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Chapter 267 - Persistence
🕑 Added 2025-11-23 18:38:46 +0000 UTCMirian stood over the corpse of Scebur. He’d bound a silver mask to his face, and when the RID had taken it off, some of the flesh had come with it. The mask was nonmagical, but mimicked the pattern of jewels embedded in the Skull of the Second Prophet. Why the obsession with the Second, though? Nothing she’d found in the histories of the Prophets had given her any clues. The historical Scebur remained as much a mystery as this present one.
There were some features she could see, at least. He’d had blue eyes, blond hair, and there was a notable scar on his forearm. As far as she could tell, she had never interacted with the man whose corpse lay before her. She opened up her spellbook to one of the pages full of tri-bound glyphs and runes in her spellbook and began examining what was left. Strange. Fragments of soul energy lingered by the corpse. Parts of his soul must have spalled off from bindings severing the pieces before the temporal anchor activated. If they were using curses that aggressively, no wonder they triggered the temporal anchor early. That would mean that in addition to having curses binding him into unconsciousness, he’d have soul damage that would make his recovery even slower. Plenty of cycles to find him, then. After all, Jherica was never able to shed the curse on their own.
Mirian was eager to be done with the matter. She mentally noted several more distinguishing features, then said, “Good work, Liuan.”
The other woman gave a stoic nod. “One less thing to worry about.”
Their meeting lasted an hour longer as Liuan discussed ways she was attempting to settle and delay the Akanan attack. Mirian listened, but part of her mind kept drifting. She’d gotten several new ideas on how to try to influence the leyline repulsors. She also had some ideas on how to create an elevator beneath a goods warehouse in Palendurio that would reach down to a second passage connecting the Gate, but needed to test out more ideas on how to move those goods up from the Mahatan Gate. Only the gates in the Jiandzhi and Torrviol had working elevator mechanisms. If she couldn’t get that to work, there was always the possibility of shipping the materials through Alkazaria instead, overseas to Falijmali, then south to Mayat Shadr. And, she had been making progress on analyzing the dissolution of Divir’s entropic field as it descended, mixed in with her attempts to reach it.
When she said her goodbye to Liuan, it was a relief. She could stop pretending to care about the nuances of politics in Akana Praediar, and instead, focus on something interesting.
Zhuan stayed in Vadriach to study the social dynamics. Zhuan insisted she stay longer, but Mirian stayed only another two days. Again, she had trouble focusing on the lessons the other Prophet was trying to teach her.
Soon enough, Mirian made her way back across the Rift Sea.
***
Plan 6 - Interception at low altitude (4th iteration)
Notes: The entropic field seems to only fully dissipate on Divir’s impact. At high altitude, the entropic field is still too wide and strong to be penetrated. At mid-altitude, the field is smaller, but seems to be ‘compressed,’ strengthening it.
The entropic field cannot be the field moderating the repulsion of Divir, or at the very least, cannot be the only arcane (or anti-arcane) force at work. The equations simply do not work. A third field type is at play here, one I haven’t been able to measure. Otherwise, we would expect Divir to fall only at a) greater leyline instability than I have measured by at least 312 major units [see notes on Endresen’s arcane field scale] or b) only after a larger breach in the entropic field [see notes on Labyrinth antimagic studies].
Regardless, the leyline instability is eroding the entropic field, which intensifies as the field is put directly into contact by a leyline breaches in the 4th, 8th, and 7th regions around Mayat Shadr [see map with measurement data].
Thus, despite the difficulties of my last attempt, this is still the plan most likely to succeed.
Mirian sequestered her soulbound spellbook, then checked her pocket watch. She had synchronized it to the leyline eruption in the 3rd region around Mayat Shadr, then positioned herself on the southern axis. The watch was currently ticking down.
She had prepared four mythril-sheathed wands. One was for levitation, but that would just be getting her to the starting position. The second was for the shaped cone shield. The third was for black shield, which would be absolutely necessary for surviving the attempt long enough to reach the Divir Gate. The biggest challenge would be regulating how much energy the shield would be absorbing. She’d met her father to practice several times, but he couldn’t put out anything close to as much power as the flames and force that would be engulfing Divir. The fourth was a wand designed for pure directed force. Unlike her first attempt at this plan, she would be starting at height and heading down at an angle.
She’d prepared two leather bracers made of reinforced drake hide, enchanted, and then wrapped with orichalcum wire that would keep the wands in contact with her skin while acting as another layer of protection. She strapped them on. The desert sun had heated the wands slightly, so they felt just a bit too warm, and they bit uncomfortably into her forearms. She tightened the straps.
Next, she had procured goggles. They were a rare enough sight, but merchants traveling across the desert who were too poor to hire arcanists to manage sandstorms sometimes used them. With Endresen’s help, she’d found a way to darken the glass. Then, she put on her armor. It was based on the antique designs of bygone years, not the modern armor worn by infantry. It had a quilted layer that was enchanted for insulation, with thin steel plates. Again, she’d used orichalcum wire and what little mythril she could manufacture to reinforce the design. Most of the reinforcement was in the helmet, breastplate, and arm armor. If her legs were shredded, so be it. She only needed to survive a few seconds without them. It might very well speed her up.
She finished tightening the buckles, then checked her pocket watch again.
Time to get in position. She began to levitate up. By now, the research camp that had been in the ruins was destroyed and any survivors had long since departed. She’d stopped bringing people with her; it only complicated things, and didn’t have much of a benefit. Zhuan might scold her, but she’d gone back to eating drake meat that she roasted in the air, with just a little bit of salt drawn by spells from the nearby rocks.
Mirian looked up. The auroras danced across the sky. The air rumbled with the rolling thunder of distant leyline eruptions. To the west, the Casnevar Range still smoldered, having had the tops of several peaks lopped off by a leyline. As she ascended, she could see the magical eruptions dotting the land like an arcanist’s light show.
Wisdom is in daily action, she thought, and checked the flows of her soul. She needed to remember each lesson. Everything is connected. Each piece of me, each decision, has its origins in our long history, in my childhood, in the cycles of life and nonlife. Even the way distant mountains look has entered my mind as a thought and changed the slightest thing. She closed her eyes, rising higher. I have remembered the turbulence of moonfall. My skin has felt the fires of Divir as it burned. Each memory is painful because pain is a great teacher. I will not flinch, but I will remember. Memory guides action.
As she opened her eyes, she saw the moon begin to move in the sky.
She had studied the angle at which the moon came in. Studied the great Mausoleum in the dream, and knew what her angle of approach would be, had practiced it.
One more try. Should I fail, I simply try again. I am just as inevitable as it is.
The auroras spread across the sky with vengeful colors now, majestic and terrifying. Divir hit the upper atmosphere, and the first licks of non-magical flames swelled even as the more intense fire of arcane meeting the anti-arcane force splashed out in waves.
The roar of leyline thunder was constant now, and it downed out whatever roar now also came from above. She activated black shield as the 1st region leyline breach erupted as scheduled, sending wild waves of arcane energy past her. The bursts of energy trailed swirls of force and fire, dancing electricity, and swells of light and sound. She collected as much transmuted energy as she could from her black shield. The mana consumed to maintain it would always be less than what she gathered, but there was no avoiding mana loss at this altitude.
Her pocket watch ticked down.
There was nothing as primal as the last minutes of Enteria around Mayat Shadr. The fundamental forces simply swirled about. All matter was transmuted. The ruined city below became ash, ash became smoke, smoke became swirling clouds. The ground was transformed as a child might mold a muddy patch; great globs of it were flung into the air. In these last moments, any touch of civilization on the world was erased. The only laws left were those of gravity, acceleration, heat—and raw magic.
The fires above brightened, the mundane fires now seamlessly mixed with the arcane ones. Sound ceased to have meaning as the world become engulfed in a single roar. As the world brightened, she checked her pocket watch one last time.
Thirty seconds.
Mirian cut mana to her levitation wand and summoned her cone of force. Then she assumed stance of the Burning Tempest Sunders the Sky. She’d shaped the conduits in her force wand with the devices of the Labyrinth so they would be flawless, then used Torrviol’s most precise equipment to make each glyph perfect. Now, she poured mana into that wand.
She plummeted down at a steep angle to gain speed. Above her, Divir was coming in fast. She counted the seconds in her head.
The 7th region leyline detonated and a moment later, she felt the remnants of the entropic field brush against her spells. She cut and reconstituted them as fast as she could. It was only for a fraction of a second, but she could feel the heat on her skin from that, feel the waves of force blasting out. She adjusted her course to compensate, then leveled out her angle.
The 4th and 8th region leylines detonated within two seconds of each other, and this time, the entropic field around Divir blasted out in force as it was severed. Her spells were shattered, and again, the heat scoured at her. Divir was coming down fast now, the wild lights bleaching its dark stone. She gritted her teeth and reestablished her spells, adjusting her course again. The pocket watch was behind her in the air somewhere, probably incinerated. The count was purely in her head.
Ten seconds.
She dumped more and more mana into her force spell, steepening her angle again. Divir was now wreathed entirely in arcane fire. It was still above her, but descending fast. It would pass her in a moment.
Mirian’s world became one of instinct. Fire cascaded outward, and with it, blasts of turbulent air. Her black shield became a solid color. Her cone of force was stripped away entirely. She was flying blind.
What she did have now was a sense of how the colossal forces changed as she approached. Last time, her angle of attack had been too shallow, and the bottom of Divir had crushed her. This time, her steeper angle meant she would just miss the outer lip. She felt the hurricane of fire blast at her and adjusted her flight path ever so slightly. It was all she could do.
Five seconds.
The arcane force being salvaged from the black shield was overwhelming. She guided as much as she could into her wand’s conduit, but the titanic forces involved couldn’t be contained to the conduit. Unregulated arcane energy splashed out around her arm. The orichalcum wire was heated and began to burn her skin. She felt the pain moving through her arm as her shield flared and then flew apart.
Two seconds.
Her armor was scoured away like wet paper. As the wind and fire cut into her, she hardly had time to feel the pain. Her helmet cracked apart.
She stopped counting the seconds. She put everything into pushing the force spell into a new angle and reaching out a single hand in front of her. That was all she could do, as her skin was scoured away, as the green light of the last burst of the apocalypse began to build.
She saw something, in that last moment.
Mirian knew she shouldn’t have been able to. Her eyes must have been blinded—they must have been burned into nothing. Perhaps the pain had caused her to hallucinate. Perhaps it was something about her connection to the Ominian as Their Mausoleum split apart. Perhaps it was that time between the cycles, and she only dreamed it.
But there was a moment that stuck in her memory. It was breaking through the walls of fire and the endless roar and seeing a fragment she’d only seen before while sleeping. It was her own hand in front of her, scoured to the bone. It was the Mausoleum itself, split with fissures of green light that shot out like fires from the sun.
It was the Divir Gate, surrounded by those walls of fire, perched atop the Mausoleum like a leaf atop a volcano about to erupt, like the silhouette of Luamin in front of the sun. It was the strangest thing, to see something intact amidst so much destruction. The Mausoleum itself was unfurling like the tentacles of a kraken erupting from the depths, green fire ready to end the world.
She woke in her bed in Torrviol in silence, cradling the impossible memory.
Comments
Chouma L'low
Nice catch, at first i had mistatook it for a typo, i hadn't thought that Gabriel might gave them a hint on who Scebur really is.
TKoko
I don't think Mirian gets it at all. None of her Internal thoughts point to her not falling for the trick
Gopard
maybe yeah... or just take Gabriel's advice take some hold from. somewhere go to a random city in the middle of nowhere and just get laid lol... as it is unless she stops being a full on Sociopath she will never get the full cooperation she needs from all the prophets and thus never get the moonfall stopped no matter how "much more useful and sensible" Miriam is obviously convinced her approach is over everybody else's...
lenkite
If the Moon falls down, then it doesn't really matter one nanoscopic bit what the enemies have been getting up to. Looks like she has parked this problem for later, when she can extend the cycle more.
Aesoir
Doesn’t she just need to reach the gate, then she’d be able to link to it in the gate network?
Nathan
I gotta admit her whole moon landing plan seems impractical, since it hinges on reaching the gate when the moon is about to crash, meaning the timeframe she would need to repair the gate and establish a connection to use for further loops is just way too short. Basically less height to ascend = a lot less time to activate the Gate. She is been quite singularly focused on reaching the moon for dozens of chapters now, and even taking into account her progressive loss of humane attachments others have pointed out and how she's stopped caring about so many things, it seems weird to me that her breakthrough in communicating with the Ominian directly hasn't led her to rethinking her plan, aside from physically ascending from Enteria to Divir at ever lower heights. When we add to that the fact that what she wants get out of it mostly comes down to selfish goals like obtaining the mythril armor and giant focus, I don't really get how this singular focus furthers her ultimate goal of saving the world, on top of her moon plan being seemingly impractical. Idk Im probably missing a lot of things
A.Irsigler
That Scebur was a ploy of Liuan seems fairly obvious by now. It is probably also really obvious to Mirian in the same vein as she did catch on last chapter that the other prophets see her as a lunatic/cracked in the head. But real-politics strikes once more. She needs the other prophets, especially those in Akana Praediar to stop the war from escalating and interrupting any progress made towards solving the whole apocalypse problem, which Mirian cares the most about. So she does the - from her perspective sensible(?) thing - she takes a "good enough" outcome of Liuan not being able to spin that particular card anytime soon again and doesnt disturb sleeping lions. The more pressing questions are: Who returned the second temporal anchor? Mirian caused Troitins to return to the Ominian, but who caused the second one? It might have been one of the prophets we know - maybe with the aid of another artifact? Or it might be a complete unknown. In any case i think the whole tensions between the prophets will converge soon in some way or another. And when that happens we will see how much resources, time and effort they all invested in backstabbing one another. Which Mirian will probably not take well. Our girl has such a short fuse already for irrational tribal behaviour.
BlastYoBoots
And simultaneously she’s the most likely for it to work on, because she’s past caring about anything besides her moonbound goals until something drastic and table-flipping is going to shake her out of it.
Atlas Dwarf
Not sure if a typo or Gabriel trying to hint, but last chapter Gabriel refers to Scebur as a her when he told Mirian that Liuan was going after Scebur.
FuriousDee
I wonder if Mirian could help her dissociation from humanity by just spending a loop interacting with her friends in a nonproductive manner and not practicing skills she improved in the loop. It’s been long enough they should be able to surprise her again and it shouldn’t even end in them all being slaughter by an invading army.
FuriousDee
Given this has been her life for more than 20 years it seems reasonable that she just doesn’t care about anything outside the mission If Secbur is like this they can’t interfere, so Mirian does care. Even if Liuan is Secbur she still can’t interfere without revealing her deception so it doesn’t matter.
Treacherous_Usurper
I think the anchor normally pulls all traces of soul fragments. This is something Miriam can test with her dad. Collecting lingering soul fragments was what they did to ressurect Nicolus. And fusing a mask to your flesh does nothing for you, so I'm inclined to believe Liuan is just bad at making a fake corpse. Also she should still be able to find his soul in the Mausoleum or otherwise, similar to the Celin (?) Guy who keeps killing himself. Miriam being a necromancer makes her the person that this fake Cebur stunt is the least likely to work on.
chumponimys
That ain't Falco!!
Enthernal
well something is off with the beginning. I understand she can't verify much, it might be the needle triggered, it might be they don't know how to properly get rid of a soul. Iirc the RID/Deeps don't know about soul repositories, though Lian would. But it seems off she didn't ask Liuan what she knew about them, how she recognized them, etc. It felt like it for a while now, but it's really starting to feel like Mirian hyperfixation with her plan/approach isn't fully natural.
Mr NerfGun
I think she is doing what most politicians do when they know someone is doing something really messed up but they really need what they can provide, she pretends like she doesn't know anything. And that is the truth, nobody actually knows what is going on. Everyone thinks they do, but that is only because they follow narrative logic. The author doesn't need to follow this logic.
Daniel
Oh Mirian. You fell for the deception.
Michael Vonica
My mind keeps going back to the idea of "win the battle, lose the war". It feels like Mirian and Scebur are trying to fight eachother on two entirely different fields of battle. Mirian is rushing straight for becoming as strong and skilled as possible, while developing novel magics and using them to solve the crisis. We still don't know what Scebur has been trying to do, but it sure seems like they think that it will get them victory. We don't know which one of them will be right or wrong. Mirian just accomplished one of her major objectives, but what has she lost by ignoring what her enemies have been getting up to?
Clara
Mirian with the perfectly aimed down-air spike
Armo
Also, did the Ominian open the mausoleum to get Mirian permission to gate in? Or is this just something that happens and Mirian was just there at the right moment? One more mystery to the pile!
Clifton
Might not be Liuan yet. Scebut had previously used proxies to do their work so it's entirely possible that Liuan has been misled. But the probability that Liuan is doing something seem to be growing quite significantly.
cel
I’m not sure that she needs to bash her head against this anymore? I think the goal of this trip to the moon was to gain the qualifications of “having seen the location/visited the location with her body” so she can open the gateway there. The last portion of this chapter, however brief, SHOULD qualify; She should be able to simply open a portal there from here on out
D Key
We'll know Scebur is Liuan if she acts more friendly to Gabriel. 'Cause as the one guy with (somehow) Mirian's trust who can cover for her, he's Luans most important ally XD
Kadi
Is the soul stuff around Scebur's body from when his soul was mutilated before departing... or the remnants from shredding whoever poor fool's soul they used as a scapegoat? I wasn't too into "Liuan is Scebur", but this is too clean and swift an ending....
D Key
Liuan is so sus... And yeah, Mirian getting detached from humanity is an issue, as outlined by Zhuan. But lol imagine the POV from Liuan in full internal panic at being found out, and doubling down on political talks as an attempt to bore Mirian away from investigating.
Armo
Whoa, Mirian is making progress! I can’t remember if this will be enough for the gatekeepers or not. Hopefully Mirian doesn’t need to bash her head against the wall… for too much longer. But even if she does need to do so, I am sure she can improve and iterate on her current plans enough to squeeze out a minute in that hellscape. And that definitely will be enough. Mirian having trouble focusing on things that are not her specialty is such a human experience. She’s becoming so different, and yet is still the same. That said, I wonder if DIVITRIUS is at least partly the cause of Mirian’s focus on the mausoleum. Maybe there’s something there he needs someone, or even Mirian specifically, to see. Hmm, my conspiratorially minded brain keeps thinking that there is more to Scebur than we know so far. I have a number of theories. 1) This dude might be the actual Scebur, companion of the second prophet. It may be that he recognised the loops for what they are, and deployed his previous loop knowledge to make an impact. If he comes back without his curses next loop, we will know he is not part of the loop himself - just using it to his advantage. Perhaps he knows of a way to pass along knowledge between loops without being part of them - would explain much. Maybe he has a version of the holy pages, like Mirian, and is using them to pass along information to himself in the next loops. 2) I’m not sure this fully debunks the ‘Liuan-is-Scebur’ theory yet. It is not fully clear to me how distinctive the soul anchor activation is to Mirian. Is it evident that a soul anchor activation occurred, or just assumed? If it’s not evident, this could just be a guy the RID brought in and cursed into pieces to throw Mirian off the scent. If Scebur had a way to pass down information as above, I wonder if the RID/Liuan has it now, or if Scebur managed to conceal/destroy it. Thank you for the chapter! I have really enjoyed the most recent stretch of the story, maybe starting from just before the siege chapters. Lots of personality from Mirian and the other prophets, lots of intrigue and of course progression too!
