Mirian dismissed the force shackles holding the engineers to the wall as she cast her magnetic shield. She'd need every bit of mana she could get.
The Akanans started with a volley of force blades, reluctant to bring their full force to bear while she was standing next to the engine. The engineers were screaming something about not damaging it, while the heavy assault team was yelling about precision spells—it all became jumbled, and when the cracks of gunfire started echoing about in the enclosed room, no one could hear anything but that.
The force blades dissipated on Eclipse, as did a followup spell that was probably supposed to bind her. Mirian cast hide in shadows, then flipped to extinguish light in her spellbook. The spell shifted all visible light in the room deep into the infrared. Mirian then cast darkvision as she moved around the engine, using the armored conduits as cover.
Panicked shouting followed, but the reason she'd chosen the spell was she knew the heavy assault teams were poorly prepared for it. Battlemagi had diverse enough spells that they could either counter it, apply their own darkvision, or use a detect heat source spell in a pinch, but these were almost all sorcerers. Their specialized wands hit hard, but only had the single function.
She cast greater lightning right at the center of the group, then immediately dropped to the floor. There was more gunfire, and several spells. Mirian crawled under a tangle of steel pipes, then got back up. She could see her spell had taken down at least one soldier, but there was an auramancer with them. The heavy assault team attacked again, laying down broad fire. A glyph panel nearby exploded, and the engineers' pleas for caution rose to a peak. Mirian felt several pings! on her armor, but her magnetic shield was doing the job. The problem she was going to run into was the mana drain; her aura was rapidly depleting.
Mirian ran sideways and unleashed another greater lightning, this time coated with soul energy, then cast a succession of magnetic detonations in the midst of the group, causing their gun barrels to explode. The auramancer screamed and went catatonic as the foreign soul energy ravaged her, and two more soldiers dropped. Better, though, Mirian had taken out several of the rifles, and those soldiers were scrambling back.
She advanced to the side of the door, pressing her back up against the wall. Then, she cast a greater illusion spell that resembled herself over by the engine and dismissed the extinguish light.
"There she is!" someone called as she had her illusion duck around the far end of the engine.
"Move to surround. Rifles company, hold fire. Precision spells only!" shouted the leader. In the darkened engine room, they missed the slightly darker shadow flanking them.
Mirian waited for them to get farther into the room, then dismissed the illusion and cast muffle sound on the threshold. She rounded the corner, moving through the door into the hall. To the three men left standing there, it must have been a terrifying sight: Eclipse would have seemed to come out of a solid block of shadows, suddenly flashing forward and slicing right through their armor. When they tried to use direct attack spells on her, they had no effect.
In three quick strokes, she'd cut two throats and impaled a third. She left behind five members of the assault team who, thanks to the sound-dampening spell, didn't even realize their companions were dead behind them. She sprinted down the hall, then dismissed all her spells and quickly chugged a mana potion. The levitation, breaking down the door, sustained force shackles for five people, then rapid succession of high intensity spells, several of which she'd needed to sustain, had nearly depleted her auric mana. Mirian caught her breath for a moment, then continued through the ship, making her way to the deck.
If the airship had crashed because of her meddling with the engine, she would have been fine with it, but she was intensely curious about what would happen next.
"What's happening? Are you alright?" a soldier asked.
"Fine. Just got cut up a little. The assault team is dealing with a sorceress in the engine room," Mirian said. "They could use support."
"The heavy assault team needs support?"
"Yes. Contact team two. And if you see an officer, we need two engineering teams heading towards it for repairs. I'm gathering my team now."
The soldier rushed off, and Mirian continued.
Topside, the deck and superstructure was covered in little blackened craters where the seeds of chaos had rained down. There were still teams running around making sure all the fires were extinguished and doing spot repairs. Meanwhile, spotters were using divination spells to peer into the dark sky, looking for more.
Mirian headed to the aft deck, then hopped over the railing, plummeting silently for a few hundred feet, then activated her levitation wand.
She noted that Torrian Tower had been split in half again by an artillery assault. Another constant. I still need to figure out why they find that tower such a threat, Mirian thought. They must have known it was empty. And they already have Luspire taken care of. So what is it?
***
Four days later, Mirian used her arcane eye that she'd originally learned from Viridian to monitor the Akanans on the far shore of the lake. She was pushing the extreme range of the spell to the point where even a single eye was incredibly draining on her auric mana, but she could make out the general trend of the army's activity.
The Republic's Justice had landed for repairs, and workers were hoisting pallets of materials onto the decks while others swarmed about. Might of Liberty circled above the town lethargically like a watchful cloud.
Across Torrviol, the army was digging trenches and fortifying houses as if they expected a counter-attack. The warehouses Troytin had prepared with supplies seemed to have satiated them, though. Smoke rose from the Academy's dining hall as they used the facilities. On the far side of town, she could just make out the dots of the distant vehicles that made up the logistical tail of the army.
This becomes a forward supply base. While the Akanan navy sieges Cairnmouth from the west, Cearsia's army comes down the river and cuts off supplies from the east. They already expect to take Palendurio through General Corrmier's treason. With Cairnmouth cut off, they then occupy the heart of western Baracuel. Troytin shouldn't have bombed the train tracks, though. Hanaran's division is routed and annihilated when it's caught deploying to Torrviol. Now, it can hold up in Fort Aegrimere and prolong the siege.
Endresen looked up at the ceiling. "Well, it's been giving material physicists conniptions because it's one of the things their theory of gravity can't explain. But maybe their equations do describe gravity, and the Divir moon isn't being held up by gravity at all. An object that close to Enteria shouldn't be in geosynchronous orbit. I hope I'm not stating the obvious, but maybe it has to do something with the leylines."
Mirian blinked. "The Akanans found a device that can use the leylines to float their airships. Maybe the Elder Gods used it to... put the Divir moon there." Her brow furrowed. "Though I don't know why they'd do that, or why they'd do it that way. But if the leylines shift out from under it..." She started laughing. "That's it! All we have to do is find a way to stabilize the leylines."
Endresen looked at her.
"Oh Gods, how do you stabilize a leyline? Right now, all I know is 'don't destroy the Divine Monument.' Has anyone...?"
"Never. I think there was an Akanan archmage who went looking for a leyline once. All his tools melted as they got close, so they started digging it up with spells. Then the archmage got fried by some sort of arcane feedback. Sadly, no data on why that happened or the physics behind that since all the equipment was slag already, and all the researchers who were with him who didn't die went off to go get cleansed by the church instead of continuing the research."
Mirian tapped her chin. Endresen wasn't a leyline expert, but she did know enough research and arcane physics to be a great help. She needed more than a few days with her. "Say, what sort of things might an Akanan transfer student need to say to get inducted into your research lab? What kind of skills might they need to demonstrate? Would Professor Jei vouching for them help?"
"Hmm. So let me tell you what we're working on..."
Endresen explained some of the details about glyph microstructures, the lensing spells they were using to look at them, and the crystallography-adjacent classification system they were developing. As she talked, Mirian connected it to what she already knew. This might make celestial runes easier to produce and analyze too, she thought. And I actually know several novel glyphs from the Labyrinth. She was sure Micael could make a convincing argument without giving too much away. Which in turn, would let me get more insight as to what's going on in Torrian Tower, and what the Akanans are getting up to when they arrive.
***
Mirian spent the rest of the evening collating data, then plotting the major movements on a map of Baracuel. She didn't even realize how much time had passed until Respected Jei brought her dinner. She hadn't even realized when her old mentor had left.
She started muttering to herself as she looked over the results. "No leyline breach down by the Casnevar Range. That means Palendurio probably is intact. But the leyline just moved." Her eyes scanned the data. "And there's that anomaly north of Alkazaria again. Strange."
She, Jei, and Endresen talked for another hour. Eventually, Jei and Endresen left to sleep. Mirian stayed in the shack, poring over paper readouts and graphs. That was where Lily found her.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey," Mirian said, swallowing hard.
"They say it's... going to end soon."
"Yeah," Mirian said. "Was it... okay? These few weeks?"
"It's hard for anything to be okay when you know..." Lily gestured vaguely outside. "A lot of my classmates are in denial. They say the world can't end because... you know, it just can't. And if it could, there was something they could do about it."
Mirian nodded. "It's that feeling of powerlessness that's the worst part."
"Yeah," Lily said. "I had to... I had to spend some time and accept that. But then, the evacuation came, and there was all this stuff to do. It felt nice to be able to help out a little." She snorted. "You should hear the other students talk about you. It's all hushed whispers and rumors. They don't know you're secretly a huge dork."
She laughed. "You still know me."
Those last few hours, Mirian didn't get any great insights. She could have spent it rechecking data, or plotting more energy surges. She could have probed Professor Endresen's brain for more physics ideas, or had Respected Jei go over more of the math.
In the end, though, she just needed to chat with her friend. She found herself glancing southeast, to where Grandpa Irabi was, somewhere in the distance.
Friendship isn't a distraction. It's a necessity. She could do this. Lily and the others were important to her. The time loop had undermined it, but so what? She would persevere, because it was worth it.
The prelude to moonfall was different this time. With the skies overcast and the snow falling in flurries, the auroras and eruptions illuminated a pristine world of white. Violet, green and orange light sent the fields of snow glittering, and gave a strange depth to the flakes coming down.
As the moon fell, those fields of white brightened, so it was almost like the world was being washed of its details, until the only thing left was a single color.