Chương 209: Chapter 283 - Contingencies

She visited Alkazaria next, and after establishing the routing of materials, found First Praetorian Voran. Her most common strategy for dealing with the Praetorians in her lead-up to creating Equinox was to alert her father to their assault strategy and ambush them all. However, that was a waste of powerful and talented arcanists. It would be much better if they were put to work culling myrvites along the logistics routes or helping construct the regulator.

Shortly before their group would leave for their hunt of "Atroxidi," Mirian arranged a meeting with Voran. He might have been a monster, but he was a professional one. Voran entered the room with a salute, acknowledging Mirian's rank as acting General of the Baracuel Army, then a bow, acknowledging her as Prophet.

"Have a seat," Mirian said, gesturing. He sat. He was good at hiding his fear, but she could sense it, crawling about the outside of his soul like worms escaping rain. She had considered what she might say. If she pretended like the memory curse was still in place, she knew he would be amenable. That he didn't know either way was why he hadn't already attacked. But she needed him to work with her father. He would either have to accept the truth, or be consumed by it.

"You already know who I really am. You killed my mother. You intend to kill—" Voran drew his wand in a flash. Mirian used raw force to blast it out of his hand, breaking the bones badly enough they jutted out. She yanked his orichalcum jewelry off, then summoned her spellbook and bound him with a weaken curse to impede his access to his aura, then force binding to restrict his movement.

"For the record, that's the second time you've attacked me first." Voran struggled against his bonds, face white from pain. Blood from his hand dripped on the ground.

"You'll never—" Stop, Mirian said, her soul touching his.

"This is your chance at redemption. I can't offer it to you if you won't even listen." Voran's jaw was clenched and his fists balled, but he was, for the moment, still.

"I, personally, can't forgive you. However, this time loop isn't about me. It's about Enteria, and I am willing to make sacrifices for the greater good. That's what you claim to value, isn't it? The greater good. Will you listen?" The Praetorian clenched his teeth. Mirian raised a finger and knit the bones she'd broken in his hand back together, then healed over the wound.

"That's more than you deserve. Listen. I need Atrah Xidi. He has knowledge of energy transmutation artifice and soul magic, and I need him working on the leyline regulator. He can clear miles of desert at a time of myrvites, and what's more, he will listen to me. You know why. I need you and your Praetorians to help with stopping the apocalypse. The greater good. None of this matters if Divir falls."

"It's a convenient story, isn't it?"

"Quite the opposite, really," Mirian said with a sigh. It was going to be one of those conversations. She decided to skip the boring parts.

"Let me show you. This won't be pleasant." After she'd pushed memories of Adria Gavell's corpse, the machinations and false reports she'd found in the Deeps spy reports, and visions of the crisis and apocalypse into his soul, she picked up the book she'd brought along and waited for Voran to stop convulsing on the ground. It took a few minutes.

"A trick," Voran finally gasped. With the force bindings still constraining him, he was having trouble moving, but he righted himself and got to his knees.

"Atrah Xidi isn't an existential threat to Baracuel. He just wants his daughter back. You're scared of him, but several of the reports about his movements are fabricated by the Deeps. They just wanted you out of Palendurio for when Corrmier does his coup. You're not fighting for something greater. You're a puppet in someone else's stage play. I'm already killing the puppet masters. I'd rather cut your strings than kill you permanently." Voran's eyes darted back and forth.

It was taking him a moment to process the memories she'd forced into him. There wasn't a "gentle" way to do it, but the most stubborn of her adversaries really seemed to insist. Nicolus might have quoted his book on manipulation by calling it "ego protection," but there was something deeper going on in Mirian's estimation. What needed to happen to save Enteria went so far against certain worldviews that the people could only deny reality.

Liuan was running into that problem in Akana, and had taken to just locking up several factory owners and appointing her own people, and that was after Celen had released articles to papers across the country about the true nature of the eruption that had killed so many people in Ferrabridge.

"He's a necromancer. An abomination antithetical to life. There is no redeeming a creature like that. Without a limit to his lifespan, he can only grow as a threat. If you let him live, you're damning us all."

"The entire Luminate Order practices necromancy every day," Mirian said.

"The holy containers the Luminate Order uses are soul repositories."

"Liar," Voran snarled.

"That you would dare spew such blasphemies—you're nothing more than another Persaman rat, sent to corrupt our holy order." Mirian looked at him with pity. Churning about his soul, she felt his fear.

"Then your fate is sealed." She conjured a small force blade deep into his chest, severing the aorta. A second force blade, she conjured at the base of the brainstem, cutting out a little chunk of material there, too. Then, she reached in her robe and took out a tiny vial of relicarium she'd grabbed from the cube she hadn't used yet, the one in the Vault below Torrviol. It was time to experiment with her contingency plans.

Mirian brought in Trinea next. By then, Voran's body was gone.

"Voran has been removed from his position," Mirian said, which was technically true.

"In past cycles, he's violated Prophet's Dictum. I need a First Praetorian who won't undermine the project. Keeping the desert safe for the caravans is critical to the salvation of Enteria. Do you accept the position?" Trinea blinked, clearly surprised to hear that Voran had been removed. However, she quickly recovered.

"Of course, Sacred One. I would be honored," she said, bowing.

"Good. I'm ordering a cessation of the hunt for Atroxcidi. I may be able to even get the necromancer's assistance in culling beasts. Can you tolerate that?" Trinea looked disturbed.

"The Prophet is above the law," she said simply.

"Speak freely. I want to know your thoughts and feelings on the matter."

"Atroxcidi is… a terrible threat, and a necromancer keeping alive the worst traditions of the Triarchy," Trinea said cautiously.

"I would prefer not to work with such a threat."

"There's a group in the Deeps who have been filing false reports concerning his actions. If Baracuel can adhere to the Unification Treaty, he can too. The Praetorians are legally only bound to protect Baracuel, not commit acts of war in Persama. I understand your hesitation, but construction of the leyline regulator requires mastery of soul magic, and both the Luminates and the Tlaxhuacan nagual are insufficient to the task. This is for the greater good. To save Enteria. Does that assuage you?"

Mirian knew that it had before Trinea had even spoken. She could see her neck muscles relax slightly, and the surface flows of her soul smooth. One by one, she went through the rest of the Praetorians, ensuring their loyalty. The rest of the group that had assaulted her home as a child were either dead or retired. The operation to keep her a hostage had been kept to a core group. Adria, who Specter had killed, Voran, who she'd eliminated, and Westerun, who was in Akana.

The Deeps director and Praetorian who had ordered the operation had both passed away several years back. The details of the operation were still in Director Castill's office in a hidden safe, but even the Director of Operations seemed not to have reviewed the decades-old files. Given how Voran and Westerun had reacted to her, it seemed it would be best to keep that knowledge buried. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Without Voran, that meant thirty Praetorians here and a dozen more from other cities could be added to construction and patrol duties. That they could all levitate would also be useful in being able to quickly move key magichemicals or react to unexpected events. The rest of the cycle, she'd get to know Alkazaria better. Then, it would be off to Falijmali. Then, to Mahatan. She would ignore no faction. And she would find the people ready to change the world.

She spent another full cycle in Alkazaria, ensuring she could deal with the fallout of the First Praetorian mysteriously dropping dead. When she found she could and material was moving smoothly south, she moved on to her next targets. She spent two cycles each focused on Falijmali and Mahatan. Falijmali was simple enough to gain the alliance of. She could command Baracuel to respect aspects of the treaty while pulling on her influence with her father to make the city more amenable. Mahatan was more of a pain.

There she requisitioned the help of Gabriel, who helped her map out the various factions. For another cycle, she worked on creating containers that, when thrown through a Gate, would float up to the top of the Mahatan Oasis. In that way, she could route key supplies to Mayat Shadr more quickly. Then, she had another part of her contingency plan to put in place. She reached out to Liuan in the dream to coordinate a visit to Akana.

Mirian checked over the pages of notes that were strewn across the table.

"Who are the most obstinate of the warmonger faction?" she asked, though she already knew most of the answer.

"Grand Marshal Caldwell and Director Matteus. Old Kudzu is the one feeding the Senate the intelligence reports that scare them. Caldwell has the biggest hammer in the world and really wants to hit some nails," Gabriel said. For once, he wasn't reclining. Instead, he was helping Mirian assemble one of her "connection charts" she liked to make to help her understand social relations and power dynamics of a region.

Mirian had written out hundreds of names on little paper cards and was connecting them with illusionary threads.

"How's keeping Kinsman alive going?" Mirian asked distractedly.

"Kinsman needs to die," Liuan said from her writing desk. She was preparing another set of orders to go out. Some were old orders she'd tested dozens of times. Some were experimental orders.

"Frankly, it's more trouble than it's worth keeping him alive. He was initially used to galvanize the population for war, but I can use the same assassination to crack down on the people I need gone and move key legislation through." Mirian looked over the rest of the map. Sylvester Aurum and Lester Rosen were key figures too.

Aurum was attempting to grow his company, but there were two bottlenecks: rare magichemicals produced in Baracuel that families like the Bardas family and Ennecus Guild were trying to maintain a monopoly on, and fossilized myrvite. Aurum and Rosen were firm allies, but as she moved about the cards, she noticed that there were a bunch of industrialists—especially from Ferrabridge and Mercanton—who were in direct competition with him. They should be fighting, shouldn't they?

But Gabriel, with Liuan's help, had marked the cards with symbols to indicate their political motivation. Almost all of them were part of the pro-invasion faction, or at the very least, supporting the faction in the Senate that opposed Kinsman. That gave her an idea. Something Zhuan had talked about in her book. Group behavior patterns can be inferred by accumulation of resources and resource goals. She started moving the cards around in a different grouping. It was simple enough.

She knew artifice, so she knew which industries would need the rare magichemicals, and each card had been labeled with symbols for the industry they were invested in.

"Hmm?" Gabriel said.

"A moment," Mirian said, waving her hand and erasing the illusionary lines. She created new ones, mapping out not the social connections, but the production line. Half an hour later, she was done. By then, Gabriel was sitting and sipping at a new vintage that he'd requisitioned from some rich fool's wine cellar.

"Alright, you've lost me. This is just most of the war faction, but you're ignoring who's friends with who." Gabriel said. Liuan had left the room some time back to go talk with one of the faction leaders she was working on persuading.

"I've organized it by who needs the magichemicals only Baracuel has." Gabriel squinted.

"There's… well. That's not everyone who wants to invade Baracuel, but it sure is most of them. So… what does this tell us? Don't we already know that's why they want to do it?" It tells me you agree with Zhuan as long as you don't realize it's coming from her theories, Mirian thought. What she said was, "These are the people who can't help but have a reason to invade Baracuel. The growth of their businesses are constrained by dozens of old laws protecting the guilds and sanctioned monopolies.

Either Corrmier's coup or invasion breaks that—or that's what they seem to think. This group over here is trying to bankrupt the Ennecus Guild, and they've basically succeeded, even if they don't know it."

"What about these ones? The other part of the war faction."

"They need more fossilized myrvite."

"Foss," Gabriel muttered.

"They have plenty."

"They'd have it more and cheaper if Baracuel was using less."

"So… what? We're going in circles. Why does the motivation matter? We already knew we need to cut the power of these people, and that means mapping out how they're leveraging their wealth into actual political power." Mapping their political power can only prevent them from directly ordering the military around, Mirian thought. Remove that, and they can still coordinate with each other to do what I was just having problems with in Baracuel.

Together, they control so many materials and factories, they control the trains, and they still control the papers as well. They'd be publishing polemics even without the RID helping coordinate things.

"If we know their motivations, we know what's going to actually move them in negotiations. There's several things we could try. If they believe they don't need Baracuel, they won't have any reason to continue pushing politics in that direction. I think there's a few things we can try. Jherica can try convincing them that this project is developing synthetic magichemicals that they'll be able to use after project completion. Celen can help spread the rumor." Liuan rejoined them.

The Mask of the Fifth Prophet she'd been wearing dematerialized, hiding back in her soul.

"The other strategy you'll like, Liuan," Mirian said, raising her voice.

"Oh?" she asked distractedly. She was reading a report of some sort.

"If you're planning on letting Prime Minister Kinsman die, you and Celen can help work on launching popular marches in the streets that are to build support for your policies. That can put pressure on the Senate and the industrialists you need to fall in line." Liuan looked up from her report.

"You're right. I do like that plan."

"Third plan—and we can also try iterations that combine these—I want to try talking to some of our key players," Mirian said, looking at the map.

"You're terrible at convincing people things," Gabriel said.

"No offense." Mirian shrugged.

"As I said, I know the production lines. I know what they want. These are smart people. Maybe they'll see reason." Gabriel snorted.

"You're too smart to believe that."

"I've also developed a soul technique for pushing glimpses of a memory into their minds."

"Well why didn't you lead with that? Five hells, why don't you do that to everyone?" Liuan was the one who answered.

"Because it's pushing part of her soul into their soul. The RID has torture manuals that are full of significantly less painful techniques."

"Correct," Mirian said.

"For those heavily in denial, it doesn't convince them anyways. They think it's some illusion, or some curse. They don't know enough magical theory to understand what I'm doing or why their theory isn't possible. Sort of the same problem we're having with most people. The crisis is complicated. The solution is complicated. Comforting lies are so much easier." She looked at Liuan as she said it, and the other Prophet nodded.

"You might as well try," Liuan said.

"How much material we can move from here will affect how much material you'll need to move to Mayat Shadr. It's like Ibrahim's iterative planning." She went back to looking over a report.

"How is he?" Gabriel asked. Mirian smiled.

"He's doing well," she said. Gabriel got a distant look in his eyes. He was remembering something. Finally he looked at Mirian and said, "Good. That's… good."

"I'll start my trials this cycle. It will take a minimum of seven cycles to try combinations of each plan. Then at some point, I'd also like to try an elimination strategy."

"Mmm?" Liuan said, looking up again.

"The mass killing of all the pro-war people here at the very start of the cycle," she said, gesturing at the group of cards she'd laid out.

"Oh, she's nasty," Gabriel said, snapping back to his usual sardonic self. Liuan frowned.

"How do I frame that? There's no Prophet's Dictum in the Church or Akanan law."

"Divine will," Mirian said.

"I can kill them at a distance in a way that doesn't look like a typical combat spell. I'll work on mapping a route. And if it doesn't work, we'll try something else." Gabriel shrugged.

"We have the time, don't we? And if a plan goes so far off the rails that we're just boiling a cauldron of shit, we can always take a lovely little vacation. There's this nice palace Xecatl has access to. The wine's terrible, but the chefs there can work miracles." Mirian laughed.

"It's a plan. Though Zhuan's also told me about this wonderful river village near Saising. I propose we rotate to different places around the world if a cycle is deemed unsalvageable."

"Deal," Gabriel said instantly. Liuan shrugged. Two days later, Mirian began her visits.