The First Mage

After the gods incident, Bael was brought back to his cell for the time being, while we went back to the mayor’s house. He was apparently spent, and I saw him lie down on the couch in the living room, while we went back to the guest room, so Berla and Reurig could relax for a moment as well. The door had barely been closed, when Berla started questioning me.

“You’re Tomar, right!? What happened to Miles!?”

She had hidden her worries well in front of the mayor, but now her panic was clear in her eyes. “I don’t know yet... He seems to be gone. Or maybe he’s just unconscious... that has happened before. But I’m hoping there’s a way to figure out more,” I said and looked down at Riala. “Did you get the script the god used?”

She nodded and quickly went over to the desk, to draw the second script they had used on a piece of paper. It took her only a few seconds before she passed the sheet over to me.

“You really memorized it that quickly...?” Berla asked her incredulously. “Even though it was mirrored for you?”

“Yep! Miles says I’m special,” Riala said proudly.

“He calls it eidetic memory,” I said to Berla. “He did a few tests with her and apparently she can recollect things she’s seen for just a brief moment with near perfect accuracy. And the result is... a mirrored image.”

With a chuckle, I turned the paper around and held it against the light, to read the script the right way around.

It wasn’t very long, only doing two things really. “Oh no...”

“What does it do?” Berla asked.

“If I understand this right, it extracts something from a vessel and sends it somewhere else... I think Miles might be gone...”

“Can we get him back...?” Riala asked.

She looked so sad, but I didn’t see any way how we could reverse this script. Even if we figured out what kind of destination “ORLMPROC” was, we probably wouldn’t be able to call something from there here. Especially not if we didn’t know the sigils to retrieve something, or how to target something or someone over there. Going to that place ourselves would also be pointless, because if there was a way to get back, Miles would surely find it. For the moment, there wasn’t anything we could do. I explained my thought process to the others and tried to reassure Riala.

“I’m sure he’s fine. He wasn’t killed, he was just sent somewhere else. Miles will find a way back to us,” I told Riala with confidence, although I was anything but certain. Even if he was truly fine, and even if there was a way to get back, I couldn’t say whether he would actually want to come back here after he worked towards getting away for so long. Maybe he will be happier wherever he is right now...

Based on Riala’s facial expression, my encouraging words were either not very convincing or they just did very little to raise her spirits at that moment. Unfortunately, we had other things to worry about as well.

“For now... we should decide where we want to go from here,” I said. “The mayor did not look enthusiastic about continuing this whole experiment anymore. Maybe he’ll come around, but if not, should we try to give him something else? Or should we leave?”

“Do you have something else?” Berla asked.

“Well... there’s the script that makes trees feel like beasts. We have yet to test it, but if it repels them, that could be quite valuable. Theoretically we could also experiment with giving mana to other people, and with turning trees into water sources. But Miles didn’t want the mayor to know about these things yet...”

“Because he wanted to use them to take over Alarna...” Berla said. “He didn’t tell us exactly how he wanted to accomplish that yet though. Is that even still on the table?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but... do we need him for that?” Reurig asked. “These are your abilities, right? You can do everything he could?”

“Riala and I can do everything he developed so far, but he came up with almost all of it... I don’t know how much luck we’ll have with developing anything truly new.”

Even after all the talks about him leaving one day, I had never really thought about how we would be on our own in terms of developing scripts once he was gone. I thought his departure might be months or years away, but still, not considering this had been an oversight. I should’ve used every opportunity to learn from him...

“That’s still plenty. Even just the opportunity to leave town without fear of getting killed will be a revolutionary idea to anyone. If you add guaranteed Callings on top of that... who would not be on board?”

“Aside from the king and the temple,” Berla added.

“Well, yes. Aside from them,” Reurig acknowledged.

The idea still sounded appealing, but Miles had basically just brought it up the other day, and there was no actual plan attached to it yet. Ideally, Miles had wanted control over the town, so we could change whatever we wanted. That would require us to first topple the current leaders, however, who would certainly not give up their power without a fight. I wished we could just cooperate with them, but even if I were able to look past everything they had done, the High Priest would presumably never agree to mess with the ritual, and even if the king were on our side, he would then have to go to war against the temple.

“If we were to try to cooperate with the king,” I said, “would he work with us on reforming the ritual and stand against the temple?”

Berla looked surprised at my question, and she thought it over before she responded. “I respect the king, but he can be stubborn in his ways... If we could convince him, and then go from there, it would certainly make things easier. Convincing him will be difficult though... Not to mention that we would have to get to him first.”

“In a way, Miles was right that a revolution would be the simplest solution... Assuming that you can get one started,” I said.

“That’s the problem with that idea. Maybe Miles knew a way... but I don’t know where we would even start. Would we just randomly talk to people...? He should’ve told us about his plan, even if it wasn’t complete yet,” Berla said, a hint of frustration in her voice.

Two major factions with two leaders who wouldn’t want to lose their power, and neither of them would be happy to work with us. The idea that one could simply kill them briefly passed my mind, but that would most definitely not send the right message, even if it were possible. Suddenly, however, another option came to mind. Actually, there’s more than two factions...

“What about the third faction?” I asked.

***

The figure was already walking off again after showing me “my world,” and I hurriedly stopped him. “Wait! I have no idea what I’m supposed to do!”

He turned back around with a sigh. “You do, readjusting just takes a moment. However you lost your memory, you’re still an architect. You will know what to do.”

“You’re taking this way too easy!”

What’s wrong with this guy!? I thought. He didn’t consider my situation, he didn’t ask what happened, he didn’t care that I didn’t know anything, he just told me to get back to some kind of work, as if I had fallen asleep on the job.

“While I haven’t seen an architect lose their memory before, it’s not unheard of for accidents to happen. Whatever happened to you, it doesn’t change what you have to do now.”

I wasn’t sure how to react. Even though all of this felt correct somehow, this most definitely wasn’t my life. Neither the one where I had been an old programmer, nor the one where I was living inside a fifteen year old boy’s head. If this guy knew me, I must’ve been here in between.

“I don’t get this. Did I... die before I got here?”

“That’s the usual process, yes. All new and expired souls get sent to the Outer Realm for processing and are assigned new lives based on certain criteria. But there are never enough worlds for all the souls, so we have to create new ones all the time.”

“I can not go back then...?”

“Back where?”

“Where I came from of course!”

He raised an eyebrow and looked at me inquisitively. “Why would you ever want to go back? When you were originally assigned to me, you were raring to get started. I’ve never seen someone so eager before. But no, there is no going back to your old life.”

If I assumed that I had died and then somehow became an architect of worlds, I could see why I would’ve been excited. All my life I had always chased the next big project that could occupy me for a while. Something that I could bury myself in, where I could learn and experience new things. But I would also get bored of these projects over time... and I wouldn’t necessarily finish them. At this moment, I felt absolutely no motivation to design a world. As if I had already done it and gotten everything out of it that I wanted, even if I couldn’t remember any of it. Been there, done that...?

“I can imagine that I would’ve been excited... But then, what comes after this?”

“The next world, of course.”

“That’s it? For... the rest of eternity? Was this my only choice?”

“The only choice where you would keep being yourself. Souls can’t die. Had you not become an architect, your soul would’ve been cleansed and sent to the next world.”

Of course I chose this option... They dangled a fascinating project in front of me and told me that my life would be over otherwise, I thought. No way would I have chosen anything else. At least not at that moment... I wouldn’t have thought about how absolutely miserable I would get when I would have to do the same job forever and ever... I had worked in dozens of companies, in dozens of fields, and started thousands of projects in my life. Every single time I was ever tied down, I got depressed after the initial excitement over the new project, after the honeymoon phase, and only at that point would I ever think about the consequences of my actions, and then weasel my way out of my responsibilities.

“If that’s all, I have other architects to check on. You should know everything you need to get back to it, just focus on it,” he said and started walking away again.

“Just two more things, please! When exactly is a world finished, and what happens if I can’t do it in time?”

He didn’t stop or even turn around as he responded. “It’s done once it’s viable for humans to live in and we can send souls there. The manual has more information. And if you fail, you’re not fit to be an architect and your soul will be recycled.”

I watched him until he stopped far away in the distance, in front of some world. He then touched the sphere and disappeared.

After all this, I could make some reasonable assumptions about what had happened. I had gotten a shiny new project, I worked on it for a while, and at some point, somehow, I had appeared in Tomar’s head. If I got bored or frustrated... and I was faced with the options of either dying or doing this forever... it was clear what my answer would’ve been. I found a way to weasel myself out of this situation.