Chapter 181 - The Kindly Doctor (Patreon)

“You did what?” Nicolus asked as they departed the gala.

“Convinced Sylvester Aurum he should begin research into large-scale multi-conduit mana regulators, as well as take leyline data from every factory he has in Akana Praediar. I don’t know if I can get him to call off the invasion, though, that seems like it’s more something Matteus and that Field Marshal are behind.”

“Invasion?” asked Alexus, who had only had a partial understanding of what was going on.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nicolus said. “But wait—how did you do that?”

“Very carefully,” Mirian said. “Now here’s what I need you to do…”

***

Gold Standard Industries was a massive company, and even with Sylvester Aurum issuing the command, it took time for the gears to start turning. Mirian disappeared back into the shadows. Rumors had already started swirling around that Mr. Aurum had become infatuated with someone, or perhaps a prodigy artificer had joined the company, or perhaps something more nefarious was at play. In her last meeting with Sylvester, Mirian suggested he get his papers to all print contradictory material. That would muddy the waters well enough.

Then, she vanished, using illusions, camouflage, and bursts of levitation to evade the people trying to track her. Perhaps in another loop, she could direct the research and production efforts more directly, but she was still wary of other time travelers. There was no way she was going to stick around in an easily targetable location next to a man that had such a spotlight on him.

On the 8th of Solem, Nicolus found his way to Mirian’s workshop. “He’s not hard to find,” he said. “Matteus drinks with him regularly. So do several RID and Vadraich professors. He just doesn’t like standing near glyphlamps, if you know what I mean.”

Mirian immediately paused her work on her designs. “Take me to him immediately,” she said.

“Immediate—wow, okay. Well, follow me then.”

It was time to confront Silou Westerun.

***

Westerun lived in a nice, but not ostentatious, house, with a well-groomed garden and no servants at all. With all his connections in high places—both in Baracuel and Akana—Mirian had assumed he would live in a palace like Aurum or Tyrcast, but no, it was smaller even than Jherico’s house.

Mirian started with a diplomatic approach. She went up to the front door and knocked.

Silou Westerun wasn’t portly, but he wasn’t thin either. He had wavy dark hair with the first traces of gray, and his outfit was that of a professor who’d been given a dress code but didn’t really care all that much about his appearance. “Hello?” he said, squinting his face into the approximation of a smile.

Mirian held out her hand. “Mr. Westerun? I’m a wizard with Torrviol Academy, and I’d like to talk to you about your own research into magic. Do you have a moment to talk?”

Westerun looked her up and down. His smile vanished. “Oh dear,” he said, ignoring her hand. “No. Please leave.”

Mirian kept her hand on the door, preventing it from closing easily. “I have to insist,” she said.

“We can schedule a meeting for another time,” he said. “It’s late, and I’ve had a long day.”

“I can keep the meeting short.”

He started trying to push the door closed harder. “Not tonight. Must I call the guards?”

“Surely you’re not scared of an unarmed woman?” Mirian asked.

“This is my property and I simply have nothing to say to a stranger. Talk to the University.”

“You’re not on their payroll, you just collaborate with them as an independent contractor. Should I talk to the RID instead?”

Westerun glared at her.

“You recognize me, obviously. I should have known.”

“Of course I know you, Mirian,” he snapped. “Now go away.”

“Absolutely not,” she said. “Shouldn’t you be pretending to be a kindly doctor? How do I undo the memory curse?”

Westerun reached for an amulet beneath his shirt, but Mirian had already scouted his house with divination. She had her mythril amulet already manifested, and she extended her aura to disrupt the enchantment on his. He scratched his chin, then brought his hand down to subtly press the glyph switch.

“Well?”

His jaw was clenched. Then, through conscious effort, he unclenched it and went back to smiling. “I suppose you caught me being a bit grumpy. Come, have a seat! How do you take your tea?”

“Unpoisoned,” Mirian said. “And one spoonful of honey.”

Westerun laughed. “You know, you were a lot cuter when you were a child. How are you parents?”

“My adopted parents? Busy vacationing in Florin,” she said, and took a seat on one of his chairs in the living room. She watched Westerun carefully, examining both his hands and his soul. Right now, he was delaying her because he thought his alarm spell had activated. “You’ll have to tell me about my real parents. How do you undo a memory curse?”

“I’m afraid they can’t be undone, my dear. It’s like lighting a piece of wood on fire. Once it’s changed to charcoal, there’s very little to be done about it.” He set a teapot on the stove.

“It’s some sort of binding that the Luminate Order isn’t familiar with. I know it’s still active, so I know that analogy is bullshit. Did you really bind the memories of a bunch of children? How do you sleep at night?”

“Very, very soundly. What I did, I did for the greater good. Perhaps you’ll understand when you’re older.”

Mirian thought of Gwenna, who’d used Westerun’s techniques to put Theodoro in a dazed state. “Your experiments are about memory manipulation and mind control. The world can only thank the Ominian you haven’t succeeded in getting as far as you want.”

Westerun brought out two mugs, then shaved off some dried tea into them. The tea pot was starting to make noise as the water boiled.

“I blocked your amulet from activating,” she told him.

Finally, he looked up in alarm. Then, he grabbed and flung the tea pot at her. Mirian easily deflected it with a burst of raw force, not even bothering to move. The ceramic shattered.

“The world is going to end soon. It turns out, I’m the only thing standing in the way of that. What happened in Mahatan when I was a child?”

“A bunch of rebels started massacring civilians. We saved you,” he said, as if he hadn’t just thrown a jug of boiling water at her.

“If that were the whole story, you wouldn’t be scared of me. You recognized me immediately, and wanted nothing to do with me. That’s not what usually happens when a friendly doctor sees his old patient. Who were my birth parents? What actually happened?” When Westerun just stood there behind the counter, staring at her, she snapped, “ANSWER ME!”

The man jerked back as if struck. Mirian hadn’t meant to shout, it had just come out of her.

The doctor took another step back. “What I did, I did for Baracuel and Akana. I saved your life, and I saved a lot more lives than that. That you must remain ignorant of what we did is a small price to pay for those lives. What happened in Mahatan should stay like a shadow hiding under shade.”

Mirian suddenly had a vivid flashback of the man saying that to her as a child. She’d had another tantrum at school, and he’d met her out beneath an old tree. He’d talked about not thinking too hard about things she struggled to remember. He’d showed her how her shadow vanished when she was beneath the shade of the tree. Another bout of rage flashed through her. She took three deep breaths before she continued. “And is brainwashing Theodoro also for the greater good?”

“Yes,” said Westerun instantly.

Mirian sighed. “You’re not going to tell me anything useful, are you?”

“I can tell you all sorts of useful things. But I won’t betray my country.”

“Won’t betray Baracuel? You’re just like Nikoline. She said the same thing, while preparing to burn Torrviol. What’s the point of lying to me?” She tilted her head. “Or are you lying to yourself?”

“I am, and always will be, a patriot, and a man of God.” Westerun said. “There’s a glorious future ahead. A beautiful future. And you can’t stop it.”

Mirian shook her head and summoned her spellbook. The man’s eyes grew wide when it suddenly appeared in her hands. “The future goes on for a few more weeks, and then all life in Enteria is exterminated. There is the blade of the Fourth Prophet,” she said, summoning it and jabbing it through the wooden floor. “Here are the Holy Pages. I’m asking you these things, not just for myself, but because you’re intertwined with several critical precursor events that affect three entire countries. You’ve worked with the RID and the Deeps, and have meddled with the course of history. The current path leads to annihilation. It will be easier if you help me. I don’t know how many loops we have to get it right.”

“No,” Westerun whispered, though it wasn’t even an answer to her question. It was more than she could see fear overwhelming him. “No no no no no!” he said, backing away until he hit the counter. He reached for his amulet again, but Mirian ripped it off him, then worked through a list of divination spells to double-check that there weren’t any other security features she needed to worry about.

“Pull yourself together,” Mirian said, exasperated. “I know several methods of helping you calm down. Would you like to try one?”

Westerun pulled a knife from the kitchen drawer. He didn’t throw it, though, instead, after a moment of hesitation, he plunged it into his own neck.

Mirian watched as he bled out. Great, she thought.

“That won’t actually stop me, idiot. I can just try again.” She used gather liquid to clean up the mess, then incinerated the body and started searching his home.

***

Mirian arrived at Westerun’s house again, this time in an illusory disguise. Like Specter, he had a small focus on an ankle bracelet, which was going to be a problem. This cycle, after the gala she’d stalked Westerun for a few days, figuring out who his contacts at the University were and when he met his ‘apprentice,’ the RID agent named Gwenna who was manipulating Theodoro. A lot of his research was secured in the RID headquarters, which would be a pain to break into. More of it was apparently in the Baracuel Intelligence Gallery back in Palendurio. That gave her plenty of heists to plan, but she couldn’t exactly do those while also exploiting Aurum’s industrial empire from the shadows.

“Hello?” he asked, answering the door.

“Mr. Westerun! Sorry to intrude. The name’s Micael, I’m a big fan of your research. I was hoping to collaborate. I’ve discovered some new runes and a new scribing technique, and I think we can help each other.”

Again, he couldn’t mask his emotions, and Mirian saw that brief fear pass over him. “Ah, I’m a bit busy at the moment. Some other time? That does sound interesting. Let’s make an appointment.”

They both smiled at each other as they hashed out a meeting time. Then, Mirian used magic to watch through the walls as the man scrambled around. He burned a desk full of notes—she’d already read them last cycle—and kept touching his amulet. She’d used a subtle spike of heat to crack a key glyph in the sequence, so it wasn’t working. She then followed him from the shadows as he snuck out the back and went straight to an RID safe house.

Mirian went over the eavesdrop.

“—must be using an illusionary disguise, because I know my own handiwork. He has the memory impediment, but he’s not one of the patients. And his soul is impossibly bright. I suspect—I shouldn’t say.” Then he turned and looked at her through the wall. She noticed the wand he’d taken from one of the RID agents.

Damnit, a detect life spell. There wouldn’t be a meeting. Worse, if word got out about someone with an abnormal soul and memory curse running around, the RID would be after her, and it might mess with her ability to gain the fruits of Aurum’s research progress.

She shook her head, sadly. She was going to have to kill them all.

***

The next cycle, Mirian tried interacting with Westerun’s colleagues, making sure she didn’t meet with him directly. Unfortunately, the very nature of the work meant everyone was using celestial focuses. A report made its way to Westerun, and Mirian had to kill him again. The RID had already been alerted, so she had to withdraw from Vadriach until the end of the cycle. Only once the invasion was underway and Vadriach was dealing with constant arcane eruptions did she return to the city, just as she had ever since that first gala.

She headed straight for the factory where prototyping and testing was done. It was Mr. Aurum himself who found her this time, pouring through the notes and diagrams of the production process.

“You need to talk to the Zhighuans,” she said as he approached her from behind. She knew it was him because everyone’s posture in the room changed when he entered. “They understand crystallography far better than your people. Your copper purification process is superb, though. I wonder if we could mass produce orichalcum… would have to get the RID or the church involved, though, wouldn’t we?”

“Who are you?” Sylvester Aurum snapped.

Mirian turned. “A new Prophet. Which reminds me—have any other time travelers come to you? Or people with an uncanny ability to predict the future? No?”

“Explain the meaning of this,” he said, voice full of command. Behind him, several of his bodyguards had wands already drawn. They were exchanging worried glances at each other.

“The world ends in an hour,” Mirian said, walking away from the table to examine the prototype. “It turns out, the leyline problem is far more proximate than I implied. Though in retrospect, you should have known. I’ve dug up at least three research reports at the University that warn about the possibility.” There were other implications in those papers about the cause of the instability. The pattern of eruptions being more common along rail lines and cities appeared to hold true here, too. She needed to talk to Professor Viridian about it.

She examined the glyphs on the spell engine, quickly running through what the function would be in her mind. “These are only going to work if a leyline can be broken apart first. Perhaps it can have the energy spread out—but how to do that when the leyline is constantly in motion underground? The device can’t track it.”

Mr. Aurum blinked at her. “You—what do you mean an hour?”

“Stand back. I want to test your device.” Mirian said, summoning her spellbook. His bodyguards raised their wands.

“Test?” The magnate seemed both angry and stunned.

Mirian looked at the bodyguards. “Put your wands away. Didn’t you hear what I said? I’m going to channel arcane energy into this device, that’s all. Gods above.” They didn’t. Mirian sighed and turned her back to them. If they tried a direct attack, they’d run into her spell resistance, which would give her a chance to respond. But if they were content to watch her, she didn’t care.

She began to channel.

Here, at the edge of her power, the changes to her soul became most apparent. As her auric mana moved into the single glyph representing ‘arcane force,’ some ambient mana was also drawn into the spell, increasing its power and causing the mana in the room to stir as well. All the nearby arcanists would feel both the pressure of her spell, and like a thin breeze were passing over them. She heard one of them swear.

The crystal conduits in the prototype device began to glow, and the copper conduits paralleling them started to heat up as impurities caused the arcane energy to transform into light and heat. The heat imbalance caused fans on the device to activate, blowing the cool air of the room through the prototype, but the airflow was insufficient. As Mirian increased her power, the fans whirred, blowing papers off the table as a wind stirred inside the warehouse. There was a crack, and then an eruption of molten copper as crystal shards splintered and steel crumpled. Mirian conjured up a quick force shield to catch the shrapnel.

Silence descended on the warehouse, broken only by the distant shouting from outside.

Mirian went over to one of the tri-point measuring devices set up to monitor the experiment. “That was only 120 myr,” she said, then rubbed her forehead. She ran through the numbers in her head. ‘Myr’ was not a linear scale, so she couldn’t just do simple multiplication. “We would need some seven hundred of these to even tackle a small leyline. But you need time to tool the factories, train the artificers…” Mirian ground her teeth. “Dammit, I need more time!” She smashed her fist down on the table. Belatedly, she realized she’d embraced the Last Breath Of The Phoenix form and dented the metal top.

Everyone was staring at her.

“All this power, Mr. Aurum,” she said, gesturing at the factory. “But it won’t save you.” She looked at him. His neck was taut. He was trying to keep his expression calm, but there was a boiling anger in there. I know that feeling.

“You deceived me,” he said. Then, “This isn’t the end. You’re lying!”

Ah, he’s one of those types, she thought. She didn’t really want to talk to him. She levitated away, leaving through a high window. In a little bit, what he thought or felt wouldn’t matter in the slightest.

***

For the next cycle, she didn’t go to the gala. She’d already repeated her tactics too many times. She risked falling into a routine that another Prophet could exploit. She tried with Westerun again, this time, getting Nicolus to approach him, using several code phrases to imply Nikoline sent him.

The problem was, Nicolus was still a sixth year student and didn’t realize when he had a tail. Nurea was good, but she was just one person. Mirian’s divination picked it up, but by then, the RID had a group closing in around them.

Nicolus grimaced as Mirian explained, then said, “Ouch. Sorry, Mirian. Uh… can you get us out of here?”

She had to roll her eyes. “Of course I can.” Already, she was thinking about what she would do after they escaped. Perhaps this is the cycle to infiltrate the RID and get some of Westerun’s notes. The nest is already stirred up.

***

One more try, Mirian thought, watching Selesia enter Silou Westerun’s house through a special lensing spell. This one used a tri-bonded sequence to let her look at both light and soul energy at a distance. This required overlapping two lensing spells, but neither seemed to interfere with the other. It was a reminder that while she perceived soul energy as an image in her mind, it wasn’t at all the same as matter reflecting light.

She watched with anticipation. She’d spent several days coaching and practicing with Selesia, and she’d thought the subterfuge would be great fun. Mirian had even used an illusion to make herself look like the man so the practice felt real. Selesia was carrying a letter of introduction purportedly written by Specter, and it had all three code words integrated in to confirm it. The idea was that Specter had recruited her, noticed her knack for rune magic, and sent her along.

Now, Mirian was three blocks away, peering out a window. Westerun started by making tea. Then they started to talk. Mirian wasn’t listening in since she didn’t want to risk Westerun picking up the listening device. She knew from examining his spellbook he did have a divination spell that would detect the associated glyphs.

The conversation continued, and Mirian felt herself relaxing. It’s working, she thought—just as Selesia suddenly put her hands to her throat and started seizing up.

She snapped the lensing spells off. He’d poisoned her. He’d fucking poisoned her.

Mirian had been working on a new levitation spell, and deployed it now. It used force energy to push the caster in the same direction as their movement on a horizontal plane. It was incredibly mana inefficient, but it also let her travel as fast as she could push, rather than being limited by the strange rules that surrounded the antigravity force.

A rage seized her.

She crossed all three blocks in a matter of seconds. Then she blew apart the west wall of his house.

Selesia was shaking on the floor. Vomit was trailing from her mouth, and she’d turned pale. Mirian looked at her soul and knew instantly at least one of the poisons he’d used: bloodleaf. This time, though, she knew how to heal it.

Westerun saw her, and he looked like he’d seen Carkavakom Himself.

He might as well have.

Mirian used her well-practiced quickened spell techniques to simultaneously cast two of Luspire’s most destructive fire spells, snapping into place a heat shield in front of herself and Selesia only after the spells were already beginning to ignite. With a roar, Westerun’s entire house erupted in a column of fire.

Belatedly, she realized she was screaming profanities at him in Adamic, just as she had as a child. She settled to the ground, kneeling next to Selesia. She was seizing up, her soul blackening. Westerun’s house, minus the small section of carpet Selesia was lying on, was a smoldering black crater. Smoke billowed from the trees in his garden; the fire had been so intense, it had ignited them, and ignited the two houses adjacent to him.

Mirian gingerly picked up Selesia’s body and flew them south, alternating cure poison and healing spells through her as she gently worked the poison out of her.

“I’m… sorry. I… failed,” Selesia managed.

She shook her head. “It’s not your failing. And we don’t need him.” Rostal didn’t teach me those Adamic curses. Neither did my tutor. The memories are still there. I’ll find another way.

“W-where…?”

“I need to take some measurements in south Akana. I’m taking you home, to Takoa.” She smiled at Selesia, feeling none of the serenity she was trying to project. “I’d also like to meet your family and let them know what a brave daughter they have.”

Selesia, however, had passed out. Mirian landed them on top of a departing train, then used illusion spells to cloak them. She snuck them inside, then continued to work on healing Selesia as the train headed south for Takoa.