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Chapter 211 - Race to the Necromancer
🕑 Added 2025-05-14 16:48:58 +0000 UTCMirian woke, sealed the hole above her bed with shape wood and shape metal, quickly threw on her clothes, then sprinted out her dorm and to the plaza in front of Bainrose Castle. She blinked beneath the flagstones, plummeting a dozen feet before casting levitation to stop her fall. Then, it was to the conduit room, where Eyeball sat spread across the table full of glyphs and crystals, its eye squinting at her mischievously.
You already know if I succeed, she thought grumpily.
HAHA. NO, OF COOOURSE NOT! HOW COULD I KNOW? THAT HAPPENS IN THE ‘FUTURE.’ HAHA. HAHAHA.
That Eyeball was able to convey sarcasm through soul-information was just an indication of how much she had to learn in the field. Still, nearly two months of practice had helped refine her technique significantly. Open Mahatan Gate, please, she thought.
HAVE FUN! Eyeball thought, and Mirian felt the strange pulse of magic that accompanied the Gate opening. Then blinked and levitated her way to the Gate room. Mirian used shape stone to create a post between the Gate and the door, and then wrote in large block letters on a spare sheet of paper:
Do NOT go through. Gate leads to a location deep underwater. Please continue studying it, though. —Mirian, Prophet (and former student)
It took a minute, but she could spare that. Next came her least favorite part. Though she’d tried, she simply couldn’t maintain spells when she was teleported. This meant she had to rapidly form an air bubble to breathe and a force shield to alleviate the crushing pressure. Inevitably, she still had aches in her joints from the brief moment when she was unshielded, and she knew of no healing magic that fixed those aches. She took a deep breath, and holding it, stepped through.
A moment later, she was in the crushing depths of the oasis casting her spells. Then she surfaced, speeding off north away from the city. She didn’t bother with stealth. By the time anyone alerted the Sentinels, she’d be long gone.
As she passed over the desert, she once again debated tactics. Should she burn as much mana as she could just to get there faster, or save some just in case? Fighting the necromancer wasn’t realistic, but hated the idea of not having mana for whatever might arise. Perhaps he’d make the two Prophets fight and see who came out on top.
Get a hold of yourself, Mirian thought. She mentally rehearsed what she was going to say again. My name is Mirian. I’m one of the new Prophets. You’re likely aware of the ongoing leyline breakdown. The Ominian has established a time loop to prevent it, because it soon leads to the Divir moon falling… hmm. Is that leading too much with the problem? I could say I’m the only Prophet, but I’ll likely only have a few hours at most before Ibrahim arrives. What if I led with me being one of the abducted children from Falijmali? Of course, if he goes to talk with them, none of them will have heard about me this loop. But he must be smarter than that—that would just confirm the loop. But he must understand his help is a valuable commodity to bargain. Especially if Ibrahim shows up…
She kept thinking as she flew. She butchered a drake and absorbed its soul, using that to cast accelerated levitation for a few miles. Several loops using this route had given her a pretty good idea of where to look for drakes, and they had the largest souls to mana drain. It was also easy to strip their legs of scales and use heat spells to cook them so that she could eat while she flew. She could also use spells to harvest water from the cacti along her route.
At night, she only slept a little, using a carefully decaying ward system to set herself an alarm. The Lone Pine dervish form would supplement her lack of sleep. Every hour counted.
***
The plateau, at least, was easy to spot. As she moved over to it, she first levitated high up and layered several lens spells on top of each other to look towards Rambalda.
Finding the dust cloud was too easy. It was closer than it should have been. Dammit! Ibrahim’s several hours closer than he was last cycle. He was an hour away, give or take. She ground her teeth. Far less time than she’d wanted to have alone with the necromancer, but it seems Atrah Xidi had detected her last cycle, and possibly alerted the Prophet. Perhaps accidentally. Perhaps not. Or, Ibrahim had made a breakthrough in the early cycle. Either way, she had no time to lose.
Mirian flew down to the cave she’d detected as the entrance to the necromancer’s hideaway. She landed just outside. She could see the souls of the five drakes inside. One of them was massive—likely a matriarch. She cast her first divination spell, targeting the rael glyph, which was used in basic alarm wards. There it was, present on some sort of ward deep at the back of the cavern. That was to be expected. Quickly, she cast other detection spells, looking for what exactly the purpose of the ward was. It detects any kind of mana-to-energy transformation. Force, fire, lightning—even sound. Whatever I use. Generally, such broad alarm wards weren’t used because something like lift object was perfectly legal to cast, while force blades was not. Ward schemes in cities needed to be specific.
Her trick of cracking key glyphs by heating them up would trigger the alarm before it disabled the sequence. The necromancer had also proven a master of energy transmutation arrays; if his undead soldiers had layers of protection, no doubt, the door to his hideout did as well. I could blast through the drakes and simply trigger the alarm. But that doesn’t exactly send the right message. Nor does butchering them with Eclipse.
The cave was relatively tall but narrow, twisting several times before it bottlenecked in a passage just large enough for the drakes to move through. Then it opened up again slightly. Back there was the door. There was no going around the drakes. And, with Ibrahim on his way, she didn’t have time to do anything elaborate, like lure the drakes out with meat.
But despite his innovations, Atrah Xidi doesn’t seem to have been able to use tri-bonded sequences to combine runes and glyphs. Then soul magic is safe to use without alerting him.
An idea struck her. There was a way to bypass the drakes, and do so in a way that sent a message of diplomacy to the arch-necromancer. From Viridian, she knew desert drakes had a symbiotic relationship with two-headed vultures. The vultures, circling high in the sky, often indicated prey. Once the drakes had killed the prey, they shared it with the vultures.
Mirian assumed the form of the Dance of the Dusk Waves, speeding up her reactions and movements. As she entered the cave, she heard the guttural growls and hissing of the five drakes. She darted towards the first one, placing her hand on it. Share with, she sent, and patterned the edge of her soul with the same patterns she’d seen with the two-headed vultures. By now, she’d mana drained enough of them to know their rhythms.
The first drake looked confused. Mirian repeated the communication, then leapt back as one of the other drakes snapped at her. She backed up. It had been quite some time since she’d run the Frostland’s Gate Labyrinth, but the motions still came instinctually to her. She ran up one of the boulders in the cavern, then leapt over the attacking drake, kicking off one of the walls to adjust where she landed. In the narrow confines, the larger drake would have trouble turning. The two juveniles behind it came at her next, but she placed her hands on each of their snouts. Share with two-headed vulture, she told it. Turning, she repeated the same instructions to the drake that was snarling and trying to turn. Since it couldn’t see her, the soul communication worked better. The drakes still weren’t sure about her, but some innate behavior written into them made them hesitate.
Blocking the way to the door, though, was the matriarch. Mirian had never seen a drake so large. Only a thin echo of sunlight was this deep in the cave, but she thought she saw the glint of a metal collar on the drake. A pet? I made the right move not just slaughtering them. I wonder how Ibrahim gets around it, though. The matriarch snapped at her. Mirian leapt back, then scrambled up the rough-hewn wall of the cave to get some height on it. When the matriarch turned to snap its tail at her, she leapt to the other wall, briefly embracing the Last Fires form to give her fingers the extra force needed to grip the small handholds.
This time, the matriarch used one of its innate spells, and a haze of sand filled the cavern, choking Mirian. Desert drakes liked to use the spell to hide or to blind their prey, but Mirian already had detect life going. When the tail snap came again, Mirian launched herself back to the other wall, but the haze made it impossible to see the holds. Her fingers came away bloody as she fell, thudding to the hard stone floor, pain shooting up her legs and spine. While she ran raw soul energy through herself to heal the damage, the large drake came forward, head snapping at her. She was forced to leap back. The rough sand battered at her skin, and Mirian raised her cloak to her mouth so she wouldn’t choke.
I just need to touch it, she thought, but without arcane magic, that was proving to be more difficult than she anticipated. The matriarch’s agitation was also riling up the rest of its family. Frustration coursed through her. Every minute she was delayed was another minute Ibrahim drew closer. And if she screwed up, pissing off the necromancer, then Ibrahim would for sure know what she was trying to do.
Mirian retreated from the drake’s snapping jaws, only to stumble on a rock behind her. She went sprawling, and as her cloak fell away from her mouth, she choked on sand.
With her reaction time, it felt like it was happening in slow motion. She saw the glow of the matriarch’s soul as its claw came down towards her. Mirian’s first instinct, as her hands scraped against the sandy cave floor, was to summon her spellbook and end the fight. Then, she realized something. Conductor talked to me with the soul language when I wasn’t touching it. I just have to extend my soul—The Sinister Hand of Shadow form needn’t only be for suppressing spells. Auramancy can be used for other things.
She scrambled back from the claw, letting it smash the cave floor where she’d been, then swapped forms. The outer layer of her soul spread out, scraping at the drake’s.
STOP! she commanded.
To her surprise, it worked. The matriarch froze, and it let go of the sandstorm spell.
Let me pass. I mean you no harm, she thought to it. When it growled, she focused her will. This creature wasn’t looking for diplomacy, but strength.
This time, she commanded it. LET ME PASS. The matriarch backed away, then put its snout against the ground, indicating it was trying to be non-threatening.
Mirian caught her breath, then walked to the door. The matriarch drake growled at her, but she seemed to have cowed the beast. Stay, she reminded it as she turned her back on it to look at the door at the end of the cavern.
Glyph sequences ran across the border of the door and the frame, carved directly into the rock. As she’d suspected, there were complete alarm sequences. In the center of the door was a ring of orichalcum. Within that circle was a disk of bone, engraved with runes. Of course. When she’d been searching through the desert, she’d been on the lookout for steel, a clear indicator of human presence. The mechanism being pure orichalcum meant it was undetectable by divination because of the metal’s resistance to spells.
The metal would be aligned to Atrah Xidi. Unlike the soulbound objects she carried, it was isolated, so she wouldn’t be directly interacting with his soul. That was good. She would need to realign the metal to her own soul in order to operate the door mechanism. Only once she had done that, control of the orichalcum disk would then allow control of the runes embedded in the bone. She could add soul energy, which could in turn ever so slightly manipulate the bone disk itself. Her best guess was that detect bone glyphs embedded in the door then would become active. It was a clever way to make sure the Deeps—who knew of, but didn’t use orichalcum—would be stymied, and the Praetorians—who wore orichalcum but didn’t use soul magic—would be equally impeded.
Mirian placed her hand on the circle, feeling the burn along the edge of her soul. Gradually, she forced it into alignment. Once she could sense the metal beneath her fingers, she realized she was wrong. No glyphs were in the door at all. This was a necromancer. Of course he could manipulate bone without glyphs. There were runes she didn’t know, but like a wand, she could simply channel soul energy into them and the result was that the thick bone spikes holding the door closed retracted. The door opened.
The sandstone hallway before her was dark.
“Atrah Xidi! I come in peace,” she called. Her voice echoed. Other than that, there was silence. The drakes behind her were quiet.
She closed the door behind her and continued down the hall, risking a light spell now that she was past the detection wards. With every step forward, her anticipation grew. The hall led to stairs that were cut into the stone. Beneath the plateau, the air was cool. A welcome relief from the desert. Mirian called out her greeting again. This time, the echo was different.
At the bottom of the stair, there was an arch that opened up into a colossal chamber. There were eight wide pillars, each riddled with nooks, reaching up to a ceiling some hundred feet tall. All the walls around the room also had nooks. Each one had a mummy in it, covered in runes. Storage for his army, Mirian realized. There were thousands of them. He constructed them all. Amazing.
“Atrah Xidi!” Mirian repeated.
On the opposite side of the chamber was a stone door. It rumbled down as Mirian approached, and a figure wearing a dark cloak emerged. She couldn’t make out his features beneath the cowl of his hood, but she recognized the way he walked, from watching him at Mayat Shadr.
The arch-necromancer took several steps forward, and then he froze.
“Atrah Xidi. I come in peace. My name is—”
The man lowered his hood. His face was gaunt, and his skin reminded her more of the mummy soldier of his she’d seen than anything living. He looked at her with his gray eyes, so bright they shone silver in the dark. “Naluri,” he whispered, the reverence he placed on the name echoing in the chamber.
Mirian’s mouth fell open. She recognized that face. Those eyes.
The memory curse was overwhelmed. She felt it fragmenting with the pressure. Atrah Xidi cast briefly, and the curse shattered entirely.
“Dad?” she whispered.
And the memories came pouring back.
Comments
Porygon2Fan
WHAAAAAT????????
tharindu prasad
Did not expected that!
Leaf
Fate's a funny thing.
Joe ?
I knew it
CrouchingWombatHiddenDropbear
Oh gosh love to have my headcanon match up.
Will Iam
Not that we would be impatient after the last chapter but my fingers are getting a bit tired from hanging in that cliff. Any chance to get a rope? And by rope I mean chapter 212
marten
This is so awesome! I cannot wait for the next chapter! After reading the other comments: if AX can break memory curses, he knows them well. Was Westerun a pupil of him who betrayed him?
Justin
Yo you star wars'd me wtf
En Tee
I'm just going to drop this here ... --- ch. 134: There was still so much about soul magic she didn’t know, but she suspected the Phoenix form—or something like it—could be used to fuel spells as well. [That Atroxcidi was a necromancer and that he exceeded the greatest Baracueli archmage do not seem to me to be a set of unrelated facts.] Rostal had said the necromancer was less than human now. It conjured in Mirian’s mind the face of a man that was half-mummy, eyes bright silver, but face as dessicated and weathered as a sandstone cliff. Whatever secrets he held, she wanted them. --- ch. 211: The man lowered his hood. His face was gaunt, and his skin reminded her more of the mummy soldier of his she’d seen than anything living. He looked at her with his gray eyes, so bright they shone silver in the dark. ---- I'll just go sit here. Impressed with this incredibly unobtrusive detailed description that's pretending exceptionally well that it's not foreshadowing.
SinfulCow
Now I wonder if Ibrahim isn’t a long lost brother, too.
SinfulCow
Holy shittoli. Talk about a plot twist I did NOT see coming. Id wondered, very, very briefly, but then discarded the thought.
Luna
HHHHHHHHHHH
Kyfe
She wanted to do that with the Time Spike removed from what's his name, but as soon as it was free, it flung away completely out of control. I'm guessing someone would need literal divine might to wrestle control of anything that could put one into the Time Loop.
FuriousDee
He did mention that
Milo
I love the reveal that Ibrahim is a monster of physicality. I wonder what absurd nonsense he’s been able to pull off with the dervish stances with the loop. Did Rostal mention that there were more than the 6 he knew, they were just lost? Or am I inventing?
Brian P.
She was writing both reports and love letters as Adria, so she knew some of her intimant secrets. But yeah, this might’ve been one she never learned. Or, if she learned of it, never cared about.
Raivshard
Yup! We cookin' now. 😃
Sam I Am
I don’t think Spectre knew anything about Mirian. Since Aria was murdered, Mirian was a hostage on paper only. Funny, if true.
chumponimys
Westerun recognized her (regardless of how she shaped her body) by the memory curse. He said something to the effect of "Of course I'd recognize my own work." I have a feeling her interactions with him are going to look very different now if she tries again. And not just because of the extra info/leverage she has now...
Derek
Holy shit. What a reveal.
Colton
I missed a lot of the foreshadowing. I'll have to reread
Kyfe
I FREAKING CALLED IT! Let's go
jcox
Ibrahim is going to be walking in on some high drama. Awkward...
Crystal Llily
It's been an idea in my mind since we learned that Atrah Xidi was persamman and that she had sealed memeries of persamman parents. And this reunion was everything I hoped it could be. Her affinity for soul magic alsos makes more sense now, she has the blood of one of the greatest necromancers ever.
Magesh S
Wow. Didn’t expect that. Now we know that Mirian is hostage against Atrah Xidi.
Brian P.
It really makes sense why he’d take his own life now after discovering the little girl he stole from the most powerful soul mage known, and then literally brainwashed, is both a powerful mage herself and a/the Prophet. Everything he worked for will be torn out by the roots.
Brian P.
I’m betting most of the next chapter are those memories flashing into her mind. And then discussion the chapter after, unless Ibrahim makes it there sooner.
laszlogasd
Just yesterday I upgraded tiers because I was eager for the chapter where we get to meet Atrah Xidi, and boy the timing couldn't have been any better. I'm so happy with this chappy. Edit: Mirian was already one hell of a powerhouse, now that she'll potentially get instructed by literally the greatest necromancer in history.. oh boy. It sounds wild, but I'm thinking eventually she might look for ways to *put* other people in the loop.
Thaabit Rivertree
Oh gosh wish we could get a small advance dump here to see what happens between them.
Thaabit Rivertree
Whaaat?! Did NOT see that coming. What a cliff!
Kevin O'Malley
And the memories came pouring back. And the memories came pouring back. And the memories came pouring back.
Midy
AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Kevin O'Malley
Seems unlikely she is his genetic daughter.
Kevin O'Malley
God Dammit.
Zurko
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHNHHHHHHHHHHHH
Kaelik
I guess this does confirm that when she was pretending to be spectre and someone said "who's watching the [asset? Can't remember the word]" that probably was about her, specifically. How funny must it have been when spectre was being interrogated by the girl she was supposed to be a contingency murderer of to keep the necromancer in line.
UraniumPhoenix
Wednesday and Sunday there's always a chapter. Friday there's maybe a bonus chapter. Depends on how fast I can write!
Alex
Arggggg! Need more !
Pete Magnuson
Could someone remind me the normal post schedule? I don't normally track when chapters will drop but this cliff is quite steep
Griffus
I love this so much
AlecL
What do we think are the odds he’s also related to her
Anonymous
I hope there is a kidnap Westrun loop
Anotherb Account
Oh yeah! Nice
Benjamin Gallagher
Oooh thats good
FuriousDee
Or those children were test subjects to develop the memory curse without accidentally killing their leverage
Dan
Oh MY GOD! YOU'RE KIDDING ME! HELL YES
FuriousDee
Finally I have been looking forward to this. Also we have definitely found a way to save the cursed professor if it took her father seconds to break the memory curse on her.
Junglerat
The training arc of the supremely powerful archmage with her dad, the unbelievably knowledgeable necromancer, is going to go crazy.
Metal(Liz)ard🏳️⚧️
well i guess that solves how she gets him to listen to her lmao bet ibrahim is gonna be pissed his big weapon fobs him off for his long lost daughter
Anotherb Account
Just realized this also gives a genetic reason she could become so strong (and was such a natural at soul magic)
Anotherb Account
Or he’ll be so good at necromancy he can store memories in her soul
Anotherb Account
Good point. Props to the author, lots of people do that
Danidreye
Oh god, the implications are killing me. Now, whenever Mirian tries to learn the magic she probably needs to know in order to save the world, she is going to have to confront the fact that her father will never remember these times with her. She will even probably need to use him as a tool for his army, that he probably made because of his bitterness for her loss. This is probably whats going to break her.
UraniumPhoenix
The idea was that she *sorta* remembered it on accident when she was choosing a fake name way back then, so was slightly off, so yes, slightly different on purpose.
Robert Mullins
I'm guessing the Fajimali kidnappings were just to provide further disguise to Mirian's own kidnapping so that if anyone including herself looked into her background it would look like an action taken against potential rebels rather than one meant to get leverage on the necromancer.
sparkc
Just want to thank the author for NOT backtracking on this even after some commenters guessed it. Have seen authors do that before and make a muddle of things.
Will Iam
It is. A very cruel and unusual punishment. Also your coments is a reference to unepic?
Erlost
Hell yeah. Talk about an ally!
Isaac Boyles
Welp, I didn't see that coming
Zak Cornell
Stop!!!! The cliff is killing me its sooooo good
Robert Mullins
Is it supposed to be Niluri like it was when she chose a fake name or is it it intentionally slightly different?
Chris Fox
I'm pretty sure this cliff counts as cruel and unusual punishment haha
Kaze
Great mother of cliffs, grant me the fortitude to see the wait until the next chapter through.
Anotherb Account
Riiiiiight
Danidreye
hahahahahahahaha
Kaelik
Aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Well damn she's about to have the easiest time in the world convincing the dangerous necromancer to work with her instead.
Mistythread
Oh shit! I’m so excited for this
Jiejra D
I was really hoping that twist was coming, but I started accepting it was unlikely. Glad I was wrong I am so excited.
EEN
paiiiiiiinful cliffhanger :(
Ada Wiberg
I KNEW IT (Great foreshadowing btw)
Bazel
Oh wow, time to meet daddy
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
well, that's a twist
Anotherb Account
AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH LUKE I AM YOUR FATHER. no but seriously, ah. Great. Love it.
