Neither Fen nor Peter wanted to be the one to ask the question. They both wanted to know, but were afraid of learning what went on inside Laurence's head. Still the silence persisted.
This unnatural, taciturn journey had gone on for a day already, and as they began to reach the edge of the forest they could tell something was going to break. Both man and child ummed and ahhed about opening the floodgates to their deluge of questions, but they both implicitly understood that some questions no man should ask.
Finally Peter cleared his throat. “What in the name of all that is sacred was that thing?” There was a momentary pause as Laurence snapped out of the reverie he so often sat in. He attempted to process the answer but before he could open his mouth, Peter's deluge began. “That beam of light! I'm going to have nightmares about it for the next decade I swear! Why did it take you so long to make? Why didn't you just fight? Surely your entry into the fray would have been just as impactful as your weapon at the end! If you had entered the battlefield then we would have been able to wipe them out before they set up a single dragon's tooth. Every single Hephaistian death after that point is on your hands, so why didn't you fight?”
“It's called the Eon Cannon. Did you know that without the connection to an Immortal reservoir, an Immortal’s body isn’t immortal? Conversely, an Immortal mana reservoir without a body is just mana. If you can do something that breaks apart the connection, then neither the mana reservoir, nor the body is immortal. When I was a child, I studied the Absolution codex and within that I learned something interesting: The majority of particulates, the cells, within a body are replaced roughly every ten years. They simply decay and are replaced. Some take longer, some are shorter, and a few are never replaced. The important part is that everything but the brain is replaced within a century”. Laurence paused as Peter and Fen looked on in confusion. “I know it’s a little in depth, but you asked how it worked, and it would be awful of me to just handwave it away like it’s super powerful, you’d never understand it”.
“I barely follow what you’re saying as it is,” Peter replied, which caused Laurence to smile.
“So where was I? Ah yes! The Eon Cannon is a variant of my Manifestation. It compresses time to the point where it’s nearly solid then funnels and releases that resultant force. The result is that anything the beam touches is aged in an instant, as you can see by the trees that surround us. These trees...” Laurence struck the side of one of the mountainous great oaks that stretched into the sky. “They should be fourth or fifth generation growths of a forest that never actually existed”.
“So what does that actually do to people?” Peter asked.
“In an instant, every cell in the body decays before the mana can even reach it. The brain is disconnected from the mana reservoir and so the reservoir becomes errant mana while the body becomes dust. It’s instantaneous, so I imagine it’s quite painless”.
Peter sat down on a nearby tree root, his hands covering his mouth and his forehead frowning in concentration. As the man thought, Laurence smiled wistfully before continuing his explanation.
“As for why I didn't fight? That's a little more complicated, though I guess it doesn't really matter anymore”. He stopped, took a deep breath and wrapped his hand round the crystal that permanently hung against his heart. “Back when I... back when Cleo died, I was distraught. I had the blood of the winds I love on my hands, and I didn't know what to do. I felt that my obsession with combat was responsible for getting us in that awful situation, and honestly I still think that. If I hadn't been so obsessed with saving the Tower from the Fallen Babel-damned Morning, for no reason other than my pride demanded it, then Cleo would still be alive. I might be weaker, or even long dead myself, but better me than her.
“I swore on that day I would never kill another person, not until I had saved her, but turns out that the Book had other plans for me. It's kind of funny, you know? I made a promise on her grave and couldn't even stick to that”. He began chuckling as he spoke, but tears began to roll down his face at the same time. His fists clenched until the knuckles went white and he shuddered as he took a deep breath. “I was honestly going to stick to it, and until the second army showed up I had absolute faith in you, Yun and the people of Misty Peaks. I mean you nearly routed them when the second army showed up. I know because I watched. Just... I didn't just watch the battle as I made the Eon Cannon. I watched the clan too. I followed the families as they took their lives into Yun's realm, I watched as the able bodied purple split off from those more vulnerable. I watched as Yun's family... my family was hurt by those invaders and I knew I had to actually to actually do something.
“So I made the first Ascendant Immortal device since the fall of the Hephaistia clan”.
Peter stood up. His mouth hung open and his eyes bulged in both shock and horror. Nobody had seen an Ascendant Immortal creation in cycles. It was said that they still existed, but the destruction of the old clan’s home plane had lost them to the ravages of the void.
“Wait, you've mentioned manifestations and devices. What's the difference?”
Laurence smiled and then ushered Fen to come closer. “Do you want to explain this one? It should be easy for you”.
Fen nodded before giving Peter a determined stare. “A device is any object created with the methods held inside the Book of Creation, including anything that has had an array attached to it. A manifestation, however, is a representation of the culmination of a practitioner’s understanding of the Book, as well as an expression of their future Immortal skill”.
Laurence ruffled Fen's hair, “Word for word from the Book itself, well done”. Fen smiled before sitting down next to Laurence. “Effectively a manifestation is important, but not necessarily more powerful than any device created. They are often more esoteric than strong, but some manifestations can have some incredible effects on the world around them. They are often ideas, or ideals rather than fully formed devices. That’s why what we are searching for, the Well of Yoth, happens to be a manifestation and not an Ascendant Immortal device”.
“So why did you get Yun to come along? He was massively indebted to you at the end there. You could have reasonably asked him to come along and he would not have rejected you”.
“Because Cleo would have hated me doing that. She would have hated me bringing my own budding clan’s pillar of support away to revive here when they were still so vulnerable. I will do anything I can to bring her back, but I can’t do that to her memory. It would not be right”.
“So what about our quest?” Peter asked, his voice rising slightly in both pitch and volume.
“There are other people we can find, other people we can get to help us in this journey”.
“Who?”
“The person we’re going to see next. Jim”.
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