The majority of the surrendered Akanan army was placed in the western part of Mayat Shadr. There was a poetic justice to housing them in the very city they’d destroyed, though it was by necessity, not spite; the laborers who’d worked on the leyline regulator already had to sleep two to a bed in the parts of the city that were more intact. The massive quake caused by Divir’s landing had been felt as far as Urubandar, though it had only knocked down buildings as far as Alatishad. It had been fortuitous that both cities had been evacuated prior to the quake.
Apophagorga had only eaten some of the corpses off the battlefield, and it had taken Mirian some difficulty to explain why humans didn’t like that. She was unsurprised to learn that titans routinely practiced cannibalism. The myrvite titan stubbornly refused to return to the strange climates that existed on the other side of the stormwall where Mirian now knew more of the beasts lived—likely due to that fact. She thought the beast might become a problem, but she had made a promise to the Ominian that she intended to keep. Enteria had not been gifted to humans alone.
That night, Apophagorga made their way back to the Jiandzhi, where they had enjoyed hunting before, and might continue to keep the route there clear. Across Mayat Shadr, there were celebrations, as soldiers reunited with friends and family, and just as many mourners as many found out their loved one was one of the fallen.
The next morning, Mirian walked around the perimeter of Mayat Shadr with her father as both took breaks from their duties.
“The clouds are different,” Mirian said, gesturing to the east. “Divir’s entry must have disturbed the atmosphere enough to shift the regional weather.”
Gaius paused, considering that. Then he continued walking. “It’s little details like that. Not that the weather here is all that variable, but knowing exactly what the clouds should look like in a region each day… how strange.”
Ahead of them, Meu plodded about, looking for anything to chase. Most of the smaller animals were too quick, but any sand scorpion he could find would turn and sting him. The old cat-mummy didn’t have a functioning circulatory system anymore, so Meu seemed to think it was fun.
“I can’t believe that old thing survived all this,” Gaius said.
“I can’t believe I actually had to use that contingency,” Mirian said. She looked back, then up where Divir had once hung, then down at the mausoleum. “Or that… it’s over. It seemed some days…”
They made their way from the outside of the city into the temple, where crowds visiting the Ominian parted as soon as they realized who she was. It was obvious even to those who had never seen her before. Her eyes were pure silver now, and occasionally, her skin would radiate wisps of light as her intense aura spontaneously transmuted auric mana. Likely, even those who hadn’t trained their arcane sense could feel her approach, though the mages were still the first to turn.
Together, they stood and gazed up at the Ominian’s corpse. The temporal needles were dull now; the once vibrant substance had been transmuted into something else. Mirian gently lay a hand on the ankle.
Nothing. Not even the faintest whisper. They were truly gone.
She and her father embraced, then returned to their tasks. They still had years of catching up to do, but for now, their responsibilities came first. Gaius was helping stabilize Persama as a representative of Falijmali. And Mirian, of course, had all of Enteria to tend to.
For so many years, Mirian had rehearsed the things she would do. It was strange now to take actions that weren’t scripted. Of course, she and Zhuan had endlessly debated what the new governments of Enteria should look like, and they’d made plenty of plans for their success. After all, the battle was over, and the immediate apocalypse had been averted, but there were still the unstable leylines and the matter of spell engines to take care of. On top of that, Tlaxhuaco was the only country that had come through the crisis with an intact government.
For the next few days, Mayat Shadr remained populated. Mirian had accepted Cearsia’s formal surrender, but aside from a few skiffs that had survived the battle, all communications with the rest of her forces had been cut. As messengers set out, Mirian also made her way back to Alatishad, then along the Setarab River to put an end to the fighting as quickly as she could.
Despite that, it took a full week for the word to spread and hostilities in Persama to finally quiet down. Major forces received Cearsia’s stand-down order quickly enough, but the breakdown in Akanan lines as Dawn’s Peace had engaged them on a dozen different fronts impeded communication and had left the army fragmented. Soon enough, there were only a few holdouts, mostly in the southern region where units continued to hide in the dense canyons and caves.
When it was safe, Mayat Shadr began to empty. The harsh desert city had needed deep wells and a constant stream of imports from Zhighua not to starve itself. Conditions had been as mild as Zhuan could make them, but they’d still been brutal. Most people were eager to return to their homes—if they had one left.
As they left, though, they left in groups quite different than the ones they’d come in. People from all over the known world had met there, and despite the language barriers, had come to know people from across the continents. Before, they had been strangers. Now, anyone who had worked at Mayat Shadr knew at least a dozen people from the different regions. Some only left with new friends who they might write to or visit occasionally, but others decided to try living in a different part of the world.
Mirian spent as much time as she could healing wounds. Here and there, she found a soul intact enough to resurrect the fallen, but her miracles were far more sparse than she would have wished. In some areas, bureaucrats were organized enough to count the dead. In others, there were simply too many; the bodies were interred in mass graves. Mirian’s newly formed Commission of Remembrance dutifully began to map out those sites and plan for memorials. She did not intend to let the slaughter of the past few months be forgotten; the monuments would be shaped with stone and enchanted with glyphs modeled after those found in Torrian Tower and the energy-transmutation door that Mirian had needed to bypass to find Eyeball’s hidden nook above the Torrviol Gate; thus, the stone would resist weathering and decay for a long, long time. Some of the architects and masons who had helped rebuild Mayat Shadr were already at work designing the monuments for prominence and beauty. The highest concentration of monuments would be along the Setarab River, but there’d be hundreds more scattered across the many cities that had suffered dead.
Then, there was the task of rebuilding cities and governments.
Zhuan kept the route through the Jiandzhi open, as both Baracuel and Persama’s factories had been devastated by the war. From Cairnmouth to Alatishad, hundreds of thousands of people got to work rebuilding as a steady supply of materials made its way north. There was far too much damage for a single person like Mirian to oversee. Local councils in each region, town, or city attempted to do what they could with the labor and materials at their disposal, and requested materials from Zhuan’s Bureau of Reconstruction. The self-organizing groups that Mirian had used to break the old power structures and devote the powers of full nations to the leyline regulator still persisted, as the former prophets used central planning bodies to try and keep the separate efforts organized and resources going to where they were most needed. It was messy, but so were the details of anything involving so many people. Mediating groups composed of people from each country soon formed to resolve the various disputes.
Mostly, though, people across the eastern continent wanted to rebuild their lives, and wanted to join in the efforts. Especially as word spread of what had happened at Mayat Shadr, the feeling that they were part of something bigger, that some divine hand was at work, inspired them.
Soon enough, every city Mirian visited was packed with scaffolding. The former prophets could no longer communicate through the dream, now that the Ominian was fully dead, but contact was reestablished with Jherica soon enough. Akana Praediar was in crisis, with daily brawls in the streets of the major cities and the remaining army there unsure of whose orders to follow. Contact with the surrendered Akanans began to shift things. Not everyone could accept the truth of what had happened—many did not. But enough began to, and from the chaos, a deep melancholy spread across the country.
Everything was changing.
At long last, things actually could change. As Mirian considered the unknowable future, she felt both anxiety and excitement. She’d meant what she said about a new world. Now, together, they just had to make it.
***
Sio Jherica met her at Vadriach’s docks, though in her usual fashion, Mirian had flown, not sailed. The old academic looked worn. They were still grieving over Celen’s death, and from their messages, had hardly taken a day off as they dealt with the turmoil.
“Glad you could make it,” Jherica said. “It’s… good to see you. I think that means I got the last of her curse off. Can you…?”
Mirian’s soul-sight spell was already active. She was relatively sure that she’d figured out Liuan’s trick to making the bonds invisible. If she wanted to, she could go ask her, but she doubted the woman was ready to cooperate yet, and she wasn’t ready to make another trip to Luamin quite yet. Mirian went through several divination spells, peering at Jherica’s head, then said, “As far as I can tell, the bindings are gone.”
“Good,” Jherica said, visibly relaxing.
They began to walk. Jherica had a guard of sorts around them, though they didn’t have uniforms, just red and white colored bands of cloth, and beyond them, a crowd that was eager to glimpse Mirian. She’d grown inured to that sort of thing. “I received you letters about the situation. Any developments?”
“Well, as I said, the senate was being annoying, so I started publishing information about their corruption. Got through about twelve of them before they started to get annoyed.”
“The judges declined to prosecute them, I assume.”
“Naturally, so then I started airing their dirty laundry. Got two resignations, but the rest decided to tough out the mobs outside their homes. Then I dug up Westerun’s notes on mind control, and Old Kudzu’s response. Something about, ‘mind control for an individual will not help us govern. It seems far more useful to develop control through information.’ Then his other letter about Operation Zenith: ‘The Senate will back our efforts, and anyone who doesn’t go along will be appropriately dealt with.’ And wouldn’t you know it, a lot of people were rightly pissed about the whole affair. Army still won’t back me, though. So I’ve called for a plebiscite, and for the dissolution of the senate and RID. Now everyone’s figuring out how to get a plebiscite done across the whole country when half of the bureaus are tied in knots. Meanwhile, the senate’s barricaded themselves in the legislative building, and the RID building came down with a mysterious case of arson. Could still use your help rooting out the old safe houses and hidden parts of the network.”
Mirian handed them a sheaf of papers full of addresses and ward schemes. “Copied from my notes,” she said.
Jherica grinned. “Anyways, a lot of people wanted to see you for themselves. Hear it from you, not me.” They cleared their throat. “Between the two of us, you look a bit more impressive.”
Mirian smiled.
A large group was camped outside the plaza in front of the legislative building. Mirian moved about, talking with small groups until the crowd had grown large enough. Then she gave a short speech, the same as many she’d given in Baracuel, only now, with details of what had happened at Mayat Shadr. The absence of Divir in the sky was a difficult piece of evidence to dismiss.
At one point, she said, “When the time loop began, I had only my own wisdom. I had to build it up, slowly and painfully. Here, you have no second chance, but you have the wisdom of each other to build on. Use it well.”
That seemed to go over well. Then she asked, “How does one deal with an infestation?”
A few people shouted out answers, some involving poison, some arson. Another shouted, “Don’t let the little bastards hide. Expose it to daylight!”
Mirian nodded. “A bit of daylight has done you all some good. I don’t think anyone could complain about spreading the light around, could they?” With that, she levitated up in full view of the crowd and cast. With a rumble and series of ground-shaking cracks, Mirian lifted the roof off the legislative building.
A gasp went up in the crowd, then a cheer, as people cleared part of the plaza for her to set the gigantic stone roof in.
“That ought to move things along, don’t you think?” she said to Jherica after she landed. Symbols, after all, could be important things.
Jherica had an ear-splitting grin. “I do believe it will.”
After that, Mirian spent some time giving advice about how to best hold systems of government accountable. Akana, though, was no Baracuel. At one point, she had a lively debate with a small crowd about intelligence agencies. She was of the opinion that no agency like the RID should exist at all, but the idea of not having any sort of agency to spy and protect the country from foreign spies seemed foolish to most. In the end, she could only offer her perspective. There were things they would need to figure out themselves.
As she headed back to the docks that evening, she and Jherica talked about mending relationships with Tlaxhuaco. Until Akana Praediar had a functioning government, it was a bit difficult to move on that issue, and also just as difficult to deal with the surrendered Akanan army.
There was one final thing to discuss.
“Liuan,” Jherica said.
Mirian pointed up.
“Hells. So she’s…?”
“Behind the door of the temple you couldn’t open on your visit there. With the death of the Ominian, she only has her own thoughts and nightmares to keep her company. I don’t imagine it’s a pleasant torment, but I feel no need to relieve her of it. Not after what she did.”
“A sixth hell, just for her.” Jherica looked up at the moon, grim look on their face. “No, I suppose I don’t feel the need to relieve her of her circumstances either.”
With that, they said their goodbyes, and Mirian departed south to visit Uxalak.
***
Xecatl and Mirian met beneath Ceiba Yan. Mirian let her hand gently run over the Sacred Tree’s bark. She spent some time communing with him before the two former prophets got to talking. The old tree still wasn’t recovered from his mana expenditure, but he was healthy enough. He’d survived far worse things. He would survive this.
Empress Xecatl looked far better now. Her soul wasn’t so ragged, and her aura looked healthy. “If it all goes to plan, Tlaxhuaco will become a major exporter, both of skilled nagual and hybrid myrvite plants,” Mirian said as they looked out at the city.
“So it seems.”
“Keep a tight grip on the merchants,” Mirian warned.
“Yes, yes, Zhuan’s advisors have said the same thing.”
“Is she still bothering you to change your government structure and step down?”
Xecatl gave a deep sigh. “Always.”
Mirian snorted. “I’d say I’d talk to her, but we both know it won’t change anything. Something to deal with some other time. The recovery seems like its coming along.”
“Yes. We’ve received quite a few new hands. Regular travel through these Gates is also going to change things.”
“It relieves some of the need for fossilized myrvite, but not enough. Any city with a Gate is going to grow. Torrviol… soon enough it won’t just be a sleepy academy town. But it’ll also bring the countries closer together.”
“Except Akana.”
“Except Akana. I don’t envy Sio. But that’s not why I came here.”
“Well, let’s see it then.”
They walked from Ceiba Yan’s garden over to a new section of Uxalak that was being constructed. Mirian recognized some of the workers as people she knew from Baracuel or Persama. The nagual were hard at work on a large garden complex, while architects from Palendurio had been invited to collaborate with some from Uxalak on the buildings. They were coming along nicely, with the central hall already complete.
A local man escorted them on a tour, talking nonstop about what the building would look like when it was finished and how the enchantments would be integrated into myrvite gardens grown on the roof of the building. Then Mirian saw two familiar faces.
“Xipuatl! Viridian!”
“Please, it’s Selkus to you,” her old Myrvite Studies professor said as they embraced.
“Old habits,” she said with a smile. She shook Xipuatl’s hand firmly. “We never properly met outside the loop, but I wanted to thank you. I first heard the idea of a unified theory of celestial and arcane magic from you. Though, I did have to do most of the legwork myself.”
Xipuatl took a deep breath. He looked nervous, and Mirian had to remind herself that she was a bit more intimidating to look at than the student she had been when she first met him.
“How does it feel to have a prophet vindicate your theories?” she asked.
“Very, very good,” he said. “Though now I’ll have to figure out something new. Well, after I’ve figured out, uh, all the things you figured out.”
They chatted a bit longer about the new nagual-arcanist program that would be at this new academy. Tentatively, the casters were to be classified as ‘druids,’ though Viridian wasn’t sure he liked it. “The historical druids had a different set of traditions. But I suppose it does roll off the tongue a bit better than the alternative.”
They took the Gate up to Torrviol, where the second part of the program was being built. New construction was going up in the north of town, though the nagual here didn’t look as happy. Even though it was Spring, moving into Summer and they were wearing heavy coats, they were shivering.
“That’s about what I did the first year I was here,” Xipuatl said.
Mirian toured the area, then went north to talk with the den of bog lions briefly about preying on humans. In their own terms, she communicated that she had a territorial claim on Torrviol, and after a brief demonstration, they weren’t eager to contest it.
“In the longer term, we’ll need to train up more druids who can talk with the intelligent myrvites and come to an understanding. For now, though, they should stay away from the northern spellward and underground during construction,” she said upon her return.
Surveyors were beginning to take a look at the north forest where a new train track would be laid. Until they had some other efficient way of moving supplies, spell engines to move goods around would have to suffice. Plans on expanding the port of the local village on the Rift Sea were already under way. Torrviol’s program would develop the alpine myrvites for spirit constructs that could survive in northern Akana, and then they’d be exported west. Mirian still needed to come up with treaties with the leviathans in that part of the sea.
Always more to do, she thought. But looking around Torrviol, seeing the new buildings go up and the fresh faces of new students from all across Enteria, she thought things were moving along nicely.