits, but she hadn’t hit them yet.
The entropic antimagic field had given her pause, though. It sapped arcane energy so fast, no spell could form under its influence. But maybe soul magic can. Not that there were any soul magic spells that could batter down a stone door. Soul magic was powerful, but it seemed to be primarily limited to influencing living things.
Soon enough, the magical auroras took over the sky, and the people of Frostland’s Gate looked on with horror as a leyline split open the Endelice Mountains. As the sound thundered across the mountains, and the flashing light illuminated the whole sky, Mirian found herself holding Beatrice.
“You said you were studying this. What’s happening?” Lily’s sister said between sobs.
“Don’t worry,” Mirian murmured to her. “I’ll stop it. I just need more time.”
The end of the world came again.
***
Mirian started the next cycle with a new plan. She started by grabbing the first spy off the roof, but she didn’t let him fall. Instead, she placed him gently on the ground. The kind of spellpower needed to do that was no problem for her now. “That was close! Are you okay?” she said loudly in Friian, then quietly in Eskanar, she said, “There’s another group attempting to infiltrate Torrviol and screw up our plans. The leader might be going by the name Sulvorath, or he might be going by a new name. Either way, he’ll have access to information that might seem impossible. But you can’t trust him, and we can no longer trust Specter.”
The spy looked at Mirian like she’d just grown a second head.
“Anyways, I have to get to class!” she said in Friian, though she didn’t go to class. Instead, she went to craft a greater lightning wand. When she was done (a bewildered Ingrid had looked on, not quite sure how she’d made anything that fast), she headed for the Bainrose library. When no one was looking, she used raw magic to manipulate the secret passage switch that led to the catacombs, shutting the door behind her.
As usual, the bog lion was waiting. She unleashed the greater lightning on it until it stopped moving. Then she grabbed the wand of levitation. Next, she checked the skeleton. Disappointingly, Specter hadn’t left any scraps of orichalcum.
She came back through the library, wondering if there was any way she could kill Specter in two days. Sulvorath was relying on her, but she still didn’t have a good idea of where she hid. Somewhere in the Underground, she knew. A passage she hadn’t discovered?
There was that hole in the wall that led to a lower level. Only, I never went down there because I didn’t think I could get back out. Maybe—
And then she froze. Down that hole and down the ruined corridor, there was that statue of Altrukyst, and the object it had. A talisman. A spell resistant talisman. Surrounded by bronze-looking disks.
Mirian hurried to Griffin Hall.
The lecture hall was open, because there was a lecture in progress. It was one of the professors she’d never had, and she couldn’t place his name. He was midway through a 200-level magichemical foundations lecture.
He stopped mid-sentence, noticing Mirian approaching the front of the hall. “I believe you have the wrong room,” he said sternly.
“Nope. Apologies,” Mirian said, and pressed the brick that opened the secret passage.
“What in the—wait—is that—what?” the professor said, and behind him, the class went into an uproar.
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Mirian ducked inside, slamming the secret door shut behind her, then hurried off before they figured out what brick she’d pressed.
It had been a while since she’d been in this part of the underground, but she’d spent months and months mapping it, looking at maps of it, then leading battles through it, so she knew it about as well as she knew anything in Torrviol. She quickly found the hole in the wall, and jumped down into the corridor.
Mirian approached the statue with giddy anticipation. Probing it with arcane energy, she confirmed both the talisman and the disks of metal around the black marble orbs were spell resistant. At the base of the statue were carved out indentations. Perhaps long ago, protective glyphs had been there, but without any sort of mana recharge, the magichemicals had decayed back into mundane material. Mirian reached out and grabbed the talisman.
It was silver sometimes, a more muted gray others, and thin veins of pale and dark green minerals ran through it. Holding it, she closed her eyes.
She saw her soul, and experimentally tried pushing at one of its currents. Sure enough, the flow stirred. A focus, she thought triumphantly. And next to it, two disks of what she was sure now was orichalcum.
All this time. I wonder who left it here, and how long it’s been down here?
The passage kept going. Maybe there were deeper secrets still in the underground left for her to find. This wasn’t the right cycle for that, though.
She slid the disk into her inner jacket pockets, then tried touching her soul to them. There was a vibration—it was like a pebble making ripples in a lake. She tried matching the vibration, but there was some sort of dissonance. It would be impossible to change her own soul current sufficiently. I’ll need soul energy to change the orichalcum’s resonance, she knew. Probably myrvite energy, that would be more potent.
If that was the case, she’d need to hurry. The second spy was about to go kill all the myrvites in the Studies building.
Mirian levitated her way back out the passage, deciding to take a different exit. She came out near the theater, then quickly walked to Myrvite Studies. She didn’t have the glyph keys, but there was a reason levitation spells were banned. The building was built out of the shell of the old arena, and there was nothing stopping her from just landing in the middle of the myrvite pens where the old arena floor had once been. She rose up, flying over the outer building, then landed next to some lesser wyverns, who sniffed at her from behind their bars. One made a chattering sound, and another eyed her curiously.
“Sorry little buddy,” she said, picking out a rather dejected looking wyvern. She quickly went through the four bindings she needed, then zapped it with greater lightning.
It didn’t take much.
With the soul under her control, she guided it around the orichalcum disks. Then, she had an abundance of energy to manipulate their resonance with. It took a few minutes, but it was surprisingly easy to get them to match the flow of her soul. She could feel the disks slip beneath the currents, like heavy stones settling into a river bed.
Mirian had triggered at least one alarm ward (hopefully screwing up the second spy’s infiltration), so she flew off again, landing in the middle of the garden, then headed the long way around to the crafting center where she used the metalworking stations to shape the first orichalcum disk into a torc she could wear underneath her coat and the second disk into metal plates that she could bind to her belt.
By then, she could hear quite the commotion going on in the Academy’s plaza as several guards searched for—someone. A flying student, they were pretty sure. By then, though, Mirian’s soul alterations were kicking in, and her face and hair looked different than the student who had just stopped by to make a lightning wand or disrupted a lecture at Griffin Hall.
She headed back to her dorm room to change out of her school uniform into normal clothes, then headed to the market to stock up on supplies for her journey north. One of the guards stopped her as she was purchasing an enchanted bedroll. “Have you seen…I know this is strange—a sixth year student… flying?”
Mirian gave him a look of surprise. “No. Goodness! Isn’t that… illegal?”
“Highly,” the guard said with a sigh. “If you do see her, please flag us down. We think she has dark hair, sort of a Persaman complexion. About your height.”
“Of course,” she said, then went back to her transaction.
She took out a loan with Tower Trust, then purchased the supplies she’d need to make a compact soul repository and a lot more inks. This time, she bought an enchanted cloth she could wrap the inks in so that they’d be protected both from jostling and the freezing temperatures. The next morning, she scribed several spells, then stashed her supplies in the derelict building Nicolus liked to go to when he was feeling contemplative.
Then she dropped by the guardhouse, using a major disguise spell to make her appear like an older man, with peppered hair and a deeper voice.
“I need to see Captain Mandez. It’s about the fugitive,” she told the desk attendant.
The desk attendant looked at her. “Ah, let me see if he’s available. He’s very busy, so if you’d have a seat, it might be a bit.”
A minute later, the attendant returned, looking a bit surprised. “He’ll see you now. His office is—”
“I know where it is,” Mirian told him. Once inside, she shut the door.
Mandez was studying her. He glanced at a detection device in his hand. “Nice illusion,” he said in Friian. “I’d prefer—”
“I’m being sloppy because I’m in a rush,” Mirian said in Eskanar. “I already told Gerard about Sulvorath and Specter. The boy nearly fell off a building, jumping around like an idiot, so you’re welcome. I’ll tell you now—Specter is double-crossing us, and her new master that will arrive soon—you can’t trust him. He’s going to know far more information than he should, and he’s a master manipulator. But you are authorized to kill him. And her, if you can manage it.”
Mandez recoiled slightly, which was the most shaken she’d seen him. “I need a code-phrase,” he said carefully.
“Specter’s been relaying the code phrases here, hasn’t she? That’s what I thought. They’re all junk. They’re compromised. Look, the network penetration is worse than you can know. We’re dealing with rogue cells from Vadriach to Palendurio. I just need you to make sure this cell doesn’t join them. Can you do that for me, Mr. Hache?”
Mandez—real name Hache—gave Mirian a long stare. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“Good,” Mirian said. “Good. I knew we could count on you. I have other cells to go un-fuck. Remember—this Sulvorath, or whatever name he’s going by—is going to be very convincing. Take him down, then wait for a proper reestablishment of protocols. Keep to God and country, Mr. Hache. God and country. ”
As she rose and turned her back, she felt a tentative magical probe from Hache, but the orichalcum stopped whatever he was trying to find out. She left, and after she was out of his office, ducked down an alley and let the disguise drop. Back on the street, two guards immediately passed her, but didn’t seem to suspect she was the one who’d just been in his office. Mirian headed back to the old building by the lake to pick up her supplies.
Using her focus (and killing a small snake nearby for the soul energy), she cast detect human to make sure she wasn’t being followed.
When there were no indications of any human-sized soul nearby, she was confident she was in the clear.
Once again, she took the overgrown trail around the lake, then headed north on the trail, setting a quick pace. She planned to make it to the first obelisk by nightfall.