“Boss, they finally posted the information about the rituals,” a young man said to another in the early hours of the day, standing in a dimly lit room without windows.

Last week, Lilly had announced that the temple would accept applications from ritual candidates to receive specific Callings in the near future. Everybody had been waiting with bated breaths for more information to be posted on the new bulletin board in the main square, and after the eighth day, it was finally here.

The boss looked up from a pile of stones he had been digging around in and glanced at the young man expectantly.

“It says they want a written application,” he began. “They need details about the person, their parents and their Callings, their upbringing, what Calling they’d like to have, what Calling they believe they would get, what they think they would be most suitable for, what job they picture themselves doing for the rest of their lives, and on and on. Sounds really annoying... The rituals are supposed to already take place next week though.”

“Hm. What about the available Callings?”

“Uhm,” the young man said, checking his notes. “For now they only accept Fighters, Handiworkers, and Researchers.”

“What?” the boss asked, perplexed. “No Worshippers?”

“No, apparently not.”

This was a somewhat curious turn of events. Lilly had said that not all Callings would be available right away, but for a divine messenger to not offer the Worshipper Calling to people seemed weird. If anything, he would’ve expected them to prioritize that Calling, withholding some of the others.

“And no Charmers either... Did you learn anything about that new Calling?”

“Nothing we didn’t know or suspect already. I heard from a guard that Sourcerers are supposed to work with water sources and scripture sigils. Sounds like they’ll do the same things that Oryn guy always did.”

“With the exception that they’re able to kill beasts... And defeat the strongest guards around,” the boss added.

“Right...”

There was a saying in Alarna. If you wanted everyone in town to know something, you had to tell only one other person. Unless you were really careful with who you trusted, or you made sure they didn’t talk, you could be certain that your words would quickly make the rounds if they held any kind of interesting information or gossip, and four days after Lilly had uttered the word “Sourcerer” in front of two guards, most people already knew about this new Calling that Tomar Remor had supposedly received.

“It also said that more Callings might become available in the future though,” the young man added.

“Somehow I have my doubts that they’ll give away that one,” the boss said with a deprecating smile. “I had really hoped for Charmers though. How many candidates do we have?”

“You remember Shadi and her friends? They just turned fifteen,” the young man said with a happy smile. “They agreed immediately.”

“Seriously? Shadi? And we can’t make her a Charmer? Now that’s brutal.”

“As if she needs it...”

“Get over your crush and think about what she could do, Wex.”

“Hm... What if we told her not to apply yet?”

“No, that won’t work... The priests will want to get the kids out of the mini temple as soon as possible. They probably won’t have a choice.”

“What should I tell them then?”

The boss briefly contemplated their situation. He had hoped to generate some Charmers loyal to him, but if that really wasn’t in the cards, he would have to settle. Though he didn’t want to give up quite that easily.

“Tell them to try anyway... Have them make up tear-jerking stories about how they’ve always wanted to become Charmers, and let them plead to Lilly to reconsider this limitation. Maybe she will, who knows. If not, our only real option is Fighters.”

“Will do.”

“Shadi, Tyra, and what’s-his-name make three. Anyone else?”

“There are more candidates, but nobody we have any leverage over.”

“Hm, alright. Let Ari know and then get back to it.”

“Roger, boss,” Wex said and made to leave the room, though he stopped short of the door and turned around one more time. “Hey, Ten... Do you think we still need to do this? It seems like things are changing for the better, don’t they? Maybe... it’s not necessary anymore.”

“Wex, she won’t be any different,” Ten, the boss, said. “Think about it. The first thing she did was imprison anyone who was against her. Then she shut Grym and Eissen up by force. And her grand idea of freedom for the people is for them to choose which Calling they want to be slaves to. Not to mention that her entire backstory seems shaky. We’re not going to stop here. Okay?”

“Okay...” he said with a nod and finally left the room.

“Besides... I’d rather die than let a priestess rule over us...” Ten said under his breath once Wex was gone.

Office

“What were you doing last night?” Berla asked after getting up in the morning.

“I figured out something new,” I said, grinning from ear to ear.

“Oh, a new script?” she said.

“Heh, yea... Kind of. Honestly, I don’t even know what it is, but it’s so amazing... ”

“I don’t know whether to be curious or worried if you’re that excited...”

“It feels weird,” Hati added. “Especially after Lilly kept changing it.”

“Alright, I’m going to lean towards worry,” Berla said.

“It’s fine,” I said with a chuckle. “Okay, first... this,” I said and put a blue stone on the back of my hand. As I did, the colorful flakes started raining down from my hand once more.

“That’s...” Berla said, her expression changing to one of surprise. “But that wasn’t a black stone! How...?”

“I have no idea!” I said, still smiling. “But that’s not even the amazing part yet!”

“Do you know what this does now?” Berla asked.

“No, but I found a way to abuse them. God, this is so cool. I’ll show you, we’ll just have to wait for this script to finish real quick...”

Just like back in the woods, these flakes still behaved strangely, even if their origin wasn’t a black stone. Once you started the script, to let them rain down like this, there was basically no stopping them. They would keep coming for about a minute, regardless of whether you used smaller stones, changed the output level, or even washed away the script. They were basically breaking the rules. However, there were things you could do with them.

“Okay,” I said as the rain ceased. “Now... check this out.”

I pressed a seemingly random spot on my body and held out my arm once more. Nothing seemed to happen at first, but after a moment, colors flash up in the air below my hand. Little by little, flakes started to appear, suspended in the air. Instead of their normal, shifting colors, however, every one took on only one color. A few greens, a few blues, some browns... until a picture appeared, hanging in the air.

“W-what... How...” Berla stammered, staring wide-eyed at the slightly pixelated picture of a tree standing on a field under a blue sky. When she stepped closer and made to reach out to the flakes, I stopped her.

“Ah! Careful. I haven’t tried touching them yet, I don’t know what that would do,” I said with a chuckle.

She pulled her hand back, but kept coming closer to look at the image from all sides. The flakes were so thin that you were almost unable to see them from certain angles, but they took on the same color from both sides, showing the same image from behind, just inverted on the X-axis.

“What is this...” Berla asked, still in shock.

“I figured out how to modulate their color and position! I can basically create pixel graphics this way!” I said, excited.

I hadn’t seen a computer in over two months, and what I felt after managing to create an image out of thin air like this was indescribable. If you think about it, the job of a programmer is kind of silly. You essentially make it your life’s purpose to turn pixels on a screen on and off in specific patterns, based on certain inputs, to create interactive applications. However, that had been my life for a very long time. Day and day out. And to see this picture before me, when I thought that I would never see anything like it ever again, was a rush.

Creating it had been quite the ordeal, but this feeling alone was worth it. I needed to carefully control the positions and colors of the flakes, which I accomplished with a long series of interlocked scripts, all with very specific parameters.

When we tested the black stone for the first time, we had tried to apply some force to the output, and the result had been... nothing. There was nothing to see, even though the script was executed. Now I knew, it had worked as intended, but the flakes simply interpreted the force parameter as the color and became transparent. The output location parameter they would react normally to though, and once I had them in a specific color and position, I only needed to suspend them in the air with a loop, similar to how we turned a stream of water into a rotating ball. The result was a thirtytwo by thirtytwo “pixel” large canvas that I could fill to my liking. Granted, the flakes weren’t uniformly square, so the look could’ve been cleaner, but that barely hampered my excitement.

“Pixel graphics...?” Berla asked.

“Oh! It means to create a picture from small dots,” I explained. “Though it would look better if I had more dots... It’s unfortunate that Lilana isn’t bigger.”

“Huh? What do you mean?” Berla asked, looking at me in confusion.

“Well, I needed a ton of scripts just to... Wait, I’ll show you,” I said and took off the priest robe I was wearing, revealing that Lilana’s body was filled with scripts.

From her shoulders down to her ankles I had basically used every open space I could reach for the scripts I needed. This too had been an ordeal to plan out, since the scripts needed to interlock in very specific ways, and I couldn’t easily connect one on my legs to one on my arms for example.

“That’s... a lot...” Berla said, looking me up and down.

“Yea,” I cackled.

We had always used more than just our arms and legs for scripts, but right now, I looked like my entire body had been tattooed overnight. Not necessarily a look I would go for, but I didn’t hate it either.

“But if I had a little more space...” I continued, “I could double or even triple the resolution... or... maybe I could animate it...!”

I was deep in thought about how I could potentially create animated Gifs with this technique, when Berla suddenly stood right in front of me and looked me in the eyes.

“Uhm... Miles, could you do me a favor?”

“Huh? Er... of course, what’s wrong?” I said.

“You... seem a little obsessed right now... I can see that this is important to you, but... is there a practical use for it?”

“A practical use? Hm... Well, I mean...” I started, but I couldn’t really think of anything.

I would presumably never have enough space to create anything truly complex. Not to mention that I was missing an input. Otherwise I might even be able to create a computer this way, and at that point, things would get really interesting. This wasn’t realistic however. And if it was just about creating pictures, animated or not, all this would do was look interesting. Simply drawing a picture on a piece of paper would be way more efficient.

“No... there isn’t really any practical use for it,” I admitted.

“It’s okay to not obsess over it so much then, right? I’m a little worried about you,” she said as she took my hands in hers.

I was a bit confused for a moment, until I thought back to the last few hours and realized that, not only did I spend a lot of valuable time on something that was borderline useless, I probably did seem somewhat unraveled right now. After all, I was standing there, rambling on about dotted pictures, half-naked, with scripts on my body from head to toe.

Actually... I wanted to find something useful, maybe even revolutionary, like last time... What did I even do last night?

It wasn’t unusual for me to do an all-nighter for something I did just for fun, but I had more important things on my mind when I started. Weird.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to worry you. It was just for fun. I couldn’t stop myself.”

After explaining to her the few things this actually had taught me, I looked down at myself once more.

“I might have overdone it a little. I— Wah!!” I yelled, or rather Lilana yelled, as I lost control when she woke up. “What did you do!? And why am I standing here in my underwear!?”

Oops...