He sat still, contemplating what had lead him to be here, but his mind was blank. One moment, he was in the void, drifting along lost in his thoughts; the next, he was here. Instinctively, he used his truesenses to get a grasp on where he was, to push beyond the walls that he was situated in, but the moment his will reached the walls he was blocked.
He tried to delve into the makeup of the walls around him, but he stopped almost instantly. According to his truesight, there was nothing around him. No walls, no floor, no ceiling, not even the chair or doorway in front of him. He may as well have still been in the void.
Reaching up to his neck, he gripped his pendant, relaxing slightly as he was firmly in the knowledge that at least he was not alone wherever he was. He was still with her.
The sound of the door opening snapped him out of his reverie. With a soft creak it swung wide open, revealing a tall woman at the doorway. Her face was indistinct, for some reason Laurence could not quite catch any feature that made her distinct. All he could tell was that she was a woman, and that she had one brilliantly piercing eye.
She swayed over to Laurence, and pulled a chair seemingly out of nowhere to sit down in front of him. Leaning back, she ushered a small boy into the room after her. The boy had just as indistinct features as the woman, but he had two eyes compared to her one. The boy closed the door and then quietly sat on the floor next to the woman, and as he sat down, Laurence could not help but feel that he recognised the boy from somewhere. There was something familiar about him, but it was a familiarity that was fixed deep within his memory.
“This must be a bit overwhelming for you, Laurence,” The woman said. The caring tone in her voice made him realise that he could understand what she meant exactly, but the words were not any that he recognised. She was speaking an entirely foreign language to him, but he understood her perfectly.
He squinted, “I do have to admit, It’s a bit surreal.”
“Oh? The two others who arrived here like you did were a lot less reasonable about the situation. I’m surprised by your level headedness".
“The two others? Rose and Gawayen?” Laurence gripped his pendant slightly tighter. He wondered if the strange woman was some kind of collector in the void.
“Oh no, the two I was thinking of left here millennia ago. There’s no reason for you to worry, you can leave when you want. I just thought you might want to have a chat”.
“Why would I want... Who are you?”
The woman smiled. Laurence was unsure whether she even had a mouth, but he could tell she was smiling. It was something about her aura. “I’m the first. People call me the mother of the Tower, but that’s not quite right. I’m the mother of this Tower, certainly, but not all of them”.
“All of them?” Laurence gasped, his mind whirring with the possibilities, “There are other Towers? Other versions of me?” His hands shook, “Other versions of... her?”
“Yes, no, and no respectively.” The woman raised her hand and a simple stone tower appeared in her hand. It was rough, squat, and sturdy. “This is the Tower,” she stopped, “Let me correct myself. This was the Tower before the first Ascendant Immortal stepped beyond ascendancy”.
“There’s a path beyond?” Laurence gaped, “But I thought... I thought permanence was the end”.
“If permanence was the end then there would be far more Ascendant Immortals in the Tower than there are. The great clans have four Ascendant Immortals each, so where do the rest go? What happens to all the twin Book masters, to all the people who reach the top of the Tower? Most fail, admittedly. They realise their path was an incorrect one, and they send themselves back into the cycle of life and death to try again”.
“I never thought...”
“My tower has been around for a long time, Laurence. Longer than you can comprehend”. The woman smiled again, and the tower in her hand flickered. Out of the side of the tower, a similar looking one began to appear at an angle. It was just as rough, slightly smaller, and slightly more intricate. “And over time, people like you have stepped beyond. The first chose to make a world using mine as a base, the second left the Tower entirely, to explore the void around us. The third and fourth both decided to make their own lands from scratch”.
“So what happened to them all? Where are they now?”
The woman sighed, “The second is still out in the void somewhere. We talk occasionally. He’s found other places like my Tower, but they are few and far between. As for the rest? When I created the Tower, I used the voidstone I was born from as the basis for everything, but without voidstone the only material the beyonders could use was their own body. They became their realms”.
Laurence took in a deep breath. He sat in silence for several minutes before sighing, “This is a lot to take in”.
“I know,” the woman smiled again, the tower in her hand disappearing as she placed her palms in her lap, “You have as much time as you need here”.
Laurence sat. He digested everything that he had heard and slowly came to his own realisations about the situation he was in. If the woman was telling the truth then he was being presented with a choice. The only issue was that he did not know which choice he wanted to make. Finally, he spoke, “Why?”
“Why did they choose to sacrifice themselves?”
“No, why did the first beyonder attach himself to the Tower? Why didn’t he make his own realm?”
“Because she was like you. She lived in regret for an action that she had made in her past, one that she desperately wished to right, but one that was impossible to do within the Tower. Now she had stepped beyond she could at least allow some variant of the world to exist where her mistake would not be made, where she would not make that mistake. She chose to cease living, so that reality could exist”.
“She could return to the point where her mistake was made... She could change a future...” Laurence’s eyes grew wide.
The woman sighed, “If you try to bring her back this way then you will cease to be. You will literally be sacrificing your life for hers. You will never see her again. Are you willing to let that happen?”
Laurence gave her a painful smile as his hand clenched his pendant tighter, He laughed, “Was there ever really any other choice for me?”
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