As soon as the doors to the temple closed and Mirian dropped the illusion spell on Arenthia, the entire room of waiting priests burst into cheers, and the high priestess could hardly move as every man and woman of the cult rushed to hug her and welcome her home. As they did, a pang of sorrow flashed through Mirian. Everyone gathered had only known her a day; to them, she was a miracle, but a stranger. The deep connections these priests of a heretical God felt for each other—would she ever be able to form that with someone? Her sorrow threatened to turn into anger.
“We thought we’d lost you forever,” Lecne said, tears welling in his eyes as he smiled.
The moment passed. Even if they didn’t know her, she knew them, and the joy they felt was contagious. Mirian found herself smiling with them.
“I don’t understand,” Arenthia said, as the crowd gathered gave her space. “We agreed that the sanctity of the order outweighed the risk of saving one. If it had gone wrong—we’d have lost everyone. I told you not to—”
“Wasn’t their plan. It was mine,” Mirian said. “And I had as many tries as I needed.”
And Lecne said, grimly, “The age of Prophets has come again.”
That brought silence to the room, and Arenthia’s gaze settled on Mirian. “You?”
Mirian handed her the amulet focus she’d been wearing. “Look for the hole,” she said.
After Arenthia had seen it, Mirian gave the quick summary version of her situation. Like with the other cultists, it didn’t take much explaining to get her to believe. “And you’ve told the Luminate Order before?” Arenthia asked at the end of the explanation.
“I have,” Mirian said.
“Damn those fools. How blind they have become to the very scripture they repeat…” She trailed off. “Well, back to work everyone! This temple isn’t going to run itself!” she told the gathering. Quieter, she said, “And my blessings to you all.”
Lecne stayed, but the other priests departed. High Priestess Arenthia led them down to the ritual room, muttering something about, “It’s where I do my best thinking.” Unlike Lecne, whose eyes often wandered to the great painting of the unnamed corpse-God, Arenthia liked to pace around the sarcophagus in the center of the room. Often, her finger would trace some part of the relief, or rest on the stone lip.
After some of this pacing, she said, “There was a detail you mentioned. How this Specter person was resistant to arcane magic. It’s not a glyph sequence. It’s a material.”
“You know about this?” Lecne said, surprised.
“That’s because you don’t listen half the time!” she snapped. Then, “Sorry, still a bit high strung. I thought for sure I’d be meeting Zomalator an hour ago. Yes, material. One of the things the Luminates started working with the Arcane Praetorians on. Their first heretical break with a long tradition of non-interference. Damn Archbishop Yohan! Sorry, bit of a tangent. My mother always said I had the mind of an old lady, and now here I am as an old lady and it’s only gotten worse. In the lead-up to the Unification War, all the kingdoms, republics, principalities and other states all had a problem with arcanists. This is pre-spellward barriers, if you’ve forgotten your history, so moving about from city to city was incredibly dangerous. The guilds had gone exclusive, and were leaving too many competent arcanists out of their ranks, so rogue arcanists started popping up everywhere. Am I rambling?”
“You are rambling again,” Lecne said.
“Oh dear. Long story short, the Luminates and the Unifiers under King Ghautleimane established the Arcane Praetorians. Called something else back then, don’t worry about it. Anyways, if you’re going to try to bring magi under heel, you don’t want the fights to be equal, so the Luminates helped develop a spell resistant material that wasn’t a focus.”
Mirian could finally follow this last bit. “A spell-resistant material. One that hinders attacks, but not your own aura.”
“Precisely. And they kept it a secret, a very close secret, and continue to keep it a close secret, one enforced by the Deeps, and they don’t much care if it’s a citizen or foreigner who knows. Plenty of people figure it out, but then they also figure out how to stay quiet.”
“And how do you know?” Mirian asked.
“Because I was part of them,” she said. “You’ve picked up on that, I assume? How everyone here has a closet that’s packed with skeletons?”
“I’d gotten the idea.”
“Have you told her?”
Lecne looked at Arenthia. “I have no idea. Remember what she said about the cycles?”
“You should probably just tell me now,” Mirian said. “That was a bit too cryptic for me to know either.”
“Very well. Zomalator fought against the Ominian in the Gods’ War.”
That took Mirian aback, and her heart began to hammer. Had she made a mistake, dealing with these cultists?
“Zomalator has more blood on His divine hands than any of us. But He changed. He became a turncoat. A traitor to his own cause. And when it was most important, He did stand by the Ominian. All of us here, we embody that. Redemption is what we offer. But—!” she snapped, suddenly whirling to face Mirian. “Redemption is something one must walk to, willingly. You can only offer your hand. If they spit in it, withdraw it. Not everyone wants to wash the blood off their hands, and only the fool tries to clean their hands for them.”
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There was a gravity to her words, and Mirian felt she’d learned something important not just about Arenthia, but about the whole cult. It explained, for example, why Maruce didn’t much like talking about his past, and most of them liked to only jokingly allude to it. She hated to break the silence that lingered after the high priestess’s speech, but she was growing impatient.
“And the special material?”
Arenthia sighed. “Right. I do get side-tracked. You are familiar with alloys?”
“Intimately.”
“Right, artificer focus, you said. Well, there’s a way to impregnate certain metals with soul-energy, in such a way that it acts as a soul-resonator. Takes soul magic, and it takes some other things. The easiest one is bronze. Turns into something they call ‘orichalcum.’ Spell resistant by itself. Acclimate it to a soul, and it amplifies the currents of it. Lecne taught you about topological resonance of soul currents? Lecne?”
Lecne sighed.
“Right, you don’t know. Niluri?”
“Sort of,” Mirian said, proud that she hardly hesitated when called her new name. She knew all about mana-enriched materials from alchemistry, so it made sense there was a celestial equivalent. “Do you know how to make this orichalcum?”
“Hah! No. Even fewer people know the recipe. I was only authorized to know what it was. I know where it’s made, though. Palendurio, in a secret part of the Grand Sanctum.”
Great, Mirian thought. Of course it would be in the least convenient place to infiltrate possible. Still, it was useful information to know. But even if she did learn the secret alloys, it was yet another thing she’d have to make, remake, and remake again every time she wanted it. Even with the memory tricks she was using, she’d certainly forgotten more glyph sequences for spells than most arcanists knew.
Idly, she wondered if the other time traveler was trying to manipulate Archmage Luspire to get the kind of training she’d gotten, and if so, how long it would take. Whatever else happened, she needed to make sure she stayed above whatever his competence with magic was. She needed to start purchasing mana elixirs again.
“That’s interesting,” Arenthia said, breaking the silence that had settled over the room. “You’ve been cursed.”
“The soul modification? No, I did that with Lecne to change my appearance. To hide from that Sulvorath guy—”
“Not that! I mean your mind.”
That made Mirian’s blood run cold. “My what?” she heard herself saying, as if she had suddenly become distant from herself. When had that happened? She could account for every loop; she’d been keeping track. She had no memory of—but of course, she wouldn’t. Was she too late? Had she already been outmaneuvered?
Arenthia continued, hand to her focus, moving around Mirian like she was a piece of artwork to be studied. “It’s very subtle. And your soul has partially grown over it, so it must have happened when you were young. Hmm. I didn’t think they actually… it was hypothetical. They said they never tried it after the program was canceled.”
Mirian’s fear made her next words come out more harshly than she intended. “What are you babbling about? Tell me!”
“Project Flayer,” Arenthia said. “It was something the Department of Public Security… discussed. Some wizards in one of the smaller academies made some advancements in mind magic. The last, untouched frontier. Not very large advances, mind you, but they released a paper showing an effect. I thought the Deeps would dismiss it and shut it down, since the research was technically illegal. But the higher ups were giddy with excitement, truth be told, and talked about how it would change the world. Then it made too many test subjects, hmm, insane. Very insane. I don’t know what the details were, since it wasn’t my unit. Someone screwed up, and somehow the Senate started to look into it, and the program was ended. Most of the records destroyed.” She looked at Mirian, peering into her eyes in a way she found disturbing. “But maybe they didn’t. Maybe it just went underground. Wouldn’t be the first time the Deeps hid an operation from the King and Senate.” Arenthia then made a retching noise and started pacing around the sarcophagus again. “Couldn’t stand those monsters. Couldn’t stand myself. Can’t wash your hands of blood if you keep dipping them in the blood vat. Had to get out.”
“Can you remove it?” Mirian said, voice quiet now.
Arenthia paused her circuit. “No. Your mind seems to be healthy. It’s a small curse, and embedded in your soul deeply. If it is Project Flayer, it’s designed to suppress memories, not cognitive capabilities. Removing it would be dangerous. I saw some of the… results. Can’t risk a Prophet becoming one of those. You hear me? Don’t mess with it. Shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
For once, it was Mirian who said, “I need… some time.”
She left the building and went to wander Cairnmouth, using minor disguise to periodically change her appearance, more as an afterthought to habit than because she needed to. Was Arenthia right? Did it happen when she was younger? Or had it been more recent? As far as she knew, she could account for every loop. Despite what the high priestess had told her, she badly wanted to shatter the curse and remember what was being hidden from her.
Childhood. She didn’t remember much from it, but that was normal, wasn’t it? Lily barely remembered elementary school, and had forgotten at least half the anecdotes that her older sister told about when they were younger.
Another thought disturbed her, though: Why me?
Something had happened, she remembered. There’d been that priest… and the dream. And he’d helped… except the harder she reached for those memories, the more they turned to mist. She wanted to scream in frustration. She didn’t even know what had been taken from her.
She wandered past Second Cairn, through the Miller’s District and over the bridges of the Cairn River, then through the factory district until she could see Fort Aegrimere, that behemoth fortress that sprawled across Third Cairn and touched the coast.
I’m working on my soul magic. Maybe I’ll get good enough to remove it myself. Until then, I can’t let it bother me, she told herself. But it did bother her, like her tongue probing a sore in her mouth. Even when she started to do breathing exercises, she remembered that she’d learned them as a child to help with her temper. Very insane, Arenthia had said.
Why? Mirian asked the cosmos.
The fat clouds hanging in the sky never did answer.
She started wandering back, her resolve hardening as she did. Whatever had happened, it wouldn’t happen again. She’d master the arcane arts until even Luspire couldn’t challenge her. She’d master soul magic until Specter couldn’t touch her. She’d learn every secret and advantage that she could. This apocalypse, these fellow travelers—it was all bullshit, and completely unfair, but by the time she got back, her mood was halfway between fury and focus. “Teach me everything you know,” she told Arenthia.
“Everything?” Arenthia said, cracking a smile.
“We’ll start with the soul magic,” Mirian said.
“Then let’s begin,” the old high priestess said.