The First Mage

After Lilana and I were done in the woods, I made my way back to camp, where Reurig was apparently already waiting. The sun had risen hours ago and we wanted to reach the worker camp by noon, to snoop around a little while the workers were in town for their lunch break.

“Good to go?” I asked as I approached him, and he responded with a nod. “Alright. We’ll see you tonight!” I said to Tomar, Berla, and Riala, as I waved and then followed after Reurig.

“Take care!” Berla said from behind me.

With a smile, I glanced back at her and the waving Riala one more time and nodded. We had gone over everything a dozen times and I was hopeful that nothing unexpected was going to happen today. Tomar appeared to be certain that everything would go well too, as he didn’t seem worried at all.

Reurig and I were going straight north instead of north-west where the camp was, because we wanted to approach it from the other side. If we were seen moving towards the camp or had to flee at some point, we didn’t want to lead anyone in the direction of our own camp. Instead of the south, we would come and go from the north, and cover our tracks as best as we could.

We were about halfway there, when Lilana piped up. ‘Hey, Miles. Can I ask you something?’

“Of course, what’s up?” I said, while signaling Reurig that I was talking to Lilana.

‘Uhm... this will sound weird, but if I get knowledge from you, do I also get, like, memories or something?’

“Memories? I don’t think so. That would be news to me at least. Why do you ask?”

‘I had a weird dream last night, and I don’t get what it meant. I thought maybe you would know.’

Lilana told me about her dream, but I had no idea what to make of it. In it, she had been sitting at a table with a bunch of white stones on it. However, she wasn’t in a house, but in what seemed like the middle of the Wildlands. Across from her at the table sat a god, who she had addressed as “Gallas,” the god of rituals. Unfortunately, she didn’t remember what they had talked about though.

“Gallas, hm? First time I’m hearing that name,” I said.

‘I’m not surprised, given the company you surround yourself with...’

He was apparently the god who appeared most frequently in Alarna, with three of the four last appearances having been him, not counting Shae at the eastern gate and the gods in Cerus. Lilana had seen him for herself seven years ago, though by that point she had already sworn her loyalty to Shae, who she had seen two years prior. The first time the people of this world would see a god was apparently a big milestone, and they would usually follow that first one for the rest of their lives, assuming that they followed any gods at all.

‘But it’s not only that I was just sitting at that table, talking to him, he didn’t look like Gallas. He didn’t have his divine glow, I could kind of see through him.’

See through him...? Why does that sound so familiar?

“Hm... I don’t know what that dream was about. I certainly don’t remember sitting down with a god. I wish I could, that would be pretty interesting.”

‘Right... I just thought that you might know something, because you said you met a few gods,’ she said, clearly sounding disappointed. ‘Sorry, it was a weird question.’

“Not at all. I only met three gods though. The first one was Shae I guess, just outside of Alarna, when me, Tomar, and Riala fled town. And then there were the two that appeared in Cerus to stop our experiment.”

‘One of them probably was Gallas.’

“Is that so? Oh, right. ‘God of rituals,’ that would make sense.”

If that guy was responsible for the rituals in some capacity, it was reasonable to assume that he would be the one to appear when something forbidden was happening at a ritual platform.

‘Hm. What did they look like?’ Lilana asked, but I had a hard time answering that question. Those three looked almost identical to me, aside from the fact that Shae had a vaguely femine body shape and voice.

“Well... the one who kicked me out looked like Shae, but more masculine and a little bigger. The other one looked the same, but he was the same size as Shae I think.”

‘... what kind of description is that? What did their eyes look like?’

“Their eyes...? I didn’t see any eyes, just vague shapes.”

‘How could you miss their eyes!? They look like beautiful jewels! Shae’s are red, while Gallas’ are blue!’

I had no idea what Lilana was talking about. None of the gods I had seen so far had anything resembling actual eyes, and there had certainly been nothing that looked like a jewel on any of them.

“Are you talking about what the gods look like?” Reurig said as he glanced back at me.

“Yea, Lilana says they have jewel-like eyes or something, but I didn’t see that.”

“Right, we were confused about that as well,” he said. “We talked about their appearance while you were gone, and Tomar and Riala didn’t see their eyes either, while Berla and I did.”

“Huh. Curious.”

“Tomar said it might be the mana. Whatever the glow is, we can see it, but we can’t see mana. If that energy were to obscure their eyes though, you guys wouldn’t see them.”

“Mhm, sounds like a reasonable theory.”

‘Wait, does that mean I can’t see their eyes anymore!?’

“It’s hard to tell at the moment, but it seems like it. Sorry.”

It was inconvenient to not be able to properly tell them apart, but aside from that, it didn’t really bother me to not be able to see the gods as other people did. For Lilana on the other hand, this seemed to be incredibly disappointing.

“We still have the others though. Say, what colors were their eyes, Reurig?”

“One of them was definitely Gallas, he had blue eyes. I don’t know who the other one was though. His eyes were Green.”

‘Green!?’

“Hm? Do you know which god that is?” I asked her.

‘No... I mean, yes, but... he’s dead!’

“Hold up, your gods aren’t immortal?”

Lilana was right that I hadn’t exactly been surrounded by believers since I arrived in this world, but it seemed like there was more of a gap in information than I thought. At least I would consider a god being able to die major news, but this was the first time I heard about that. I looked at Reurig, but he seemed confused as well, even though he had been a temple agent for years.

‘Of course gods aren’t immortal! Nobody is! And tell Reurig I’m disappointed by him not knowing who that was!’

I rolled my eyes and forward her message to him with a sigh. “Teach us then, who is that god?”

‘Celeth... the god of beasts. It is said that, at the dawn of men, he tried to tame his creations for our sake, but they overpowered and killed him. Some old books talk about him, but he’s rarely mentioned outside the temple.’

As I forwarded her explanation to Reurig, realization seemed to dawn on him. “Ohhh, the one who was challenged by... What was it called? Whatever. It was some beast, they fought, and the god lost. I didn’t know he was supposed to have green eyes though. But come on, Lilana... that’s a fairy tale. Nobody actually believes this stuff.”

“‘How can you call yourself a temple agent if you don’t know that Celeth is the only god with green eyes!? And why would the gods allow beasts to do as they please if Celeth hadn’t fought for us and lost!?’” I said for Lilana.

“I’m not calling myself a temple agent anymore, I’m free from all that religious nonsense,” Reurig said with a smug expression.

‘Nonsense!? NONSENSE!?!?’

“Argh! Lilana, please!” I pleaded, holding my aching head. “Reurig, please try not to tease her so much.”

“Haha, sorry,” he said.

Despite her insistence that all temple personnel should know this story, Lilana couldn’t actually remember every single detail either. Beasts had apparently existed before humanity, and Celeth was the god lording over them, whatever that entailed. When humans finally entered the picture, the beasts became a problem, because they attacked and killed them not only for food, but also for sport. As the story went, Celeth was tasked with reeling his creations in, and he at least got them to a point where they stopped killing humans for no reason. However, they would not stop treating them like prey, and eventually the strongest beast in existence challenged the god. If it won, the beasts would keep doing what they were doing, and if Celeth won, they would obey him, without ever questioning him again. The god accepted, “out of love for humanity,” but he ended up getting killed, and the status quo persisted.

I didn’t quite get the point of this story. It might’ve worked as a Jesus kind of thing, with Celeth being humanity’s savior, but if he died, and hadn’t solved the problem, he hadn’t really accomplished anything. His name also hadn’t been spread far and wide, as some kind of “this is how far the gods will go for you”-type of message. He had just failed, and his name had apparently been forgotten. At least partially.

Lilana’s justification that this was the reason why the gods didn’t do anything about the beasts seemed weird as well. Even if a beast had managed to kill a god, would beings that called themselves “gods” really let themselves be bullied by their own creations? Although, I had yet to be convinced that they actually were gods, and I had just heard a story that said that gods could die. At the paw of a beast no less. If they’re at risk of getting killed if they go up against the stronger beasts, they might be actively avoiding any confrontations...

Assuming that there was some truth to this story, it would mean that there had once been a beast that could go toe to toe against a god, however, which was a little worrying. I didn’t have a good measure of the gods’ power yet, but I knew the beasts I had encountered so far were no match for our water attacks, and I had to assume that the gods would be a few levels above us. Would that be a category ten? Or maybe even above that...?

Tediously, I forwarded the entire story to Reurig. We need a better system for that. “Thanks for the explanation, Lilana,” I said after she was finally done. “This is weird though, isn’t it? If this story is true, and regardless of whether he died or not, why would he suddenly make a random appearance in Cerus?”

‘That’s obviously why I was surprised in the first place!’

Right...

After we had cracked the ritual platform script, I thought we were starting to make real progress at understanding how things worked here. With being able to control the Callings, I had felt on top of the world, glossing over all the things we didn’t know yet. Getting kicked out of Tomar was kind of a wakeup call that we still had a lot to learn. However, on top of that, more and more questions seemed to pop up since I met Lilana, with a whole new world of lore opening up to me. One day, I’m going to figure out what all of this means, I thought, as Reurig motioned for me to be quiet, as we were getting close to the worker camp.