I was stunned. All these weeks I had been brooding over this problem. How would I figure out how the ritual platform worked without examining one? Maybe I could have figured something out by researching Omega more, maybe the black stone would’ve eventually given me a hint, or maybe a white stone could have proved useful. But ultimately, it was all a shot in the dark. This. This was the best case scenario. Free access to the ritual platform script. Even if it might not have all the answers, it would still be an enormous leap forward.
Unmoving, I stared at the platform from afar, until I could feel Berla squeeze my hand. “Go on,” she said, nodding in the direction of the platform.
I swallowed my nervousness and smiled at her. Then I looked down at my other side, where Riala stood, anticipation in her eyes. “Let’s go, this is going to be very interesting,” I said to her.
Riala and I hurried to the center of the square, while Berla followed after us. We stopped right in front of the ritual platform and Riala immediately kneeled down to look it over. This was my first good look at it, since I hadn’t really seen it at all back at the temple, when I had just arrived in this world. With a diameter of about two meters it was way larger than I had pictured it, and it was completely filled with intricate, chained scripts, in what appeared to be the same blue paint that was used on the water sources. The only areas that didn’t have scripts on them were a small circle in the center, which was presumably where you were supposed to stand, and an even smaller circle for a white stone.
After squatting down I slowly looked over the scripts closest to me. Just like with the water source script before, I didn’t immediately understand all the functions that were in use, but I could make out certain things. Such as that the “signs” people were seeing weren’t godly effect shows, but mana taking on a shape determined by the stones, just like it was turned into water with blue stones. That means stones can hold different information... Magical flash drives? Works for me.
I kept going and my eyes went wide when they fell on the initialization script. The ritual platform wasn’t activated by the stone, nor was it running indefinitely. It was activated by pressure! How could I not realize that!? Tomar told me the stone had been put onto the platform before he stepped onto it!
Barely a minute had passed and I had already gleaned very valuable information. “This is amazing... Thank you,” I said, looking up at Berla, and she smiled once more.
If we hadn’t taken her with us, we might’ve never found this place. The town was relatively small in comparison to Alarna, but this square was in such a remote spot that we probably never would’ve come here.
“I don’t understand most of these,” Riala said with a pout.
“Don’t worry,” I said with a chuckle. “We’ll go through them bit by bit and learn everything about them.” As I went back to reading the scripts, Berla sat down on the floor, watching us.
Chaining scripts had already been something I hadn’t been familiar with and just discovered via trial and error, but these scripts utilized several features that didn’t exist in the Omega I was familiar with. Like actual sub-functions for example, even though the language was supposed to only support jumps as part of its design. I was ecstatic about every new thing I learned. And then my eyes finally fell on the script I had been looking for. The one at the core, responsible for actually applying the Calling.
“Here it is,” I said in a whisper. “The answer to... how...”
I froze and stared at the platform in silence. A single word had crushed my hopes. Not even a full word. A single abbreviated instruction. “EXTR...” I whispered and sat down, hanging my head. This was it. Reversing the ritual script would not accomplish anything, unless I wanted to become a white stone.
“What’s wrong?” Berla said, having noticed that something had happened.
I answered her in a low voice without raising my head. “It extracts the knowledge from the white stones... I wasn’t just pulled from my world and landed inside Tomar... I was inside a white stone first. I... I won’t... Damn it...”
What did I expect? Find the right button and be back on earth in the blink of an eye? Of course not. This entire idea was stupid. How was that even supposed to work? Where is this world even? And how would some simple script do something as complex as sending spirits across time and space? Why would that function even exist?
In frustration, I went on a mental rant. There had always been a sliver of hope. After all, this was a world where we could shoot a water jet from our bodies to split a line of trees in half, but at that moment, all I could think about was that it was over. That I wouldn’t be able to return to my world via this path, and maybe there was just no path at all, seeing how I must’ve been inside a white stone for some reason. I just sat there, feeling sorry for myself, when Berla spoke up again.
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“Hey, Miles. If the knowledge is inside the stones, why aren’t the Callings random?” she asked, but I didn’t understand what she was talking about.
“What do you mean?”
“Children usually get the same Calling as their parents. Not always... but most of the time,” she said. “If the knowledge comes from inside the stones, shouldn’t it be random?”
My eyes widened at this new piece of information. “It’s not random? But then...” I said and shuffled to my knees to look at the script again. It was most definitely extracting something from the stone and putting it inside the person on the platform. That something being everything the ritual was supposed to give you only made sense, because there was nothing else on the platform that would do that. At least as far as I could see. However, if it wasn’t random, there might be more to it yet. A small spark of hope lit up inside me again. “I need to know more.”
Before I could do anything else, however, I noticed that Berla’s head snapped in the direction where we had come from. A man walked out of the shadow of a house and into the moonlight, where his face became visible and I was able to recognize him as the guard that had interrogated us, Captain Lera.
I got up immediately, but out of the corner of my eyes I could see more shadows coming from multiple directions. Soldiers of Alarna, all of them with spears at the ready. I looked around and counted ten, plus the captain, who was walking in our direction.
“Somehow you’re never where you’re supposed to be, Mr. Remor. That makes my job kind of tedious,” he said and came to a stop at a distance of about twenty meters. “I want to get out of town before the sun rises, so I would appreciate it if you didn’t resist. Know that four platoons are waiting outside town, you’re not getting away this time.”
Intimidation? That’s your tactic? I thought. Even if what he said was true, as long as we could make it past these guys, I was sure we could find some way out of here. Either he underestimated us or he was in a real hurry. Maybe a bit of both?
I waved Riala over to me and stepped towards Berla to help her up. Then I took a blue stone from my pocket and held it up for the captain to see, at which point the soldiers that had kept slowly creeping closer step by step came to a stop.
“I’d like to make you a counteroffer, captain. What happened between us last time was kind of a warning shot. If you force my hand you won’t get off that easily this time. Just let us go in peace, we’re not even in Alarna anymore.”
The captain furrowed his brows. “That won’t be possible, I have my orders. Not to mention that I see it as my personal failing that a dangerous criminal like you managed to flee,” he said before glancing at Berla. “Of course you will have to come with us as well. Your mother is worried sick about you. Although I imagine she will be quite disappointed by your behavior. Are you looking for a chance to show your loyalty by any chance? If so, this would be it.”
I glanced over at Berla, but she only hung her head with a sad expression. I didn’t know anything about her family, though something seemed to be going on there.
“How do you picture this going, captain? We could kill half of you before you even have a chance to react. Like that I guy,” I said, suddenly raising my arm at one soldier, who was visibly flustered by my threat and stumbled a few steps backwards.
Good, they’re scared of us, I thought and lowered my arm again. I doubted that they would let us go, but I had to at least try. If possible, I would rather not kill a bunch of people while controlling Tomar’s body and with a young girl standing at my side, though she already had two blue stones in her hands as well. The non-lethal scripts meanwhile would buy us a few seconds, but we wouldn’t actually be able to knock all of them out before one or more of them reached us. Even with Berla by our side, we would probably be done if that happened. Though it seemed like they weren’t sure about it, seeing how they hadn’t immediately jumped us. I guessed the original plan had been to get us while we were asleep. For the moment, our best chance was to create an opening and flee.
The captain looked admonishingly at the flustered soldier, who quickly got into position again. Captain Lera then locked onto me once more. “Believe me, they will do their job. Last chance, Mr. Remor.”
“Likewise, captain,” I said and raised my arms in his direction, before whispering “We’ll go through the captain. Defense on the right when I give the signal,” to Riala and Berla, who nodded in understanding.
We stood like that for a few seconds, unmoving, while the captain looked us up and down, but eventually he made his decision.
“Get them!”
“Go!”
The captain and I said almost simultaneously. I shot three water blasts in quick succession at the captain and two soldiers on his left, while Riala took out two on his right. We immediately started running straight in the direction of the captain, while the other soldiers followed after us.
A few of the blasted soldiers seemed to be out of it, but the captain was already recovering when we reached his position, so I shot another water blast straight at his face, throwing it back to the ground with a heavy crash. We made it past him, and while Riala and Berla kept running as fast as they could, I did my best to hold off the other soldiers a little while following them.
Unfortunately, this had been the plan in its entirety for the moment. We were trapped in a walled town, we had pursuers hot on our tail, more danger awaited us on the outside, and we didn’t know where to go. How are we in the exact same situation as last week again already!?