Laurence spent the next few days in a waking slumber. Everything around him seemed almost immaterial, as though it would all disappear if he just wished it hard enough. He wandered about the town, looking at the towering buildings that spread out from the midpoint between the twin mountains. The height of the central buildings even reaching the same height as the two mountains, creating a third, manmade peak. The peak was not visible to the outside world, from below the mountain the entire town was obscured by mist. It was why the tallest building in Misty Peaks was known as the invisible peak, or the missing mountain. Often Laurence would be found staring at the missing mountain absentmindedly. There was something going on inside his head, but after the expression of his power in the middle of the town, people left him well alone.
The entire time he walked through the town, Fen stood by his side. Whenever Laurence would stop, Fen would take out his statue and carve more definition into it. The statue was slowly morphing from a formless creature into a figure with four legs. It had a long, slender body and a spiked mane of some sort, but that was all that was possible to glean from the current details. Occasionally Fen would put the statue away and pull out new materials, quickly transforming them into beautiful statuettes in a variety of poses. Sometimes they were of the people that walked by, other times they were of bizarre creatures or monstrosities that could only come from the mind of a child, unfettered by the constraints that were formed by a person witnessing animals in real life.
They walked to to the edge of the town and Laurence sat down, soon Fen followed suit and pulled out a chunk of stone about the size of his hand. As they looked into the valleys and hills that spread out from the mountain, Fen created a chisel out of mana and began scraping off stone shavings. Slowly a creature came to life between his fingers, with the body of a mole and claws almost the same length of its arms. The creature looked like it could cut through anything that came in its way, be it dirt, soil or metal. As he finished the edging around the eyes of the creature, it seemed to come to life, as if it would jump off Fen’s hand and begin digging through the ground beneath them both immediately. Smiling with pride he showed the statue to Laurence, who looked over it, nodding his head slowly.
Seemingly snapping out of his reverie, Laurence looked at the odd mole in greater detail before smiling and handing it back. “Is that the first pack leader you've made?” Fen nodded bashfully. “It's excellent work. Your craftsmanship has become extremely precise. How many more are you intending to make?”
“Ten for all the packs, then when I finish the wooden piece that will be the tribe leader”.
“Impressive. So have you finished your first pack then?”
“Not quite. Are you back to normal now?”
“Yeah, I'm sorry for scaring you. I didn't realise that Yun would push my buttons like he did. He should know me better than that”. Laurence sighed and looked back out at the vista in front of them. There was a small dust cloud forming in the distance that attracted his vision for a moment, but before long he returned to Fen. “I guess we have both changed a lot since we separated. Anyway, show me your models”.
Quickly the young boy pulled object after object out of his little bag. With each model he would give Laurence its name, use and personality. The boy had put a lot of thought into each one, even when they were just sculpted models of passers-by he was still picky. He insisted on having a pack that worked together under the leadership of his newest creation. “I want a hundred models under the pack leader, but I only have ninety-six at the moment. I am four short”.
“Very Impressive, Fen. I can see the improvement of your carving from your first piece”. Laurence picked up a carving of a bird. It was blocky, and the lines that made up its body were far less smooth than any of the statues that came later, but it had a kind of charm to it that made Laurence smile. This had been the first piece that Fen had ever done, of a bird that Laurence had brought back to life through bizarre means. There was something wrong with the bird, as if it was an entirely different animal trapped in the bird's body, but that was impossible to see in Fen's model. Instead there was a naive charm about the bird, like the muddlings of a very small child approaching something entirely new. There was symmetry within the bird, almost too much, and its wings were far too small for its body to ever leave the ground, let alone fly, but the bird was fat and it was joyous, as if it had all the world to sing to about all the pleasures that a bird could experience. Laurence let his mana flow into the bird for a moment before giving it back to Fen. That particular statue had a special place in his heart. “So have you thought about how you are going to ease up your fine control? Having your mind split a hundred and one different ways at the same time is sure tho backfire upon you spectacularly”.
“Umm...” Fen bit his lip softly as he tried to work out how to partition his army. “I don't know,” he said, his brow furrowing deeply. “I don't know, master”.
“There are lots of ways you could partition things,” Laurence began.
“Partition?”
“Split them up. In my opinion the best option would be if you have four models just below your pack leader. If they each control groups of twenty-four then you already have more solid control, as you're trying to control a hundred things, four things or one thing. You could end it there, but I would suggest going deeper. You could split your groups of twenty-four into four groups of six, with five normal models and one squad or hunt leader, then you have control over one unit, four units, sixteen units, or one-hundred units”.
“I don't follow you,” a voice said from behind. Laurence turned around and saw Piao bending over to listen in to what he was telling his student. “Do you mind if I join you?”
“Not at all,” Laurence replied. He paused before breathing out deeply. “I think the best way to describe the idea is if you punch someone, you use your entire arm. It’s a unit, it’s simple and doesn’t take much thought. Now, think about moving your fingers separately, like you’re grabbing something. If you split your models into four groups then you’ll be able to treat it like that. Finally, splitting it again, into four more groups of six each leaves you with sixteen groups in total. With these sixteen groups it’s more like you’re playing an instrument than just grabbing something, because it allows for much more versatility with your groups”.
Piao thought about it for a second before nodding. “I can see what you’re suggesting. Could you not split That further by making the groups of six into three pairs of two? It would allow you to have another group to control, of fifty”.
“I would suggest that is a possibility but there’s a point where it becomes too difficult to control. It’s why I would suggest not trying to control things that finely unless you absolutely have to. It would lead your models going out of control with a far higher frequency than you would like. At some point you might have the capability to split your attention properly to deal with each model on its own, but at the moment I would suggest taking smaller steps”. Fen nodded quietly before pulling out a chunk of wood and forming a knife with his mana. Before he could begin Laurence put his hand over the wood and pulled out a box. “In here is a limb of the loverwood tree. I would suggest making your last four models out of this. It’s slightly awkward, and you have to perform each incision with a tool coated in resin from the lone Soyella plant then cover the entire thing in that resin as a varnish to keep it all from growing back”.
Fen nodded at Laurence’s instructions before carefully taking the wood and looking at the knife and jar of liquid inside the box. He split a single sizable chunk off the branch and began carving and varnishing the wood at an increased pace. He had an idea in his mind for each statue, and his body was desperately trying to keep up with that idea. Shards of wood flew off into the box before the first model was revealed. Soon enough Fen had completed the first model and he began work on his second one, then his third and then finally his fourth. Each one was made with increasing speed as the young boy got used to the method of carving with the knife and varnishing after each cut, and soon enough he had four identical statues; four wolves seemingly made of flame.
As he looked at his student finish crafting the models, Laurence could not help but gasp. He covered his mouth with his hand and a softness that was foreign to his expressions seemed to reach his eyes. He slowly stretched his left hand out towards the statues and touched them carefully, as if they were made of porcelain. He opened his mouth, as if to interject, to explain himself, but before he could speak there was a blaring siren. Piao looked up and scanned the horizon before swearing loudly.
“They’re back,” the young man said before pointing at the cloud of dust that Laurence had seen spring up on the horizon. It was bigger now, and coming closer with increasing speed.
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