The First Mage

I felt great when I was slowly waking up in the morning, but when I realized I was sitting upright in a chair instead of lying in bed I was momentarily disoriented. “Oh... huh.”

‘Weird to wake up like that, isn’t it?’ Tomar said with a chuckle in “my” head.

“Heh, yea. It really is. And not quite as satisfying. Still, it was amazing to sleep again for once.”

Who would’ve thought that I would ever enjoy wasting hours of my life, just lying around? Scanning the room, I saw that the others were still sleeping. At least I’m still an early riser.

“And how was your night?” I asked Tomar.

‘Not so bad. Though I can see how it could get boring. I guess we’re lucky that Berla stays up late, and we can talk for a bit longer.’

“You’re right, that’s pretty nice. Ria is fun as well, when she wakes up in the middle of the night and tries to write scripts with sleepy eyes,” I said with a warm smile.

‘Didn’t have the pleasure,’ Tomar said with a chuckle. ‘She might be getting used to sleeping through again.’

“Yea, probably better that way.”

‘We talked about your idea, by the way.’

“Oh? I’m guessing you guys aren’t huge fans. Berla seemed mildly annoyed that I was taking it so easy,” I said with a grin.

‘Actually, we like the idea, but the non-existing plan is kind of an issue. Do you have any idea how we would accomplish any of this? How would we convince people to follow us? And before we even get to that point, how would we get out of here, back to Alarna, and into town?’

“I’ll admit, I’m still working on filling a few holes in that plan. In the meantime, however, I did have an interesting idea while I was dozing off last night, which might secure us the continued goodwill of the mayor, which will help us with at least one of these issues. I actually can’t believe I didn’t think about this before. I should probably get some sleep more often.”

‘What is it?’

The big thing I had promised the mayor were improvements on the ritual platform. Its random nature was a pretty annoying factor that forced people into jobs they never wanted, even if they might be suited for them. At the same time, it was very difficult to control how a town would develop, because if you had little to no Fighters, you would have a harder time protecting the town. I don’t know why anyone would think this design was a good idea, but I claimed to be able to find a workaround. The problem with solving this issue was that a white stone contained multiple Callings, with one of them getting selected more or less randomly, presumably based on the person receiving it.

One potential solution were stones that contained one Calling multiple times, which would raise the odds of receiving a specific one. It wasn’t a great solution, but still an improvement. However, we had tried various ways to get signs without using up the stone, and they had all failed. Since the stone needed to stay intact to function, you couldn’t use it partially in any way.

Another option might’ve been to add a delay to the script chain, so you could see the sign and cancel if it’s not the one you want, but rerolling like that would potentially cost a lot of white stones, especially if the Calling gravitated heavily towards whatever was most suited for the person.

These options also assumed that it actually was random, which was mostly a theory right now, because we hadn’t been able to do experiments on the ritual platform yet.

However, there was one very simple solution to bypass all of our issues. All we had to do, to control what Calling the script would select, was to give it a different template.

“A person steps onto the ritual platform, the script extracts a suitable Calling for the person and gives it to them. Imagine the person as both the input and the output. Now, what would happen if we changed the input?”

‘You mean... Oh. You want to take the information of what’s suitable from someone else and use that to get a specific Calling for another person. Separate inputs and outputs.’

“Exactly! If a program doesn’t do what you want, you hack it.”

‘Uh... right. I think?’

“And what’s even better, we should also be able to see what Calling someone would be suitable for by using them as the input, but leaving the output empty. Two birds with one stone.”

‘And here I thought you wouldn’t be able to suddenly surprise me with something new in the morning if you didn’t stay up all night. Can’t wait to test it!’

“Me neither,” I said with a chuckle. “Tomorrow we should be able to finally go to the ritual platform again. After the caravan has left. And then we’ll just need a few young adults who’re looking for a Calling different from that of their parents. Until then we can do some preliminary tests in the garden.”

‘On us? That’s going to be interesting.’

“I hope so.”

***

Once everyone was awake and had gotten ready, we made our way to the garden, now with our newest member Reurig in tow. I was very curious about testing my new idea, but I was also looking forward to him seeing proper script usage from up close for the first time. The reactions are always funny.

Disappointingly, he seemed completely nonplussed when I executed a sign script and a glowing green ball of light appeared. I watched him intently, but he looked at the sign like it was nothing special at all.

“Oh, another Handiworker,” I heard one of the guards say. “You owe me.”

“Ugh, damn it,” the other said and a few Kira changed hands. At some point they had started betting on what sign would appear next. According to Berla, it was apparently not uncommon among Fighters to pass the time with games or gambling during low-risk jobs.

“Okay, that was a normal sign script. Now I’ll add an input and an output.”

With the extraction and sign script on the front, I declared the top of the water source cube to be the input, while I set the output to the bottom side. Then I placed a white stone on one corner of the cube. “With this we should theoretically get a sign, but no effect... Volunteers?”

Surprisingly, a response came from behind me. “What exactly are you working on?” the guard Pyran said.

He had been the more curious one of our daytime guards from the start and was always watching us with interest. The guards hadn’t been involved in any experiments so far, but now that I was looking for a volunteer, he seemed interested.

“Want to try?” I asked him. “It’s pretty simple. If everything works, it should more or less always show a Fighter Calling if you do it.”

Nervously, he stepped closer to us. “I’m not going to fall unconscious or anything, right?”

“No,” I said with a smile. “This script is harmless.”

I think.

Berla looked at me admonishingly, but didn’t say anything. By this point, she understood that there were no guarantees with scripting, but I was fairly certain nothing unexpected would happen.

“What do you want me to do?” Pyran asked.

“Just stand right there and place a hand on the water source,” I said, pointing to one side of the cube. “If it works, it should show a Fighter sign. And if I’m wrong, it should either be random or nothing will happen.”

He did as instructed, laying his hand on the cube, and the white stone dissolved. What appeared was not a blue light, however, but a pink one.

“Huh. A Charmer. Guess your test didn’t work then?” he asked.

“Hm, actually, what Callings do your parents have?”

“My father is a Fighter and my mother... Ohhh. I see. My mother is a Charmer. Can I try again?”

“Go ahead,” I said.

He tried it a few times and the result was a relatively even split between Fighter and Charmer. There seemed to be a tendency for the Fighter Calling, but the sample size was too low to say definitively. Regardless, the experiment seemed to be working.

“Haha! Finally some progress!” I exclaimed.

Next, I urged Reurig to try it, who seemed at least somewhat curious what he would get. With two Fighter parents, anything other than that Calling should be rare. Just like with Pyran, the results seemed to confirm the theory. He tried it five times and he got five Fighter Callings. This was the first time we had gotten reproducible results, as the signs had seemed completely random all the other times we had tried it.

“Berla, you want to try it?”

“Uhm, I’d rather not.”

She seemed apprehensive, but I didn’t know why. After two successful tests we could see that the script was safe. However, I also didn’t want to push her, or dig too much in the presence of the guards.

“Alright, I’ll go then,” I said, before taking a long, deep breath and placing my hand on the water source. Drumroll...

““Huh.””

Several of us were surprised by my green sign, including me and Tomar. I tried it a few times, but the result was always the same. A Handiworker Calling.

“I guess the Sourcerer Calling was a one in a thousand chance,” I said, feigning innocence in front of the guards.

Almost all done, the only one left is... I thought and glanced towards Riala, who was staring at me with hopeful eyes. I had told her to best not say or do anything in front of the guards, to eliminate the risk that she might accidentally reveal something. However, the whole point of this specific script would be to check what type of Calling someone was suited for, and it would be very interesting to see whether this would work with someone who wasn’t fifteen yet.

With a smile, I nodded at her. “Do you want to try it as well, Ria?”

She beamed at me and hurriedly took a white stone to place it on the water source, followed by her hand. All of our eyes went wide when we saw the sign that appeared. Most of the signs we had gotten so far were just colored balls of light, but with a meter in diameter they weren’t small and the effect was flashy. What we were looking at right now was a small, marble-sized sphere, glittering in the air. The sign was unlike any of the other ones, and so inconspicuous that we could’ve easily missed it in the mass of random signs we had triggered before, if it had appeared randomly. After about five seconds it fizzled out and disappeared into nothingness.

“It was pretty! What Calling is that?” Riala asked happily.

I didn’t know, even though Tomar had supposedly told me about all the Calling signs. Looking around, I could see the confused faces of the others.

“That’s a good question... what was that?” Berla said.