The First Mage

We sat around the fireplace as I briefly updated the others on what had happened after I landed in Alarna, during Lilana’s Calling ritual. Unfortunately I still didn’t know where I had been in between that and getting removed from Tomar’s mind, so the story didn’t take very long.

“And now I hope that our little wunderkind here remembers the script the god used,” I said while smiling at Riala, who hopped off the log she was sitting on, to dig through Tomar’s bag. She returned with a folded piece of paper, which had what I was looking for on it, albeit mirrored.

“Heh, thank you, Ria,” I said, as I patted her head and she looked back at me proudly.

Aside from the important part in the script, which would extract a soul, there were other bits in it that were very interesting. Like the snap activation, or that the script targeted not the vessel it was written on. Instead, these air-drawn scripts could apparently be targeted in a specific direction. However, I guessed that it wouldn’t be possible to do this with the scripts we were using. If you used a normal script like a crosshair, the target would always be the vessel it was written on.

“Did you test the snap activation?” I asked Tomar.

“Yeah, but it didn’t work. I don’t know why, but maybe it only works with these mana scripts.”

“Hm, too bad. I’ll have to look into it,” I said, looking forward to researching something entirely new.

The script wasn’t very complicated. Essentially, all it did was take a soul out of a host and send it to the Outer Realm for processing. Maybe I should start writing down these terms... I thought. The part we needed for the soul extraction was simple enough, and in combination with the ritual platform script, which was more or less made for putting a soul into a person, it should be possible for me to move between different hosts. After we had successfully gone through the second part twice, giving people Callings, I believed that it would work. “This is it,” I said. “With this script we can remove me from hosts. And if we use another host as the vessel, we should be able to move me around.”

‘Great! So I can get my body back now?’

“You seem to be in a hurry. I’m guessing Lilana can’t wait to get her body back?” Tomar asked with a chuckle.

“Yea. Though we’ll still have to find a host for me.”

‘Huh? You will go back to Tomar, won’t you?’

Joining Tomar again was what I had planned on, but now that we were sitting here, opposite of each other, that plan felt a little awkward. Could I actually ask him to give up a part of himself once more? If I did, I assumed that he would say yes. He was such a nice guy that he would even do it just for the sake of Lilana, some girl he didn’t know, and hadn’t even really talked to yet.

Another aspect to consider was that whatever we were going to do next, it would presumably be easier if I had a body of my own. Unlike Tomar, Lilana wouldn’t be able to contribute much to the group at the moment. Practically speaking, it would make sense for me to stay where I am for now. We would get another proficient script user and one person less to protect. The only downside would be that Lilana would have to keep sharing. I was getting ready to explain myself to her, when Tomar beat me to it.

“Hey, Lilana. I’m sorry, but would you mind sharing your body with Miles for just a little bit longer?”

To my surprise, he told her exactly what I had just thought about, and asked her to bear the situation for now. I steeled myself for getting yelled at by her, but in another surprise twist, she ended up being very reasonable.

‘Hm... I guess that makes sense... We’ll switch now and then, okay? I really don’t want to spend another whole night doing nothing...’

“Okay, sounds good to me,” I said in disbelief and then forwarded what she had said to Tomar, who nodded contentedly. That left the others updating me on what happened to them. “I guess that’s that for the moment. Now, tell me what happened in Cerus.”

“Right. Where to start...” Tomar said. “After you were gone, the mayor was pretty shaken and feared that the gods wouldn’t let us keep messing with their gifts. I tried to convince him that it would be fine, because they had only prevented the last ritual, but he kept putting off making a decision, and he distanced himself from us. We were also asked to stay in our room, at which point we thought about your plan again. Well, and then the soldiers arrived.”

***

Two weeks ago in Cerus

“What about the third faction?” I asked, while we were discussing the plan to start a revolution in Alarna.

“What third faction?” Berla asked in response.

“Well... the king and the High Priest might be the primary leaders, but are they actually vital for the town to function? The people who actually do most of the work are the authorities, right?”

“Hm, I mean... yes, but it’s not that simple.”

“Okay, maybe there’s more to it, but think about it. If the king was gone from one day to the next, life would go on, wouldn’t it? Now imagine if the authorities were to disappear. It would affect every single part of our everyday life. They coordinate everything, they keep the records, they manage the trade with Cerus, and even though the temple handles the rituals, the authorities prepare them. And they take over again right afterwards to assign you your job. The people and the authorities... That’s the third faction that Alarna can’t function without.”

“That’s true,” Reurig said. “Though I don’t see how that helps us yet. If there isn’t a central leader we can talk to, we’re back to going from door to door to talk with thousands of people.”

Berla thought my words over and came to a realization. “Oh, you mean... Right, there is a leader,” she said.

“Who?” Reurig asked with a puzzled expression.

“There is someone at the top of the authorities, who reports directly to the king,” Berla said. “He isn’t technically a leader... but if you go by hierarchy, you could say that he is. The statistician, Gean Maila.”

“That guy? I didn’t know he was in such a position,” Reurig said.

“Me neither,” I said, “but Miles had told me once that he assumed Gean to have more jobs than we knew about, to a point where it seemed to him like Gean was essentially at the top of the authorities.”

“He was right,” Berla said. “It’s an interesting idea. If we’re able to convince Gean, he could be a great help in bringing the other departments onto our side. And if we were in control of the authorities... we would essentially control Alarna. Is that likely though? I don’t really know Gean, but to me he always seemed loyal to the king.”

Even though I wouldn’t say that I trusted Gean unconditionally, he had gained some trust points when he revealed to Miles and me that he had known something wasn’t right. He had determined that I wasn’t a Mad One and that I wasn’t a danger to anyone. Afterwards, he had let me live my life, even though he knew that I was hiding something. Additionally, he had told me that I was being investigated. Something he didn’t have to do. Before we were imprisoned by the guards in Alarna, Miles and I had planned to come clean to the authorities, and we would’ve gone to Gean for that. After all, he had demonstrated that he was able to judge me by my actions, rather than what people thought of me, and that could potentially help us here as well. To the best of my knowledge, he wasn’t playing a game like the others, and I was sure he would see the benefits of our ideas. I recounted my experience with Gean to the others and Berla nodded in understanding.

“That does sound like it might be worth a shot. It’s certainly the best idea so far,” she said.

After a short discussion, we decided that working with Gean would be our best bet to get people onto our side. He knew more about the town and its inner workings than us, and unlike the king and the High Priest, he would basically not lose anything if we succeeded. The authorities would always be around.

“We have something of a plan then... All we have to decide now is whether we actually want to go in that direction,” I said. I was still a little nervous about this idea, but I kept coming back to Miles’ rundown of our options. Assuming that we would never be safe until we dealt with Alarna, we didn’t actually have a lot of viable options left. Especially now that the mayor wasn’t sure about our experiments anymore and our future here was uncertain.

“This plan is the main reason I am here right now, so you can probably guess that I’m in favor of it,” Reurig said. “Let’s do it.”

Berla looked a little more apprehensive. “If anything goes wrong, this could be the end of us. Although it’s the same no matter what we do out here, so... I believe I’d like for us to try changing our destiny.”

With Berla and Reurig in favor, and none of us having any better ideas, we knew what we were going to do. We still had more we needed to talk about, but we finally decided to go back to Alarna.

“Let’s plan this out then,” I said.