As the adrenaline faded, I found myself a little surprised at how smoothly all of this had gone. Had I underestimated how unhappy the citizens were with the previous leadership? Or how scared they were of a new kind of beast? Was it peer pressure that made all of them accept me so easily? Or were our promises just that convincing? I had gone with the flow, and generally I considered people to be sheep, but it still perplexed me how we had essentially just strolled in here and asked them to give power over to us.

A knock on the door of the High Priest’s office interrupted my thoughts. “Come in,” I said, and as soon as the door was open, Zara flew in and fixed her eyes on Riala.

“Sis!”

“Riala!”

Despite her big sister betraying her in a way, by selling Tomar and her out to the guards, Riala had never spoken a single negative word about Zara. She loved her sister, and even though she had readily come with us to Cerus, she had waited for the day when she could see her again.

“I can’t believe you’re actually back! Are you okay?” Zara said, while hugging her younger sibling tightly.

“Yup! We were in Cerus, sis! And we camped a lot!”

“In Cerus...?” she said and looked at Tomar, behind Riala.

“Hello, Zara,” Tomar said. “Don’t worry, we were there before the beasts attacked.”

Yea, don’t worry Zara, I thought. The only dead people Riala saw were the ones she helped kill. You better hope she never tells her sister about that, Tomar. Heh... it’s kind of nice to not be on that side of the conversation.

“Don’t worry, hm?”

Zara let go of her sister and her head swiveled in my direction.

Uh oh...

“You’re... Lilly? Thank you very much for bringing my sister back to me. I thought I would never see her again.”

I could just take the thanks, but right now I was Lilly, the divine messenger, and that person hadn’t actually done much for Riala. It felt like she wanted to thank someone, just not Tomar. She was obviously still unhappy about what had happened. Granted, in her eyes we kind of kidnapped her sister.

“I’m happy to see two sisters reunited,” I said, “but I believe it’s these two who are most deserving of your gratitude. I’ve only known them for a short while, and it is my understanding that they were the ones who cared for Riala all these weeks.”

Zara hesitantly looked between Riala, Tomar, and Berla. After a moment, she took a deep breath and addressed her sister’s traveling companions. “Thank you for watching after her. And Tomar, I’m... I’m sorry I reported you. I thought about it a lot and I understand that you tried to protect yourself and Riala. But... it was still absolutely unacceptable for you to just leave Alarna with her!”

“I’m sorry, Zara. We would’ve come to you if we could have, but—”

“No buts,” she said. “That you would risk o— my sister’s life like that... But I don’t want to think about that anymore. I’m just happy that she’s back. Let’s head home. Okay, Riala?”

This was the first time I had ever seen Zara ask her sister like that, instead of simply trying to order her around. We had rarely treated Riala like a little child, and she responded well to that. Zara was her guardian, however, and not only did she want to protect her sister at all times, I also suspected that she was very jealous when Riala interacted with other people. Maybe she had finally learned that controlling her little sister’s every step would be difficult though.

“Yes!” Riala exclaimed and ran around the room hugging everyone present, including me, who she wasn’t supposed to know very well yet. Given Riala’s nature, however, this didn’t surprise Zara in the least.

“I’ll come back tomorrow!” Riala said.

Zara did flinch a little at that last part, and I could picture her trying to change Riala’s mind later, but for the moment, she simply took her sister by the hand, thanked us once more, and finally left the office. As they went down the hallway outside, I could briefly make out Riala saying the words “beast” and “fluffy,” to which Zara responded with a very audible “What!?”, but at least she didn’t storm right back in here.

“Maybe we should’ve told her not to say anything about beasts to Zara,” Berla said with uncertainty, as she came over and sat down at my side.

“It should be fine as long as she doesn’t tell her how much danger she was in.”

“I guess so.”

“So, what now?” Tomar asked.

“Right. What now?” I said.

We would have to figure out a plethora of things in a short amount of time. Reurig was presently looking into the guard situation, but we also had to determine what would be needed of us in the immediate future, now that the High Priest and the king were in jail. We also had to ensure that these people didn’t try to get back at us, however. They knew where our abilities came from, at least in part, and they could try to use this knowledge against us. At least we didn’t need blue stones anymore, which made the stories about our abilities being divine blessings much more believable. Still, we had to get this knowledge under control, which meant we would have to talk to the resident scripture researcher. We should also talk to Aelene, to see what her deal is, and even if we had just overthrown them, we could also try to talk to the previous leadership. The chances that they would help us were probably low, but it would make things easier.

“I think we should head to the prison first. We need to talk to the people there. We also need to introduce ourselves to the priests, seeing how we just axed their religious leader. Then the guards... defenses against the beasts... Cerus... figure out the hierarchy of the authorities, talk to their leaders as well... So much talking...”

“In short, we’ll be busy,” Tomar said with a chuckle. He seemed carefree, but he was probably still high on our plan working out.

“Yea. Maybe just five more minutes though...?”

‘Come on, Miles. Let’s go. The priests need to hear from you, and I kind of want to see the High Priest and Aelene in prison after all they’ve done.’

“Alright, alright,” I said, while indicating that I was responding to Lilana. Most of the time she was pretty quiet, presumably just observing what I was doing, though she was quick to join any conversation related to the temple, their religion, or the gods. This was definitely important to her, and since the plan was for her to take over the role of divine messenger in the near future, I couldn’t half-ass this. “Priests and prison then. Is there a quick way to gather the priests?”

‘There’s a bell in the garden that’s used to call everyone for group prayer in the morning. The priests will come when they hear it.’

“Alright, then we’ll get that over with and then head to the prison. Oh, we need to get some white stones though... I’ve used them all up, and if we need a ‘blessing,’ we should have some on hand. Do you know where they’re stored?”

‘Uhm... Not really. Maybe they’re in the ritual chamber?’

“Yea, maybe. The door is locked though, right? Do you know where to find a key?”

“I know my uncle has one, but the High Priest must too, right?”

“Probably...” I said. Scanning the room, I didn’t see any keychains though. I was about to get up, when I realized that Berla had started snuggling up to me once more, though not quite as aggressively as last night, presumably because Lilana was awake right now. Another thing I need to figure out... What do I do about this?

“Sorry,” I said to Berla and left her behind on the sofa, as I got up to check the drawers of the High Priest’s desk on the other side of the room. I found writing utensils, a lot of files and documents, but still no keys.

Locks were relatively rare in Alarna, because stealing and break-ins would have some real consequences here. In my world, one might be quick to say “it’s not a problem as long as they don’t catch you,” but when just stealing something mundane like an apple will immediately land you in jail, and doing it a few more times will get you killed, very few would be willing to risk it, especially since everybody got a Calling and a job anyway.

Now that I think about it, I’ve never asked why that Bael boy in Cerus had repeatedly stolen from the market. He should’ve had no reason to do that... and this last time when he had been caught he was almost fifteen already. Just a little longer and he would’ve gotten his Calling. Hm... I guess I might never know now.

The primary reason the ritual chamber was locked was because there were dangers associated with just letting people hop onto the ritual platform without oversight or guards, which also meant that there probably wouldn’t be a lot of keys to the room. Lilana was right that the High Priest probably had one, but even if he did, I couldn’t find it.

“Maybe he has it on him or something. And your uncle is in prison as well, so I guess we’ll get the white stones later.”

‘Hmhm, sounds good.’

The upper clergy consisted of eight priests, for the eight main gods of this faith, and with Lilana’s parents and her father’s brother, three of them were related to her. Because of this she had acted all high and mighty when we first met, but she didn’t seem to actually care much about her family. When I first brought up the fact that we might have to act against them, her immediate reaction was “That’s fine.” Maybe it was the way priests were raised, but to them, family just didn’t seem very important, unless it was about making use of their influence. In a way, this reminded me more of aristocrats than anything I had heard about Rulers.

I was about to slam shut the drawer I had searched through last, when I noticed a certain name on one of the files. “Tomar Remor...”

“Hm? Why did you say my full name?” Tomar asked, confused.

I took the file out of the drawer, holding it up to him, and his eyes widened.

“The High Priest has a file about me?”

“I guess it’s not all that surprising,” I said and opened it. It mostly included general information about Tomar. His name, the names of his parents, his birthday, there was nothing special in there at first glance. However, one line caught my eye. “Huh...”

“What is it?”

“Your Calling... it says ‘Researcher (Determined),’ but also... ‘Split One,’ with a question mark.”

Tomar looked at me with a perplexed expression. It seemed like the High Priest knew something we didn’t. Reurig had presumably not known about this either, despite being a temple agent, or he would’ve surely mentioned it.

“Huh? What kind of Calling is Split One?” Berla asked.

“Good question,” I said. “Maybe it stands for ‘split personality’...? That would make sense. Does this mean the High Priest knew about us though?”

I didn’t yet know whether we were getting answers right now or just more questions. We had a lot to talk about with our prisoners.