The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Near the end of the 205th loop, Mirian checked back on Torrviol. Professor Seneca and the alchemists of the Academy were isolating and studying several of the strange magichemicals produced by the jeweled lotuses, but the alchemistry was time consuming. Viridian continued to work on hybrid lotuses, but obviously, they took time to grow. It seemed, like most advancements in magic, it would be a lengthy process.

On the 206th loop, Mirian established the link between Torrviol and Mahatan, stole some jeweled lotuses for the professors to continue studying, deposited the fake Florinian ingots from town for coin, then departed north in the evening.

Wary of overtaxing her soul and aura, she kept her mana siphoning to a sustainable rate, doing short bursts of accelerated levitation and then returning to a regular levitation spell. This pace, while slower than a train, was significantly faster than what an eximontar could sustain.

Ibrahim only seemed to finish consolidating his forces in Rambalda on the 4th. Mirian suspected he had optimized that portion of the loop about as much as was possible. That gave her three days to look around without fear. After that, she would lay low, continuing to investigate Falijmali and the surrounding towns.

Mirian had no illusions about being able to achieve her goal in a single loop. She had planned out routes over the next few cycles that would take her past the ruins of some few dozen towns and villages that had been destroyed in the Unification War. The theory was that while a normal person wouldn't find much use in staying there, a necromancer might find such a place a valuable resource. Perhaps soul fragments still lingered, though Mirian had only noticed fragments of significant size in the First City and in the depths of the oasis. More likely, there were corpses perfect for making Atroxcidi's mummy soldiers.

While rune production could be done almost exclusively with myrvite souls taken from the desert creatures, her analysis of the resources available to Atroxcidi purely using the myrvite parts in the local ecosystem led her to conclude he must be obtaining supplies from other parts of the world. As a minor city and port on the East Sound, Falijmali was the most likely place he visited, though Mirian wasn't entirely sure if the Deeps had simply made up the rumor and been right by coincidence or he really had been spotted there. Upon reflection and discussions with Gabriel during their council, it seemed like a rumor like that would be difficult to contain. A legendary arch-necromancer visits town, and only the Deeps and Praetorians find out? In Gabriel's words, "That stretches the imagination more than a millstone weighs around the neck," which didn't make any sense, and yet she knew what he meant.

Her first route took over the ruins of Saghibalda which mean, in Adamic, "little town." There were, by her count, seven places that had been named Saghibalda, which seemed like it would have been an absolute headache to deal with for travelers and tax collectors alike. This was the westernmost one, positioned on a creek that ran dry most of the year. Professor Holvatti had once said in one of his lectures that, due to the lack of good topsoil in the region, farming was completely impossible in the region, hence why it was never settled. This was flatly contradicted by a history of people farming the region for, according to the records Mirian had examined, at least a few hundred years, having settled it well before Holvatti's great great grandfather had been born. The fact that the area was barren now was due to the war. It was yet another lesson that sometimes very smart, knowledgeable people had absolutely no idea what they were talking about.

Mirian landed in the abandoned town on the evening of the 2nd. The scars of war were still apparent, even after a century. Some of the buildings seemed to have collapsed from neglect, but others clearly had been blasted apart by artillery. The mudbrick walls were pocked with bullets, some of which were still stuck in the walls. Sandstorms had blown over the town, burying most of it in drifts and mounds, but the Isheer sanctuary in the center of town still stood tall, despite the damage to its stone pillars and a gaping hole in the roof.

It looks so much like Arriroba, she thought, and trailed her fingers across the buildings. Detect bone revealed a mass grave just outside town.

Mirian thought of the Akanan soldiers who had no compunction about slaughtering the people of Torrviol. This is nothing new. Only, it was Baracuel doing it. It was a depressing thought. Is all of history like this? She'd learned about the horrors of the Persaman Triarchy, when necromancy had run rampant and slavery had returned to the world. She had learned about the ancient Zhighuan Empire and the great slaughters that had taken place as emperors and pretenders alike conscripted entire countrysides for their war, and then the terrible famines that had swept through the lands. The history books, it seemed, had been more circumspect about discussing the true cost of Unification. Now, the immediate future held an Akanan invasion, and Gabriel thought it was inevitable.

Has it always been like this? Will it always?

The problem always seemed to originate in throne rooms, councils, and parliaments. The cry for war never started on farms or craft shops. And yet, they're swept up in it. And bear the heaviest cost.

The graves were undisturbed except for some lightning scorpion burrows in the mound. They'd no-doubt helped with decomposition. There were no signs of living people. Another place, another people who will be forgotten.

Mirian flew on.

There were three more villages along her route. Two had the same mass graves. Another had a collapsed well. Some divination revealed the bedrock had been shattered by earthbreaker shells, and what had likely once been an aquifer that supplied the town with water had dried up, forcing the population to move on.

Her divination revealed nothing of note in the large swathes of desert she crossed.

She moved onto Falijmali.

***

It was one of those towns that had seen better days. East of the bay, there were the remains of an old castle. Nearby, a lot of the houses were made out of the stone they'd stripped from it. All around town were the remains of what had once been a mighty wall. Now, there was a spellward that circled the town. The spellward was short, run by only two engines, so many old houses were outside of the barrier, and were now abandoned.

Still, it was bustling with activity. A ship had just come into port, and was offloading crates of goods. Mirian recognized the barrels of olive oil that came from Arriroba's groves, and felt a brief pang of nostalgia. The fabrics people wore were more drab than the wealthier parts of Persama, but here, there was a distinctive style that immediately set it apart from places like Mahatan.

Mirian had observed the town from afar with lens spells, then landed far enough away that she doubted anyone had seen her levitating around. She kept her illusion over her eyes, which was now necessary to prevent people from staring. If informants had spotted Atroxcidi here, that meant there were informants, and such people didn't always care who they sold their information to as long as the coin spent.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

First, she walked around town with detect life, looking for any souls that were different. If the Deeps had agents here, they weren't wearing soul disguises. If there was an advanced Praetorian force, they weren't wearing orichalcum. No one stood out.

She wandered over to a tavern by the port and listened into the conversations. There would be a few days before tales of Ibrahim's rebellion and war would reach Falijmali. For now, the sailors griped about sea serpents and leviathans, of hard labor on hot days, and of the price of wine.

What she needed to find was where key magichemicals got shipped. She headed around to visit the magic shops.

The first one she entered was a place called Najwa's Artificing. Walking in nearly gave her vertigo. The decor was warm and considered, with a beautiful but unostentatious rug and a few soft glyph lamps. There were two carved wooden chairs sitting by a small table, the kind of furniture that Grandpa Irabi had in his house. The kind of furniture she immediately knew had been passed down for generations. Behind the counter, she could see a high quality artificer's table, complete with enchantments to help regulate glyph production and a few basic woodworking and metalworking benches. The racks of tools were organized, and each tool clean enough they glimmered in the light. On the counter itself, there was a teapot sitting in a tiny glyph circle that would keep it warm. It was cozy and functional at the same time.

It was exactly the kind of place she'd dreamed of having when she graduated from Torrviol Academy. The perfect little artificer's shop. Mirian felt a deep pang. It was a nostalgia for something that never had been. For something that now never could be.

"Can I help you?" the woman behind the counter, presumably Najwa, asked. She raised an eyebrow. The shopkeeper had the same eastern complexion as Mirian, and the same dark hair, though she kept it pinned up.

Mirian took a deep breath. "I like the attention to detail here. You have a nice shop."

"Thanks. It's not for sale," Najwa said.

"Oh, I didn't mean… that's not why I'm here. I am interested in magichemical shipments. I see you've got an alchemical refinement set, and I was wondering if you know what the trade caravans going south look like?"

"I don't pay attention to that sort of thing," the woman said curtly.

"I ask because I'm both looking for new suppliers and experienced crews," Mirian said. "Anyone you could point me to? I can pay for your expertise," she said, pulling out three silver drachms. That was a lot to pay for information, but also small enough that it hopefully wouldn't indicate suspicion, just an abundance of wealth.

The shopkeeper eyed the silver, but said, "Not interested. Either buy something or leave."

Mirian bought several pre-fabricated conduits and copper mana-flow splitters. It might make Najwa be more amenable to helping her, but at the very least it would also save her some time in setting up a few leyline detectors locally. As she left, she felt the shopkeeper's suspicious gaze on her.

The next shop she went to got a similar response, and the shop after that. Mirian could track the reasoning well enough. The traders and merchants saw her as a potential threat to their competition. While a merchant in Akana would see her inquiries as a chance to churn out more silver, the merchants here favored stability and close relationships with their partners over growth. And, it was clear to Mirian that everyone talked to each other. A few days after she'd talked to Najwa, everyone was giving her the stink eye.

She moved on to eavesdropping spells. She did some refinement on hidden remote spy, adding a few dozen glyphs but improving the overall efficiency of the spell while reducing its detectability. This brought back memories of observing Torrviol's spies with Valen. Almost always, people were extremely boring to listen to. They talked about the weather. They talked about petty arguments and small dramas. They talked about their children being annoying, or being adorable. They talked about their husbands and wives. They talked about fruit being spoiled, or a house repair that was particularly difficult. They talked about getting a poor grade of copper from the last ship in. Mirian found it all excruciating. Even narrowing her scope to a few select merchants or trademasters she knew must be involved, she overheard no details that brought her closer to the southern caravan routes.

A few days of this was too much to tolerate, and she began exploring the south herself. Outside of town, there had once been roads, but they had fallen into disrepair. Pack camels and eximontar were mostly used to move goods, as well as a domesticated myrvite that looked a lot like a drake but was apparently called a 'spotted mage-lizard.' It didn't have spots, but did have colorful frills it would display if it was annoyed.

The high winds from the east constantly were wiping away the tracks of the pack animals. Instead, Mirian went back to the tried and true method of divination: looking for animal scat. However, detect eximontar and detect camel unexpectedly returned tiny scattered points all across the desert.

When she investigated why her divination was being thwarted, the culprit was unexpectedly tiny. Little colorful scarab beetles were constantly taking the dung and rolling it off somewhere else.

Her search moved her south to the high desert where the land was full of crag-filled plateaus, jagged spires, and maze-like canyons. The area she was trying to search was still massive, and the terrain only magnified the difficulty. Still, she got to work.

***

The next loop, she took a different route across the desert. She changed her approach to talking to the townsfolk, but they remained suspicious of her. This time, decided to use the same method she'd used to find her family: break into the port offices and look at the log books. Here, she picked the fluoronide subset of magichemicals to analyze. Back in Torrviol, Platus had blown himself up using one of the alchemical compounds. Perhaps he still was. Mirian had long since stopped caring about whether he lived or died. The point of picking the category of compounds was that they were distilled from northern flora like the royal cordyline and fireweed, and the only way to get them was to ship them in.

Next, Mirian broke into each of the magic shops that did any sort of alchemistry and checked their ledgers. Two of the shops didn't seem to actually keep ledgers, which was appalling. For those shops, though, she could look at their inventory on the shelves and extrapolate.

Mirian wasn't particularly knowledgeable about criminal smuggling operations, but she was good at math. She could tell the numbers weren't adding up. Even without access to all the information about shipments, it was clear that a lot more magichemicals were making it into Falijmali by boat than were ending up in shops.

The problem was, caravans didn't seem to leave the town very often. The number of nearby villages only reachable by land was quite small, and the overland caravans directly to Mahatan were risky and required a lot of guards to escort them. Perhaps another caravan would have left, but the leyline disruptions still caused mass myrvite migrations, scaring off anyone.

More divination in the desert was achieving little. Her high powered divination spells were returning nothing, but that was no surprise. Atroxcidi had hid from the Praetorians for over a century; no doubt he'd come up with schemes to defeat most search attempts. She could cover a lot of ground by flying over the rocky terrain, but the necromancer had probably accounted for levitation. Detect cave and its variations might work for finding an underground hideout, but there were simply ways to defeat the spell. That, and thousands of false-positives. Most of the caves she did find seemed to be full of myrvites.

There was a riskier way to find Atroxcidi; she could do what she did with the spies in Torrviol and track his army backward through time by using multiple loops. However, that would involve first getting right next to the undead legion, and after Ibrahim had talked to the necromancer; it was the very thing she was trying to avoid.

For any other army, she could simply follow the inevitable refuse they left behind, but the undead left no waste, ate no food, drank no water, and struck no camp. An army that requires no logistics.

She kept the tracking method in mind, but as a last resort. She had another idea. She needed to talk to someone who did have expertise in smuggling operations.

Nurea had written her a letter of introduction to Ravatha, one of the Syndicate criminals. Her smuggling operations in Cairnmouth were extensive. If anyone would be able to advise her on untangling the operation in Falijmali, it would be her. Fetching her from the city would give her a later start than she liked, but now she could guarantee a safe route through the area.

On the 208th loop, Mirian headed to Cairnmouth.