The First Mage

When Pyran came back, he had a boy and a girl with him. His daughter was approximately five years old and was carried by him, while his son looked about seven years old and was walking by his side. One similar in age to Riala and one younger, that’s a nice fit for our purposes.

By this age, they would most likely be staying alone at home already, while their parents were at work for most of the day.

The three came to a stop in front of us, standing right by the water source, and he sat the girl down before introducing us. “Pery, Yules, this is Tomar,” he said. “He will check what Calling you will get once you are older.”

“Hello, you two,” I said.

Both of them seemed somewhat meek and only briefly said “Hello.”

“Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt, and maybe you’ll even find it fun,” I said to them and then looked at the older brother. “Do you want to go first?”

He first looked at me with uncertainty and then up to his father, but then he was suddenly pulled forward by another young girl, who evidently wanted to push things forward.

“Come on, I’ll show you how it works!” Riala said happily.

Pery only let out a surprised “Wah!” Before he even knew what was happening, he was sitting in front of the test cube, with Riala quickly putting a white stone on top of it.

“Now you just put your hand on it! In the circle!”

“Uh... okay,” he said, stupefied, and placed his hand on the cube.

I wonder if personality makes a difference. This boy doesn’t look like prime Fighter material to me.

Pery’s eyes went wide when three lights appeared that were vaguely shaped like books. They briefly flew through the air before getting stacked on top of each other and then disappeared in a flash of light.

I crouched down beside the boy. “Do you know what Calling that is?” I asked him, but he shook his head. Maybe he hadn’t been here much yet. “It’s the Researcher Calling,” I said. “It means you would not fight beasts, but work with your head.”

His expression brightened ever so slightly at my description. “We’ll do the test a few more times, okay? That will tell us whether you will really get that Calling,” I said and he nodded.

Nine tries later, the result was clear. A born Researcher. This was a surprising result, since both of his parents were Fighters. I asked Pyran about their families, but he told me that there weren’t any Researchers among either his or his wife’s relatives.

From what I had been told, there had never been much research on this topic until now, since there was no way to really check a person’s Calling. It was known that you were likely to get the same Calling as your parents, but there were also outliers. Based on Pery’s results, it was apparently possible to be dispositioned entirely different from your relatives.

And he didn’t show Riala’s sign at all.

Now that her brother was done, Yules had apparently gotten curious and sat down in front of the test cube next. “In that circle?” she asked Riala, pointing at the cube.

“Yep!”

A little over a minute and ten white stones later, we knew her destiny as well. Fighter all the way. No Researcher, no marbles, it was essentially the expected result. “You would become a Fighter like your parents.”

“I’ll be like mom?” she asked.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Okay!” she said and jumped up to go back to her father with a smile on her face.

She seems happy about it. And Pery seemed happy as well.

Today’s tests confirmed more or less what I had been told before. Your heritage was important, but it didn’t guarantee your Calling, and there were also people who got Callings they didn't really want. Maybe it was based on a person’s nature to a degree, but you were also affected by your parent’s Callings. Or maybe your upbringing?

In any case, with neither of them showing an unusual sign, we could now be relatively sure that we had an actual, unknown Calling on our hands. If Riala and Tomar were related, I would agree with the mayor. Unusual Callings would be kind of running in the family.

While Pyran left once more to get his kids back home, I turned towards Riala. “What do you say? Want to test giving someone that Calling?”

She nodded emphatically. Stupid question, as if she would say no do doing more experiments.

“Let’s do it,” I said and looked towards the mayor, who sent a guard to get the boy from the local jail.

We talked a little about the experiments and tests while we waited. Luckily, we were in a relatively small town and it took only about twenty minutes for the guard to get back, a young man in handcuffs walking beside him.

When we saw them approach us, the mayor walked in their direction to talk to the boy and explain the deal to him. “Hello, Bael,” I could hear him say, but I couldn’t make out the rest of their conversation. The look on Bael’s face was interesting, however. He didn’t look like someone who was slated to be executed, and he didn’t seem to jump at the chance to escape his fate either. Instead he looked at the mayor with suspicion. After a minute or two, Bael nodded though, and they came walking over to us.

“We have a deal,” the mayor said and briefly introduced me. “This is Tomar, he’ll administer the ritual. Just do as he says.”

Now he was looking at me with suspicion. “Hello,” he said.

“Hi. Shall we get to it?” I said and motioned him towards the ritual platform. His only response was a brief “Hmhm.”

Riala immediately hopped onto the platform once we arrived, already knowing the procedure, and I quickly explained it to Bael as well. There was a chance we would not get the glittering sphere on the first try after all, so he had to be ready to cancel the ritual. He nodded, signaling that we were good to go.

Riala and Bael stood on the platform back to back as the script activated and the sign we had wanted actually appeared on the very first try. Ten seconds... I thought and we waited.

However, after just a few seconds, some kind of force pushed the two off the platform and two white, glowing figures appeared in a flash of light. Everyone but Riala and I were frozen in place and stunned into silence by the combined aura of two gods, although even I felt it a little this time.

“Wah!” Riala said, trying not to stumble from getting pushed. I quickly caught her and helped her stay upright, while Bael practically fell flat to the ground in his state. He was shaking while he tried to prop himself up ever so slightly, to look at the gods.

This can’t be good...

I waited for them to say something, but they only looked around at first. At the people here, at the cube with the modified sigils, and finally at the ritual platform. After removing the cloth I had used to cover the scripts, one of them finally spoke with a masculine voice. “Interesting. Which one of you did this?”

He looked around at all of us, but quickly fixated on me and Riala. “These two. There are awakened humans?” he asked, looking back at the other god. “Since when?”

“You haven’t heard? Shae was up in arms about two awakened humans, I guess that’s them,” the other said.

“And nobody informed me? How did this even happen?” the first one said in exasperation.

“Let’s discuss that later. First, the cleanup.”

“Very well,” he said and started drawing a script in the air with his fingers, which started glowing after he snapped his fingers, seemingly activating. The water source and the ritual platform briefly glowed and were then returned to their previous, unmodified states. He nodded in satisfaction and turned towards us again. “And now you two,” he said and prepared to write another script.

“Hey, wait a second!” I said in a panic. “What’s the problem?”

He stopped, and looked at me, seemingly surprised. “You... that’s not your body, is it?” he said and approached us, crouching down right in front of me. “Something went really wrong here. You’re the problem then?”

While the first god I had seen didn’t actually do much to stop us from leaving Alarna, these two were clearly here to stop us from doing what we had been trying to do. With just a short script and a snap he had reverted my changes, and next he wanted to do something to us. Maybe he wants to take away our mana? No, that wouldn’t stop us... Remove our knowledge of Omega? That seems like a lot of effort though... Maybe simply kill us...? I can’t let that happen.

“I’m the one who modified the scripture,” I said. There were two of them, and even if I could harm them, it was probably not a good idea to attack someone who clearly knew more about scripts than I did. Not to mention that any aggression might fall back on Tomar and Riala.

“Curious. Did Shae mention this as well?” the god asked the other one.

“Not that I know of, but I didn’t pay too much attention.”

“Well, this should be a simple fix then. Is the original owner still in there,” he said and poked my head.

‘Uhm... yes, I’m here.’

“Splendid.” He stood up, took a step back, and started writing a script in the air once more, while Riala and I were watching him in a daze. “We’ll just put you back in charge and remove the problem.”

‘What!?’

“What!?”

Tomar and I said in unison.

“Wait! Let’s talk about this! If I did something I shouldn’t have, I apologize! I was just—”

The last thing I heard before everything faded to black was a snap.

***

Some time, somewhere

A translucent figure was holding a white stone in their hands and prodded it, when they suddenly looked bewildered at another figure. “Wait... is that an artificial soul in there?”

“Yea, unfortunately. There were no natural souls I could use for that specific job, so I had to invent one.”

The first figure placed the stone back on the table they were sitting at and shook their head. “You are overambitious. There is no way you will get all of this to work in time.”

“Don’t be such a downer. It’s partially working already. You can see the animals, you can see the monsters, and as soon as I figure out why the stupid water still crystalizes, I can let humans manifest.”

“That your solution for the water problem works on the plants and animals, but not on humans, should tell you something about the state your world is in. It’s all kinds of wrong.”

“Actually, it would work, I just don’t want it to work like that. It would defeat the whole purpose.”

The first figure sighed and started disappearing into the shifting air as they made one last comment. “You don’t have a lot of time left, so I recommend you find a solution that ‘works for you’ quickly.”

Now alone, the other figure fell into thought. After a few silent moments, they waved their hands in the air and the scenery around them changed to an open field with an empty riverbed, which they examined closely, before plugging a blue stone out of thin air. A few more moments passed, as they stared at the stone, until they started writing scripture sigils in the air. When they finished, they snapped their fingers and a large, black cube with blue sigils painted onto it appeared out of thin air.

They placed the stone on the cube and water started streaming out of it. “Dirty little hotfix, but it will work for now,” they said, looking pleased at their creation, despite their words. “Not that much different from a well really. Heh, a well with a paywall.”