Jherica screamed the first time they went through the Elder Gate. However, at the same time, they found it fascinating enough that they subsequently took ten trips through the teleportation device in quick succession.

“Amazing!” they said, beaming.

“Are you quite done?” Mirian asked after the tenth trip, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, I guess. For now.”

“You can always come back. I’ll make sure you have free access to anything in the Academy.

Once in Torrviol, Mirian set about setting up her experiments into conduits. In between her investigations into new crystals and artifice, she practiced her spellwork.

“Build me a tri-point detector that won’t get overloaded,” Mirian told Torres. “I’ll be back in a few days. I want to get something from the Frostland’s Gate Vault.”

Her former professor gave her a shocked look. Mirian was used to it.

The Vault up north held several Elder devices, some of which she knew the function of, some of which she didn’t. Critically, one of them could create perfectly formed crystals. Professor Jei had already shown it was possible to incorporate the magichemicals from jeweled lotuses into conduit crystals. Those crystals, in turn, had capacities that exceeded any other discovered conduit. If they were to control the leylines, it was research that had to be done.

It took longer to reach the Vault this time. She was at a different part of the cycle, and out of practice. Still, as she was floating back to Torrviol on a wyvern-wing glider, she began to consider the usefulness of mapping out the winds of the cycles. The weather each day was completely predictable. She might be able to find more routes where high altitude winds could speed her along in an extremely mana-efficient way.

“You’re back,” Jherica said when she landed, somehow surprised.

“I told you how long it would take me.”

“Yes, but I didn’t believe you. One thing you learn when you do research is that how long people say something is going to take and how long it actually takes are completely different. Once knew a wizard who said they could create an artificial magichemical that would replace chimeradase in three months. I believe he’s still working on it.”

Mirian changed the subject. “How is your training coming along?”

“Terrible. Arcane magic feels so much easier compared to soul magic.”

“Hmm. I’ll see if there’s anything I can do to speed you along.” She turned to leave, but Jherica grabbed her arm.

“Wait. Why… are you so helpful?”

Mirian looked at them. From the rings around their eyes, she could tell Jherica hadn’t been sleeping well. They alternated between projecting a happy calm and a nervous suspicion. “Enteria comes first. I need allies, not pawns. And I need those allies to have the ability to change the timeline in critical ways. Allies who aren’t vulnerable to a well-timed curse or a few battlemages.”

Jherica narrowed their brow. “What do you mean ‘vulnerable to a few battlemages’?”

“I mean if you’re not an archmage by the time this thing is over, you’ve been doing something wrong.”

The wizard blinked, then gave a nervous laugh. “Spell intensity… hah… not really my thing, you know? Logically, every person should follow their strengths, and mine are more in research….” They trailed off, but seeing that Mirian was still fixing them with a stare, kept talking. “There’s only a few dozen archmages in the world at any given time for a reason. Not everyone has what it takes. Logically, if anyone could become an archmage….”

“Before this all began, I was hitting 36 myr. Barely enough to pass as an artificer. You have the opportunity to get trained by archmages. Manipulate them to learn their secrets. Consume resources like mana elixirs again and again at a rate you couldn’t normally afford. Steal spellbooks from all over the University. What you say to get all those things doesn’t matter, because it all gets erased. Your strength as a caster is one of the few things besides memory preserved by the loop, so we have to take advantage of it. Practice. Every day. You need to catch up. Liuan and Gabriel both can hit myr ratings in the high 80s. Ibrahim can’t really cast, but he can punch a desert drake to death with his fists.”

Jherica scrunched up their face and made a weird noise.

“The research and knowledge is critical too. But it won’t mean anything in the final cycle if someone like Tyrcast can just show up and end you with a force spear.”

“Ugh, Tyrcast,” Jherica said. “You know, it would drive him nuts if I could outcast him. Fine, fine, I know I need to. But I get to complain the whole time I’m doing it.”

“Great. Just make sure I’m out of earshot.” She walked off.

Jei and Torres met her north of Torrviol. Professor Cassius had also joined them. Mirian hadn’t talked with the professor of combat magic in a long time.

“I heard what they were up to and decided to see for myself,” he said.

Mirian shrugged.

“I’m also curious. How much have we worked together?”

“I took some of your combat classes, but most of the work we did was raising a militia. You also helped me assault an Akanan airship.” She didn’t mention stealing his eximontar, Winterblossom, dozens of times as she sought to conquer the Frostland’s Gate Vault.

“Assaulted an airship? That would have been something to see.”

He grew silent as they approached the clearing. It was just north of the catacombs entrance the Akanans had used to push into the underground. As they set up in it, Mirian could remember countering the Akanan attack here. She vaguely remembered the route she would need to take to end up back in Bainrose Castle, though it had been years now since she’d helped lead soldiers and militia members through the cramped passages.

While Torres set up the tri-point meter, Mirian stood by Jei. “We used to go into a grove north of the gardens to practice,” she told her old math professor. “You helped lay the foundation for me to build on.”

Jei nodded curtly. “Thank you,” she said, far too formally for Mirian’s taste.

Mirian gave a wistful sigh. There was too much to explain. Too many things they’d been through together. I watched you lay down your life for me. Without hesitation, she thought. She still had an ache in her heart where something was missing. The other time travelers helped soothe her isolation, but it was a companion she really craved. “I wish you could all remember.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to NovelBin for the genuine story.

“It would certainly be nice,” Torres said. “The rumors are spreading like wildfire among the students, and several of them think they can run around and do whatever they want without consequence. The guard isn’t too happy about it.”

“Yes, well, they’ll survive. Or rather, they won’t.” Mirian waved a dismissive hand. “If I spent too much time making everyone’s life better here, it distracts from the research efforts. I suppose I can try to make some small adjustments to how the announcements of class cancellations are made and so-on. Or…” She tapped her chin. “I could put a lot of them to work. Not sure on what yet. Busywork, at first, maybe, But eventually, we’ll need somewhere to test the prototype… yes, that’s a good idea. Thank you.”

Torres raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you’re welcome.” She touched a glyph on the tri-point meter. “It’s ready.”

“Excellent. Stand back. You’ll want to use sound suppression and light suppression spells too.”

Mirian had taken her first steps in reformulating several spells in her spellbook so that they used unconventional pathing glyphs, which would make them more difficult to counter. However, her greater lightning spell still was formulated for maximum efficiency and intensity. She rarely used it in combat since it was overkill, but it was a useful benchmark to have.

Regular tri-point meters were now insufficient to measure her spells. This was her first test since she’d visited her birth-mother’s grave. She breathed in, closing her eyes, embracing the titan-catalyst. Her soul began to stir. First, she made sure the currents within her were flowing smoothly, then gradually brought her awareness outward to the edge of it. There, she could feel the churn of auric mana. She started drawing it in, preparing it like the sea drawing back before a great wave. Once it was at the edge, she brought her mind to the glyphs prepared on the page. Each one was crafted using the most advanced equipment Torrian Tower had to offer. She’d worked with Professor Seneca to craft the magichemicals for each glyph so that each one was maximally potent, then used Professor Endresen’s arcane physics lab to scribe each one.

She aimed at a large boulder about twenty meters away. Then, her mind unleashed the mana, pouring it through the glyphs.

The thunderous eruption of lightning deafened her. Lightning cascaded through the air, but it didn’t just smash into the boulder. The earth shook, and even though it wasn’t a spell designed to chain, she’d poured so much electric energy into the air that smaller arcs of electricity smashed into the nearby trees, toppling two of them with splintering wood, while another bolt shot into the sky. The boulder cracked apart, parts of it running molten, all of it glowing slightly.

She turned back, using soul energy to heal her ears to repair the shattered drums. Torres and Cassius both stood there, mouths gaping. Jei’s eyes were wide.

It took Torres a moment to recover. She cleared her throat, hands shaking, and announced, “Mana condensation hit 145.2 myr, point of spell release, 144.5 myr, and target reading, 143.8 myr.”

“Gods above,” Cassius whispered.

Mirian grinned at them. Almost have Archmage Solvir beat.

***

The time passed quickly after that. Mirian was busy either working with Jherica, managing research, rescribing glyphs in her spellbook, or training. It was all necessary, but it was the research she was most interested in. With the Elder artifacts from the Labyrinth, they could make perfectly formed crystals. It all then came down to Viridian’s work with the jeweled lotuses and Seneca’s alchemistry.

There was also a new technique Mirian was trying. The Zhighuans had discovered that small inclusions of minerals could change the color of a crystal. Adding small amounts of iron to quartz caused it to become the amethyst variety. Zhighuan crystal mages and merchants had used that to make a killing in trade before the knowledge began to spread. Now, that would be useful in changing the properties of the conduit crystals.

They’d already made one breakthrough: amber jeweled lotus extract could be incorporated into chrysoberyl to create a crystal that had a higher mana capacity than corundum. In normal circumstances, that would be revolutionary, but to deal with the leylines, they needed something even better.

The theory Mirian wanted to test was what orichalcum and mythril did inside a crystal, both when it was soul-aligned and when it was unaligned. She spent some time going north and binding the souls of several glaciavores so that she could make the powdered mythril. Theoretically, she could make adamantium, but that would mean killing a leviathan or finding another myrvite titan like Apophagorga. Or seeing if Apophagorga was still around. Her leyline detectors hadn’t picked up on the cataclysm beast, but she still wasn’t sure if binding its catalyst had permanently killed it.

She was discussing different alchemistry formulations they might try when Jei had a thought. She spoke in Friian so the other professors could understand her. “You mention idea of powdered mythril enhancing a conduit crystal when it was aligned to a soul. Usually, inefficient conduit crystal has the arcane energy spontaneously transform into other energy type, usually heat. Such inefficiency is tolerable in wand or spellbook, but would cause the crystal to violently rupture when confining something like a leyline. But orichalcum and mythril generate genuine spell-resistance. Would not the inefficiency conduit crystals that include those substances be ideal?”

Professor Endresen, who had been sitting in a chair staring off into space, suddenly came to life. “Where does the extra energy tampered by spell resistance go?”

Mirian thought through it. “As long as it isn’t becoming a mundane force. And as long as it isn’t moving down energy levels to become the kind of D-class mana we’re trying to avoid generating. Endresen, run your tests. Try to check for ambient mana level changes too. There won’t be a quantifiable number we can put on that, but a few arcanists all feeling for changes in the pressure on their aura should be able to give us some idea of what kind of mana is resulting, if it is indeed that. Good idea, Respected Jei.”

She doubted the solution would be so easy, but it was worth testing. Even removing a small percentage of a leyline’s energy would be a massive benefit, and make the rest of the leyline regulator easier to build.

As the cycle came to a close, Endresen’s investigations proved inconclusive. The spell resistance problem wasn’t new, after all. Using specific quantities of powder would remove all the confounding variables that came with tests involving a person and their aura, but it was still bumping up against the limited precision of their ability to measure.

She discussed it with Jherica. “Vadriach University’s equipment is more sensitive. You may be able to make a breakthrough when we aren’t. The RID has orichalcum. Liuan should be able to strongarm them into providing it.”

Jherica’s mood was still all over the place. Right now, they were looking anxious. “And what if even our equipment isn’t sensitive enough?”

“Then we’ll have to learn how to build something better. That’s why it’s so critical to extend the cycles. There may be research we can’t accomplish without doing so. It’s also why we all need to learn enough artifice.”

Jherica nodded. Their face twitched. “I don’t want to go back.”

“It does… get tiresome.”

“I never was good at keeping everything in my head. That’s why I write so many notes! But it all… and how do you keep track of it all?”

Mirian didn’t mention she’d stolen the Holy Pages which allowed her to take notes that persisted through the cycles. “Practice,” she said, which wasn’t entirely a lie. She still did need to keep a great deal in her head.

“It’s so big. How are we… how can the Ominian think we can do this? It’s starting to sink in, just how much work this is all going to be to stop the Divir moon from falling. Not that I dislike researching, but when I started my career, I thought I might make a few small innovations and maybe get my portrait in the Hall of Research. Now I realize we have to rewrite the magical theories. That, in turn, will upset the Church and all the industrialists… and then there’s the wars…”

“One step at a time,” Mirian said. “Remember where you’ll send me updates on your progress?”

Jherica ticked it off on their fingers. “Usually, Torrviol, but until I hear otherwise, Alkazaria. If it’s early in the next cycle, Urubandar because you’re going to chat with Gabriel. Mmm. Hope he’s not too worked up about… uh… Ibrahim killing him.”

Mirian sighed. “Yeah. We’ll see.”

Jherica smiled. “You know, you’re a lot nicer than I thought at first.”

“Oh?”

They laughed. “You can get… uh… a bit intense?”

“Fair,” Mirian said. She heard the midnight bell tolling, muffled by the glass windows of Torrian Tower. “The 1st of Merisheth. It should be soon now. Let’s go watch.”

“Oh. You like to watch?”

“Yeah. It’s beautiful. The top of Torrian Tower has a good view of it, though I suppose the clouds will get in the way this time.” Mirian said. “Still, you can see the magical auroras coloring the cracks in the clouds and bleeding into the snow.”

“Beautiful. Mmm. Never thought of it that way. Horrifying. So big and out of control. Never did like what I couldn’t control. That’s why I like research.”

“Horrifying too,” Mirian said. “If you don’t want to watch, that’s fine. See you around.” She looked at Jherica. They still had rings around their eyes. “And good luck.” She opened the window and levitated out. There, she watched as the purple and orange light spilled through the clouds, coloring the midnight snow. Eventually, there was that bright flash that pierced through everything, and the end came again.