The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

"Retreat!" Mirian snapped.

The two other heavies kept their shields raised as they walked backwards until they were through the doorway.

Mirian healed a nasty gash on Gromaer\'s shoulder and the bruises he\'d gathered. "Anyone else hurt? Grimald, let me see that arm. There. Two minute breather, then we go back in."

Gromaer\'s shield was lying on the ground near the door, but they\'d probably be able to push the horrors back enough to retrieve it.

"Back in, let\'s go. Ready? Advance!" Mirian called out. With Eclipse and the spears harrying the greater horrors, they pushed into the room again. This time, they stayed closer to the door. The fighting dragged on for minutes on end, until Mirian could see the endurance of her allies was waning.

"Retreat. Three minutes, then back in."

They passed around water skins and caught their breath.

"Advance!"

Four more times they repeated this. It was an absolute slog. Finally, she\'d cut up the front legs and torsos enough that the horrors began to make that weird hissing sound.

"There\'s the merge! Grab the hammers! Hit it now!"

They dropped the shields, and while the two soldiers kept a spear embedded in each horror, Mirian came at the center, carving hunks of the tough flesh apart. She assumed Lone Pine so that she could keep her attacks relentless. Unlike dueling, which involved a lot of stabbing, puncture wounds were insufficient. She had to cut them apart. Rapiers were usually terrible at that, but Eclipse wasn\'t some normal sword, and the unnaturally sharp blade didn\'t dull as it cut into the creature again and again.

Then the heavies joined the fray with their war hammers, with Grimald targeting the legs on the left one while the other two smashed apart the legs on the right target. There was the sickening sound of carapace crunching and flesh splorching as they lent all their strength to the blows.

As the two maws opened, Mirian stuck Eclipse right down the center of the left one, raking the inside as she withdrew her blade. She focused on carving a path down the center of the creatures, reasoning that if they couldn\'t complete the merger, they\'d be crippled. And it\'s working! she elated.

With the crack! of steel on carapaced flesh, Aelius\'s frontliners finished smashing apart the legs of the right greater horror. It crumpled to the ground, letting out a gurgling scream as ichor poured onto the ground.

As it fell, Mirian targeted the strange head-like protrusion on the top of the torso. She slashed at it once, then twice, then sent her blade right through the center. The creature let out an earsplitting scream again, then collapsed onto the ground, twitching.

Mirian embraced Dusk Waves and came at the left side of the horror, cutting apart its mouth-torso. One of the soldiers managed to pin his spear inside the horror\'s maw as it opened, the crossguard lodging in its mouth as the thick speartip pierced out the other end. Mirian vaulted on top of the creature as it thrashed, then embraced Lone Pine. She dug Eclipse deep into its back and dragged Eclipse across the spine with both hands. The back of the creature split open like a rotting melon. Even after the bodies had stilled, Mirian continued to cut the thing apart. No way was she risking it regenerating on them.

"Wow," Cediri said. "You actually did it."

"Third try\'s the charm," Mirian said.

Gromaer gave her a funny look. "What\'s that supposed to mean?"

"Don\'t worry about it." Mirian let out a big breath and wiped some of the sweat off her brow. "Whew. Now let\'s see if we can get this door open."

She approached the far end of the room, where minuscule glyphs were carved directly into the wall by the doorframe. She hadn\'t been able to analyze them before, so she had no idea what to expect.

Sections of the glyphs on the wall were tribonded glyphs, the kind she still hadn\'t been able to replicate because they required simultaneous scribing. She\'d also have to do more analysis of what those sequences did, which would require delicate divination equipment in Torrian Tower at the very least.

The Vaults were clearly designed with puzzles and trials in mind, though. Four sections of markings that were far simpler than stood out. They were clustered into four insets of stone, engraved with both glyphs and runes.

Cediri and Aelius joined her, while the others watched their backs. "This doesn\'t make sense," Cediri said. "That sequence… its used to pull inanimate objects at short ranges. There\'s nothing for it to pull. And I\'ve never seen these other glyphs."

Mirian read the sequence. Pull object at these coordinates from spell, trigger arcane energy burst if detects—and then the sequence transitioned to celestial runes—different tissues? I think that\'s what that is. But the runes are different in each one. Referring to body parts, but in strange places. A human wouldn\'t have…

And then she got it.

"We need parts from the greater horrors. That one needs one of the tendrils. That one needs that weird cartilage they have. That one needs something from a leg. Either the muscle sinews or the carapace, I\'m not familiar with that… glyph. And that one needs part of the torso-mouth," Mirian said, pointing at each recessed section.

Aelius raised an eyebrow. "That was fast."

"I\'ve studied a lot of glyphs." That was true enough.

They cut up a chunk of the horror, then placed the tissue samples in the slot. As soon as the correct sample was there, it levitated in its spot. The third slot rejected the carapace from the leg, but accepted the sinewy muscle from the inner part.

Silently, the stone door slid open, revealing a short hallway that led to another door.

"It worked," Mirian said, about as surprised as everyone else.

One of the soldiers cleared his throat. "Ah, technically, the threat to the town has been eliminated. So…"

"Oh come on," Cediri said. "You know you want to see what\'s down here."

The two soldiers looked at each other. "Alright, yeah," one said, and the other didn\'t protest.

The group grabbed their packs and supplies from the previous room, then piled the tower shields and extra spears on the other side of the door they\'d just opened. Mercifully, the antimagic suppression field ended there. Then they continued down the corridor. This door required no special puzzles, it just opened when touched.

Beyond was a room unlike any other she\'d seen in the Labyrinth.

Dozens of different crystals poked out from different rock formations. It looked like parts of a cave had burst up from the floor, though Mirian knew by now the Labyrinth wouldn\'t let those formations be there unless it wanted them there. There were dark stone pedestals scattered throughout the room, and a green stone table with a glass sphere and several strange looking brass implements neatly organized on top of it. In other parts of the room, there were things that looked a bit like sarcophagi, only they were too small to fit a person, and there was nothing inside them.

There were two doors, each with glyph sequences written in a circle in their center.

The other arcanists joined them. Aelius looked at Beatrice. "Ever seen anything like this?"

"Not like this one. Mirian?"

Mirian was already deep in thought. She approached the door. As she did, she felt an antimagic field again, as soon as she crossed a few feet past the entrance. "Damnit, another suppression field." She stepped back. "But it only affects part of the room."

"Anything dangerous?" Grimald asked.

"Seems clear. Post two by the door to keep watch. Scrappy still could show up. We\'re pinned in if it does."

"I can handle Scrappy," Mirian said. Probably. Her focus was mostly on the room, and the glyphs on the doors.

"What\'s with the rock outcroppings?" the Ennecus sorcerer asked.

"Normal rock formations don\'t look like this," the mage said.

"They\'re all crystals that would be useful in conduits," Mirian said. She\'d thought that was too obvious to be stated. "These doors need specific types and amounts of energy to hit them. Which means spells, but I don\'t know how we\'re supposed to cast spells and hit the door through the antimagic suppression field."

Cediri tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Perhaps there\'s a way to disable the field without needing to drill into the walls."

"If we drill into the walls, we definitely attract Scrappy," Aelius said. "And despite our proto-archmage here, I\'d rather not test her claims if we can avoid it. We\'ve never been able to disable an antimagic field we found in the Vaults through brute force. Outside the Vault, we only managed it once, and we lost two people to a horde. So. We play the Labyrinth\'s little game, yeah?"

"Agreed," Beatrice said, giving Cediri a look.

Cediri rolled his eyes, heading over to the table. "The workbench here is outside of the antimagic field. These tools are strange, though. They… hmm… they seem familiar. What\'s this orb do?"

While he pondered that, Mirian looked around more. The pedestals and sarcophagi-looking things were all at odd angles. The rock formations seemed scattered haphazardly, but it meant they were blocking her ability to see all the pedestals at once. She kept having to peer around them.

"Why do these stone containers have holes in them?" Beatrice asked, circling one.

She was right, Mirian realized. Each of the sarcophagi-adjacent stones had two holes each—except for one of them at the far end of the room, and a second one in the middle of the room that had three holes. On a whim, she stuck her hand inside to feel for any hidden switches, thinking of how the Underground worked. To her surprise, she could feel her auric mana swirling around her hand inside the stone container.

"The suppression field isn\'t inside the containers," she told the group.

"Interesting. Anyone here a contortionist?" Cediri asked without turning around. He had the orb in his hand, and he was moving it around, peering through it. "This is a beautiful crystal sphere. Very smoo—whoops!"

The sphere slipped out of his hand, but as he bent down to catch it where he expected to fall, something funny happened: it didn\'t fall. It just stayed in the air, unmoving. Cediri looked around, then carefully reached up and grabbed the orb again. Experimentally, he moved it over the floor, then let go. Again, it stayed in the air, not even hovering, just simply not moving. It\'s anchored in the fourth spatial dimension, Mirian realized.

"Try putting it on a pedestal," Grimald said.

"I was just about to do that," he said.

"No you weren\'t."

Cediri scoffed dramatically, then brought it over to a pedestal. Peering through it he said, "Oh! Glyphs. The big ones in the center are rosh and aitliu. Moving his head around to get a better view. "There\'s a set of longer sequences along the outside. Ah… divination?" He looked expectantly at Mirian.

She walked over. "Divination, for detecting specific arcane frequencies. Rosh and aitliu, obviously." Mirian looked over by the door. "It\'s the same basic detection the circle of glyphs by the door is using. Presumably, this is similar to the magichemical puzzles. It\'s looking for specific arcane energy frequencies to hit each pedestal and then the door."

The arcanists not guarding their rear went around looking at the pedestals as Cediri held the orb over each one. "The frequencies are different on every pedestal," Aelius said. "And different on the door."

Obviously, Mirian thought. Curious, she peered at the stone containers from over by the pedestal. "The holes in the containers line up with each other, and pass over the pedestals. But… hmmm…" Mirian held up her hand in the space between the pedestal and hole. There was a small flare of aura that came from each side of her hand. "The antimagic field doesn\'t cover a very small cylinder. Whatever we need to do, it involves directing beams of arcane energy along a path." Her mind raced as she connected the dots. "And each stone sarcophagus-looking thing just needs to transform the energy then redirect it. Look—we\'ve been given dozens of conduit crystals for a reason. So we built the glyph sequences that will transform each beam so that it matches the glyph energies the puzzle is looking for."

What she didn\'t expect was the looks of despair that followed. "Building something like that would take days!" Cediri moaned.

"How many of you are trained in artifice?" Beatrice asked.

"I\'ve done a bit," said Aelius.

"This is incredibly simple stuff," Mirian said, amazed that anyone would be despairing at the simple constructs they needed to make. Each device simply needed to change the angle of a beam and contain two energy transformations. That\'s nothing!

The Ennecus arcanist said, "But we\'d need artificing supplies. Hell, we\'d need mining supplies. These crystals—"

"One, I always carry artificing supplies with me. Two, even if I didn\'t, they\'re over there on the table."

The arcanist looked over, then looked a bit embarrassed.

Mirian headed over to the table and got to work. The Labyrinth tools were strange, but familiar. Mirian didn\'t seem to actually need her scribe\'s pen. The device they found was ingenious; she discovered if she channeled a glyph she wanted into the pen, the Elder pen created the magichemical ink she needed to scribe that glyph.

Cediri, of course, had the idea of taking the artifice tools with them. However, trying to pull the orb out of the room proved impossible. When the orb got to the threshold, it simply stopped, no matter how much Cediri yanked or pulled. Grimald tried to push it with his whole body weight, leaning forward as he pushed, but failed to get it to move.

"It\'s like trying to move a stone wall," he complained.

The scribe pen and other tools proved to have a similar protection. They too floated in the air when released. "They\'re four dimensional objects," Mirian said. "They\'re probably much larger than you think they are. I mean, this ink is coming from reservoirs somewhere. Or they\'re chained to something we can\'t see." I don\'t even think I could remove them with relicarium and the time loop. There\'d be no way for me to coat the entire object, just the three dimensional part I can see.

"It can\'t be chain, because I can take it over here on the other side of this rock formation," Cediri said.

Mirian blinked at him. "Do you know any four dimensional geometry?" she asked.

That shut him up at least.

Aelius figured out how to use one of the tools to extract conduit crystals safely. The tool used some sort of energy—sound energy? Invisible light?—to disintegrate the stone matrix directly around each crystal, letting them get the whole thing with no risk of shattering it.

Two hours into her artificing, one of the stone formations began to glow with apparent heat, though none of the heat seemed to spread around the room. They watched, fascinated, as the stone and crystals reconstructed themselves.

"Infinite conduit crystals," Aelius whispered.

"But not free," Mirian said.

Aelius looked through the hallway back at the two dead greater horrors. "I suppose they\'re likely to return too, aren\'t they?"

"Probably," Cediri said. "Everything in the Labyrinth has a price."

"Ain\'t that the truth," Gromaer grumbled.

"Hmm. There\'s an issue," Mirian realized, as she worked on her fourth device. "There\'s a mismatch in the flux glyphs needed. I can\'t complete a split transformation."

"Can someone translate?" Grimald asked.

"We can only open one door," Aelius said. "Anyone have a preference?"

No one did.

After two more hours, everyone was getting restless, but at last Mirian was done. She got to positioning her devices. It didn\'t take long. Beatrice had been busy using shape stone to make little holders for the crystals at the angles she needed. There were a few issues of misalignment. Two of the conduits needed slight adjustments, and one of the glyphs needed to be reworked.

"Don\'t we need a spell engine?" Cediri asked.

"No," Mirian said, standing at the edge of the antimagic field. "I can channel enough auric mana. Alright, let\'s see if this works."

She channeled, straining with the control and power the device needed. Then, bright symbols around the door they\'d chosen lit up and it slid open.

Giddy with anticipation, Mirian went to the door.

Cediri said it before she could. "Another puzzle?"

"Looks like it," she said. There were dozens of complex geometric forms carved into the floor. She could see no pattern to any of it.

Grimald looked at Beatrice, who nodded. "Look, I have to say we call it here. We\'ve been down here for an entire day. Scrappy doesn\'t full close this place up in one night. We need to rest and return tomorrow."

Mirian looked around, but she could see the exhaustion in everyone\'s faces. She ground her teeth. It shouldn\'t shift until the 20th. Unless it reacts to us making it this far. Scrappy will close a few doors, but we can just open them again.

"Alright. Back up, rest, then down tomorrow. We are getting to the end of this."

"Agreed," Aelius said.

Mirian glanced back as they headed back up. So close, she thought. She just had to be patient.