The ring between Laurence's fingers cracked and shattered into dust. Wiping off the residue left behind he sighed. Glancing at the letter that sat to the side upon his workbench he pulled out a strip of metal from the large pile that sat to his right. Using his truesense he idly wrapped it around a metal bar about as thick as a finger before running his fingers against the edges to smooth it off.
Four more times he moved the metal strip around the bar and then smoothed the wrappings down with his fingers, until finally he had five plain rings as a basis to work with. Allowing each ring to stand on platforms of air just below eye height he began to work on them simultaneously, carving simple artistic pieces onto each one. The first had a flower upon it, the second; an eye. Third, he made a spiral and fourth was a flame. The fifth and final ring he spent a few moments extra creating a symbol of two snakes eating each others tails. He smiled for a moment and just waited. After a moment the spiral ring cracked and shattered like the previous ring he had made. A hairline fracture formed and spread across the flower before that ring too shattered. The other three rings, however, did nothing.
Laurence grabbed the rings from the air and pulled out a thin filament from within the pile of materials to his right, before slowly sliding it through the indentation caused by the patterns on each ring, before pressing it down and solidifying the rings themselves. There was nothing fancy about these rings, no stones set within, no interesting layers or splits on the rings themselves, but instead just a simple filigree on the outside surface of each ring. This did not mean the rings themselves were not valuable or contained no power. In fact these simple looking rings were by far the most powerful and complete objects he had made since he created his Web of Time. They were the culmination of all his work since he had turned eighteen, and if they were able to withstand the millions of glyphs he had used in their creation they would be pinnacle Immortal ranked equipment.
The issue was that very few objects in the entire tower could withstand the full force of so many glyphs, and none could withstand the force perfectly. Ascendant Immortal materials were all unique and had true sentience, so would be near impossible to transform into something like the rings that Laurence held in the air.
As a finishing touch to the rings, he pulled out a small bowl filled with clear blue liquid, and dunked each ring within for mere moments. As he pulled the rings out of the liquid he heard a scratch behind him and the door opened.
“What have you spent the last twelve hours making, then?” Peter asked behind him.
“Rings,” Laurence replied glibly.
“I can see that,” he said as the light spilled into the room properly, illuminating the piles of mess and thin layer of residue that seemed to cover everything within the work-space. “What is their purpose though?”
“Fine,” Laurence muttered. “The rings are all made from a composite of ardent silver and lover's iron, colloquially called orihalicum. The filigree is burnt dragon gold, and the polish I used to cover the rings is a creation of my own that I have called liquid time”.
“Liquid time,” Peter gasped. “Is that...” he trailed off as he looked back at the young woman encased in crystal that stood prominently in the room behind him.
“Yes, its excess crystals from the fallout of my Manifestation. I turned them into a liquid after heating them and discovered that they are an incredible finishing material. Anyway, these rings themselves are what I have dubbed my ‘rings of memory’. Each one is connected to my memory of certain events, and provides a shield for someone who wears the rings for as long as my memory of the event exists. It doesn't mean the shields are unbreakable, not by any means, but the strike would have to be strong enough to kill me in one blow to break it”.
“How in the name of Babel herself did you manage to make that happen? I can understand the shield, but connecting it to something transient like a memory? That seems impossible”. Peter was stunned. From what he knew of Creation and array making Laurence had done the impossible.
“This may seem a bit rude, but I have to ask. Peter how far have you delved into the tenets given to you in the Book of Death?”
“I've gone as far as any Immortal would. I've looked into it and memorised it, and now I am combining it with my knowledge of control and Order”.
“Okay, so you're becoming a Lich. That's fair enough. The issue I have is that every Immortal who comes here to try and get me to make them something, and there are a lot of those, they think that because they reached Heaven rank with something that they completed it”.
“So they, so we are wrong?”
“Very. Something that most people don't understand is that the Books are an essence. They aren't a map or a guide, but as you gain more of a grasp of what they show you, the more connected to that essence you are. In fact, by the time you reach Sainthood you are already an avatar of the Book”. Laurence grimaced as he spoke. What he was saying was a bitter pill even for him.
“What are you implying, Laurence?”
“The Books changed us. I'm saying that we were likely never really children. We didn't have time to grow and to learn, and for that reason you can't really call any Golden Child a balanced or healthy adult. Us Golden Children... we were incomplete when we were given the Book, and it changed us into these vessels of something else”. He stopped and rubbed his eyes. Laurence could not remember the last time he had actually slept. Sleeping was not a necessity for him, but he felt that his body would function better if he gave himself the time to relax. “We're getting off topic here. My original point is that when I first learned how to create these artifacts I used glyphs to represent words to tell my creations what their purpose was. Eventually I learned to write sentences and paragraphs; the artifacts stopped trying to perform these vague and broad actions I originally gave them and I was able to hone in on what I wanted them to show. That was my ascension to Heaven in Creation. Now? Now I write poems, I make stories with the glyphs, I change the artifacts I have in my grasp from mere objects into true creations. I give them life, stories, a purpose more than just ‘hold this’ or ‘cut that’. I bind them to themselves and give them the freedom to improve. I Create, and I go beyond the essence of Creation to do it. I ascend it”.
“So there's more to the paths we take than the end the Books give us?”
“That's the mistake I almost made. There is no end to the eternal, and that is why I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that given enough time I could bring her back”. Laurence stopped and glanced at the envelope before turning to face Peter properly. “But now I have a faster option”.
For a moment there was silence between the two men. It was deafening within the quiet hilltop that Laurence lived on.
“What?” Peter said, his mind reeling in the shock of everything that Laurence had just said.
“I found something last night that gave me an answer that I was looking for, something I didn't even know existed, but I must have had with me since I was seven years old. I found a clue to something that should not exist”.
“So the auger was right?”
“Undoubtedly. As much as it pains me to admit it, I have to admit that my destiny has been seen. At least this far. Now, before we continue I would like to show you my latest Creations. This ring is yours. I call it The Ode to Spirit, and you can use it on yourself or Rose. I don't really care. The second ring belongs to Fen. It’s called The Pains of Loss, and is bound to my most powerful and vivid memory. This ring has a shield that even Ascendant Immortals cannot break... in theory. The third ring though, that is my own, and is something different entirely. I call it... I guess I can just call it Potential”.
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