The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Mirian was expecting the bullet, was watching for it, but it still caught her by surprise. Kinsman had a strong voice that carried people along with it, and the suddenness by which it was interrupted was almost as shocking as his sudden collapse.

There, Mirian saw. Opposite the podium, she saw a rifle barrel being withdrawn from a hole in a glass window. Then the window melded itself back shut.

Shocked cries and yelling began immediately. Several priests in the crowd began shouting and moving forward to heal him. It wouldn't work, she knew. The shot had pierced him right through the skull and blown a red smear across a stunned woman standing behind him. She also collapsed, either from the bullet fragments as they went through the Prime Minister, or from shock.

From the same direction as the shot had come, an eastern Baracueli man stumbled out of the building, holding a rifle. He looked dazed.

Immediately, several people at the back of the crowd began shouting and pointing. It was impossible to hear what they were saying from her vantage, but Mirian could guess. The next part, Mirian knew. The Baracueli man, Theodoro, would be torn apart by the enraged crowd.

"Meet me at the rendezvous," Mirian said to Selesia, and cast total camouflage and levitation. She leapt off the balcony and sped towards the area. As she neared Theodoro, she tapped into the titan catalyst like she would a focus, and dipped down.

Theodoro blinked, and as one Akanan man tackled him, another ripped the rifle from his hands. He let it go without any resistance. He tried to say something, but the shouting drowned him out. Some people started beating him, while others tried to pull them away, while others still shouted for the city guard to come quickly. Mirian hovered just above them.

The influence was subtle, but with her vision of his soul, she could see it clearly: thin black lines all around his head. Someone had cursed his mind. Mirian cast detect life next and turned her gaze to the door he'd stumbled out of. There were three people in that room. Mirian went for the door, but found it already bolted shut. She hesitated.

The people securing this room would be small players. Right now, the conspirators would be fleeing. She needed to go after the biggest target.

Mirian flew up to the sixth floor window where she'd seen the rifle barrel emerge. The room was dark—unnaturally so. Even without divination, she could tell there was a spell sapping light from the room. With detect life, she could see the assassin hastily disassembling something. The rifle, likely. She flew up to the roof and dismissed her levitation spell. No doubt, she'd tripped all sorts of city wards with it, but there was enough chaos it was the least of the city guard's concern.

From above, she watched as the assassin moved about inside the room, then made for the stairwell. Glancing back down, she could see people from the crowd pointing in her direction. They'd likely noticed the light distortions from her camouflage spell.

Mirian crept over to the opposite edge of the roof and peered down. On the other side of the building was a spell carriage. As the assassin emerged from the back door, he immediately entered the back of it and the driver hit the glyphs.

Mirian used another short burst of levitation and landed gently on the back of the carriage. Her camouflage worked better when she was in the open air. Hopefully, no one noticed the light distortions she was making and did anything rash.

"…divination device is giving a strange reading. Surveillance six, check it out," she made out someone saying from inside the carriage.

Ah. Whoops.

She flew off again, this time grabbing onto a different spell carriage that was just behind the one with the assassin. She had to fly to three different carriages as the one she was following wove around the streets, doubling back and zig-zagging through the maze that was Mercanton before it finally parked in front of a nondescript building. The first floor windows were boarded up, and the building looked derelict.

What are the odds this safe house has the same design as the one in Torrviol? Mirian wondered.

She ducked into an alley and began to apply the soul-disguise bindings that would make her appear as Adria. A few minutes later, she stepped out of the alley and made her way to the front door.

Sure enough, there was a pit trap triggered by a false door, with the real door behind the coat racks. Mirian supposed that most people wouldn't be visiting Akanan spy safe houses more than once.

A man sitting next to a heavy rifle case with a small glass of whiskey turned as she entered. One of the people next to him started and reached for a revolver.

"Nikoline? What in the five hells are you doing here?" the first man asked. Frowning, he said, "And why are you still wearing that damned face."

The agent next to him hesitated. "Mavwell, you know her?"

The first man, Mavwell, apparently, grunted.

Mirian gave him the kind of predatory smile Specter gave when she wasn't wearing her mask. "I wanted to congratulate you. I saw the shot," she said.

"Don't you have your own task to attend to?"

She shrugged, and poured herself a glass of the whiskey. "It's all handled. The objective is secured. At last, I can escape that little rat's nest." She sat down across from Mavwell and didn't say anything. Specter loved making people talk by saying nothing.

Mavwell looked at her. "If Old Kudzu finds out, he'll be pissed. You know he doesn't like things out of place."

Mirian made a mental note of the nickname. "I was thinking. A war is a perfect time to kill someone. Accidents happen all the time with that many guns around, and no one notices just another body."

The assassin sighed. "You know that trust is the underlying principle that makes operations work, right? Paranoia is for the little people, out there," he said, gesturing.

Mirian didn't say anything, just wet her lips with the whiskey. It tasted awful. She didn't know how anyone stood the stuff.

Mavwell kept looking at her, his blue eyes trying to drill through her skin. "You think there's going to be an internal power play? That could bring the whole operation down. It would be a stupid, unnecessary risk. This is about building the new world. It's bigger than one person." He swirled the whiskey in his glass around, then added, "Yes, you're right of course. There will always be someone stupid enough. Someone who doesn't know their place. But that's why people like me exist."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

They sat in silence. The conversation hadn't gone like she'd expected, though Mirian wasn't sure what she'd expected. She pushed her luck. "That was a neat trick with the patsy," she said. "He just walked out like a little lamb to the slaughter."

The assassin grunted. "Westerun's little project. Gwenna seduced him, then they spent months tinkering around with that head of his. Twenty years of research, and the best they could manage was to make him docile and confused for a few minutes. They could've achieved the same result by just shoving Gwenna's tits in his damn face."

Mirian gave a subdued chuckle, feeling like that was the right response.

Inside, her mind was howling. She knew that name.

Westerun.

***

Mirian left the safe house at a languid pace, hoping it hadn't been obvious how much her heart had been pounding. She'd copied Specter's flexible-disguise illusion spell. Once in the street she used it, then after several blocks of weaving around to lose any tails she'd acquired, she cast total camouflage and rapidly levitated a few blocks away. Then she dismissed the spell and her soul bindings and made for the rendezvous. She frowned, feeling the depletion of the soul repositories in her spellbook. She'd charged them with soul energy from the myrvite pens in Torrviol at the start of each cycle, but she needed to find a way to replenish them while in Akana. Perhaps there were myrvite smuggling operations here, too. Or I can continue pursuing energy transformations. If there's a way to step down soul energy to cause it to transform into mana, then perhaps there's a way to reverse the process too.

She made her way back to the apartment where Selesia waited. The girl was sitting by the window, but the blinds were closed.

"So what happens next?" she asked.

Mirian sighed. She'd watched it happen twice now, once from Vadriach and once from Mercanton. "Do you want some tea? I'm going to make some. Sassafras tea, right?" It was a traditional tea brewed by the Takoa. She knew Selesia liked it. They had a type of black tea, too, but it was too stimulating. What Selesia needed was something calming.

Selesia didn't say anything. She could guess why. She boiled the water in the teapot with a quick spell, adding the leaves and dried sticks to it, then sat down while the drink steeped.

Mirian continued. "Already, the broadsheets are printing information about Theodoro, naming him as the assassin. They'll have talked to the RID, who will have told them Theodoro was part of a blood-cult that seeks to destroy Akana Praediar. A blood-cult, funded by the Palamas family and other rich Baracueli, that ordered the assassination, and that they suspected as being behind the arcane explosions across the country for the past decade. It doesn't matter that it's all complete fiction. A thousand newspapers all print the same story. Everyone starts talking about it. They've all heard the same thing, so they all believe the same thing. Tomorrow, they'll learn of the attack on the Akanan Embassy in Palendurio. In Baracuel, the planned coup involves arresting the Palamas, so they're never supposed to be able to speak in their own defense."

Mirian paused, and used heat displacement to cool the tea, then poured Selesia a cup. The girl held it close to her, letting the smell waft up and the warmth move through her hands, but not drinking.

"The Senate already has the war resolution written up. It passes nearly unanimously. One senator speaks out, questioning how a bullet fired from ground level managed to strike Kinsman at a downward trajectory, and questioning why the RID kept this investigation about the blood-cult secret instead of warning the Senate. He'll be found dead in two days, and the assassin will be another Baracueli man, who is also conveniently killed before he can say anything. There's more arcane eruptions, mostly in Ferrabridge. The conspirators didn't plan for that, but they do take advantage of it. Marshal Cearsia's army group is conveniently redirected to invade Torrviol, the supposed epicenter of the eruption attacks. Meanwhile, the shock, the horror, the fear that they are under attack—it all adds up to a war fever. People flock to the recruiting centers, lusting for war. Lusting for revenge. I'm sure there's plenty of people with questions or doubts, but they'll all stay quiet until its too late."

Selesia shivered. "That's all it takes?"

"Yeah," Mirian said, and took a sip of the tea. "Though it's not something spontaneous. I thought Ibrahim attacking Alkazaria might derail some part of their plan, but the conspirators just push through. If anyone notices the strange contradiction of Persama attacking Baracuel when they're supposed to be working together against Akana, they find a way to rationalize it. Or the newspapers simply don't print anything about it."

"When they invade… what about all the Akanans in Baracuel?"

"The papers, and presumably the agencies helping move the type in the background, stoke hatred and paranoia. Baracueli broadsheets talk about Akanans preparing to burn parts of Palendurio. Here, the broadsheets caution people to watch their Baracueli neighbors. There's a few fires in Mercanton, probably planned, then some more of the arcane eruptions across Akana. The mobs form shortly after."

Mirian stood and brushed aside the curtain.

Selesia still clutched her tea to her chest. "I can't imagine myself joining such a thing. Even if I thought it was true."

"Maybe you wouldn't," Mirian said. The streets were full of people talking as the news of the assassination still spread around Mercanton. Some wept openly. Some stood there, numb. Others could barely hold onto their rage. "It's not that everyone gets the war fever, just… enough. There's… a sort of inertia to the world. These patterns people follow. It's hard to describe, but even when I change things and see a new event, I've started to think 'I've seen this before.' I changed the course of events in Torrviol, but how do I change something so big while also stopping the apocalypse?"

Selesia looked at her. She looked sad.

"There was… another time traveler. He took control of the conspiracy, but it was easy because he basically just wanted them to keep doing what they were doing. Now I have some names, though." She hesitated. "Who is 'Old Kudzu'? Does that name ring a bell?"

"Not at all," Selesia said.

Lecne and Arenthia had told her to start thinking about philosophy. It seemed strange to Mirian that it was something she needed to consider. She'd always had a sense of justice. She tried to do what was right. It didn't feel like she needed to have a name for that. "I have to figure out what direction I'm trying to steer this ship," she said, gesturing at Mercanton. "Soldiers need orders. People need guidance. A lighthouse to show them the way in this time of fog. But there's so… many of them. And there's so many people who'd rather steer the ship into the rocks than even think about giving up the wheel."

Selesia was silent for a time. Then she said, "It's nothing new. All this bad stuff. It happened to the Takoa, the Semnol, and the Mianol. It happened during your Unification War. It happened during the collapse of the Persaman Triarchy. As far back as you can go, there's always ruthless people trying to get power. I dunno the details or anything, it just seems it's part of human nature."

Is it? Mirian wondered. She thought back to when she'd first been getting Rostal to train her. She'd worked with the young students of the local school. She thought of Zayd. She found it impossible to understand how children, full of such joy for life, could become monsters like Mavwell or Specter. It seemed to her like philosophy became a trick, where people used big words and fancy concepts to justify the unjustifiable.

But I suppose I should look into it anyways. None of this will be solved by ignorance, she thought, watching the pain of Kinsman's assassination spread further through the city.

In a sense, it made her feel sympathy of the Akanans. So many people felt such sorrow and rage.

In another sense, she hated them. You'd all visit more death on others when you know, you know, how terrible it is. It seemed too easy to point people in a direction and tell them lurid tales about their supposed enemies. Why are they so easily fooled? she wondered. But then again, she had trouble faulting them. After all, she'd trusted what she read in the Torrviol Broadsheet. It was only through the time loop that she could definitively prove the lies and conspiracies.

How do I get them to see, then?

To that, Mirian had no answer. She closed the blinds, and shared tea with Selesia.