Misty Peaks was a hard place to find. It was made to be that way. A string of six mountains on the thirteenth floor of Babel had been co-opted by the New-Hephaistians in order to make a base that would allow entry to and exit from their home realm, the realm that their leader had made during his ascent. It was one of the prides of the entire clan, because it was an entry to anyone inventive, a place of pure exploration of the creativity that could come from life.
They had long since set the place up to call to those with a strong enough connection to the Book of Creation. It would call to them like the tower called to the young Golden Children of the clans, and in the process of entering Yun’s realm it would become their home.
The New-Hephaistians were different from the other clans; they had to be. There was nothing ancient for them to cling to, there was no conservative faction to the clan because there was no way to appeal to tradition. They made the traditions as they moved and breathed; everything was new.
This meant that unlike the clans that had ruled within the tower for hundreds of cycles, some spanning years and some spanning millennia, they readily accepted new blood. They were as zealous as the other clans at containing that new blood, but they would not turn away those with lesser talent. They needed bodies as much as they needed people with skill, if not more. They knew that they could not turn people away, but they were very aware that they had to have some way of not being destroyed like the old clan had been.
For that reason alone Misty Peaks was made, it became much more extremely quickly, but none of the core of the clan ever forgot that the entire area that surrounded the gateway into Yun’s realm was an intricately designed bulwark against anyone who would attempt to destabilise the clan.
A sense of danger washed over those who did not come to the mountains with the best of intentions, and persisted for as long as they kept up their intention. The command was written into the soil that made the dirt, the air that made the sky and the drops that made up the water. The rewriting of the world to form a doorway and at the same time a defense was as clear as day to Laurence and he could not help but be impressed.
Finding Misty Peaks had been easy for him; both he and Fen could feel the draw to the city form worlds away, but they were both special existences. The value of Laurence’s teaching to Fen was not downplayable, and even though he often took a hands off approach, his stone was being remolded into gold. The boy was gifted.
Laurence led the group to the bottom of the middle mountain. At the very base was a stairway. The steps were fine marble, and each one was perfectly even. If one followed the path up the mountain it eventually breached the cloud layer that gave the mountains their name and disappeared from sight. Above the first step was a sign with the symbol of the Hephaistia clan carved into it. The words ‘Misty Peaks’ sat under the Hephaistian hammer in a cursive font. It stuck out to Laurence in a way that was oddly reminiscent to him, however he could not place why. As he looked up the stairway he could see that every ten steps there was a lamp set up in the same style as the poles that held up the sign for Misty Peaks; it was a red metal, some sort of alloy that Laurence did not immediately recognise, inscribed with hundreds of symbols, each one a name. Why the names were there, Laurence had no idea, but a few of the names he saw were instantly recognisable to him. The first few hundred were the names of Yun, Louisa and then all of the people that they had taken from Biqiril when they were first climbing the Tower. After that the names quickly delved into people he did not recognise. He assumed that the names were just a signifier of members of the clan, but he was not entirely sure.
They began walking up the stairs, and quite quickly Laurence and Fen reached the top. As they glanced round at the sights of the town at the top of the stairwell they noticed that Peter had not shown up, nor had Rose. Laurence turned back to the stairway and looked down, only to see Peter halfway up the path with Rose strapped to his back. The corpse-woman seemed to be having a piggy-back ride as Peter slogged his way up the stairs that Laurence took no time at all to climb, which made him realise something. He delved into the makeup of the stairs themselves. It seemed that the stairs were a Creation of someone’s, made in order to test the potential of the people climbing them. If they had great potential then the route would be short, a simple path of one-hundred steps, but if they did not have great potential with the Book of Creation, or if they were inclined in a different direction then they would have to take the long route, the thousand steps. Peter’s issue was two-fold however. He was not exactly inclined towards the Book of Creation, he was more attuned to Death and Destruction, but also the current state Rose was in led her to being unattunable, which meant that the stairwell fundamentally rejected her existence. As Laurence watched the climb up he was unsure whether the situation with Rose was an oversight or a defense mechanism. There was nothing wrong with it being both, but he did wonder if it was intentional or not.
As they waited for Peter to climb up the stairs, a young man walked over to them both and smiled. Laurence, still enthralled by the design of the stairs ignored the man until Fen began tugging on his sleeves in order for him to deal with the man.
“Greetings sir,” the man said, straightening his petticoat and shirt as he stood proudly in front of Laurence. “My name is Piao, and I am the current gatekeeper. May I ask why you have come to our lovely city? Are you here to stay?”
Laurence turned and looked at the young man before brushing away his lank black hair and turning away from the stairs properly. He straightened his back for the first time since he had begun the journey and felt a line of cracking bones as he did so. He frowned. He was coming to accept that he had not taken the best care of himself. “I’m here to see Yun. Tell him his brother is here”.
“I’m sorry, what?” There was a panicked smile that was plastered across the young man’s face, his dark eyes wildly darting about as he looked at the grizzled tramp that stood before him. “I... I don’t...”
“You don’t need to anything,” Laurence said, interrupting Piao. “Just tell Yun that Laurence is at the gate and then get back to your stupid job. I’ll stay right here if it makes your life easier”. He turned to fen, ignoring the young man. “Come on Fen, show me how your sculpture is going. Explain to me what you’re doing as if you were trying to teach me about the techniques”. Fen nodded meekly and pulled out the half complete statue.
Around twenty minutes later there was a rustling sound as the air beside Laurence and Fen seemed to fold in upon itself. There was a crackling and a pop as a man who looked to be in his late twenties appeared beside the two of them, his white hair fluttering in the light breeze. He sat down next to Laurence and watched Fen for a moment. The boy stopped and looked at the man in confusion, but Laurence ushered him to continue with his explanation. He nodded and continued on, finally finishing his explanation with going into his intentions with the sculpture.
Once Fen was done the white haired man turned to look at Laurence and said “you look like shit”.
Laurence smirked, “Nice to see you too, Yun”.
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