The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy-Chapter 161 - 160 - Another Route

When the time loop started fresh, Mirian spent some time in the dorms one night quietly breaking into people’s rooms and investigating their spellbooks. It had the advantage of both disrupting the initial conditions Troytin would encounter, and offering her a quick way to get several spells without scribing them. She left a few of her usual surprises, then traveled to Palendurio and hired a new assassin to go after Troytin.

Mirian spent two cycles training her speed, strength, and agility with Rostal, then two more perfecting the obstacle course. The tricky part was at the end. To replicate the reversal of gravity, Mirian had to precisely channel into her levitation wand so it was exerting a force exactly twice as much as gravity on herself, then had to continue channeling while also twisting her body like a cat so she could land upside down on the hanging platforms.

Meanwhile, she continued to iterate her designs with the artisans in Frostland’s Gate, and sketched out new ways to streamline her work. In those cycles, she started stealing Professor Cassius’s eximontar, a beautiful creature named Winterblossom.

One day, I’ll have to ask Cassius how he came up with that name.

Winterblossom was proud, aggressive, and also significantly larger and faster than any of the other myrvite mounts. It took Mirian a bit to figure out just how Winterblossom liked his mana threads, but once she figured that out, the mount took a liking to her.

Having practiced leaping about her model of the death corridor until she was absolutely sick of it, Mirian was ready to try the Labyrinth again. She cleansed Torrviol of spies, set up new pitfalls, then headed north.

On the steepest sections of the pass, Mirian took to levitating both her and Winterblossom up the steepest parts of the mountain trails. At first, Winterblossom kicked wildly and made a distressed chittering noise, but eventually, he got used to it. Overall, she was still saving mana and reducing travel time.

Her next innovation in saving time came as she approached the highest part of the Littenord Pass. Winterblossom was pretty good at navigating the snow, but it was still deep. When she’d tried giving Winterblossom ice-crafted snow shoes the first time she’d stolen him, it hadn’t worked, and the eximontar had made his displeasure known. But walking down the deep drifts took time, and keeping track of the trail was equally annoying. This early in the cycle, she had no footprints or travelers to follow.

Looking down from the height of the pass, it was a long slope, treacherous with ice and a few short cliffs.

I have to fight gravity the whole time to get up here. Why not use it to speed my descent? she thought.

Her stolen spellbook didn’t have exactly what she needed, but the spell would be a fairly simple one. She spent some time by the warmth of the traveler’s obelisk scribing away as Winterblossom tried to eat different kinds of fir needles. The dumb animal lacerated his tongue on a sword-pine tree, then stomped around in a panic until Mirian could finally calm him down and hold him still to heal him. At least the priest’s healing techniques work the same on eximontar, she thought.

Finally, she’d scribed the spell: nested perforated force spheres.

It was actually two separate spells so she could control the mana flows going into them separately, but she thought of it as a single thing. If it worked, she would get down the mountain in record time.

"Ready, Winterblossom?" she asked. The creature made a weird clicking noise with its mandibles. Mirian guided it over to the edge of the trail where the downward slope began, levitated them slightly, then cast the spell around them.

The inner force sphere was designed to stay still and keep whoever was in it upright. The outer force sphere could roll as much as it wanted, and the air holes in both would make sure they didn’t suffocate. Mirian used a force spell to drag a rock into the back of the sphere to start their momentum, giving them a solid thwack!

They began to roll down the mountain. Winterblossom, inured already to levitation spells, still didn’t like the feeling and made his displeasure known, but couldn’t move much. Mirian was focused on putting more mana into the second part of the spell so the outer sphere stayed intact. They began to bounce down the mountain, accelerating far faster than even a double-conduit levitation wand could manage.

Mirian let out a whoop as the force sphere tumbled down the path, launching itself off a cliff. There was a feeling of falling and Winterblossom made a gross noise, but then with an explosion of snow they hit the slope and kept going, continuing to build speed. Wind and flakes of icy mush streamed through the air holes, while the sphere kicked up clouds of snow on both sides, adding some friction, but not nearly enough to slow them much.

She kept channeling, feeding more mana into the outer sphere as it was bombarded by stray rocks and little falls. Winterblossom made another noise, then gave up and lay down, only crushing Mirian’s left leg a little. The bottom of the inner sphere started to get damp with slush as the snow they careened over melted and found its way in gaps.

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The sphere tumbled down another slope, then splashed into the shallow mountain stream. Once they were in that, they started making even better speed. Mirian shrank the inner sphere slightly so the water didn’t fill too much, but this late in the season, the stream was mostly frozen over. The sphere continued, smashing through a cluster of icicles on one rocky bank, breaking off the branches of shrubs that had leaned too far into the stream and startling the five hells out of a group of elk that had thought it was a safe time to get a drink.

At last, they reached a valley, and the sphere ground itself into enough snow on the flat plain that it came to a halt. She dismissed the spell, laughing from the joy of it. "Oh, come on Winterblossom! That was great!" she told the eximontar.

Winterblossom turned his head and snorted, clicking twice.

Mirian let the mount pout, and levitated up above the canopy to see how far she’d come. In the distance, she could see the pass they’d come down, looming high above them. That probably saved me a half day or more, she thought.

Winterblossom needed a bit more time to lie in the snow, but judicious use of the grooming brush and another offering of mana finally got the beast to get up and continue. Once away from the slopes, the path was almost a straight shot to the village.

***

They stood at the edge of the death corridor. Mirian began to limber up, shedding all her supplies except the tightly strapped pack that contained her spellbook, soul repositories, food, waterskin, and puzzle-solving supplies. She’d worked to minimize the weight of the pack, while maximizing the useful tools.

"You’re really going to run that thing?" Beatrice asked, skeptically.

Mirian finished stretching. "Remember, no matter what happens, head back to town. And you remember when the myrvites swarm the town?"

"The 19th of Solem. We’ll be ready," Cediri said. "Whew. Good luck."

Mirian embraced the Spear That Cuts Water. As soon as the crushing wall across the way closed and then opened again, she accelerated into a sprint. She leapt across the gap, landing with both feet before she started moving again. She leapt to the first safe tile as the wall slammed closed behind her, then made a series of one-legged leaps onto the safe tiles, alternating using her left and right feet.

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Second tile. Fifth tile. Fourth tile. First. Sixth. Fifth again.

Then, she dove forward, twisting her body like a corkscrew. The yank of gravity reversing was, at least, familiar, but it threw her off balance since it didn’t happen as a result of her spell. She landed with a grunt on the platform below, then took a moment to recover.

As she stood, though, the platform began to vibrate. That can’t be good.

Whatever it was about to do wouldn’t be good for her health. Mirian took a running start and leapt to the next platform. As she did, she heard a wunk! When she landed on the next platform, she looked behind her, only to see the first platform she’d landed on had retracted itself, leaving behind only stone spikes.

The second platform started to vibrate.

Shit. She recovered her footing, then leapt. The third platform started vibrating too. This time she didn’t hesitate, just took another running leap, hit the last platform, and kept running. It was a good thing, too, because whatever timer the platforms were on, the last one was shorter. Even as her feet left the platform, she felt it starting to lower, making her jump to the final ledge short. With her enhanced reflexes, she grabbed onto the ledge, her body slamming into the wall.

Mirian heaved herself up. Behind her, all the platforms had retracted. But in front of her was the door.

"Yeah! You did it!" called Beatrice from the far end of the death-corridor. "Good luck!"

She turned and gave her a thumbs up, then placed her palm on the door. It split open, revealing a large room full of stone pillars. To her dismay, the antimagic suppression field was still in effect.

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It took her some time to figure out what the puzzle was. There were tiles that lit up with glowing glyphs when she stepped on them, and they helped give her hints about where the next tile-switch was. Getting to each tile meant leaping up to the tops of the stone pillars, then jumping from platform to platform until she was just below the ceiling.

She took notes on the sequence of the switches and their locations. For three rooms, the puzzles grew in complexity. She discovered switches that would only stay active for a short amount of time, but finding a switch that glowed the same color as the timed switch would lengthen how long it stayed active. Red switches stayed active only for a few dozen seconds, while yellow switches lasted a minute, and so-on through the color spectrum.

The next room baffled her. She spent an hour trying to make the puzzle work, but one of the tile switches had glyphs that alluded to a tile near the top of the puzzle—but she couldn’t find it.

Mirian sat and ate, contemplating solutions. The switches proceed through the color spectrum. Why would it stop at purple? The Elder Gods aren’t limited in the light they can see. Perhaps there’s an ultraviolet switch? But the suppression field is still active, so I can’t just use a spell to detect it. The stonework is too perfect for me to simply find the glyphs; if there wasn’t a glow, I wouldn’t know any of the switches were active.

She munched on a piece of boar jerky, then sifted through her pack looking for solutions.

Then it struck her.

Of course! Certain magichemicals fluoresce in ultraviolet light. I can hold out the glass bottle as I move around the top and find them.

Sure enough, when she climbed back up to the higher stone pillars, the bottle of ink began to fluoresce. With that final switch activated, she could hit the red switches in quick succession. The glyphs around the door finally opened.

That led to her first construct. It was about seven feet tall, though a bit thinner than Scrappy.

Again, the antimagic suppression field was active. Mirian grimaced, and summoned Eclipse. If only I knew more soul magic, perhaps I could use something that could harm something like a golem by itself.

She came at the golem under The Spear That Cuts Water, using her enhanced agility to dodge its first swipe at her. As she ducked under it, she cut upward. Sparks flew and there was a terrible screeching sound as the blade scraped the metal arm. She dodged again, then plunged her blade into the central eye—

—or tried. The blade hit a powerful force barrier, somehow active despite the magical suppression field. Normally, Eclipse would shear through it, but the barrier remained intact. Light began to bloom where her blade met the barrier. The golem made a howling noise, and Mirian felt a churning feeling inside her. The spell resistance of Eclipse was tied to her soul, and though it was enhanced by the property of the special metals, it was still linked to her. She could actually feel soul energy being consumed, like water meeting fire and erupting into smoke.

She withdrew the blade, gasping for air, body shaking. Fortunately, the golem seemed shaken as well, which gave her valuable seconds to dive out of the way as it recovered and sent two of its arms crashing down toward her. I don’t think that’s a fight I can win, she decided. So it’s similar to the other puzzle. Solve the room while getting chased around. Only, without levitation, and without anyone to take over if I get tired.

Mirian started moving around the room looking for switches as she wove around the pillars, dodging the slow-moving golem. When she had enough distance, she hoisted herself up onto a rectangular pillar, then leapt to a slightly taller one a few feet away and grunted as she pulled herself up again. To her dismay, the golem’s hands reformed into a claw-like shape that pulsed with energy. It attached a pair of them to the pillar, then slowly began to climb.

No rest then. I’ll have to train my endurance as far as it can go. She leapt to another platform. Blue glyphs lit up as she stood in the center of it. Mirian quickly jotted down its position, caught her breath, then kept going.

***

The next room had a golem too, and as soon as the first one broke off its pursuit, the one in the next room was after her. Mirian switched to the Lone Pine form just to ward away the weariness. At the top of the room, she had to scramble to get out her ink bottle to help find the switch that was lit by ultraviolet light before the golem climbed up and swatted her off.

Then, as she stumbled through, there were two golems waiting for her, a little one and a big one. Damnit, she thought. There was no time to rest. She circled around to where one of the taller pillars was closer to the wall and used that to leap back and forth between the two until she was at the top.

That should give me a chance to catch my breath, she thought. The larger golem would at least be slow to climb up, which would give her—

That’s when she saw the small golem leaping from pillar to pillar, making its way up to her. Still with the damn antimagic field.

Desperately, she used one of the kicks Rostal had taught her, hitting the small construct in midair as it leapt toward her. It plummeted to the ground with a crash. She looked down. The energy forming the central ’eye’ was chaotic, and the energy along its limbs crackled. It seemed to be repairing itself, but it at least was temporarily disabled. She doubled over, breathing hard, muscles trembling.

Good. Just need a minute. If I can incapacitate the first one then—

That was when she felt her leg snatched by a thick claw. It dragged her backward with incredible speed, and she was plummeting to the ground—

***

The Ominian walked with her under a night sky. They were in the Endelice Mountains again, the dark ice of the glaciers glimmering with reflected light from the stars above.

"Does it have to be so hard?" she thought at Them, since she had no physicality.

THIS PLACE crooned the Ominian, and took another step forward. The Ominian was perhaps six times taller than the myrvite Titan; the beast would have been like a small dog to it. Yet, even as They walked, there was a tenderness to Their step. Even though there was nothing around them but jagged mountains and a frozen world, They stepped as if it was a garden full of delicate flowers.

"Why do you walk Enteria? Are you leading me to something? Am I on the right track? What is the path forward?"

A dozen times before, she’d asked similar questions, and the colossal Elder God, or statue, or whatever it was, had simply ignored her. Now, They turned.

Pictures flashed through her mind. She saw a long road of cobblestones winding through a valley, then the streets of a city, though the architecture seemed wrong—all the buildings too shiny and tall to be real. Then the roads began to split, the trails fanning out, and in the same logic of dreams, she knew there were more roads than there was space to fit them all. The roads became branches of a tree, and she saw the tree again, the one that was half-aflame.

Thousands of paths, hundreds of thousands—half of them burning. In the haze of smoke and destruction, it wasn’t clear which of the tangled branches led to the fire, and which to the greenery. WHICH PATH? came the words in her mind, blazing there like a scream.

She had no answer. They had no answer.

She woke in her bed again.