Twelve hours. That’s the amount of time I was able to enjoy some relative peace and quiet, between the black stone incidents, the revelation that Aelene was pregnant, and the next morning. By some miracle, and contrary to all my beliefs, nothing else had happened in that time. It took hours for me to truly feel a semblance of relaxedness, but when I finally did... I apparently fell asleep in a matter of minutes.

I woke up alone in my bed the next morning, bright daylight streaming into the room. Clearly, I had slept longer than usual. I rubbed my eyes and rolled out of bed, proceeding to stretch myself. I hadn’t rested this well in a while and felt great. My body was raring to go, and my mind was sharp. Unfortunately, said mind was eager to remember everything that was going on. I shouldn’t have been sleeping, and especially not for so long. The plan had been to go and check out Cerus, and I had ideally wanted to travel through the night, so we’d be back by noon the next day.

Instead of reveling in having been able to relax, I immediately started beating myself up. Nothing was going according to plan, and I had solved barely any problems yet. I felt like I wasn’t in control anymore, as if all I was capable of was reacting to the things happening around us.

Weird. I feel a sudden urge to crawl back into bed...

Despite being greeted by a smidge of depression right after getting up, I did my best to stay positive, telling myself—over and over—that things would get better in just a few days. Surviving another three would solve one problem for good, another three days hopefully another one. And if I managed to snatch some water stones in the meantime, we’d be on the right track. I could do it.

After getting dressed, I left the bedroom, expecting to find either Garn or Pallo in the hallway. However, it was entirely empty. Somewhat surprised, I went on alone, getting ready, and finally starting to look for the others. For a second I thought something might have happened, but when I came across priests who greeted me like they normally would, I figured they had simply let me sleep, while they went out. And for some reason they took both of our guards with them, even though one would usually stay with me.

My first instinct was to ask Hayla as I came up to the office, but just before I pressed down the door handle, I remembered my last conversation with Berla from the day before.

“She likes you.”

“Yea... I figured as much...”

“Maybe... it would be better not to interact with her as much. You know? Don’t get her hopes up.”

“Hm. I mean, I’ll have to talk to her, but if you’d like, I’ll only do it if it’s necessary.”

“I believe that’s for the better.”

I wasn’t sure how worried she really was, but after agreeing to limit my contact to Hayla a little, I decided to search for the others on my own. In the end, it didn’t actually take all that long to find them. Approaching the back of the temple, I saw them outside through a window. After we spent the better part of two days in the garden, both Berla and Riala had taken a liking to it, because it was a little like being outside in the Wildlands, but without having to travel an hour to reach the woods.

The moment I stepped outside, Riala’s head snapped in my direction and she came running my way, euphoric to see me. “Tomar! Finally!”

“Whoa!” I exclaimed.

Given her speed, I was worried she might barrel right into me, and I took a half-step back to brace myself, but she came to a sudden stop right in front of me, hopping up and down, unable to contain herself.

“Come!” she yelled as she took my hand and pulled me over to the others. “I learned something new!”

Curious what got her so excited, I followed her in a light jog. Rounding a low hedge, Berla, Hati, Garn, and Oryn came into full view, standing around a small campfire in the middle of an open patch of grass.

Riala let go of my hand and dashed to grab a few sticks and sheets of paper from the nearby bench. Meanwhile, I slowed down and approached the others. Raising a hand, I said, “Hey.” Nobody said anything in response though. They simply stared at the campfire in a daze. Even Hati, who recently didn’t seem to care about much but food and sleep, was focused on it. The only one who seemed to even notice me was Berla, a smile on her lips that seemed to say, “You’re going to love this.”

Weaving her way into the circle of people, Riala absentmindedly waved a hand and sprayed some water onto the fire, which fizzled out immediately. I was struck by the casualness of her moves. She didn’t even think about it. She wanted the fire out, and her body was acting accordingly.

Muscle memory...

I grinned. She was starting to use scripts unconsciously, the abilities getting ingrained in her. Perhaps even more than they had in me. Though it wasn’t much of a surprise really. From how she talked, she seemed to do little else but practice and try new things all day long.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

A little envious, I watched her set up a second fire, crumpling up the paper into balls and leaning the sticks against them. Overwhelmed by the suddenness of it all, I didn’t start to really think about what she might have learned until the preparations were complete. She was looking up at me expectantly while kneeling on the ground. That’s when it hit me.

Heating water... Even Hati is perplexed... Campfires...

Staring blankly at her, I said, “Wait... did you...?”

Without further ado, she extended her arm towards the dry paper. Her fingers moved into position, and then a snap seemed to echo through the garden, as sparks were emitted from her hand. They traveled through the air and hit the paper, though nothing else happened.

When she glanced at the paper and realized that it wasn’t aflame yet, her face contorted slightly in annoyance. “Damn it!” she exclaimed. Turning towards it, she snapped again and again. “It worked just now!”

“You can create sparks...” I mumbled and crouched down next to her.

“Yes... but getting a fire going is hard,” she pouted.

“Hahaha!” I could do nothing but laugh at the young girl complaining about being unable to start a fire, while spawning water and sparks from thin air. “Wow. How do you do that?”

“Dunno,” she said, still trying to enlighten the paper and wood.

“Well, what’s the feeling you’re using?”

She stopped for a moment to think, cocking her head to the side. Though she quickly resumed her task while responding. “Sis was being annoying yesterday. She said I couldn’t go to work today. That’s the feeling!”

That would be... Annoyance? Anger? But she said she was heating water by thinking about how fluffy Hati was. Hm. I guess those are two separate things.

I could’ve given her a few pointers on how to start a fire, but I wanted to give her the chance to do it herself. After a couple of tries a few sparks did finally take hold, and she carefully blew on them until the tiny flames started roaring.

“Yay!” she exclaimed. “Look!”

I chuckled. “I see it. Good job. Amazing, really,” I said as I patted her head and watched the fire. Once again, she took a step forward without us.

See, Tomar? It was a good idea to teach her. She doesn’t even quite know how she’s doing it, but she’s coming up with things we weren’t even considering yet.

I had never expected this strategy to work as well as it did, but who would argue about the results? This girl and her experiments were very clearly the key to figuring out where to go from here. Watching Riala, I felt something waiting for us just past our current capabilities.

“Uhm, excuse me... Tomar...” Oryn said. “Can you explain what this is? Her attempts at it have been... a little unclear.”

“Hm?” I looked around once more, studying the faces of the others. I only thought them in a daze at first, but now that I was looking more closely, they seemed apprehensive. “What’s wrong?”

“She’s creating fires!” he said worryingly. “I mean, water is one thing, but this?”

Garn nodded in agreement, and when my eyes fell on Hati, he only said, “Fire is scary.”

I didn’t understand what made them so anxious. Fire was certainly more dangerous than water, but I didn’t feel like it was that much of a difference. Searching for an answer, I looked at Berla, the only one who didn’t seem fearful.

“Don’t worry, guys. They’ll always be able to put it out right away. They’re walking water sources as well after all,” she told them.

Oh, right. Fear of fire actually makes a lot of sense here.

In this area, with little to no rain, no lakes, no rivers, and a limited supply of blue stones, fires could be a very serious problem. Even if you combined the output of all water sources in Alarna, there would be a limit to what you can do. And if a fire were to spread, you might actually reach a point where you couldn’t stop it anymore. Apparently this was enough to terrify even Oryn enough that he put it above seeing a new application for Omega.

“I guess they can put it out...” Garn said. “But I have to admit that it does make me nervous.”

“As Berla said, don’t worry about it.” I smiled at him. “And it’s just sparks, not an actual fire.” At least not yet, I thought. As I was addressing Garn, I figured I might as well clear a different question I had. “By the way, where’s Pallo?”

“Oh, uh, he didn’t show up today,” Garn responded, surprised by the sudden shift in topic. “Sorry, I don’t have any details.”

“He just didn’t come? Huh. Oh well, guess we can send someone to check on him later. Anyway! This is actually pretty simple in theory, Oryn,” I said, and turned my attention back at Riala’s new find and Oryn’s request for me to tell him more about what’s going on.

The town bells started ringing six o’clock as I began to explain to him in broad terms that the blue stones are an interchangeable component in the process of using scripts, and that other components can theoretically cause different effects. Though we were of course just scratching the surface so far. I didn’t give him all the information right away, but just this little bit was seemingly enough to get his mind off of our little, potential pyromaniac, and he started to ask more and more questions.

Through the barrage of inquiries, I didn’t even notice that the bells stopped ringing at some point. What did get my attention, however, was when they started ringing again. Not to signal the time, however, or to warn the citizens, but to call for them to gather at the main square for an announcement at noon. The problem was that we hadn’t planned any announcements. And we hadn’t told anyone to gather the citizens.

I frowned as my gaze wandered in the direction of the main square. Noticing that I was distracted, Oryn stopped talking.

“Oh? An announcement, Tomar?” Garn asked curiously.

“No... This isn’t us...”

And I can’t imagine this to be good...