In the morning, Mirian did something she hadn't done in a long, long time: she put on a Torrviol Academy uniform and headed for class.
It brought back a surge of nostalgia.
Which was funny, upon reflection. While she'd been a student, she'd constantly been stressed, tired, and panicked, in about equal measure. But now, with the gap of time, she found it was easier to reflect back on the things she'd enjoyed: chatting with Lily over food. Peaceful runs in Mage's Grove. Listening to yet another fascinating lecture.
Of course, for most people, nostalgia meant reflecting on a past that wasn't there anymore. For her, that past was still the present. She'd both moved on, and hadn't moved on at all. Her classmates hadn't moved away or settled down and had families. All her old professors were still here, teaching. Even the snow would fall exactly on its prescribed day.
The leaves will stay bare. It will always be moving to winter. A realization struck her. Will I ever see the season of spring again?
"You've grown quiet," Valen said, still walking next to her as they crossed the fields between the dorms and the Academy.
"Hmm? A lot to reflect on."
"Can't be easy moving from Akana to here for your final year of classes," Valen said, referencing her cover story. That was one thing she admired about the girl. She took her spy assignments seriously.
"Well, I always knew it was coming," she replied. She'd decided that her made-up parents in this scenario had been born in Baracuel, but raised her in Akana Praediar for several years before moving back. That would explain why she had no accent when she spoke Friian, and would explain away her flaws in speaking Eskanar. Hopefully, though, neither would come up.
Valen broke off to go to her classes. Mirian headed to the Artificer's Tower. There, she'd continue to work on various divination devices that she'd put up all over town. The upper level classes were generally small enough that the professors would recognize Micael wasn't one of their students, so her plan was to claim she'd been given special permission to continue her projects she'd been purportedly assigned in Akana Praediar and then register for classes as usual on the 7th. Then she'd have the short break before the next quarter started on the 12th. That was plenty of time to set up everything she needed to. Then, she could attend classes as a cover while she continued to monitor the situation.
With any luck, she'd have what she needed early in the cycle and could discard the farce. If not, that was the price she was willing to pay for good reconnaissance.
***
Mirian kept expecting Sulvorath to make himself known, one way or another. Before she'd fled to Cairnmouth, she'd been able to tell he'd arrived by the way guard patrols shifted and the spy network completely changed tactics. However, neither she nor Valen nor any of the professors she'd roped into the investigation reported anything she considered unusual.
What in the five hells is he playing at? she found herself thinking.
She wondered if he'd already arrived, and had somehow gotten wind of her plan already. She added more wards to Valen's room, and quickly expanded her divination device deployment. However, the Akanan spies continued to act like no one had intervened. And maybe no one has, she thought. Had she actually scared off Sulvorath?
She had thought about whether or not to use Specter's necromantic curse on the other time traveler. She could get the wands easily. She already had a charged soul repository hidden under her uniform.
It would eliminate him for a cycle. But would it eliminate him entirely?
Unfortunately, she still had no information about his initial conditions. All she knew was that he started somewhere in Akana Praediar, probably a northern city, and had easy access to fast airships. That likely meant he was associated with their military. But there was no guarantee that putting a curse and a necromancer warning mark on him would keep him incapacitated. Perhaps that mark didn't mean the same thing to the Church of the Ominian. Perhaps they'd heal him anyways. And unlike him, she didn't have easy access to airships, so she couldn't put him under the kind of time pressure he'd used to initially thwart her.
If there was any possibility he would be healed from the curse, there would be knock-on effects. She would have revealed a capability he didn't know she had, and might start investigating soul magic more deeply. If he learned soul magic, that could be much worse for her. And if he didn't feel like he had the upper hand, he would no doubt change tactics. So far, since her escape, he'd been ineffectual, but from Jei's recording of his conversation, also felt convinced he had the upper hand. That was a perfectly fine equilibrium to maintain, for now.
What she really wanted to discover was if she could find a way to eliminate him entirely. That meant when she did ambush him, there would be no recovery. There would be no learning from it. He could never be a threat to her again.
Specter's path took her north, then back around south through the market forum, then slightly west. There, she dipped into a side door in an alley.
Mirian watched through the wall as her soul-glow moved to the next room, then hit a staircase and started descending. She kept part of her attention on Specter's progress while she analyzed the door. It used a glyphkey lock, but she disabled the alarm ward, leaving the lock itself vulnerable to being overpowered by raw magnetic force. Once the door was open, she quickly cast a divination spell that would locate common magical traps or alarms, then scanned the room for anything like the pit trap or other defenses she'd seen the Akanan spies set up. Seeing nothing, she cast muffle sound on her feet, then hide in shadows as she closed the door behind her. The camouflage spell would keep her well hidden in the Torrviol Underground, while her orichalcum would do just as well at defeating any spells Specter was using to monitor her back.
The second door she encountered was a false wall, but reveal iron did the trick it usually did and led her to the brick she needed to push to activate the mechanism. She cast another muffle sound on the door, but needn't have bothered; the hinges were well-oiled. Then she walked down the steps, her spell muffling not just her feet, but the vibrations they sent into the surrounding stone. She added darkvision to her actively channeled spells.
Once in the tunnels, she caught a glimpse of Specter down one of the longer halls. She'd dismissed her illusion, and was strolling quite casually through what was no-doubt her usual route. She was likely using some sort of light-modifying spell too, as she had no light spell active. With Sulvorath having yet to arrive, she clearly wasn't on the lookout for an operational breach. Nor would she know the assassination attempt on Jei had failed yet.
Mirian relaxed slightly once she recognized the section of the underground they were in. She'd helped run strike missions through it dozens of times. There's where we usually established a defensive cordon, she thought, as she passed a section where three tunnels converged. And that was the route we used for the counter-attack to encircle the trapped underground forces, she remembered as she passed a buried hall.
As they continued east through the tunnels, Mirian mentally mapped where they were beneath the city. Past the forum. Getting close to Torrviol Lake.
Specter glanced back before she rounded another corner, and Mirian froze. Her hide in shadows spell covered most infrared light as well, so she trusted in it to keep her hidden. When the woman continued on, so did Mirian.
She'd rarely gone this far east, since the battle never came out this way, and many of the tunnels were flooded beyond use. Specter stopped by an unremarkable brick wall, then looked around again, casting what Mirian guessed was a divination spell. Mirian stayed still, watching her from the shadows.
Apparently satisfied, Specter tapped three bricks in the wall in sequence, and the wall opened. Not an ancient door. A recent addition, she realized. Of course it had never shown up on the old maps.
Mirian waited for her to head inside, then waited a moment longer before approaching.
Detect life revealed no other people in Specter's lair. Reveal iron showed that the mechanism wasn't using steel, so her earlier sweeps for secret passages had never picked it up. Instead, it was using a glyph triggering mechanism to activate an attached spell engine that cast a simple move object spell on the door, but anti-divination wards meant the usual methods of detection also would have missed those.
She went through several divination spells, checking for both glyphs and runes. There was a rune-mark detector in the floor beyond that seemed standard fare for the Akanans. Mirian used her stored soul energy to disable it through the wall. Satisfied, Mirian began her preparations.
She cast shield spells against heat, magnetism, electricity, and kinetics, layering them in concentric spheres. The strain of maintaining four different shielding spells, muffle object, and her camouflage spell was intense, but that, combined with her orichalcum, would be plenty of defense. She opened up her spellbook to greater lightning, enhanced for paralysis and less lethality and prepared her charged soul repositories, ready to use the runes she'd need to pierce Specter's own enhanced spell resistance.
Mirian pressed the bricks in order, and the door softly rumbled open again.
Specter's quarters were built in an ancient ruined building that had been repaired and renovated with tasteful hanging tapestries and functional but nice wooden furniture. The stone floors were clean of dust and grime, and Specter had even taken off her boots by the front entrance. It wasn't particularly spacious, but she had several rooms to herself, including a bedroom, meeting room and office.
It was the office that she was in. Specter looked up, perhaps shocked to see a shadow silently approaching, but Mirian never gave her a chance. She cast a greater lightning bolt, coated with soul energy and enhanced for paralysis, and the woman let out a truncated scream before she collapsed to the ground, muscles seizing. Mirian dismissed the camouflage and sound muffling spells, then moved quickly to Specter. She flipped her over onto her stomach, using a knee to press down on her back. She unclasped the chain holding the imposter's spellbook, then kicked it across the room. Mirian then quickly took her wands off her. She then pulled the orichalcum torque off her, as well as the two hair pins. There was no time to adjust their resonance, so she threw them across the room as well, hissing at the burning sensation that came from touching an object attuned to another's soul.
She then used a pair of shackles to secure the other woman's wrists, then continued to search her for any weapons. She pulled a dagger from Specter's belt, and another smaller dagger from a sheath that her boots would have hidden if she hadn't just taken them off. Satisfied, she took her knee off and stepped back, finally dismissing her defensive shields.
Specter groaned.
"Got you," Mirian said.
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