The First Mage

One of the hurdles in my plan to take over Alarna was the temple. No matter what we did, the priests were unlikely to ever go against the temple’s teachings. They would fight us, in the name of their gods. Depending on how it went, we would have possibly been able to get the soldiers on our side first and put the temple down by force, but this new option was fairly interesting as well.

Lilana wanted to essentially become the head of her church. She had concluded that she could accomplish this as a divine messenger, which would put her above even the High Priest. And if faking that had worked for others, she believed it could work for her too. I didn’t disagree. All it had taken Aelene was a godly aura and spraying some water. We would have to finetune the mana script, to make her feel more like a god, but other than that, it would be smooth sailing if that was the standard we had to clear. After all, Oryn had nothing over us when it came to using Omega.

I hadn’t even considered posing as some kind of angel yet, though that would’ve been difficult anyway, seeing how we were wanted criminals. This girl, however, was an aspiring, young priestess-to-be, who was “chosen” during her Calling ritual. The evil, lying High Priest had tried to hide it, but she escaped. It was a good story that we could certainly work with, and she would help me in turn. Someone who had been with us was also much less likely to stand against our ideas. Win, win, win. In the worst case, she would become the new head of the temple and then fight us, but that would be the same scenario as with the High Priest and Aelene at the top, just with a different enemy. And I would still get out of here, meaning I essentially had nothing to lose.

“So, what comes next?” she asked after we had made our deal.

‘First we have to get out of here, and then we’ll have to find my companions, since we need their help. There’s someone in town that I can check in with to see if they’re here. If they’re not, we’ll have to go to Cerus, unfortunately.’

“... and that’s really safe?”

‘It is. With how you are now, beasts avoid you.’

“Really!?”

‘Yup, it’s pretty useful.’

“Hm, alright. And how do we get out of here?”

‘That depends. Can you tell me what’s behind the wall with the windows?’

She turned around and I could see the sky through them. Putting a hole into this wall would definitely get us outside, but it would cause a ruckus. If we couldn’t escape quickly enough, the two agents would be right behind us, and who knows who else.

“Behind that wall? That’s where the temple garden is. It’s spacious and there’s walls all around it.”

‘Not a great option then... In that case, we’ll go through the door and make our way to the entrance.’

“But the door is locked... and there’s agents on the other side.”

‘Yea, they shouldn’t be a problem.’

“You’ll have to tell me exactly what you want to do...”

‘Alright. We’ll lure them both in here and knock them out. Afterwards, we’ll just leave. Assuming that not a lot of people know about you yet, and since we didn’t see a lot of people on the way here anyway, I’m hoping we’ll be able to reach the entrance without any issues.’

“Hold on, you want to knock out two Fighters? How is that supposed to work?”

‘With scripts. Like I said, you can do interesting things if you understand the sigils.’

“That’s not very believable...”

‘You saw me produce water from your leg, was that believable?’

“Hm, point taken.”

‘It will work, you’ll see.’

“As long as this isn’t another bad plan conceived under pressure...”

‘I’m fairly certain it’s not.’

“Oh, that’s a relief,” she said with an ironic chuckle.

She went silent for a moment. Since she didn’t know anything about scripts and would currently not be able to use them without blue stones either, she would have to give control back to me if we were going to do this. There was that one blue stone Oryn had brought to test us, but that wouldn’t even be enough for the two agents. She had sounded certain when we agreed on the deal, but I half expected that she would back out after hearing more about what we would have to do.

‘Is the deal still on?’

“Yes... we can’t do anything from this cell. We have to get out first.”

Correct.

She took a deep breath and concentrated, while she was still sitting on the floor in front of the bed. A second later, I was back in control. The pain was still there, but I did feel like it was lessening ever so slightly.

‘If you tricked me, I’ll make your life a living hell...’ she said.

“I don’t doubt that for a second,” I replied.

I guessed that it had been about fifteen minutes since Oryn had used the script. If he was knocked out because of mana overuse, like Tomar and I had been when he tested us back then, he would presumably not wake up for another few hours, so we didn’t have to worry about him.

The agents were an obstacle, but I was certain we could take them. Especially since they didn’t know what they were dealing with. My biggest worry right now was that more people might come here. Other priests, more agents, etc. I didn’t want even more of an audience, as that would make it harder to get past the agents and to walk out the front door. I would’ve rather waited a little longer, for the pain to go away even more, but I didn’t have much of a choice, we would have to act as soon as possible.

I pocketed the blue stone and made sure that the notes in Oryn’s notebook had been destroyed by the water before I went to the wall opposite of the door. I tried to relax, took a deep breath, and then yelled as loud as I could. “Help! He collapsed! Help!”

Only seconds passed until I could hear noises from the door, followed by it opening. An agent stood in the doorframe and looked down at Oryn, lying on the floor. “What happened here!?” he asked.

“I don’t know! He was testing something, and all of a sudden he became unconscious! Please help him!” I said.

He gave hand signs to the other agent and then carefully stepped into the cell to check on Oryn, while the other one watched me from the outside. After checking for a pulse, the first agent waved his partner over.

“He’s alive, let’s get him out of here,” he said.

“You stay there,” the other one said to me while he stepped closer and they prepared to pick up the unconscious Oryn.

As soon as the second agent stepped into the room and I had a clean shot to hit both of them at once, I raised my arms. The agents noticed my movements and dropped Oryn immediately, but before they could do any more, a water blast threw them into the wall hard. One of them lost consciousness just from that, while I had to follow up with another blast to the head on the other one. Some Fighters really are resilient. At least the pain didn’t get any worse.

After checking the hallway, I hurriedly went to work, removing the agents’ weapons and tying them up and gagging them a little with the blanket, which I cut into stripes. I doubted that this would keep them occupied for long, but it would be better than nothing. While I was doing so, Lilana was getting excited about what she had witnessed.

‘That’s crazy! You knocked them out just like that! What else can scripts do? Will I be able to do that too!?’

“We’re still scratching the surface when it comes to what scripts can do. You will see much more impressive things than this fairly soon,” I said with a chuckle. “What you will be able to do all on your own will depend on how far you want to go with this.”

Barely any time had passed since this girl had admonished me for writing sigils because they were sacred, but it seemed like she was coming around quickly after seeing what she might be able to do.

After the agents and Oryn were bound, I hid the weapons under the mattress and then checked the hallway again. All clear, I thought and closed the door from the outside. So far, so good.

We didn’t have a lot of time. Should someone come here and not see anyone, they might not even check the cell, but the agents would surely regain consciousness soon enough, and after they get rid of their gags, they’d be able to call for help. That meant we would have to get out before that situation occurred.

I straightened my robe and started walking down the hallway, towards the front of the building. There weren’t a lot of turns, but since Lilana had been crying on our way here, and I hadn’t been able to see a lot, I had to rely on her guidance. ‘The next one left.’

Everything went well at first. I kept walking for several minutes, and we didn’t see any other priests on our way, until we were almost at the entrance hall. Down the last hallway, we could already see the main square through a window, when a woman suddenly came around a corner and walked in our direction. A woman that clearly had mana, but strangely, it didn’t look like a lot.

‘Oh no, that’s Aelene!’

That’s her...? Huh, I thought. There was no way Oryn would’ve figured out a mana regulation script on his own, but Lilana had told me that Aelene had felt almost like a god. The amount of mana I saw, however, looked more like the amount Oryn had. It didn’t make sense. Unless she’s able to regulate it some other way...?

I knew that there had to be some way to control your mana to a degree, because the gods had written scripts in the air with it. It was possible that only gods could do that for some reason, but assuming that others could do it as well, Aelene might be able to control her mana by her will alone. That would be very useful...

For now, I had other things to worry about, however. She was looking at a book while slowly walking in our direction, but the hallway wasn’t very wide. There was no way she wouldn’t notice us if we stayed here, and she would immediately see our mana. I walked backwards carefully and hid behind a corner.

‘She’s not paying attention, you can knock her out!’

Most definitely not, I thought while staying quiet. Causing a scene so close to the entrance would potentially be a problem, so I could only hope that she would keep her nose in that book and walk past us. My heartrate was rising as she got closer and closer, while I was pressed against the wall and kept glancing down the hallway behind me and around the corner. Can’t she walk a little faster?

After what felt like an eternity, she finally passed us, still focused on her book, not having noticed us. I immediately started walking towards the entrance again, though I kept glancing back at her. She was dressed up and apparently she could have a godly aura if she wanted to, but she seemed like just some woman to me at that moment. Yet the temple had convinced people that she was a divine being. It’s weird how humans work.

After walking around one last corner, I could finally see the temple’s front door. I briefly looked in the direction of the reception desk, where a priest stood and smiled at me. I smiled back at him and nodded in greeting, before walking straight out the door. Alarna awaits.