Seeing how Tomar and Riala had run around with scripts on their bodies for weeks and months by this point, the view should maybe not have been so unusual, but several details about the ones on Shadi’s back stuck out. Like the fact that they were the unreadable variant, which was used with the engagement script as well. They were also much more tightly packed and written in characters that were so tiny that I had a hard time imagining someone writing them by hand. At least with the writing utensils they had on hand here. What was more though, they didn’t actually look painted on at all, they looked like a tattoo, something I hadn’t seen in this world at all yet.

Staring at the scripts in fascination, I didn’t immediately notice Nym’s confused expression, until she addressed me.

“Is this not normal for Sourcerers?” she asked, looking at a script peeking out from under my shirt.

It was a reasonable enough assumption, but I wasn’t going to go into that right now.

“Hm... That’s hard to explain. Suffice it to say that this is unusual.”

It did make a lot of sense that she had scripts on her though, as it explained why she didn’t feel like a beast. Her aura was under control, and some part of them might have been responsible for it.

Moving closer to examine this work of art more closely, I slowly reached out to confirm my suspicions of it being a tattoo, just to have my hand slapped away by Nym.

“Huh?”

“Would you mind explaining to me what you’re doing?” she asked, looking at me with contempt.

“I just wanted to check if this is painted on!”

“You’re not going to feel up an unconscious girl in here, do you hear me?”

“Are you serious?” I asked, irritated by the accusation. “I’m just interested in the scripture sigils.”

“Not on my watch.”

Does me checking out her back really look that creepy? Ugh.

“Fine, would you do me a favor and ‘feel her up’ then? They aren’t on the skin, are they? It looks unusual.”

Suspicion still in her eyes, Nym finally took her eyes off me and looked closer at the scripts as well. Pinching the skin and running her hands across the girl’s back, she was able to confirm my suspicion.

“You’re right, it seems to be under the skin. How peculiar.”

“Have you ever seen ink applied like this?” I asked.

“I can’t say that I have. Though I suppose you could technically insert it with a needle... Does that mean the sigils on your body aren’t like this?”

Ignoring her question, I tried desperately to read the scripts. This was a much larger sample size than what we had before, and there had to be some logic to it. Under the watchful eyes of Nym I kept leaning over the bed, walking around it, and getting closer, to get a better look at certain spots.

“We should transcribe this while we can...” I said absentmindedly. “Berla could you—”

Before I could even finish my thought, she cut me off. “How much do you need?” she asked.

I was briefly startled by her voice coming from right next to me, not having noticed that she came over and was looking at the scripts with me.

“I guess you’ll need quite a few sheets of paper?”

She understood that we would need all of it, and also that we wouldn’t be able to write this intricately with a quill. We needed more paper than we would need to cover her back.

“Eight sheets maybe? Make it ten, just in case,” I said.

While I kept trying to decipher what was written here, I only vaguely made out Berla and Nym talking about getting something to copy it. She was apparently nearly out of paper right now, so Berla decided to get some for us. Another situation where I wished we had Riala with us, though I could imagine that this amount would’ve been too much for even her to remember. Tomar had the same idea.

‘Too bad Riala is with Zara today. We could get her though. She’ll be mad that she missed this.’

I shook my head. There would be enough time for her to study this, and Zara would get mad if we kept asking to postpone the agreed to visits, or cut them short, like we had done multiple times already.

“You. Uh, it’s Tomar, right?” Nym asked all of a sudden.

“Yes. Nice to meet you,” I said without looking up. “This one’s weird...” I whispered at a particular sigil.

“Listen, if she’s actually dangerous, I will give you a bit of leeway, but I’m not keen on people hanging around here and examining my patients. Is it actually necessary that you do this right now?”

“Something unexpected happened to her during the ritual, and we need to figure out what that was as soon as possible. Ideally before she wakes up. I’d appreciate it if you let us do this. Assuming you’re done examining her for the moment.”

“Very well. I’ll go back to work then, but I’m keeping an eye on you.”

“Yea, yea...”

With Nym having gone to the other side of the room, doing whatever it was she was doing before we got here, it was finally quiet around us.

I wondered if there was any chance of Shadi’s back having been like this before the ritual, but it seemed very unlikely. Not only because this looked like a huge, intricate, and flawless tattoo, in a town that didn’t have anything like it, but also because the script’s sigils, while unusual, looked like they were put in place with purpose. It didn’t look like someone had just made this up on the fly. The more likely explanation was that this had appeared on her during the ritual, to give her her powers. One had to wonder how a magic user might work in this world, and this was probably it. Just like us, they would simply have scripts on them, and they would get them when they became Sourcerers.

This had interesting implications. You couldn’t accidentally blur a tattoo, but if she were to get injured, and these scripts broke, she might not be able to use some or even all of her abilities anymore. Just like a Fighter, they could effectively get crippled, and unable to make use of their Calling anymore. Even though a wizard wouldn’t traditionally need much of a functioning body to cast spells.

With this theory in mind, one had to wonder whether she was able to actually read and write Omega. Sourcerers getting weakened, or even useless, by as much as a shallow cut seemed very much in line with how this world worked. After all, our group was pretty powerful already. For this to work as a balancing mechanism, they couldn’t be allowed to just write new scripts on their body.

What also supported this hypothetical, were these new types of scripts we were seeing recently. They weren’t standard Omega, so even I couldn’t simply read them, and this might not have been a coincidence. The water source and the ritual platform were one thing, but these other scripts were ones that would, theoretically, appear more often in this world, with every one who enters into a magical contract or gets a magic Calling. And the more research material you have, the easier it becomes to understand the entire system behind it. Assuming you could read it, but this looked like gibberish for the most part. Except for the section I was narrowing in on, because it was the one with the most characters I recognized.

“CMP...” I said quietly.

‘Compare?’ Tomar asked.

“No, that doesn’t make sense in context. Unless I have the context wrong, which is very much possible,” I sighed. “And right after that it becomes gibberish again. These few declarations make no sense... And the code becomes more and more nonsensical from there. Either this is something I don’t know or it’s encrypted. What fucks me up is that I feel like I’ve seen this before!”

‘Hm...’

I had done a lot of reverse engineering in my life, a process of gaining an understanding of foreign codes or file formats, and I had seen a lot, but you just can’t remember everything. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one digging around my memories.

‘What about a compression...’ Tomar said, trying to recall something. ‘That runs from top to bottom, picking up patterns as it goes.’

“Where did you pull that from?” I exclaimed.

Realizing that I said this in almost a normal volume, I glanced up at Nym, and she glanced back at me, but didn’t say anything. I shook my head to signal that I hadn't been talking to hear and looked back down.

‘Since when do I know where you know stuff from?’

“Fair enough. I don’t remember that at all, but it’s interesting.”

The idea was that these scripts were partially gibberish because parts of them referenced other parts. Patterns that would otherwise be repeated over and over would be shortened to just a few characters, reducing the amount of sigils necessary. At the same time, it would also obscure the script. Not quite on the level of an encryption, but enough for someone to not be able to simply read it.

If this is the start of a reference... and it points here... and then...

The door opened again, and Berla and Fae came inside, the latter carrying the writing material, which would’ve been challenging for Berla to get here alone.

“Wow! What’s that?” she asked excitedly, looking at the scripts.

“We don’t exactly know yet,” I said and pointed at the sheets of paper she held. “Could I have that?”

“Of course!”

She handed everything over and I immediately got down to the floor to start writing. I didn’t copy the scripts, however. Instead, I experimented with ways to turn them back into standard Omega. Not my brightest moment, as it would’ve been much safer to copy them first, but I couldn’t help myself.

This goes here, and then that there, and this... Yea, this is nonsense, next try.

It took me a few attempts, but eventually I landed on something that seemed to make sense. The thing with decoding something is that you know you’re on the right track very quickly. The moment things make sense, will usually be the moment you’ve got it.

I kept looking back and forth between Shadi and my script, putting the last couple of sigils in place for this particular script.

“This is it... I know how it works!”

Picking up the sheet, I looked it over. A new script. One of many to be exact. Endless possibilities and opportunities abound. At least in theory.

‘Uhm... Miles? I don’t doubt that you got it, it looks like Omega now, but... Do you have any idea what any of these functions do?’

“I don’t have a single clue.”