I looked at the puddles of water around the room and down at my hands as I was clutching them. “So far, so good.”

While using scripts was uncomfortable, I felt fine. Even after repeated use and with force applied to the water, the sensation didn’t change, and we had decided on a script that we would use for defending ourselves. Meanwhile, Riala was still hopping around me, pleading to try it as well.

“Please, please, please!”

“...”

‘You know, if we’re leaving for the guard station soon anyway... Zara might be mad at us, but...’

“You’re a bad influence...”

Riala looked at me in confusion for a moment, but jumped in happiness when I agreed to try it on her as well. “Alright. We’ll try it. But, Riala, it hurts a little. Like last night. Is that really okay?”

My words didn’t even register properly. “Yes!” she said gleefully.

We got another Miles here...

I sat down with her and wrote a simple script on her hand, that would do nothing but spray a bit of water in the direction she would point her palm in. She looked on with great curiosity. “This part is different from yours. This too,” Riala pointed out.

How attentive is this girl?

The sigils she was pointing at were for the force of the stream and the amount of water. The last script I had tested was for my self defense. Since we were inside the house I had kept these values low, but the script on my hand now would produce a much stronger water stream. “That one is too powerful to use inside, we don’t want to break anything, right?”

I finished the script and instructed her what to do. “Just point your hand forward like this and press the blue stone on the back of it with your other hand.”

Riala stood up and did as instructed, raising her arm and holding it in the direction of the door. In the exact moment she used the blue stone, the door opened and Zara looked on in horror as water shot from her sister’s hand and landed in front of the young woman’s feet. Uh oh...

While I was looking at the scene with wide eyes and gritted teeth, Riala ran up to her sister. “Sis! I can make water!”

Zara’s eyes darted around between the puddle at her feet, her excited younger sibling, and me. Her expression turned from horror to fascination. Seeing someone produce water out of thin air, hundreds of meters away from a water source, would fascinate anyone. Maybe I should’ve approached this whole thing differently.

She got to her knees and looked Riala over. “Are you okay?”

“Yep!”

The fascination didn’t last long, however. Anger flared back up as she looked at me next. “I told you I don’t want you to do that in my house!! And you even did it to her!?”

“I’m sorry, Zara... I thought it would be better if I’m supervising her, instead of her trying it on her—” I tried to explain, but Zara interrupted me.

“You shouldn’t do this at all! Nobody should!” she said, before she delivered the finishing blow. “I reported you to the guards!”

I stared at her for a moment as I let the words sink in. It hurt a little, but I couldn’t really blame her. Whatever the mana was doing, it scared people. Not only that, I had also endangered her sister and essentially told her every single illegal thing I had been up to.

“I understand,” I said. “I will leave.”

As I stood up, I could see out the window, where a squad of guards was already approaching the house. “That was quick...”

‘Would’ve looked better if we had gone to them...’

“Hmhm,” I agreed.

Zara held Riala tight as she moved out of the way to let me walk out the room towards the front door. I gave a sad smile to Riala as I waved at her and left.

“Tomar, don’t go!” I heard her say from behind, but I walked on.

It will be fine, I assured myself. I would talk to the authorities, explain myself, and they would understand why I had acted the way I did. I was just a boy who got a Calling that allowed him to modify sigils. It was the first of its kind and I was scared, but also curious. They had to believe me. They will. It will be fine. And as soon as the situation was cleared up, I could talk to them about Riala. I took a deep breath and opened the door.

***

A guard captain walked down a street with two squads of his men behind him. Such a display of guards marching through town was rarely seen in these parts. While the citizens readily moved out of the way, very few of them left. Instead, they watched on, to see what was going to happen.

Captain Lera motioned one of his squad leaders to take position behind the house while he and the remaining squad came to a stop at the front. The guards positioned themselves in two rows, on the left and right of the path leading to the door, spears at the ready. The captain was about to announce his arrival to the people inside, when the front door opened and a boy stepped out.

“Mr. Remor. You’re under arrest. Raise your hands and come forward,” Captain Lera instructed.

The last time he had seen the boy, he was unresponsive and barely moved. He had been nothing but an empty husk. What the captain was looking at now was something else. Tomar had a fear inducing aura around him, similar to that of beasts. Yet his body language was non-threatening. He had expected the boy to either cover in fear or try to make a run for it. Yet he just stood there, seemingly at peace with himself, a hint of a smile on his face.

Tomar slowly made his way up to the captain, step by step, when a shout came from inside the house. “Riala, don’t!” No sooner had the words made it to the outside than a young girl came running out of the house, raised her arms, and produced a large stream of water that blasted the captain off his feet.

One of the guards immediately incapacited the girl with the blunt end of his spear, which prompted the boy to attack the guard, in an attempt to protect her. However, he was overpowered by the remaining guards before he could do anything.

“Riala!” came the helpless cry of a young woman from the house, where she was held back by another guard.

The drenched captain stood back up and walked up to the boy and the girl, both lying on the floor, held in place by the guards. “Listen, and listen well, Mr. Remor. I have orders to bring you in alive, but these are not strict orders,” he said to the boy while holding up his head by the hair.

The captain let go and shouted orders. “Handcuffs! And search them!”

The hands of both of them were bound behind their backs. The guards found several blue stones on the boy, hidden in his clothes, leading the captain to the conclusion that he hadn’t actually planned to come willingly. The girl didn’t have any more.

“We’re taking both of them!” the captain announced and started walking away. His men hefted the boy to his feet and picked up the unconscious girl, before marching after the captain in formation. Left behind was a devastated young woman.

***

“I don’t care what your gods say, High Priest. The boy has broken town laws and will be judged by the town’s authorities,” the king said.

“The town’s laws? He has broken the law of the gods, using the holy scripture as a plaything for himself! It’s blasphemy!” the High Priest said theatrically.

“A word spoken by your ancestor hundreds of years ago is hardly the word of the gods, High Priest Orthur. As much as you would like that,” King Hertar said. “Let’s be frank, shall we? We both were monitoring the boy and my guards got to him first.”

The High Priest was fuming. The boy was out of his reach now. None of the major factions could act lightly against the others, and openly opposing another could quickly lead to war. His agents had messed up and didn’t notice what the boy had apparently been up to. Had they been there, they could’ve taken him into custody first and the roles would now be reversed. The agents had already been dealt with, but that didn’t change the situation. It also meant that the king would have to be careful how he acted, however.

“I demand that you let us study him. Whatever he has done to himself is in direct contradiction with the teachings of the gods, and we will get to the bottom of it!”

Meaning you want to know how to get that power yourself, the king thought. However, the temple was in charge of the rituals and they were the only ones who even attempted to study the scripture sigils. That made his demand hard to refuse.

“Very well, you’re allowed to study the boy in his cell, under supervision,” the king agreed begrudgingly. This was a compromise neither party was happy with, but both agreed to. The High Priest stomped out of the king’s reception room, shouting at one of his subordinates to go and find a certain priest.

Meanwhile, the king turned to Captain Lera, who stood by his side. Just before the High Priest had stormed in, the captain was about to make a report.

“Have you gotten anything out of the boy yet?”

“He has been quite forthcoming actually. If you wanted to believe his words. He claims that his Calling gave him knowledge about the scripture sigils, but since this would be seen as blasphemous, he kept quiet. Instead, he snuck out at night to research the water sources, planning to eventually release his findings to the public.”

Tomar’s story appeared to make sense on the surface, and unbeknownst to the king and the captain, parts of it were even the truth. However, the boy could not explain how he had gotten the power to use scripture sigils on his own body. Nor did he have any information on how one would build water sources. If his claims were true, and he had received a previously unknown Handiworker or Researcher Calling related to water sources or scripture sigils, he would know more. Instead, he had partial knowledge, like one might receive from reading books. As neither Tomar nor Miles knew what it was like to receive a normal Calling, they hadn’t considered this. To someone who had a Calling, however, it was suspicious. The knowledge you had about a given field should be all-encompassing.

Tomar’s crimes, from breaking the curfew multiple times, over destroying a water source, to attacking a guard, were numerous enough to execute him immediately. That would’ve been standard procedure, because the town would not waste resources on long-time prisoners. But first, they would get everything they could out of the boy.