The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Mirian woke abruptly, and then lay there, trying to figure out why. She had woken with a start, like she had heard someone scream, or like she'd been experiencing a vivid nightmare. Only, she couldn't remember the dream, she just had this dreadful sense of loss that took her breath away, and she found herself crying without even knowing why.

This quiet sobbing was enough to wake up her dorm-mate, Lily.

"Mirian? Are you okay?" she mumbled from the other bed.

Mirian had to choke back a sob, but the feeling was at least dissipating. "Yeah, wow, sorry. I—nightmare or something, I guess," she lied.

Then, a drop of water hit her, right on the chest, dampening her bed-gown.

It was raining outside; she could hear the soft pitter-patter of it falling with that soothing sound. But if it was coming into her dorm room, it was suddenly no longer soothing. She examined the ceiling, and sure enough: another drop hit her, right in the face. Looking up, there was a hole in the ceiling. It looked a lot like a bullet hole to her, except it had traveled through three floors and a roof to reach her and it hadn't gotten any wider. And obviously, she hadn't been shot or anything. She could only see the faint light coming from the cloudy sky if she positioned her head just right. She checked the covers. Shit, it had even gone through the duvet! But when she checked her chest, there was no hole or anything. Well, thank the Gods for that.

"What's up?" Lily said, eyes actually open now, and only a little groggy. Lily's blond hair was in its usual morning tangle, but she already had her thick glasses on. She was blind without them—in the literal sense. The small glyphs on the side of the temples linked with the crystal lenses to let her see.

"There's a hole," Mirian said. "It's leaking."

"Oh, great. Wait, what? We're on the first floor." She came over and squinted at it. "How the hell did that happen?" she muttered.

"No idea," Mirian said, and then let out a loud sigh. "Just what I needed, something else to worry about."

Lily nodded sympathetically. "Don't you have an enchantments exam today?"

Mirian put her head in her hands. "Yes."

"And that presentation in your artifice class?"

The clay cube covered in glyphs was sitting on her desk. It mostly worked. "Also yes."

Lily gave her a quick side hug, then just sat there on the side of the bed with her. The moment was ruined when another drop came down and splattered them both, sending droplets over the inside of Lily's glasses. As she cleaned them off, she said, "Listen, I can talk to housing today. I can skip my botany class this morning—it's all review, and my professor will forgive me."

"You're the best," Mirian said. "I owe you."

"Nope, this one's free," she said.

There was no one in the rooms above them, it seemed, so Mirian took a tin container from under her bed and set it up on the covers to catch the water. After that, the ping! ping! ping! of the water annoyed her while she prepared for her academic battles.

The Torrviol Academy was one of the oldest magic universities in Baracuel. This meant it came with a few centuries of historical baggage, one of which was a dress code. Each student wore the Torrviol uniform, which resembled the military dress uniforms of the army. Students wore different color combinations depending on their year. The colors for her were black and white with orange trim, as well as brass buttons going down the center of the coat. In that same regressive tradition, the women wore skirts, and the boys trousers, though the academy had finally yielded to complaints and now allowed the women to also wear trousers for athletics—thank the Gods for that. Students also had different tassels on their uniform's shoulder pads depending on their year. She wore the gold cords of a final year student. Final year, that is, if she could manage to graduate.

She was not at all sure she would be able to graduate.

Students spent six rigorous years in the academy, and Mirian had struggled through all of them. The only classes she hadn't struggled in were artifice design and arcane mathematics. Everything else saw her studying late nights in the library, and still somehow managing to score lower than her peers on the exams.

What she really wanted was for time to stop so she could rest up for a few days, pull herself together, and then catch up on her studies and classes. Since that obviously wasn't going to happen, she did what she always did: powered through her exhaustion and told herself she could rest when she was dead.

Her first class of the day was Alchemistry 402, which was one of the legendarily dreaded classes required for her Artificer degree. Professor Seneca was a competent teacher, but there was only so much she could do to simplify such a complex field.

Other students often hired tutors–or each other–to coach them, but Mirian didn't have the kind of money for that. She budgeted her silver carefully, but her parents could only send her so much. That was one of the reasons she was pursuing artifice: At last, she might be able to help pull their family from the margins into actual comfort. The old run-down house back in her home province was in dire need of repairs. Apparently, her little brother had put his foot through a dry-rotted board, but her parents could either afford to pay the healer or to fix the hole, and the choice was obvious.

Mirian ate a simple breakfast of berries and porridge, which she quickly cooked up in the dorm's communal kitchen, then just as quickly scarfed down. Then she was off to class, donning her enchanted cloak to keep at least most of the rain off of her. As she walked, her mind went back to the hole in the ceiling. It was so strange. How did something make a hole that smooth? Even a force spell would leave spalling.

Her walk to the Academy proper was a scenic one. The dorms were wrapped around the campus along the low crescent-shaped hill that overlooked the academic buildings. The area was lightly wooded, though the Torrviol Academy gardeners kept the trees and shrubs meticulously trimmed and the bright flowers well-watered. Sigil-bees buzzed about the flowers, striped abdomen pulsing with faint light each time they landed to drink nectar.

As the cobbled walkway let out from the shade of the trees, Torrviol Academy presented itself in all its glory. The rain hadn't let up, but at this early hour, the sun was just coming over the horizon, so the strip of sky below the low-lying blanket of clouds was lit up in the orange and violet sunrise. The luminous sunrise silhouetted the domes and spires, here and there glinting brilliantly as the light caught a stained-glass window or the crystal pinnacle of a spire.

The Academy was a strange mix of architectural styles dating all the way back to ancient times, though most of the truly ancient structures were actually buried underground. The most prominent buildings surrounded the large plaza in the center. Among them was the Kiroscent Dome, a massive structure of weathered marble and brick that took up the whole east side of the plaza. The building had been a temple at some point, but as the Academy was established, it became the centerpiece for the academic ceremonies. On the west side of the plaza was Torrian Tower, which Mirian had learned had been the tallest building in the world some few hundred years ago. It was easy to believe; the tower could be seen for miles around, and nothing else came close to it. Even Bainrose Castle, the circular medieval keep that had once helped protect the Academy from both invaders and monsters, was only a third of its height.

The buildings only got more eclectic from there. Amid the ancient and medieval structures were painted brick buildings and newer concrete and glass structures that looked normal enough in a modern city, but downright strange amid all the historic buildings. The newer buildings also lacked a certain care and artistry that the older buildings had.

Beneath the cobblestone paths and new streets were even older structures. The area Torrviol Academy had been built on had been occupied for millennia. Towns had been built, burned down, rebuilt, burned again, flooded, and rebuilt countless times. At one point, Torrviol had apparently been a much larger city; Mirian hadn't been paying all that much attention in her history classes, though, so she wasn't quite sure on when that was. That did mean the Academy had an entire three basement levels below, and rumor had it, there was even older stuff beneath that. When Mirian thought about it, she got an excited itch to explore whatever ancient secrets lay beneath, but then the less adventurous part of her brain reminded her that her grades came first.

It was nearing the end of the quarter, so plenty of other students were scurrying about the campus for last minute studying, or on their way to early classes like she was. A poor first-year student–obvious because of her white coat and bronze embroidery–was sitting on a bench in front of Bainrose Castle, crying. Yeah, Mirian felt that. It was just that she didn't have time to cry.

On her way to the Alchemistry building, a newer structure, because the old one had burned down in an absolutely catastrophic fire that had killed three students and a custodian, a noise above her made her pause.

She looked up, only to see a dark figure leaping across the gap between two buildings. The figure seemed to sense they were being watched, and glanced down from the roof at Mirian. She could see nothing of the person's shrouded face. At first, she wondered if it was a student, hellbent on an absolutely psychotic prank or bet, but the figure wasn't wearing any of the Torrviol colors or tassels. She opened her mouth to say something, but then the figure was gone–ducking away from the edge of the flat roof, leaving no trace.

She looked around, but no one else seemed to have seen it. Mostly, they were keeping their heads down so the rain didn't drench them. Mirian couldn't quite explain why the creeping figure had felt so wrong, but the feeling seized her and wouldn't let go.

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