The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

The first cartography device she made failed spectacularly. Creations like the spellrod just needed open mana channels linked to glyphs, and casting a spell was as simple as pushing mana through that channel and each glyph in the sequence. However, the mana flow through the cartography device needed to be strictly regulated, or, as she discovered when she tried testing the first prototype, there'd be too much force applied to the pen and it would go flying off, tearing a hole in the paper. Or, as she discovered with the second prototype, it was easy to get the balance of forces that influenced the pen wrong and cause it to transcribe scratching her head as a blocked passage. Also, the ink pot on that one exploded, and she wasn't sure why.

Divination, as it turned out, required a great deal of precision. Mirian honestly thought she'd gotten lucky with the cave-detector last cycle. She ended up taking a trip to the Artificer's Tower to check out some of the design books there, and bought another set of tools that would help her artifice work be more precise. The work was grueling, requiring precision in glyphwriting that even Professor Eld hadn't required. Making the wands she needed for combat certification was relaxing in comparison.

One of the shop stewards started giving her funny looks. "Isn't it between quarters? You've been here more than I have today. Take a break!"

"This is what I do for fun," she told him.

"Not judging by the amount of curses I've heard out of your mouth it isn't."

Well, he had a point. Mirian tried relaxing by taking a walk in the Mage's Grove, but her mind kept wandering. She remembered the airships and felt dread. She remembered Nicolus holding his dead knight and felt sorrow. She remembered being shot as she fled across the rotunda and felt fear. Meditation and deep breathing only helped so much. It was better if her mind was totally focused. Then, those horrible memories couldn't bite at her. She went back to Bainrose and found some more books on precision artifice.

The next day the shop steward saw her again and said, "You again? Is this a special project for a professor or something?"

"Yeah," said Mirian, because there was no sense in telling the truth. She got right back to work, deploying her new precision calipers and arcanometer to measure mana flow in each of her circuits. This led to her making several adjustments with the silver wiring and recasts of most of the glyphs. Her new glyphpen had a marked ink vial that could measure exact amounts of the magical ink so that she could get balance of magichemicals right. Then, when the measurements were still off, she realized the inks she was using were probably too cheap. Damn, she thought. I need to take more alchemy classes so I can mix these myself. Some of the merchants had to either be skimping on the expensive ingredients in the ink, or they were using cheaper instruments themselves. For most classes, and most items, it didn't make much difference. The good news was, once she knew what the measurement error was with her arcanometer, she could calculate an adjustment to the amount of magical ink she was using on the glyphs. It was time consuming, and a bit wasteful. She wondered if there was any way she could use the wizardry labs in Torrian Tower.

That grand tower that dominated the skyline of Torrviol was where a great deal of cutting edge research was done. Professor Viridian was one of the few wizards who stayed in the Myrvite Studies building; the rest mostly stuck to the spire, where expensive labs, powerful wards, and intricate spell engines allowed them to push the limits of knowledge. Mirian had seen Professor Endresen entering the building a few times, and in her lectures she'd talked about just how much precision was needed to measure the properties they were studying. She'd also seen just how much magic was running through the tower when it was demolished by artillery during the first cycle. Mirian had never heard of a student going into the tower. But she had heard of students working on special projects for a professor, which might necessarily mean using their research space, wherever that was. Mirian filed 'impress Professor Endresen' in her mind as something she might try in a future cycle. There was too much to do already for her to try that this time, and she didn't even know what such a move might be needed for. The high tech labs of Torrian Tower would be overkill for the device she was making, even if they might be useful.

The days passed quickly. She met Selesia again, and enjoyed teaching her various rapier stances and parries again. Then she got her first lessons in Eskanar. She'd known it was fairly similar to Friian, but didn't realize that some of the words were basically the same. She found she picked up the new language's vocabulary fairly quickly. It was the grammar and the alphabet they used that threw her off, but Selesia was patient and fun to learn from. Selesia started joining Mirian and Lily for dinners.

She passed her combat certification again, and decided next cycle she would see if she could pass the second certification test on the same day. The 200 level classes that had tormented her a few years back had grown easy. She hadn't realized how much progress she'd made.

Then it came time for registration. Her heart leapt at the idea she might see Professor Jei's name on the list—

But it was Professor Torres teaching it again.

Her stomach twisted. She hadn't been convincing enough. Or, she'd missed something. She'd have to try again.

At least there will be another try, she thought. In a sense, it was comforting. Her friends and mentors could die—but she'd see them again. In a sense, it was horrifying. No matter what she did, they would all die gruesome deaths in the end. Atrocities visited on them again and again.

What would it take to end the cycle and truly save them? Now that she saw the scope of the calamity, she had no idea. To paraphrase Professor Viridian, all she could do now was build a foundation. Understanding might come later.

She took the same list of classes she had last cycle. She wondered who else in Torrviol was working on the secret project. Obviously, the spies knew all about it. She needed to find out more about who they were, where they met, and how they moved about.

One of the problems, it seemed, was that she was going to need to remember a lot. Studying at Torrviol, Mirian was no stranger to memorization. But she was going to need to find ways of keeping track of each day, and different people's movements throughout the day. She would need to expand her expertise in that many more disciplines. She would need to remember to plan ahead for spells and devices she would need. She wondered: is there a time limit? How long will the month repeat?

There was so much she didn't know.

***

Mirrian completed the cartography device on the morning of the 10th. That meant she had two days to spare in the passages under Torrviol before the winter quarter began, rather than one evening. And this time, she had a proper mapping device, not just a delving device. She'd bought a nice pocketwatch from the market, too, so that if she heard voices she could mark when she heard them, not just where. The cartography device was, unfortunately, a bit impractical to use. It resembled a small picture frame holding a piece of parchment, with two vertical and two horizontal brass rods crossing its center, each marked with dozens of magical glyphs. On the edges of the top and bottom of the frame, the parchment rolled up like a scroll, allowing the device to roll and unroll more paper as needed, though it only worked in that one direction. A small orb was suspended between the four brass rods, itself also covered with various glyphs. At the base of it, it held a specially designed pen, and that was where the ink reservoir was as well. Mirian could press various glyph switches on it to mark a place of interest. The problem was she had to hold it in place as she walked while channeling mana to make it work.

The intensive labor that had gone into it also had precluded her from making a spellrod this time. She had her wands from the combat certification and her spellbook, but she was hoping to avoid a fight, because in no way was she ready for one. If someone ambushed her, she would need to place the cartography device on the ground first before getting out a wand since it took both hands to carry it. She didn't think the Akanan spies would give her a 'time out' before zapping her with lightning.

Because she wouldn't be able to have her spellbook out while carrying the mapper, she'd integrated a light spell into the device. This was an innovation Mirian was quite proud of; the blueprints she'd been following hadn't used it. However, it solved two problems. One, she could see in the tunnels while using it. Two, it got rid of excess mana flow so none of the other instruments would be accidentally overcharged during the operation. This led to a significant decrease in exploding ink bottles and broken pens.

Naturally, the frame was just a bit too big to fit in her satchel, so she had to hide it under her cloak awkwardly as she walked. This time, Mirian cast a minor disguise spell before heading to the door, just so no one would wonder why a student was entering a lecture hall during the weekend. It took her three tries to remember where the secret switch was. Then she descended, cartography device in hand.

As she walked, the little pen scribbled away. It was, for all the complications and annoyances, a well-designed device. It detected the step-by-step descent, and marked little rectangles to represent stairs. The pen's movements were tiny and precise, and so the resulting map was easy to use. Pulses of invisible light that shot out and reflected back told the pen how wide the passages were, and sure enough, when she came to a split, the map knew to draw all the possible passages.

She'd thought she knew where to go to get to Bainrose, but it turned out the passages seemed to avoid going under the plaza or near the castle. Subtle bends in the tunnels, or repeated zig-zags and turns had made it challenging to orient herself. Now she started to get a better sense of the layout. There were at least three distinct layers she was traversing through. Once, they might have been well connected, but iron grates, collapsed tunnels, and newer construction that blocked off old areas made it more of a maze.

As she walked, she paused to listen every so often in case someone else was down with her. It was spooky and dark, but so far, it had just been her and the rats.

The archeology textbooks had mentioned several distinct layers of ruins, and Mirian found her map made it easier to sort through which was which. The top layer was Old Torrviol, distinguished by its use of older bricks that were broader and flatter than the ones used in more modern construction. The foundations of current Torrviol came down into them, often blocking off passages. Sometimes, entire rooms of older buildings were preserved, though they had long since been stripped of anything of value.

The second layer was a network of brick tunnels that had run under the city. The archaeologists had argued about this in the books. Some thought it was a sewer system. Some thought they were defensive, though why Old Torrviol had needed so many of them wasn't clear. Most of them were blocked off by something, usually by collapsed earth or iron grates.

Below that was Ancient Torrviol. This was the city that had once stretched from lake to hill. The construction here used more granite. Once, the stones seemed to have been polished and carved with either art or runes, but time had weathered much of it away. Trickles of water that ran through the ancient structures had eroded some areas, collapsed others, and created streaks of calcite and other minerals.

What the layers all shared was a stale, rankling smell, a mixture of rat nests, mold, and who knew what else.

It took her some time to re-find the strange door she'd encountered before, but she finally did. It was still there, and still very much closed. Contrary to what she'd thought, the door wasn't adjacent to Bainrose, but to the plaza in front of it.

This time, Mirian had come prepared with a few divination spells. She started with image room, one of the spells she'd needed to integrate into the cartography device. This version, though, had a mental component. She cast it at the keyhole, and then closed her eyes as the spell brought images of the room beyond into her mind.

The spell wasn't a perfect visual. Instead, it reminded her of looking through a foggy mirror, where she could just make out certain features, but others were strange or distorted. What she saw, she couldn't quite understand. It seemed that the floor of the room… just stopped. Like there was a giant pit just ten feet beyond the keyhole, and the walls were missing. She stopped channeling the spell and looked at her map. There was nothing preventing the room on the other side of the door from being enormous—there were no other rooms or passages that prevented that. But it didn't make sense. There obviously couldn't be a giant pit underneath the main plaza or the plaza would collapse. And why was this door newer than the others? The stone seemed to be the same type used in the ancient city, but the door and glyphs were all new.

She tried another divination spell, sense enchantment. Sure enough, someone had layered various enchantments in the stone. Mirian was nowhere near experienced enough to say anything more than that. Apparently, diviners of some skill could say more about the type of enchantment, the amount of mana used, and more about the flow patterns. Just another thing she needed to practice.

The next spell she cast was date rock (which they'd all joked about in class), a spell she'd practiced a few cycles ago in her geology class with Professor Holvatti. She'd had to re-scribe it, of course, but the spell worked on most rocks. Casting it on the granite would give her some ridiculously high number in the millions, because technically, that's when the stone formed. But casting it on the mortar between the stones should give an age of the construction.

When she cast it though, the result came up as over 5000 years old, which couldn't possibly be right. That would make the construction pre-Cataclysm, and while Torrviol had been settled for a long time, she was pretty sure that directly contradicted the history books she'd read for classes. It was far more likely she'd just screwed up the spell somehow, or maybe the close proximity of the granite was interfering. Yeah, that had to be it.

Mirian cast a few more spells that were supposed to detect common glyphs, aiming at the inside of the keyhole, but the spell just said there were no glyphs. However, when she tried inserting one of the steel lockpicks she'd gotten from the spy's satchel into the keyhole, it was repulsed by a strong magnetic force. There had to be glyphs in there, but some sort of ward or enchantment was preventing her spell from detecting it.

Well, that's that, she thought.

To say there were undiscovered passages she still hadn't mapped would have been an understatement. There seemed to be more structures below Torrviol than at the surface. However, her auric mana was nearing depletion, so she chose one more place to visit before she returned to the surface.

There was a place where a brick wall had collapsed into a lower level so that a two-foot high opening led to a place Mirian couldn't seem to otherwise find an entrance to. She hadn't gone down, though, because there was a ten foot drop that she wasn't sure she could get back up from if she did.

Mirian returned to the area and knelt down to cast image room. Sure enough, the corridor went in both directions, but she couldn't see anywhere that it linked up with. Bad idea to go down, then. On a whim, though, she cast sense enchantment. She was surprised when she got a positive result. Crawling forward so she could stick her head out of the hole and look down the corridor, Mirian cast her light spell.

In the distance, she could make out an old shrine. It took her a moment to interpret which God the shrine was dedicated to. It was Altrukyst, she was pretty sure, but in some Elder form she'd never seen before. Usually, he was depicted with a guide lantern and stars, with chains figuring prominently in older ones. It was only the chains and stars she recognized. On either side of the statue were two black, polished obsidian orbs, each surrounded by a disk of strange metal. The metal had a strange, orange luster she didn't recognize, though 'orange' wasn't the right word. It reminded her of bronze, except the light reflecting off it was patchy; some parts were brighter, some darker, as if shadowy clouds ran through the substance. Linking the two orbs was a chain, passing through a screaming mouth in Altruskyt's torso. The strange bronze-like metal wasn't returning as enchanted, though.

In the statue's hand was a talisman. It appeared silver at this distance, though obviously it wasn't silver or it would have tarnished long ago. That was what she had detected. She tried casting a lift object spell to get it, but even stranger, there seemed to be some form of spell resistance in the area.

Another mystery, she cursed. Despite her exploration, she still had no idea where Professor Jei actually went when she went into the underground. And yet, even as it was frustrating, it was exciting. She had the time to solve it.

She headed back to the surface.