The colossal myrvite let out another roar as it thundered forward. Mirian covered her ears again.
It moved like a turtle, slowly but inexorably, but it was large enough that each stride covered a surprising distance. Mirian shifted to the Lone Pine form as it let out another roar. She still felt a wave of power stripping her aura, but the earth dervish method helped her weather it with less loss.
As it approached, her arcane sense felt like it was on fire. The beast radiated arcane energy like nothing else she'd felt. "I'm going to fly us out," she said. "Ready?"
Rostal nodded. She grabbed him with lift person, then activated her levitation wand.
As soon as they began to rise, one of the waving tentacles pointed right at them and shot out a dark beam.
Mirian felt the mana fueling both spells crumble from her grip. Instead of pushing through the glyphs, the flows grew chaotic, and her attempts to reassert control of the mana failed. With a yelp, she and Rostal plummeted from thirty feet up. They'd already begun to leave the hill they were on top of, so instead of falling flat onto the ground, Mirian smacked into a bush. She heard branches snap and cloth tearing as she rolled off it down the steep slope, bouncing off a sapling, then crashing into at least three other things as she flailed about, grasping at the crumbling, sandy soil for purchase. Disoriented, she made out a flash of cliff approaching, and summoned Eclipse. With a shout, she plunged the blade into the cliffside.
Her arm wrenched and she screamed, but the blade lodged firmly in the ground. A tiny landslide of soil and small rocks tumbled off the slope down the cliff below. The little landslide continued as the DOOM, DOOM, DOOM! of the myrvite's footsteps sounded.
Mirian cast her levitation spell again, this time in a short burst, canceling it just as the beast shot out another disruptive beam. She'd regained enough height that she could scramble along the steep slope. She started moving along it, switching from the Lone Pine form that had helped her weather the fall to The Spear That Cuts Water so that her feet could find better purchase on the treacherous ground.
When she looked back, scanning about for where Rostal had fallen, she saw the fool standing at the base of the cliff, blade drawn. Somehow, he'd survived the fifty foot fall and was staring up at the beast, rapier drawn.
Mirian shot out a lift person spell to try and pull him back, but one of the tentacles shot out and blocked it while two others came at Rostal. He slashed the first, then vaulted off the second as it tried to grab him, diving under a third that came sweeping down like a scythe. Miran's spell dissolved on spell resistance so powerful that she felt a shock of feedback from it.
She saw Rostal get one more good slash, but there were too many tentacles, and only one of him. A spined tendril wrapped around his torso, impaling and crushing him. Mirian's eyes went wide as she saw what happened next: Rostal's soul energy didn't dissipate. It was instead sucked towards the gaping mouth of the beast, the myrvite's four pincers glowing with crimson light as it opened its maw wide. She could see rows and rows of thin spiny teeth.
Shit, was all she could think.
She sent out another burst of a levitation spell, then dropped it again as it sent out a beam, sending her forward along the slope to where the ground was flatter. She dodged through a patch of brush, aiming for where the ground had the cover of trees. The beast was at least a hundred feet tall and seemed to have no problem crushing and sucking the souls out of the vegetation too, but that would slow it down. Mirian had torn something important in one of her legs, and she was definitely bleeding from something. She sent healing energy from her repository into her leg, but ignored the other wounds. There was no time to figure out where she was hurt.
As she passed behind another bush, she sent out a greater illusion that looked like herself, sprinting at a right angle from her actual direction of travel. But when she glanced through the canopy to see if the behemoth had taken the bait, it hadn't.
Of course. It's not just looking at visible light or even heat. If it can eat souls, it can see them. Fuck. Fuck!
She dismissed the illusion. She'd reached a patch of flat ground through the trees and took off through it at a dead sprint. The footsteps of the beast thundered after her, and she knew she was in trouble when she glanced back because it was looming larger through the trees. There was the CRACK! of trunks being splintered as the creature crashed through them. The thin pines of the boreal forest yielded like grass to an elephant. It was barely even slowing down.
Mirian changed her form to The Dance of Dusk Waves to gain extra speed, but she was running out of breath.
The beast let out another roar, and this time Mirian found herself stumbling, dazed.
Shit, she thought again, feeling the presence of the thing behind her growing. There was only one option left. She grabbed Eclipse by the blade and turned it towards her heart, ignoring how it cut into her hands, then plunged it into her chest.
Pain lanced through her and she fell to her knees—but she wasn't dead. She wasn't sure if she'd missed her heart or if she simply wasn't dying as fast as she'd wanted, but one of the tendrils grabbed her. She felt the spines digging painfully into her leg, lodging in like the teeth of a bog lion. Then, there was an immense pressure on her soul. She grabbed for her aura, but found it was being siphoned away. Eclipse fell from her grasp and—
***
—She was in the dream, in the Mausoleum of the Ominian. The Elder God stared down at her from Their throne, unmoving, but she knew They were watching. The places where They'd been pierced still oozed ichor, and there was a silence so deep it seemed more eternal than the stars, more unbreakable than the mountains and—
***
—Then she was awake in her bed, screaming.
"Wooo. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Shit!" Mirian said as she recovered. "Sorry Lily. Don't worry, don't worry it's... don't worry."
"Gods, Mirian! It sounded like you were being murdered! Are you...?"
She closed her eyes. "All good. Allll good," she lied.
She tried to reconstruct those last moments. As painful as they were, they were important. I was dying, but not yet dead. But my soul is intact. She cast around with her senses, feeling it. It was harder to see without the focus, but she could still see the shapes and currents of it. Eclipse is still there. So it came with me. She breathed a sigh of relief. Then a drop of water hit her on the head, and she looked up with a grimace. "The fucking hole," she muttered, and grabbed her spellbook so she could telekinetically shut off the water heater above her.
Here, Viridian drew a quick representation of a spell organ. "Take, for example, the slithering swarm. This myrvite is only found in the labyrinth. By what selective pressure did it come across such a habitat? By what selective pressure did it gain the use of its shadow-arms? These 'arms' can be replicated with a nine-glyph spell. There are some indications the slithering swarm has magichemical sacs that replicate the function of these glyphs. Alone, all of these glyphs would be useless. Unlike the brain or other fantastically complex organs, there's no apparent iterative process that would seem to result in a myrvite gaining such a complex spell."
He paused and looked around the class. "Or, consider the intact ecology sites found within the Labyrinth. There are records of a leviathan being found intact inside a colossal Labyrinth chamber—a chamber two hundred miles from the coast. What accounts for this? Perhaps the Labyrinth itself is modifying the evolution and traits of myrvites. After all, the Elder Gods did not build the Labyrinth for no purpose. If we cannot deduce the function of the Labyrinth through study of its structure, perhaps we can deduce its purpose through its effects."
There were a few murmurs throughout the class. Professor Viridian's lectures were never scripted, but here, he was departing from the textbooks significantly.
"We will study this question throughout the winter quarter. In order to even begin to discuss it, we will need to understand the complex factors that influence ecology."
Viridian wrote several words on the chalkboard: organisms, climate, resources, and interactions. "My recommendation is that you categorize your notes in these four conceptual frameworks. In organisms, we will study heritability, traits, and spell organs. Resources and interactions you should understand from previous classes, and this will be an exercise in application. But with climate, I would like to say a few more blasphemous words."
He smiled. "I've been having some conversations with our visiting guests from Akana, and Professor Denton shared with me the most fascinating development. Akana Praediar is developing wondrous spell engines that can perform calculations automatically, using the mathematical relationship of several glyphs to move energy about. In the end, it produces an illusion. When Archmage Luspire asked what I would like from a collaboration, I asked for a very specific one they've been developing. And they have delivered it."
With a dramatic flourish, Viridian telekinetically opened a closet in the room and pulled out a machine.
Mirian started. That's new, she thought.
"Here, I have input the properties of the oceans and continents—simplified of course—and their ability to incoming solar light. I have added the mountains and Enteria's spin. I have input initial conditions, such as ocean temperature. The machine then attempts to simulate the climate patterns of Enteria. Observe," he said.
Mirian was on the edge of her seat, and she wasn't the only one. She could tell Viridian was feeling especially pleased with himself, and that meant he'd discovered something. Even if it was built for this purpose, adjusting the parameters of the spell engine must have taken him the whole break, she knew. I wonder if he slept!
She watched the machine whirred to life. An illusionary square lit up the room, bathing everyone in blues, greens, and browns. It was a map of the known world. It made sense Viridian had only used the known portions in his model—no one knew what was across the larger oceans, and even Akanan airships would struggle to brave the deadly storms. She watched as colored puffs of atmosphere settled, and then the machine lit up with blobs of color across the continents.
Several students gasped. Some—probably those who needed to brush up on their geography—looked around confused.
"The white areas represent the frostlands and tundra. The yellow areas are arid, the dark green where we would expect temperate forests, and the light green where we would expect tropical environments. You see the problem," he said. "Who would like to comment?"
Calisto's hand shot up immediately, as did several others.
"Yes. Calisto."
"It's wrong," she blurted out.
"Yes. Elaborate."
"The whole climate map is off! The device put the beginning of the frostlands some three hundred miles north of where they actually start. There's an entire temperate region that doesn't exist. And in east Baracuel, it has forests instead of the arid scrublands that are really there. And Persama isn't a desert!"
"Wonderful, yes. How absolutely fascinating," he said. "So then what might account for the massive differences?"
Another student said, "The model's garbage," which got a few guffaws.
"Certainly. It doesn't reproduce Enteria's climate, except in a few places further south. But simply dismissing it isn't very interesting. What's far more interesting is to ask: why? For by answering that question, we may discover something."
"There's a missing factor," offered one of the sixth years sitting behind Mirian.
"Precisely. But I have input the largest factors. So what could it be?"
Mirian saw what he was getting at. She was trying to lay low, but she couldn't help herself. Her hand shot up, and Viridian nodded at her. "The Labyrinth and the leylines," she said.
Viridian was absolutely beaming, his eyes twinkling as he said, "What an intriguing hypothesis. We shall have to explore it as the class continues."
Much to Mirian's disappointment, after his introduction into the big mysteries, Viridian moved back to going over the foundational concepts of heredity and its influence on animal traits. She studiously took notes, and found Calisto glancing over at her notebook.
As soon as class ended, she put on her overly charming smile, the one she'd tried so many times to use on Nicolus to get what she wanted, and said, "Hey, you seem to know your stuff. Want to be study partners? I'm Calisto." She extended a hand.
Mirian had been planning on asking her the same thing, but the girl had beat her to it. "Micael. And sure," she said, shaking her hand. "You know any good places?"