The First Mage

After an entire day without major incidents I really thought we might get through it without anything interrupting our schedule. That, just for once, we might be able to relax, do some research, and then peacefully fall asleep in the evening. A day like that started to appear more and more like a pipedream, however. Not only were there the events of the last few days, even before that we had barely any time to do anything outside of work. And if I weren’t able to stay up every night anymore, my free time would get cut down even further.

Hurrying towards the source of yet another presumed emergency, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was really what I wanted. The plan hadn’t been for us to micromanage every little thing that happened in this town. Actually, the plan hadn’t even necessarily been to stick around. We just wanted to be able to live in peace. But hadn’t we already accomplished that? There were very few enemies left, and unlike before, the remaining ones would think twice about attacking us or trying to use us for their own goals.

Couldn’t we leave this to someone else? I pondered as we crashed through the temple’s front door.

A few people stood in the main square, gawking and pointing at the clouds rising from somewhere in the market district. What we heard was almost certainly an explosion, and a very large one at that. But I hadn’t heard about any kind of explosives in this world yet. There were no canons, no pistols, and no dynamite. I didn’t even know whether the basic ingredients for any of it existed.

Riala, Hati, and I followed Berla down the market street, deeper into the western part of town, passing citizens who were evacuating and guards leading them. They were confused and panicking, though none of them looked like they knew what happened, and the few guards we tried to ask just said that they were getting the citizens to safety first, as per their protocol.

The crowd soon grew thinner, and after winding our way through the streets for a couple of minutes, we rounded another corner and finally arrived at the site of the explosion. A few houses down the street, one building had seemingly disappeared, leaving a gap in their line from where the dark clouds were originating.

“Berla, careful!” I instructed.

Nodding back at me, she slowed to a quick walk as we kept approaching the location. The dark, black smoke rising from it seemed bizarre, but when we got closer, things became even weirder. In place of a building, there was a deep crater, at least three meters deep. We could see where the basement’s walls had once been, but there was no sign of any wood or stone around—as if it had all just evaporated. Even more worrying were the colorful flakes that sporadically floated through the air amidst the smoke, however.

“That’s...” I said.

“Black stones?” Berla asked.

“Looks like it...”

I gestured for the others to wait and inched closer to the hole, looking down into it. I couldn’t make out much through the clouds in the middle of the night though.

“I don’t see anything... Do you know what was here before?” I asked Berla.

“I believe it was a bar,” she said. “It was nothing special.”

Something wasn’t right. What we heard sounded like an explosion, but this didn’t look the part.

Black stones... They’re apparently used as a drug, right? If so, someone would need a decently sized supply of them. What if this bar’s basement had been filled with them?

It didn’t explain what caused the “explosion,” but maybe why the flakes were there. Then again, without scripts they should be little more than stones, making me think of an alternative theory.

The black stones were always weird. What if they have properties we don’t know about? Especially now that magic is coming back... And they are black like gunpowder...

“I hope there wasn’t anyone in there when this happened...” Berla said.

“Right...”

With no sign of anything left, it stood to reason that nobody would’ve survived it. Surveying our surroundings, I didn’t see anyone either. At least until we heard footsteps approaching us quickly from a distance.

“Tomar!” Grym shouted, coming from the same direction as us. A squad of guards followed after him, all of them stopping coordinately right in front of us and staring into the hole. “What happened here!?”

“We don’t know yet,” I said.

“Very well. Men! Search for survivors and any signs for what caused this!”

““Yes, Sir!”” came the collective response before the six guards spread out.

We watched in silence as they disappeared into alleys and behind the eerie wall of smoke that did not seem to subside in the slightest.

“It’s been one thing after another recently, hasn’t it?” he asked, a grim frown on his face.

Yup...

“I assume nothing like this has ever happened before?” I asked, glancing at him and Berla.

“No. It definitely hasn’t. And this time I don’t know about any myths either.”

“Me neither...” Berla said.

“And I assume you would know all the stories there... are...” He trailed off when his eyes fell on Berla, turning towards him, and he realized she was moving as if walking on air. “What... How...?”

“New walking aid,” I said.

“You’re telling me you can walk again?” he asked wide-eyed. “I want to say it’s unbelievable, but... My boy is right, it gradually becomes more difficult to be surprised by you kids. I’m happy for you, Berla.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Anyway, I’m going to take a look around as well if we have no information at all yet.”

“Alright, we’ll—” I started before I was interrupted.

“Captain! We found three survivors in an alley behind the building. I mean... the former building!”

Survivors... Eye witnesses?

“Lead the way,” Grym said and started moving, the rest of us following after him.

We walked down nearby alleyways and arrived in the area behind the former bar in a heartbeat. Tended to by two guards, three people sat leaning against a wall behind a corner—a location we hadn’t been able to see from the front. One was a woman who looked like she might have worked at the bar, while the other two were a young man and woman familiar to me. As we got closer, their heads turned our way.

“Tomar...” Tyra said, frowning.

“You. Are you guys okay?” I asked.

“Okay? Okay!? Are you serious!?” the woman spat, enraged. “My bar is gone! My family’s bar! What was that?”

“I’m sorry, Miss. We will have to investigate this incident before we can give you any more information,” Grym said in an uncharacteristically calm voice. “Can you tell us what happened here?”

“Of course you don’t know what it was... Why would you, right?” she mumbled. “These... shining plates suddenly appeared everywhere. We immediately went for the closest door, but we barely made it outside before that sound, and then the house disappeared in a black pillar!”

“Was there anyone else inside?”

“There were a few Fighters, yes. But they didn’t make it out in time.”

She seemed to care very little about the lives lost, and much more so about her bar. Tyra and Calom looked around somewhat aimlessly though, shook by what happened. They kept glancing in the direction the building had been in.

“I see,” Grym said sadly. “I would appreciate it if you could give us any information you may have about them, to determine who lost their lives here today.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, waving him off. “I’ll come to the guard station tomorrow. Always the same...”

Her reaction was most certainly weird, but I figured there might simply be people in this world who were used to the idea of potentially dying anytime and anywhere. At least I thought that was it.

“Captain!” A guard came running from the hole, a lantern in hand. “We haven’t found much, but there are a few stones strewn around at the bottom. They look like blue shards, except that they’re black.”

The woman flinched. Had I not still been watching her, I would’ve missed it. She knew more than she said.

“Black stones, or shards,” I said, interjecting myself into the conversation. “They’re similar, but can’t be used with water sources. You also can’t get them around here. Do you know something about them?” I asked her.

Her expression back to a mix of annoyance and indifference, she curtly responded, “No. And I’m not going to sit around here any longer. It’s your job to figure out what happened, so do it. I have other things to worry about now.” Standing up, she turned towards the other two and snapped her fingers to get their attention. “Come,” she said.

Those were the last words I heard from her as I watched her stroll off, with Tyra and Calom hurriedly following her. Grym seemed as confused as I by her attitude and was about to stop her, but one of his men shook his head at him, signaling that we shouldn’t.

“What’s with that girl?” Grym asked him once they were out of hearing range.

“That’s Janna Bant,” the guard said.

“Ah... Ugh,” Grym grunted. First in understanding, then in irritation. At my confused expression he explained, “A notorious Charmer. She’s been questioned dozens of times because she was suspected of abusing her Calling. Particularly on Fighters. I believe her family was slowly killed off by beasts over the years?” he asked his subordinate, who nodded in confirmation. “It’s the usual story. She’s not happy with the work we do.”

“She will come to the station tomorrow, however,” the guard said. “She always turns up when summoned, and keeping her here in this situation would’ve only served to make her even more angry.”

“Hm, hm. Good decision,” Grym nodded.

“Was it?” I asked, a bit bewildered.

“Hm?” Grym didn’t seem to understand my question.

“A building just disappeared, people died, and these three were the only ones here. Seems to me like they were suspects.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Suspects? Of what? I hardly think that these three Charmers could’ve had anything to do with this. Lilly and you also instructed me to be more lenient. You want me to send someone after her?”

“Hm... No, it’s fine. I was just wondering how you approached such a case.”

Really, this was just a hunch on my part as well, and if it was me, I wouldn’t do much more either. We could’ve tried to question them more thoroughly, but she seemed rather tightlipped, and if they were certain that she would come in the next day, that questioning would happen soon anyway. Instead, I glanced at Berla, signaling to her that we needed to have these people followed.

“Alright,” Grym said. “Now, can you tell me anything about these colored things or the black stones?”

“Yea, I suppose I should.”

The black stones were a potential security risk. If there were more in town, and they were responsible for what happened here in some way, he needed to know. Even searching the market district and getting them banned officially wasn’t out of the question.

And if the stones did this... and people use them as drugs... What’s going to happen to them?

I walked around the corner to take another look at the hole and began explaining the situation to Grym as I understood it. While Berla silently disappeared, Riala and Hati simply followed me, and we all ended up staring into the still rising smoke. If this was a black stone reaction caused by the magic system, I really wished Gallas would have warned us about it.