This time, Mirian changed two more variables. She recruited Valen as a spy again, torched the registrar's building as usual, and stripped the second spy of his soul-mark so that he'd trigger the destruction of the spy's headquarters.
But before all that, she had another person to recruit the aid of.
"Respected Jei," she said, walking into her office. "It's good to see you again."
"Mirian. Do you not have class? Do not tell me you are skipping."
Mirian didn't answer. Instead, she went through all forty of the exercises Jei had taught her so long ago, chanting the words in Gulwenen as she did. Then she explained. After that, she said, "You've always understood the full implications of the time loop. Few people do. Now I need your help."
Jei cocked her head. "How long did I need to come to terms with it?"
"Usually a full day. But we don't have that kind of time." She told her about Sulvorath. "We need to make sure no progress can be made on the Divine Monument. Whatever it does, we don't know yet, but he cannot be allowed to learn. All sabotage should be done subtly. Lost papers. Improperly mixed alchemical solutions. Partial melting of key glyphs that cause the spell engines to malfunction. Ironically, the Akanan spies in town help that along. I'm also conducting tests on the timeline, seeing which variables he has the hardest time dealing with. I'm also seeing how many people in Torrviol I can mobilize against him without him knowing."
Jei snorted. "Here I thought you would be coming for help with the exam."
Mirian waved her comment away. "Your math problem is impossible to solve without a second set of coordinates, and we don't know what the coordinates are. Which might mean needing to find another Divine Monument. Maybe. But it's not clear the Akanans actually have one. They have something else. But needing a second coordinate set would mean...." Then she blinked. "Oh shit. What if that's why the leyline collapse propagates down to Palendurio? But if there's one there, why have I heard nothing about it?" She stood and started pacing. "How old are the Monuments?"
"Undatable," Jei said.
"Right, probably predates even the Cataclysm since they were put there by the Elder Gods. Are there historical references to them?"
Jei raised an eyebrow. "I am not a historian."
"Right. Crap. I'm going to have to open a history book at some point, aren't I? Well, a problem for another time. That said, there is some math I'd like you to look over."
Mirian laid out the equations and formulas she'd come up with to measure rune resonance, explaining how it worked to her as best she could, comparing it to waveform mathematics. For two hours, they discussed it, and Mirian kept thinking about just how much she'd missed working with Jei.
Saying goodbye to her was the worst. Her eyes prickled with tears as she said it.
Jei looked at her, concern wrinkling her brow. "Remember to take care of yourself."
Mirian couldn't help herself. She gave Jei a big hug. At first, Jei stiffened like a board, then, she awkwardly patted Mirian on the back.
"See you next cycle," she said, trying to swallow the lump in throat. I can give myself that, without falling apart, she thought. Just a few hours. I can do that.
It was hard to focus after that. She had to take some time to breathe, and just watch the horizon. Then, it was back to the work.
Soon enough, she was on the train to Palendurio again.
***
True to her new plan, Mirian ignored the political situation in Palendurio and focused on infiltrating the Sanctum.
She had thought about assuming the identity of one of the acolytes so she could attend classes, but the more time she spent in disguise in the Grand Sanctum, the more she understood that the soul magic curriculum they taught was sparse at best.
Instead, she stuck to the shadows, continuing her own research into runes, taking breaks to make sure she was exercising her glyphic spellwork as well. Eventually, she broke down and started looking into history books in the Great Library, searching for any mention of descriptions of strange objects that might have a connection to the fourth spatial dimension, the arcane dimension that the Elder Gods had such mastery over.
Such mentions were difficult to find, and the archivists were little help.
She ended up crafting three huge detectors, warded as best she could, in hidden spots outside the city. The detectors were powered by small spell engines, and would output their data on a scroll using mundane ink so that when the antimagic pulse wrecked them, she'd still be able to read the results. Hopefully, data on energy intensity would help point her to something.
For all their failings, the priests and bishops of the Luminate Order took the circles of secrecy seriously. The secrets were passed down verbally in special ceremonies. Infuriatingly, there were no ceremonies scheduled until after the apocalypse. The last ceremony had been the 22nd of Cerelorn, a week before the cycles had started. While she knew the first and second circle secrets from Arenthia and Lecne, the third was the purview of the bishops and archbishops, and she had trouble even getting close to them.
On the 20th of Solem, her reports came in.
***
Mirian instructed Jei to recruit Professor Torres, giving her a list of predictions to help. She instructed Nicolas to have Nurea warn the Cairnmouth Syndicate about Sulvorath. She left several seeds of chaos in Torrviol itself, set to go off simultaneously in empty rooms and along the spellward.
This time, she got a letter from Torres, and it spoke to the timeline in Torrviol being drastically altered by a myrvite incursion and total disruption of classes. Sulvorath was indeed trying to do something with the Divine Monument, but what it was, Torres hadn't been able to tell. As best she could tell, they were still stuck on the same problems that had plagued them when Mirian was there.
Mirian managed to sneak into the passage she'd found in the Sanctum the previous cycle. This time, she seemed to have stumbled on a sect of Eintocarst. Thankfully, the room wasn't occupied, though it was obviously still in use. The books were mostly the same kind of garbage she kept encountering, but one was a detailed treatise on the Labyrinth, and what that implied about the nature of Eintocarst's Godhood. It included several studies into runes found in the Labyrinth, as well as the myrvites associated with their construction. She took the book with her, and spent as much time as she could reading up on and practicing the new runes.
This time, she used one of her orichalcum disks to shield the most critical parts of her energy detector artifacts. She succeeded in measuring the energy from the leyline eruption, but the eruption had been so big that even at the low-sensitivity measurements, all three devices displayed results at the maximum possible point on the scale. She'd have to decrease the sensitivity or find a way to extend the scale.
The orichalcum had shielded several critical components, but there hadn't been enough of it to shield the rest.
At the end of the cycle, she started scouting out the rooms of the archbishops and the pontiff. As she'd suspected, the rooms were well guarded. What few Praetorians were still in Palendurio were mostly guarding the grounds at Charlem Palace. She began to map their patrol routes, schedules, and routines. She found several easily exploitable gaps in the security measures around the Kingmont Hill. In three different areas, there were non-overlapping wards she could disable without causing any alarms that would allow her to sneak in without a permit.
She sent a letter to the pontiff requesting a meeting. The letter was, of course, ignored.
The world ended.
***
Mirian killed the first spy by pulling him off the roof, far enough away that no one could reasonably attribute it to her. For the second spy, she opened up the latches on the wyvern cages so that they ate him when he went to kill them. She killed the spy posing as the mayor's secretary when she went to rob one of his counterfeit Florinian ingots. She left a letter for Magistrate Ada on where she could find evidence of the spies' activities. Then, on her way out of town, she set the registrar on fire as usual. As she flew out, she levitated a pig through the spy headquarters window, triggering the fire traps, then sniped Captain Mandez from the air with a disintegration ray as he moved to respond, as well as the spy who worked at the train station.
She laid low in Palendurio, focusing again on the history of the Luminates and looking for more clues about the Labyrinth and the works of the Elder Gods. She also looked into the latest research by wizards looking into the leylines, which was an incredibly sparsely known field, but it allowed her a few key refinements of her leyline measurement device. This time, in addition to the orichalcum shielding, she tried to use what she'd learned of the runes in the holy vaults to create an additional layer of protection.
When she got the letters from Torrviol, she found the town had been deeply disturbed by the rash of deaths, then further disturbed by the revelations. Sulvorath had retaliated by killing dozens of people, including Nicolas, Magistrate Ada and Jei as he apparently attempted to wrest control of the town. But he'd been too obvious about killing Jei. Valen bragged about hearing that Archmage Luspire had ripped apart the house he was hiding in and incinerated him. Mirian couldn't help but feel a surge of gratification at learning that her nemesis had been torched. She noted what building he had stayed in. Possibly, it was a spy safehouse she hadn't identified.
Despite all her precautions, her measurement devices were overloaded again.
Two more secret rooms ended up being dead ends. One was abandoned, but contained no knowledge of interest. Another was still in use, but was full of useless ceremonial trinkets.
Mirian pretended to be an acolyte and healer up by Charlem Palace so she could learn a bit more about the people there, getting as close to the section of the palace occupied by the pontiff and archbishops as she could.
The world ended.
***
Mirian checked the house that Luspire had apparently burned last cycle over. She'd had to scribe several divination spells much earlier than she usually did, but she was getting quite good at speed-scribing, the exact thing every arcanist wasn't supposed to do. The house appeared to be empty, but it had basic anti-theft wards, and upon further investigation, a rune-mark detector. The kind Specter used.
The runes Specter was using were quite simple, and now that Mirian knew the rune sequences, changing them was simple. She needed to modify a single reference rune, and then add her own triggering rune. This changed it from 'if the rune-mark is not detected, the room catches on fire' to 'if the rune-mark is detected, the room catches on fire.' Then she created a miniature spell engine that would spread those flames if it detected enough heat energy. She was sure that Sulvorath had a rune-mark, probably that Specter had placed on him, so if he or any of the spies attempted to use the room, it would cause quite the fire.
She could have made the trap more intricate and deadly, but as always, she didn't have the time or the resources. Two days just wasn't enough.
She headed south again.
Mirian checked out two books about geoarcanology from the Great Library, trying to figure out how to get her detector to work. She ended up finding a relatively simple solution: seismometers. Not even magical ones, either, though a small spell engine was the only way she could figure out how to turn the cylinder of paper the waves would be recorded on. Measuring the arcane surge itself seemed to be impossible, but she could easily measure the shockwave that surge caused.
The result, though, was that she was left with three long seismograms of jumbled lines. The spell engines had broken too quickly, so the paper cylinder had stopped rotating, so all the lines were right on top of each other. She could triangulate one of the major earth movements at the start of the eruption, but not how the eruption had progressed underground as it neared the city.
The breakthrough, though, came when she investigated the next secret room on her list, the one north of the holy vaults that took the most drilling to get to. As she broke through, four priests of Shiamagoth greeted her, crowding by the entrance.
"Oh thank the Gods! We're saved!" one of them cried out.
Behind them was a large magical forge, and beyond that, an entire shelf full of orichalcum ingots.
Found it, she thought.