The fourth test room was like the others, it showed the same motif as the floor before it, but intensified to the nth degree. When Laurence and Yun walked into the area they were confronted by walls and floors of gemstone. Everywhere their eyes moved was sheathed in crystal. It was beautiful, but screamed decadence in a way that nothing natural could. Laurence turned to look at his canine friend and smiled, thinking how lucky they were to get out of the situation without spilling any blood.
“Name, age, species and time spent travelling,” said a loud and rather lifeless voice from beside the two companions. They turned and were confronted with a veritable giant of a man. Everything about him was enormous, from his hands that were the size of Laurence’s chest to his arms and legs which were as thick as old tree trunks. “Come on, not all of us have all day”. He said, his deep voice vibrating in Laurence’s chest.
“My name is Laurence, I’m seven years old, I’m a human and I’ve been traveling up Babel for fifty five days now. How did you get to be so tall? I mean my daddy is a big man, but you’re huge!” The man astounded Laurence so much that he had to pull out his codex immediately and begin drawing him.
“Boy, Laurence, I am going to tell you about…” Try as he might to not, the boy just suddenly drawing him made him feel self-conscious. “Stop drawing while I talk to you. It’s rude”. Laurence drew a few more strokes then put his stylus down. “Good. I assume you’re one of those Golden Children that come through here every so often. The next test is a test of your potential. I won’t tell you more about it than you have to know, but your dog companion passes if you do”.
“Okay, so are you going to answer my questions?” replied Laurence, not particularly caring about the vague description of the test. He would find out about it on his own, but he wanted to know about this mountain of a man in front of him. He continued to stare at the giant man as the minutes began to tick by, finally the huge man broke at the uncompromising stare of the child.
“Fine, fine. I’m a giant. I was born big, and only got bigger”. The giant man paused. “Happy now?”
Laurence smiled, happily opening his book and writing something down. “Yes. I am. Where do you want me to go for the test then?”
The giant despaired at the young boy and his perseverance. It was like the moment he found out what he wanted to know he would move on to the next thing that interested him. “Child, just go through the gateway in front of you. You’ll see the past, present and future. If you can get out then you pass. Simple as that”.
Without a thought, Laurence walked into the gateway in front of him. There was a bright flash of light and he was presented with an image of his past. He was five years old, his father had just found out that he had found his way into the kennels for the third time. It had been a long day for Laurence, as he had been confined to his room for the rest of the afternoon. Eventually his father sat him down to deal with the problem at hand. Laurence liked his father. He always treated the boy fairly, even when Laurence had done something very wrong.
Laurence looked up sheepishly as his father bent in front of him, his hulking frame still dwarfing the boy. He rubbed Laurence’s head, messing up the boy’s hair and said “Law, you should know that we don’t tell you things for the sake of it. There is always a reason behind it”. He frowned. “Please, son, don’t go into the kennels without a supervisor. If one of the dogs injures you and you can’t get out then it could end badly for both you and the dog. I know you like them, so if you want to go and see any of your canine friends then just tell me or your mother. We will happily take you”.
Laurence grinned. He had already found out what he wanted to know about the dogs anyway, so he happily agreed to not bother his father with sneaking into the kennels. Another idle thought struck him though. Before he had even had time to process the thought he said “Daddy, why do some of the dogs have wee-wees, but others not?”
The image faded into nothingness and he was confronted by himself floating in front of him. The other Laurence opened his eyes and smiled. It was a very crooked smile, like something was missing from the boy, but Laurence had no idea what. He looked at his clone and tried to work out if there was anything different other than that odd smile. While he was still looking the clone opened his mouth. “So, Laurence. You really don’t feel any connection to yourself, do you?” The clone seemed to be slightly taken aback by Laurence’s response to its existence.
“Why should I? You obviously aren’t me because I am, so I am trying to work out what you are”.
“I’m people’s perception of you. An odd child with no emotional connection to anyone except an odd wolf. Do you even think your parents might be worried about you? Do you not even wonder if they care?” Something ancient flashed behind the eyes of Laurence’s double. It wanted to know these answers as much as Laurence wanted to know what the double really was.
“Why does that matter though? I can only find out if they care or are worried about me by asking them and they aren’t here. Why would I be worried at all?” Laurence was thoroughly confused by the being that had taken his form. It was asking questions that were really rather simple for Laurence to answer, but they felt like they should be much harder or deeper in concept than they were. It was the first time that he had encountered something like this, that was obvious to him, but odd to the inquirer.
“Do you not have empathy, child? Is that missing from you?”
“What’s empathy?” Laurence had never come across the word before. He was obviously lacking in something the creature was looking for but he had no idea. Now he was interested. Why did he not tick like the creature in his form expected? Was it something wrong with him or with humans?
“Empathy is the emotion that connects you to people. If you hurt someone you should feel bad about it, and if someone does something positive or negative then you should emote with them. It’s one of the better parts of the human survival mechanisms”. Laurence’s double thought about something for a while. Eventually he just began walking away and said, “This is a vision of your future. If you wish to change it you must change your nature. Though not all visions are as they seem”.
The double faded into nothingness and Laurence was once more presented with himself. Older, he looked stronger. He was facing a red haired child, who was splayed on the ground after a fight. They were in the middle of an alleyway, and a city around them was roaring with life. He raised the hammer and swung, the image cutting to darkness. Laurence was surprised by this image. The being that had taken his form was not adamant about how the vision would be bad, but he did imply it heavily. So heavily that Laurence could not help but pick up on it. Would this be a bad thing? He wondered as he walked through the exit gateway and reunited with his friend.
Leaving the testing area, Laurence and Yun both stood slack jawed at the new floor. The field in front of Laurence was burning. As far as the eye could see flames licked, fluttered, spat and spluttered, curling around stones and hills. The area was a veritable purgatory, and Laurence’s pointer stone said that it would take almost one hundred days, over three months to get to the next stele. He was stood on a platform that seemed to be shielded from the flickering flames. Taking a step out into the flames, Laurence felt the heat and could smell the scorching of the hair on his skin. He pulled himself back onto the plinth and sat down, thinking about the nature of the plane in front of him.
Yun pushed out of the protected area and began playing outside in the flames. He smiled at his friend as he began chasing his tail around a lava plume. The flames seemed to do nothing to the wolf. It was incredible for Laurence to see, as he had no idea how Yun could stand those flames. After a few minutes of playing outside Yun turned and looked expectantly at Laurence.
Brother not understand? He said directly into Laurence’s head. They had tested the speech ability that they seemed to share when they first got the power, and they could not find an upper limit to it. Seeing Laurence’s continued lack of understanding, Yun sent a projection of the Book of Creation, where it dictated and described the Inner Flame Formation. Laurence recognised the page, but the line that Yun had put specific emphasis on was not what Laurence was expecting.
To practice the formation, it began, one must draw a flame from within. However to restore your soul you can draw from within or without. Laurence realised he was being a fool. In front of him was not a massive wall of pain and burning, but rather a giant battery for him to be able to restore his mana indefinitely from. He felt like a fool for not understanding the fact that mana and the soul of a person were effectively the same thing. Taking a deep breath and circulating the formation, Laurence walked out into the hellscape. He whooped with joy when rather than pain and a sickly smell, an absorbing sensation and a feeling of fullness passed through him.
Seeing how much mana the boy had at his disposal, Laurence could not resist the urge to begin trueforming. He danced about, feeling elated at the ease of control the surrounding flames gave him, yet perplexed at the fact that he had no materials that could survive the intense heat around him. Finally he perused through the Book of Creation in his mind’s eye, and found the section on unconventional resources. He saw that a master of the Book of Creation could turn anything they wanted into a weapon or artifact, which is when he had a brainwave. The flame itself was fueling Laurence, letting off heat and light that he could absorb and turn into mana. Perhaps he could turn part of the fire into a material that he could use to make an artifact with.
Turning his mind’s eye to the outside world, Laurence began looking at what he wanted to use and thinking about what he wanted to make. He finally began pulling the light from the surrounding fires as he walked and collected them between his hands. Once he decided he had enough material in his palms he began shifting the photons into the skin of his left hand. Each photon was shaped into a rune, which in turn was shaped into another rune on Laurence’s hand. These streams of runes were constantly entering his body and draining his mana reservoir dry, but immediately the reservoir would be restored to full by the surroundings. With each cycle his hammer gained a greater luster, and his reservoir was able to take in and hold more mana. This plane was the perfect place for Laurence to train, and he could not have enjoyed himself more.
The rune continued construction for an entire day while the boy and his canine friend frolicked within the fire. Even Yun was improving from the situation. His body was growing by the hour and his fur was taking on an incomparable white luster. By the end of their first day Laurence had completed his creation and Yun had grown to the size of a bear. He was a hulking wolf, and Laurence was worried that he might grow even bigger, but was not willing to stop him. The flames nourishing them meant that they did not have to worry about food at all, which surprised Laurence. It also meant that he could spend more time making tools. Once it was ready, he began testing the tool. The object he created using pure light, was a tattoo imprinted into the palm of his left hand. Injecting mana into it, Laurence willed a beam of light out of his palm and shifted it like a rope once it reached the apex of its length, over a hundred meters in length. Sending small pulses of mana through the rope of light he could change its direction and density, allowing it to be a harmless beam of light or a writhing light tentacle that could bind a target with merely a thought.
Laurence swung the light-rope towards Yun, to see if he could catch his friend unawares, but despite his massive bulk the wolf shifted out of the way with ease. He sent a pulse through the rope as Yun dodged to the side and sent the beam between the wolf’s legs and round his waist. Without a moment’s thought he pulled the beam back and yanked Yun with it.
Realising that Yun was now coming towards Laurence far faster than he would like, he sent another pulse of mana through the beam to make it intangible and it slid straight through his friend’s body. He dropped to the ground as Yun came within touching distance of him, and watched the young wolf fly over his head. Shooting out the rope once more, Laurence grabbed his friend and pulled him back enough to stop him flying off, before allowing the rope to become light again.
“What should I call you then?” Said Laurence as he looked at his tattoo. In Laurence’s mind, every weapon or artifact should have a name, and this tattoo was no exception. He felt like it should have a name from one of the old languages, but his grasp of them was nonexistent. In the end he called the tattoo Inklight. It was profoundly literal, but seemed right to the young boy.
They continued traveling and improving their power until they both reached bottlenecks in their growth. Laurence’s hammer seemed to no longer be made of iron, but fine steel. It was incomparably hard and it could become far heavier if Laurence willed it. Yun, on the other hand, had stopped growing when he was comparable in stature to a large bear. His muscles and bones seemed to change the most, becoming incredibly tough and durable, while his fur became as strong as spider silk. Together they were death on six legs. After about forty days they reached a mountain. It was the only real piece of terrain that the two had seen since they started traveling on this plain. It stuck out like a sore thumb in the landscape, and because of that Laurence had an irresistible urge to climb it. They quickly reached the wall that made the mountain hard to climb. It was a sheer face, but rugged, unlike all the other ground in the area. The rest of the surrounding land was charred and melted, but somehow this mountain had stood up to the flames. Laurence prepared himself for the jump, stretching and slowly circulating mana into his muscles before bracing himself against the wall and promptly falling through it.
He looked at the surrounding area with shock and awe. It was a beautiful and serene landscape, with small hills and pretty trees. A stream ran through the middle of the area, pooling into a little lake with a house next to it. Laurence rubbed his eyes a few times to make sure he was not dreaming. It was unbelievable to think that in the middle of this world of fire stood a little slice of heaven, and yet here it was.
He called to Yun from the other side of the wall, telling him it was just an illusion and that he could just walk through. The wolf was hesitant at first, but yipped with joy at the surroundings when he saw them. They were a true break from the flames, the heat and the slightly sulphurous stench that had surrounded the two friends for the last few weeks. They reveled in it as long as they could before going towards the riverside hut and greeting the inhabitants of this beautiful place. The hut was well built, if slightly eclectic. It had obviously been built and then systematically improved over hundreds of years before it had reached its current state of repair.
It was a two story house that extended over the lake a little ways, with a platform set up for fishing. The front of the house was raised and had a little stairwell leading up to the door with a swing chair set up next to a pile of books, while the front door itself was intricately carved with the image of a great eye residing over a man bowing his head either in reverence or shame. It was beautiful. Outside the house was a small stone building set up with a furnace in the centre of the wall furthest from the entrance. The furnace constantly belched vibrant flames, giving the smithy that it was part of a jolly feeling.
Laurence was quietly examining the smithy when he heard a voice behind him. “I would rather you didn’t touch those”. The voice was very well spoken, with a crisp sound to it that implied the owner was not used to being disobeyed. Laurence turned round and was presented with a young looking man, his white hair and old eyes being the only things that made him seem anything more than twenty.
“Umm, sorry. I was going to come and say hello but I got distracted by the beautiful skill of everything made here”. Laurence said.
“That’s perfectly fine, my boy! My name is Luke Jeshua. What’s yours?”
Laurence was enthralled by Luke. He was the first real immortal that the boy had ever knowingly met, and constantly bombarded him with questions about immortality. Eventually he sat Laurence and Yun down and asked if he would like to hear a story. Laurence agreed without a second’s thought, so sat down with a warm drink and listened to the man talk.
“In the beginning…” He began. He spoke with a sombreness that seemed to imply he missed the beginning of all things. “In the beginning there was nothing. Nothing but the stone and the void. Nothing to see or hear, to eat or even breathe. Nothing but cold, hard, rock and an abyss of emptiness”. Luke stood at his kitchen area and began making some food. He brought out the leg of an animal from a storage space of his and began preparing it as he spoke.
“That was all there was, all there could be until the eye opened, until it reared its head for the first time”. He began to pound the meat, tenderising the leg beyond what was needed. “For thirty days the eye comprehended only why it lived. It could do no else. Each moment of the day it would spend introspecting and analysing, until finally on the thirtieth day it knew Life”. He stopped pounding the meat and began roughly putting in shards of a root vegetable that looked very much like garlic. “This is why each month has thirty days.
“Once it knew what it was, it decided it needed a name. It called itself Babel and decide that ‘it’ was a she”. Luke stabbed six pieces of garlic into the leg at equidistant points, each time pushing his thumb into the beast until it was past his first knuckle. “Babel decided that she needed to understand more than just herself, so she looked at what she was not”. He pulled out some salt and began crushing it with great gusto. “She spent ten months on this. Ten whole months, until she finally knew Death and all that it contained. This is why ten months is a year to us”.
Once the salt had been crushed to fine powder, Luke grabbed some herbs from the side and tore them to shreds, before adding them to the powder. “Babel knew what she was, and what she was not. She knew life and death in their most intimate and purest forms, but that was all she knew. She craved more, so she looked out into the world she was part of. She stared into the void, looking, studying and analysing, until finally she saw the primal nature of things. She witnessed the elements in their most basic forms and knew Chaos”. With the herbal salt mixture that he created, Luke began to rub the animal leg down. He was as vigorous with this as he had been with everything else. It was like he was still trying to hurt the animal, even though it had long since died.
“She understood the building blocks of reality, but lacked the way they connected together to form everything, or anything. So once again she looked. She observed the elements and how they interacted until she had seen as many permutations as there could be. She saw that there was a beautiful unity in the way that the elements connected, but she still did not know why they connected like they did. Finally she saw the fundamental laws that make up our universe and understood Order.
“She was getting closer to the understanding she sought after, she could feel it. However it eluded her grasp. For days she could not see what she was missing. Days turned into weeks and weeks became months. For the first time in her life, Babel was directionless. Eventually, in a fit of rage, she destroyed the earth and watched it shatter. She destroyed half the world she knew so she could understand more”. There was pride in Luke’s voice as he says this. Pride, when before there had only been slowly tempered rage. He began covering the roast in oil and putting a variety of vegetables on the tray he had set up.
“With this one act…” He continued, as he put the tray of food in the oven he had prepared. “With this one act she realised what she had been missing. With rage she understood Destruction. She began driving everything she knew, everything there was to ruin. She only stopped when there was nothing left to destroy. Once more feeling empty, she knew there was something else left in the universe for her to understand. However she could not fill the void until she got an idea stuck in her mind. She had to fill the void somehow, fill it with everything in her mind and allow it to progress like she did. She laid the foundations and began creating her great tower of layered realities.
“The moment she began constructing the magnum opus that would be known by her name she gained the knowledge of Creation. And so, five years and thirty days after she first opened her eyes she became sovereign of all. With her great knowledge she created the boundless earths and the land on high, then sat on her throne at the top of the tower ushering in the second cycle”.
Laurence sat while Luke told the story, completely enraptured. He had heard the story before, but the version his father had always told him was different in tone. The way Laurence’s father spoke of ‘the first’, who he assumed to be Babel, bordered on reverence. Luke, on the other hand, spoke of the story like he hated her. He just sat for a minute, scratching between Yun’s ears, and thought about the differences in the stories. Finally he spoke. “Your story is slightly different to the one I know”.
“I’m sure it is”. Luke replied. “It’s only the first half of the story too. Do you want to hear the second half?”
“Of course!” Said the young boy, eyes bright at the idea of learning something new about his world’s creation myth.
“During the sixth cycle, or maybe it was the fifth, the queen of all eternity began feeling something she had never felt before”. Luke said, his voice laden with mockery. “She began to feel lonely. It snuck up on her, nibbling at her mind that she did not actually have anyone to discuss everything with. Finally, after a century of thought, she broke and decided to make a vessel that she could discourse with about all of reality. It took her over an hour, which is a long time for her to do anything of this ilk, but eventually she thought she had the companion made perfectly.
“It would be a companion who she could teach and who would be able to communicate with the beings that had begun to develop in her tower. She based it on the most prolific and advanced of the species, the human, for that reason, and gifted it with cognitive powers beyond normal capability so it could learn languages in moments. The companion would be her true masterpiece, a living thing that could contend with her on an intellectual level. Finally she decided that it should be her opposite, in almost all senses, so made the companion a male and gifted him with the Book of All. What she ended up forming was a young boy with bright blue eyes and soft blond hair.
“This boy was like a son to Babel”. Luke continued, releasing his hands and smiling sadly. “He was doted on by her, and taught everything that he could take. He learned more than any other being could from her or the book, and began taking up a stance to eternity that was the opposite of his mother’s. It was exactly what she intended, but soon she discovered that despite all her knowledge, it was not what she wanted. They began discourses that devolved into arguments, and finally rows bloomed from the ashes of the original discussion.
“Despite their arguments the boy learned all he could. He wanted to make his mother proud, to make her understand his point of view. He wanted for her to see that he was right, despite how much younger he was than her, he could still put forward just as valid points and understood everything just as well as she did. So he took his book and began to absorb its contents. He rose in power as his understanding of everything bloomed and his conviction in his view became more and more firm”.
There was a momentary pause in Luke’s tale that Laurence took advantage of. “But what was their argument about?” He asked the wistful looking man. It was obvious that Luke was avoiding certain details about the story, but Laurence could not work out what, or how to ask. In the end he asked to see if Luke would divulge on his own terms.
“He never said. All I know is that if I asked him now, many millennia after he first argued with his mother, he might have changed his mind”. Luke paused and cocked his head to the side, now more thoughtful than wistful. “However, he also might be even more obstinate about the point. People are like that though. Once someone is convinced of something it takes a lot to change their mind. Either way, the boy, now a man, had become beyond competent and had evolved his soul and body to the peak of immortality. He just had one step to take and he would become on par with his mother, one more thing to master and he would be a true god like her. Unfortunately his aspiration was scuppered at the last step.
“The day he completed the fifth path, his path of Chaos she took the book from him. She claimed that it was so that he could finish this path of his on his own, but he knew otherwise. It was her final act of control over him and he hated her for it”. Luke spat the last few words with a venom unparalleled in his speech so far. “In response the man did the only thing he could do to get back at Babel. He left. He walked out of their home and began climbing the tower, looking at all the things his mother had created. Everything he found forced his view more and more into the forefront of his mind. It made him bubble and seethe that his mother did not understand that she was wrong, he truly believed that he was right. Finally he snapped. He could take no more, but could only vent his hundreds of years of pent up rage upon his mother’s creation. He had no way of matching up to her so instead he began obliterating everything in his surroundings. In three days he had obliterated half a plane of the tower. It wasn’t that he had ruined and made it unlivable, he had actually removed it from existence. It was something that was previously thought impossible beforehand but he was a Five Path Master, one who had mastered five book paths, which had never existed before. He was on a warpath and there was almost nothing that could stop him. He wiped out swathes of land and killed millions of people but still no one could stand against him. In the end he was forced back by the connected power of the six great clans, and bound by a great manifestation formed from the lives of three Hephaistia clan elders. Their creation was a seal, one that could only be broken if the bloodline of the three elders died out, or if there were six book paths used as a key to the seal. They then cast him out into the unknown lands that he had ruined, reforming them as best as their powers would let them”.
Laurence realised he knew the story as it ended, it was one that his father had told him not too long before he left. The Fallen King, the legend about the man who fell from the peak of power to the lands below and wreaked havoc amidst the masses. “I recognise both of these stories!” He says excitedly at Luke.
“Huh. If that’s the case then why aren’t you sad about it? A normal child would be sad or bored by an old story”. Luke replied. Apparently Laurence’s reaction had confused him.
“I have heard the stories before, but these are very different versions of what I know. In the version of The Fallen King that I know, the king is sealed by three Ascendant Immortals permanently. It’s also not related in any way to the creation myth”.
“That kind of annoys me,” said Luke in reply. “Without those two parts, it’s an incomplete tale. Tell me, Laurence, how do they portray the Fallen Morning if they don’t go over his reasons for destruction?”
“He’s treated as though he’s a madman, or a rabid animal. The story spends a lot of time over the hunt for him, and a little on his sealing. In fact it ends just after he is sealed, which confused me a little as there was no rounding off to the story. It seemed to end abruptly”.
“Life happens like that. Not every path leads to closure and some people never come back into the tale. That I…” He paused, as if internally correcting himself. “That I have a different, less popularised version of the story annoys me. For one thing, mine feels more complete”.
“I like yours more, though that could be because it’s a new version of a story. I may be… biased? I think that’s the right word”.
Luke laughed. “Yes. You’re a smart child, Laurence. Did you know that?”
“That’s only because I like learning. I’m not smart compared to an adult in most things”. He smiled sheepishly. “I don’t even know how to get myself out of trouble most of the time, and I get into it a lot”.
“That’s something you don’t lose with age, you just get in different kinds of trouble. Don’t worry, Laurence. You’re a talented child, and you could easily become a Heaven rank before you are twenty”.
“But that’s ages away! I’m only seven, that’s double my entire life so far at least!”
“You should not be too impatient. Most people with talent wouldn’t reach Heaven rank before they are fifty, while a normal person who cultivates would have to be at least a hundred before they can think about Heaven. Only a Golden Child has such a chance, one who was born to wield the power of the world’s way”.
“I am supposedly a Golden Child of the Absolution clan, but my father was never clear about what that actually meant”. Laurence sighed. He had a lot to ask his father, but no way to actually do it. It annoyed him more than he actually realised.
“You’re supposed to be a Golden Child, yet you don’t know what one is? That’s ridiculous. I may as well teach you about them then, so what would you like to know about them?”
“Anything. What actually are they? Why did they come into existence? Is there anything better than a Golden Child? What am I missing to reach my next stage in cultivation? I want to know a lot of things, but those are the big ones at the moment”.
Luke looked at the young boy who kept him company for the first time in millennia and could not help but feel happy. This child was full of potential and inquisitive beyond common sense. Luke was interested to see where the boy could go if given the right kind of guidance, even if he was an average Golden Child.
“You are pretty much the average Golden Child”. He began. He did not want to put down Laurence, but the boy deserved to know that he was not the best of the best, even if he was the best of the rest. “That is not a bad thing, as Golden Children make up the best males and females of the year that they are born in. The best Golden Children manifest their souls and become Saints at the age of six and the worst at the age of eight. Apparently before you turn six your body is not able to take the energy and so children with the potential for sainthood at that age are sealed until they are at least six, else they become crippled by their own power.
“Golden Children are called as such because in what I believe was the third cycle, when the eight clans of way were first created, the clans still used gold as their metric for value. Children who could cultivate to Saint before the age of ten were considered ‘as valuable as a gold mine’. They were, and are, the only people who were definitely capable of reaching immortality, whether normal or Ascendant. It meant that they were valued as future powerhouses and potentially valuable resource gatherers for their clans”.
“So Golden Children are valuable because of their growth speed and potential? That seems a bit mean to the children who are smart, but not good cultivators. It even seems a bit mean to the other children who are not quite as good as the Golden Children. Why do they get excluded?” Laurence was confused by this idea. To him, if you were a day faster, then you were just as good as the person who was a day slower than you. You might even be worse than the person behind you if you work less than your competitors.
“Essentially yes. The Golden Children are the best of the best. They might have odd idiosyncrasies but they are rigorously tested from the age of five, and then thrown to the dogs the day they become Saints. Often there will be hundreds of children competing to gain the title of ‘golden’. This is because the children will not be let out of the pocket dimension that the clan lives in if they are not Golden Children or at least peak saints by the age of twenty-five. Often their wanderlust drives them on to manifest quicker, though you seem to have manifested of your own volition quickly without need of external stimulus. You’re definitely the best of the average Golden Children, but still not as excellent as some who have been”.
Luke paused to check the food in the oven. It was cooking away happily, so he closed it and continued talking. “In answer to your next question, there is something more than a Golden Child. Once a cycle a child is born at Saint level. These children have to have their cultivation sealed, but it is usually unsealed around their seventh year. They are almost always Golden Children, but do not show any more potential until they reach Heaven rank. Once they reach Heaven rank, these rare children will become Immortals far quicker than anyone else, and if they are given one of the Books of The World they have not studied, then they could become Immortals within a year of reaching Heaven. They are all destined to become the next leaders of the clans they are born into and so are called ‘Little Rulers’”.
“So I could be a Little Ruler?” Laurence said. The idea of being someone who was akin to a great hero of old, like the great leaders of the clans were, was enticing.
“You could be, but it is unlikely. For one thing, you would have been told from a young age that you were a little ruler. But for the second, if you were adopted and not told, then you likely would never actually be able to cultivate. The seal used, unless it has changed since I was last in contact with the clans, servers you from the energy of heaven and earth. It allows for the powerful energy that the child is born with to be absorbed into their bones and muscles without there being too much for them to handle. That is not to say that you won’t do well. You’re close to a peak Saint before you turned eight years old. You’ve done incredibly well for yourself, and will only grow more powerful as you get older”.
“Thanks, but it doesn’t help me with my current problem”. Laurence sighed. Since meeting Damascus he had tried to make one of the Manifestations, but each attempt failed. At first it was because he could not trueform well enough, then it became because he had too small a mana reservoir. Now he just could not find one that felt right. The boy had looked through all the manifestations and tried to make them, but at the thirtieth he realised that none of them fit him.
“You said you were of the Absolution clan, correct?” Said Luke, snapping Laurence out of his irritable stupor.
“Yes, though I don’t see how that will help”.
“Well if you are having trouble with Restoration, then it might just be easier for you to start with an animal corpse and try to use mana to return it to peak condition before trying it on anything living. That way you will be able to build up your multitasking to deal with the tumours”.
“What’s Restoration?”
Luke looked blankly at Laurence before slowly coming to a realisation that Laurence was not the average Absolution clan member.
“You truly don’t know what Restoration is? Do you not practice the Way of Life?” With two words, Laurence had managed to actually stun Luke. A lot could be said about the clans of way, but in Luke’s mind cross-pollination was not one of them. It was so out of character that they would let one of their children study another path before the Way of Life that he felt there had to be something going on.
“No. I practice with the Book of Creation. Why would I know anything about this way of life?”
“Because that is the practice method of the Absolution clan. Are you secretly a Hephaistia child? Or are you some sort of test to gain control of the six books?” Luke scratched his chin and then checked on the food again. It was almost ready at this point so he got some plates and cutlery out, then set the oak table they were sitting at. “This is food for thought. A very interesting development indeed”.
Laurence frowned. “All I know is my father’s name is Angus Absolution, my mother’s is Maris Morgana Absolution, and that I am from Ribec village, in a region outside of the tower. Mother always said that father was an important member of the clan we were part of, but never said how. So it is possible that I am an experiment”. He shrugged.
“You seem awfully calm about this. You do realise that being a test subject is a bad thing, right?”
“Why would I be bothered by it, though? Even if it is a bad thing, or something that could have bad results, I can’t change who I have become. So why worry about it. Worrying won’t fix it, and if I let my worries consume me I would probably go mad”. Laurence looked at Luke sadly. It was the first time Luke had actually seen a negative emotion on the child’s face. For some reason it seemed slightly forced, as if Laurence was doing it intentionally. “Either way, I study the Book of Creation, I know I need to make a Manifestation, but none of them seem right to me. I have the capability, I just seem to lack… something”.
“The thing you lack is experience. With any of the paths that people tread, the only way to truly work out the right choice is by experiencing many things”. Luke began serving the piping hot meat and roasted potatoes to the boy and the wolf. “It’s kind of hard to explain to a child, because you lack the experiences that are so required for the explanation. To understand what you want and need, you have to have it, then lose it. In having a thing you can come to understand the sensation of losing it, while in losing a thing you can come to see why you wanted it in the first place.
“This is one of the cycles of the way. To gain the future you must give up the past. Remember that”.
“How does this help?” Said Laurence. His head was beginning to hurt from all the talk of circles and want. To remedy this he took a gulp of water and stuffed his face with food, hoping that the sustenance would stop the throbbing between his eyes.
“In essence, you don’t know what you want because you don’t have enough experience to know yet. Manifestation is a profoundly unique experience that is dictated by your life up to the point where you actually manifest. It will come in time, so just wait and experience the world. Have an adventure, make a name for yourself”.
“That makes me feel a lot better about this. I wasn’t worrying, but I might have begun to soon,” said Laurence, stuffing more food into his mouth. It had been a long time since someone had actually spent time and effort cooking for him. The food itself was incredibly tasty, far more flavourful than anything he had eaten in recent memory.
They began winding down their conversation as the food finished, and as Luke was clearing away the plates Laurence decided it was time for him and Yun to get moving. They said their goodbyes as they helped clear up and began their journey again. This time Laurence did not waste too much of his time and effort on manifesting, instead he built bizarre objects out of heat and light. He made himself a defensive bubble out of heat that he could activate with a word and a variety of sculptures that could only be seen from certain angles, or felt through difference in temperature. It was still an exhilarating experience for the boy, and as he neared the exit he told Yun that he would come back to this floor one day. The two friends reached the stele to the next floor one hundred and two days after entering, older, wiser and a lot more understanding of their place in their cultivation.
Meanwhile, across the world, Luke Jeshua sat by his pond. He was drinking a glass of wine and absent-mindedly fishing in his lake as he thought about his visitors. They were the first visitors he had had in a long time, and that could only mean one of two things. It quickly dawned on him that one option was not possible, so he made himself comfortable and smiled thinking “What an interesting visit”.
