The First Mage

After realizing that I had apparently changed slightly, I thought about what being inside someone’s mind truly meant for the first time in a while. It was clear that I wasn’t a normal Calling, but up until now, I always figured that I still operated under the same rules. My knowledge and abilities were not getting merged into the host in one go, but we had seen evidence that Tomar had been affected by me being with him. Just like with a regular Calling, he appeared to learn things, like how to read Omega. Over time, it had also seemed like he had become smarter and more assertive. Not that he had been stupid when I met him, and his mother had been fairly intelligent as well, but keeping the timeline and his age in mind, he had changed a lot in a very short amount of time.

I had figured that Tomar would eventually take on all traits of mine that would be useful to him and then he would become a combination of the two of us. Afterwards, I would either disappear or become kind of obsolete. However, I had never considered that it might not be a one-way merge.

While a normal Calling was apparently just a collection of knowledge and abilities, I was still more or less myself, just without a body. Other Callings were simply integrated into the host, but what if the rules were entirely different for me? What if I hadn’t been getting merged into Tomar at all? What if it worked more like a synchronization? Thinking back to everything that had happened to us here, it did seem like I had changed. At least a little bit. However, at my age you don’t change easily. Being more careful when you realize beasts are actually a much bigger threat than you thought makes sense, as does trying not to hurt someone because your companion wouldn’t like it. But for me to not even consider such options meant that my way of thinking had changed.

A month ago, I wouldn’t have had any qualms about using Lilana either. It would’ve been easy enough to justify. Without me, she might’ve died. She was also just some young priestess-to-be. I could’ve believably argued that we were the good guys, trying to bring peace and prosperity to the people, and that this would be worth a little collateral damage. After everything was said and done, I then would’ve just let her go and she could’ve become whatever she wanted. Maybe I would’ve robbed her of a few weeks of her life, but how bad would that really have been? And wouldn’t it be worth it in the long run? I hadn’t truly valued the lives of people I didn’t know before, but now that seemed wrong.

There were other examples as well though. I had never liked children. At all. There hadn’t been even a single time in my entire life where I thought “Oh, that child is kind of sweet.” Not even with kids in my family. Yet, the first time I met Riala, that was my exact thought. Statistically speaking, it was highly unlikely that I would like the first child that crossed my way after an entire life of not thinking fondly of them. Curiously, I hadn’t even realized this back then, however. The thought popped into my head, it felt natural, and I didn’t think any more about it.

If I had to say, this development would presumably be well received with most people. I had been called a sociopath in my old life before, as well as emotionless. Personally I didn’t see it at the time, and I would’ve rather defined myself as rational and calculating. However, I had realized early in my life that my thought processes did often differ from that of other people. And for this to change after just a few days here in Erinn, it would need more than me being careful around my host to actually make a difference in how I thought and acted. I had changed more than I had realized.

Curiously, while these changes had come naturally to me somehow, it was the total opposite for Tomar. He had been able to read Omega from one moment to the next, and he didn’t even truly realize what was happening. He had also gradually come to accept the thought of getting rid of certain people in this world, even though he hadn’t said the word “kill” out loud. These thoughts had apparently just popped into his head as well, but they were confusing him. Maybe because they ran counter to everything he should know or believed in. Omega was used in this world, but actually understanding it wasn’t normal. And this mild-mannered, friendly boy would never think about killing a person under normal circumstances.

In light of these new theories, I also had to consider that there might have been more to the incident with the soldiers in Cerus. I already thought that I probably would have tried to resolve the situation in a different way, but why had Tomar not done so? Because they grabbed Riala? That could certainly trigger someone, but what happened then? He only said a fight broke out, and that, unfortunately, all the soldiers were killed. Picturing that scene of someone holding a dagger to Riala’s throat, I came to the conclusion that Tomar had probably gone for a kill shot from the start. The Alarna soldiers knew that she was dangerous as well, so the agent would’ve held her tight. There couldn’t have been a lot of options for an attack with the scripts Tomar had on hand. Yet Riala had come out the other side without so much as a scratch. The easiest way to accomplish that would’ve been a clean shot through the agent’s face. And after that, the soldiers would most definitely have attacked, at which point Tomar and the others truly wouldn’t have had a choice anymore.

This was all just a theory, but it made sense to me. However, this would not be normal behavior for Tomar. I was certain that he would’ve tried to surrender, and flee at a later time, even if that might not have been the safest choice in the long run.

Unlike the changes to my thinking, which could be considered to be good, the changes I was suspecting Tomar to go through were starting to seem worrisome, to the point where Lilana might not even be entirely wrong. If he had actually killed people in cold blood, he was potentially becoming more like my old self, who would’ve seriously considered that option. And while I would’ve welcomed this a few weeks ago, from my current point of view, it didn’t seem like a good thing anymore.

How hypocritical can you be...? “No Tomar, you can’t kill people!” Please. What am I even worrying about? Even my old self wasn’t a soulless murderer. It will be fine.

What I did worry about, was what all of this meant for Lilana and me. If I stayed with her for too long, she would presumably take on traits and knowledge of mine as well. That much I knew. It had taken Tomar a few days until he started being able to read scripts though, so we should be fine for the moment. If this was a two-way street, however, would I also take on traits of her’s? Me+Tomar+Lilana... that would make for a weird combo. No offense, Lilly, but I’d rather not become like you.

I potentially had to reconsider my current host situation or our plans. Lilana learning how to read Omega in a few days’ time wasn’t ideal, but we would be teaching her a little bit anyway, so she would be able to play her role as a divine messenger properly. The thought of our two personalities mixing, however, was a problem, and it might not take as long as I originally believed.

The first time Tomar had shown changes in how he thought had been about three weeks after we met, and it took me about four weeks until I made noticeably different decisions. That should be our window. Lilana and I shouldn’t stay together for more than three weeks at most. Ideally, I would either find a new body before then, or I might have to ask Tomar for a ride after all. Going by our current plan, however, three weeks should at least be enough to get us started. It is a tight schedule though.

***

Reurig had left the camp in the early morning to keep an eye on the town and look for hints about Gean’s whereabouts, as he had done every day for the past week. I wanted to get started as soon as possible, but since he was the oldest citizen of Alarna with us, and the Fighter with the most experience, I also wanted to discuss the new plans with him before we made any definitive decisions. He wouldn’t return till the evening though, so we stayed at the camp for the day, going over everything again, while also working on the snap script.

I had started helping Riala with testing new combinations, but just like her and Tomar, I reached one dead end after the other. Scripts that looked like they should probably work just didn’t, and there was no clear reason why. This only made me more curious, however.

While I studied the copy of the script the gods had used, I realized something. It had been drawn a little less cleanly than Riala’s usual scripts, indicating that Tomar had drawn it.

“Hey, Ria. Did Tomar write this?” I asked her.

“Yup. He mirrored it, so he could read it more easily.”

Right, I thought. When Riala had seen the script, it was mirrored, and if she had copied it as is, it would not have been the right way around.

“Do you still have the original?”

“Of course!” she said and went to get the piece of paper.

Holding it up against the light to read it, I didn’t notice anything at first, but eventually I caught one sigil that looked weird. Omega didn’t use the English alphabet, but the sigils were closely related to it. If Tomar’s version of the script used an “A,” the sigil in the god’s script was an “A” with only half of its horizontal line. This was the only difference between the two scripts, but it could make all the difference if whoever created this system had added new sigils to the language. That would be kind of annoying, but it wasn’t unheard of. Usually, people in my world used that tactic to make Omega scripts even more difficult to understand, because you couldn’t even rely on a unified character set anymore. I guess you didn’t want anyone to use this sigil, did you? Well, tough luck.

“Maybe I got it,” I said and started writing a test script on my arm. It was a normal one, to first confirm my suspicion. If I was right, Tomar had simply made a small error while copying the script, mistaking a sigil for a similar one. It wasn’t a huge blunder, but the result would’ve been that, no matter what they tried, the snap activation would never do what it was supposed to do. This was actually a pretty common error, where you would make a small change while trying to get something to work, without realizing that that change was what stopped it from working entirely.

I replaced the normal “A” sigil in this script with the “incomplete” one and tried executing it, but nothing happened. Just as expected, the system didn’t recognize this sigil as the same one.

“Nothing happened,” Riala said with a confused expression.

“Yea, as expected. This is good.”

I proceeded to write another script, this time with a variation of the snap activation. As soon as I completed it, the snap sub-script finally activated for the first time and I felt mana gathering in my hand, but without exiting my body for real.

“Huh, curious,” I said, looking at the increased amount of mana mist around my hand. This hadn’t been what I expected, and I stepped away from the others to actually test the snap.

“Don’t go too far, I want to see!” Riala pleaded desperately.

“Yea, don’t worry,” I said with a chuckle.

In theory, the script should’ve created a small ball of water above my hand as soon as I snapped my fingers. It wasn’t anything special. However, when I did finally snap my fingers, what appeared wasn’t a small water ball.

“Argh!”

“Miles!?” I heard Berla yell.

‘Whoa! What happened!?’ Lilana said.

Instead of the intended ten centimeter radius, the ball was about forty centimeter in size. And aside from that unintended effect, I also immediately reached my threshold and groaned in pain. The water ball should’ve flown into the air after a second, but instead it became unstable and essentially exploded in my face. Had I not stepped away, we would’ve all been drenched.

Wet and exhausted, I let myself fall to my knees, trying to get my breathing under control. “Don’t worry... I’m okay,” I said, glancing at the others as they were approaching me carefully.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen though, right?” Berla asked.

“Heh, no. It wasn’t.”

I was very glad I had chosen the water ball script. Had a water stream suddenly erupted in my face, that could’ve been a real problem.

“But you did it!” Riala exclaimed, looking at my hand expectantly.

“You know you can’t use this yet, right?” I said, raising an eyebrow. She had a lower volume than Lilana, and I didn’t know what would happen if she were to just copy this script. Apparently, she had learned that much though, as this wasn’t her plan.

“I know, I just want to compare it!”

“Promise?”

“Promise!”

“Alright then,” I said and showed her my variation of the script.

She briefly looked at it and then started jumping up and down in celebration. “I got it! I got it first!”

“Haha, yea, you’re right. Good job,” I said, looking at the proud expression on her face. The variation I had used could be found in her notes as well. One that I thought should’ve worked, and the same one that I had come up with. I was the one to activate it, but if she had used the right sigil, she would’ve been the first to use snap activation.

I was happy for her, but we really had to put new rules in place, because her using it could’ve ended badly. I had called Oryn a lunatic because he used a script he didn’t understand, and here I was, doing almost the same thing. I had an idea of what was supposed to happen, and I understood almost every aspect of the script, but this one unknown sigil had changed the behavior way more than I thought. I had been overconfident as well. Overconfidence... let’s just hope this isn’t Lilana affecting me already after all, I thought with a wry smile.