The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Chapter 109 - The Palendurio Crisis

Mirian made it down to the canals with only a few people pointing and shouting about her, then dropped her night camouflage as she flew inside, taking several twists and turns through the reinforced caves, passing a boat full of very surprised laborers moving supplies through the waterways. Once she was out of sight, she landed and cast detect life again, but all she saw were the forms of people moving about on the boats through the tunnels. There was no cluster of twenty of them moving together.

She wandered through the passages, seeing if there were any boats smuggling people out inside crates, or Palendurio Guards riding the rafts, but found neither. She cast detect metal, enhanced to have a mental component so no one else could see the glow, hoping that if the guards had taken off their armor she could detect it, but the usual merchants were carrying around too many goods with metal in them for anything to look out of place. She would need a more specific divination spell, and she didn't have one. Always next time, she thought.

The group seemed to have disguised themselves and dispersed. This cycle, she wouldn't find them, but she'd know where to wait next time. At this point, she was sure the guards were impostors of some kind. The murder of the guard at the gate was evidence enough of that. But who? she wondered.

By then, she was tired, and low on mana. She headed back to the inn for dinner.

The commons of the Bard and Lion Inn was ablaze with rumors. Mirian ordered a meal from the counter, then sat in her usual corner. All around, everyone was talking.

"—heard that the guard just came in wands blazing! Literally, that thing burned like—"

"—what in the hells were they thinking? Couldn't have been the guard, why would they do that? Why would anyone do that?"

"—talked to a woman who said they saw a pile of bodies—"

"—explosion, outside the city. He said it was an attack, saw spells getting flung about—"

Mirian started eating, when a man sat across from her.

"This seat taken?" he asked.

"It is now," Mirian said.

"You hear what happened?" he said, peering around the room, then out the window. "Can't believe it. The Akanan Embassy, attacked! I heard it was the Praetorians," he said.

Mirian shrugged. "It looked like the Palendurio Guard to me. Then again, anyone can wear that armor."

"You saw it? Damn. Did they really attack the crowd?" He didn't actually wait for her to answer, though. Clearly, he had a lot of nervous energy and just wanted to talk. "There's a rumor going around that there was an attack north of the city. You think the attack on the embassy was retaliation? And the Akanan merchants are in on it. Damn, always knew they were scheming. They talk to each other, you know? Back each other. You think they might try to retaliate?"

Mirian leaned back, really looking at the man for the first time. He certainly looked worried. But she'd heard that rumor before, in tomorrow's broadsheets. It seemed a bit early to be suspecting the Akanan merchants of anything. Do the Akanan merchants already have a reputation like that? Or is there a campaign to spread the rumors? "Where'd you hear that from?" Mirian asked.

"People are talking," the man said.

"So... someone on the street? How would they know if the merchants were conspiring?"

"The Akanan merchants are always talking to each other! Everyone knows that. Any time a new shipment comes in—"

"How do you know they talk?" Mirian asked.

The man abruptly stood, pushing his chair out. "Why am I talking to you?" he said, annoyed.

"I don't know. You're the one that sat down in front of me," Mirian said.

The man glared at her, then left, muttering something about "young brats" as he did.

Interesting, Mirian thought.

***

"What should the response be of a faithful citizen as the army attempts to restore order? This is the first of the holy cities, and our actions must reflect it..."

So that's where he's going with this, Mirian thought. As the speech continued, Pontiff Oculo never said, 'listen to General Corrmier,' but he might as well have. She tried to think through what that implied. Corrmier obviously represents his own noble family, but how did he get the Luminate Order to back him? Why does the military even need to occupy the city?

Then she realized. The Palamas family is the one getting displaced. That's why Governor Palamas is the target. They kill him to remove him as a threat, but also pin the embassy attack on him. Somehow, they also have the backing of the Luminates, but then how does Akana Praediar fit into all of this? Do they know about the planned break in the alliance and the invasion?

General Corrmier outranked General Hanaran. And when he ordered General Hanaran north, it was to her death, and the death of the entire division. Was that also part of the plan, or a miscalculation?

The crowd wasn't happy with Pontiff Oculo's speech, which ended up being quite short. Calls for peace and to follow martial law were uncharacteristic of His Supreme Holiness. Ever since the Unification War, the Luminates had mostly remained neutral in politics, and enough people could tell his speech felt a whole lot like picking sides.

There was also the issue of the magical explosions that were now coming with increasing frequency. Oculo didn't address them at all in his speech, and the crowd grumbled about that too. If it's a preplanned speech, it wouldn't, Mirian rationalized. Just like the professors with prewritten lectures never changed them.

Sure enough, the riots continued. Any Akanans still left in the city were leaving as fast as they could, but not fast enough for the mobs. The next morning, three Akanans were found with their arms nailed to the walls of their shops in clear reference to the spikes that pierced the Ominian.

That day, there was a new development.

"For the King! For Baracuel!" shouted a mob armed with tools and improvised spears as they attacked another group that was roaming the streets by the sanctum. There was a bloody skirmish that left two bodies bleeding out, and then the group they'd attacked ran away.

An hour later, a mercenary band wearing the colors of both the Palamas and Bardas families moved through the streets.

"What's going on with them?" Mirian asked a well-dressed woman in Tenedor Plaza.

"You didn't hear? The King has issued a denunciation of General Corrmier, and deputized them as the new guards of Palendurio. He told all the soldiers that they didn't need to follow Corrmier's orders anymore. Technically, it's in his authority to dismiss a general, but the King isn't actually supposed to exercise that power! None of them have since the war."

That explained it.

Mirian then stopped by the Royal Courier for her message.

"Why, yes, I do have a letter for you," the official there said. "Was a bit surprising. We haven't heard anything from the north, and then here comes a zephyr falcon from Cairnmouth. If you don't mind me asking... what's going on up there? Everyone's saying different things. Has Akana Praediar really declared war on us?"

"They have," Mirian said, opening the letter from Lecne.

She read it quickly. Lecne hadn't been able to find out any information about Sulvorath himself, but they had provoked the Deeps into moving agents into the area. Dozens of criminals and even innocent citizens in the area had been arrested and interrogated, all looking for Mirian. The descriptions they'd asked about matched her, and they matched the 'Vera' disguise she'd used briefly.

But not Micael, she thought. She was still ahead of him, and he was still obsessed. The why of it still wasn't clear. There had to be more to why he'd want the apocalypse to continue. There had to be some reason he'd attacked her.

Specter was still giving him access to the Deeps. She had a plan for how to cut that off, but for now, it was better to let Sulvorath spend all his time and energy looking for her. She had a plan to cut into his efforts to do anything, and now she had a baseline to test against the variations she was going to make in each cycle.

"Any other news?" the courier asked.

"No," Mirian said, and left.

As she entered her room, she checked the orichalcum shavings she'd grafted into the locking mechanism. Her own magnetic spell fizzled. So resonance does decay, she thought. The spell resistant metal she'd kept on herself still matched her own soul, but removed from it, it would eventually revert. That was good to know.

General Corrmier, it seemed, didn't care much what King Aurelius Palamas proclaimed. That evening, Mirian watched from the roof of a clocktower as Baracueli soldiers fought roving street battles. The entire city sounded with gunfire and spells. The Bard and Lion Inn boarded up its windows and started using the tables and chairs to barricade the door at night.

When Mirian woke in the morning, it seemed Palendurio was divided: the Loyalist faction, as they were calling themselves, had claimed the city north of the Magrio River, while the Liberation faction—Mirian wasn't sure where'd they'd gotten the name—had claimed the south part of the city. Every bridge was occupied, and the streets were deserted as people hid in their homes.

The next day, as she was writing her observations and notes about events, Mirian felt the rumble of a small earthquake. Quickly, she rushed out to her balcony, then levitated over one of the abandoned towers of Ducastil, no longer caring at all if she was seen.

She was just in time to watch as the leyline eruption began.