The crystal sat on his chest, rising and falling with his breath, reflecting blue light across the deck. Time was on his side. Yveth and her companions, however many there were, would have to wait for him. They would have to stress about when he arrived, and the longer he took, the better in that regard.
As he sat upon the deck, he thought back to the days prior. He and Sleepy spent several days catching up, reminiscing and working together to make a second set of docks situated in the sky above the first. It was not difficult for either of them, but they took their time. The progress they made was incremental, and as they were working in concert they would often stop and augment things that the two of them had already worked on. Only when both Laurence and Sleepy were happy with the outcome would they move on to the next section, then the next, then the next.
Eventually, inevitably, they finished their work. The new docks were complete and they sat arrogantly above the original set of staging points, expanding the harbour as a whole in not just two dimensions, but three. The new docks themselves were made of solid local wood, and the local buoyant stone that aided their world, and their ships to fly. In essence, the new dock was a giant airship. It had the capability to move if necessary, and could be set beside, above, or below the other docks as Sleepy willed it. There was housing, and general all-purpose buildings set up, as well as several warehouses, however everything paled in comparison to the array-work that the two of them performed to make the harbour fully functional. It was intricate and all encompassing, drawing power from daylight in order to propel the hulking mass and storing the excess in the simple statue of a wolf at the heart of the docks. From there the wolf could power every single thing around it, from the lights and water in the housing to the preserving arrays within the walls of the warehouses. It was all encompassing.
As they worked together, Laurence began to touch upon a concept he had long since forgotten; relief. He had focused for so long upon what he needed to do in order to bring Cleo back from the dead that it was only now that he was actually able to relax for a short amount of time. With that he was able to think about everything he had actually learned in his time since becoming an Immortal, and the more he thought, the more he realised that he should have long since Ascended. There was something he was missing, something core to his being that he had somehow left behind in his desperation. It was a lot to mull on.
He sat up, scattering the light and shocking the birds that had perched on the railing that enclosed the deck. Running his hands through his rough beard, he sighed, “I need more time...”
He walked over to the railing and looked out at the empty sky. It was like a blank canvas, full of exciting things that he could envision, that he was slowly being able to envision again after his drive being focused for so long. There was a sound behind him as he looked out, but he did not turn round. He was taking in the vista, one that had once inspired him, and was doing so again.
“What are you looking at?” Quentin asked, standing behind him.
“Freedom,” Laurence replied. “Loss.”
“How odd,” Quentin said as he walked next to his cousin. He gripped the rail slightly nervously. “I just see an infinite void out there, and it’s kind of terrifying.”
“There’s nothing out there to see because that’s not your path. You’re not a creator.” Laurence stopped. He turned and properly looked at Quentin before asking, “If you don’t mind me asking, what was your second Sainthood?”
“I’m as basic as they come. Life and Death, much like your father actually. I’ve only ever really had talent in the concept of Life, healing myself and healing others came as second nature; but I had to progress so I learned about death. I learned about how things became injured in order to heal them better. I gained an understanding of poison, though likely not as deep as Peter’s, and then I hit a wall. I think I hit the wall when I realised I couldn’t stop people from dying, and that started with Sara.
“At first, I thought I wasn’t strong enough. I was only a child when it happened so it’s easy to understand such a mistake. More power means more ability to do things, but as I learned more about Death I realised it was an inevitability. And... at the same time, that it was a necessity. If nobody died then there could be no growth. Immortality in its own way is a subversion of that, a subversion that the karmic cycle, that Babel only allows because you become able to experience more. If death wasn’t inevitable, then we would be treated just like the Kimbramancers. We would be rejected by the world.
“Because of this realisation I had a second one. I couldn’t bear to master some of the Book of Death. I had read the entire thing and there are parts within my mind that I dare not use, because in my opinion they are aberrations, things that should not be allowed as they subvert the intentions of the Lady herself.”
“So you’re stuck,” Laurence replied.
“Pretty much. I've reached a dead end, and I need to backtrack a bit to work out where I went wrong.”
The two men stood silently for a short while, mulling in their own thoughts of how they would continue down their own respective ways. Finally Laurence spoke.
"What happened to Sara?"
"I wanted to train her, be a big strong hero to the poor Earth ranker, that kind of thing. I was showing off. I basically had a new pet. I got her to reach Sainthood and everything, but then we began our journey out of Spirit... and we encountered one of those Saint bounty hunters.
"I've never been the best at fighting really. I'm fast, and nigh unkillable, but I don't like hurting people very much. I get it's a necessity sometimes but... I'd prefer if it wasn't. Either way, we fought together and I took the hits like I normally do. What neither of us realised was that the bounty hunter had a partner, who severed Sara's head before I even had a chance to react.
"It wasn't glorious, nor was it overwhelming... I just paid slightly less attention to my surroundings than I should have, and she paid for it. I can't even say I got revenge, because I ran. I left my friend's corpse in an alley as I escaped for my life."
"Did you ever get revenge?"
Quentin laughed bitterly, "I went back after I became a Heaven ranker, and discovered that both men were killed by someone else. Burned to death, actually."
"Ignis clan?"
"I never found out. I assume so, but it was a cycle ago. Either way, after that event things became harder for me. Healing became easier, but everything else? I struggled to find the right balance. The harder I’d strive for power, the more difficult it would become."
"Did you never want to try and bring her back?"
"How could I?" Quentin replied, "I didn't have aberrant time powers like you, nor the ability to contain souls. At the time I could only heal the flesh, and there are some things that the Book of Life cannot fix. Thirty seconds of a completely severed head is one of them.
"If I was older when it happened, or much younger now, I might have tried... but I didn't have the ability, and no longer have the inclination. Sara died, I grieved and I was able to begin progressing again when I began focusing on what I am good at. Growth."
"You'll master everything eventually, cousin. Your mindset is a good one." Laurence smiled at Quentin, grabbing his shoulder and hugging him. “I believe that given enough time, all of us will. It’s just that we don’t have enough of it right now. We’re at most a day away from the well, and once we get there we won’t have time for anything but facing the Kimbramancers that Yveth has prepared for us.”
The two of them sank into silence once more as they stared out at the unblemished sky. Minutes rolled by when Laurence saw a dot appear before them. “Is that a dot?”
“A stable one,” Quentin replied, “You reckon that’s the island?”
They stared at the dot as it got larger and larger, until it was just barely visible as a mass of stone that hung in the air and not an animal of some kind. “Looks like we’ve run the clock out,” Laurence said, sighing.
“If only you could make more time for us, huh?”
“If only I could...” Laurence stopped and frowned. He turned to look at Quentin and then whispered, “Why can’t I?”
He slowly, thoughtfully, stepped over to the middle of the deck, his hammer appearing in his hands. With each step the hammer seemed to shed impurities within itself. It was no longer the black mass of wrought iron that it had been when he was a child, nor the patterned steel that it had become once he had rejected his shadow. Each step allowed it to become clearer, only ceasing to shift when Laurence too ceased to move. He stood still as he raised his now-crystalline weapon, gripping it just below the head. The sunlight caught the soft blue that was the twin of the crystal that hung around his neck, spreading out in a ring around him. The air rippled, and even the light seemed to slow down in his presence, moving like molasses past him. Slowly he moved his hand from out at his side to before him, and the light sped up, warping his shape in Quentin’s eyes. He lowered the haft, and as it touched the ground he whispered a single word with a grin, “Keter...”
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