Laurence ran. He had never run so hard in his life, but then his life had never really been in danger before. The beast had given him a small head start but was hot on his tail the entire time. It enjoyed the chase and hoped that the young boy would lead it to even more tasty flesh.
Garral came close to cutting the boy several times, but in every instance he managed to duck, dodge or turn at just the right time to avoid injury. Five, ten, twenty times the beast attacked, but each time Laurence would dodge away into the underbrush. It seemed like the chase was coming to a close when Laurence was faced with a wall of plants, vines and trees, far too thick for him to push through and too tall for him to jump over. He looked behind and saw that the Orik was gaining, it would be upon him in a fraction of a second, so as the beast swung its claws at his head he ducked, grabbed the beast by the calves and propelled himself back through the creature’s legs the way he came.
Garral screamed in rage as it was thwarted, its sharp claws cutting through the wall that had blocked Laurence like butter. The Orik turned around as Laurence rolled into a sprint and sped away. It went on all fours and began chasing once again. This child was giving the hunter far more trouble than it was expecting, and it hated him for it. Soon the energy it expended would not be worth the meat on his bones, but it could not stop the hunt. Its pride was now at stake.
Laurence had a plan. He knew the beast was about as powerful as him, so its bones and hide must be very tough. He wanted the beast’s body to make armour, but he had to be in the right situation to get it. The little wolf was still slowly dying, so Laurence intended to finish things in that hollow. Either he would die, or the Orik would.
The creature chased, no longer caring about subtlety or the enjoyment of the hunt. It felt like it was being played with and that meant the boy had to die. Garral channelled its mana into its limbs as it ran, quickly outdoing its old speed and busting through foliage in the way. Its speed caused so much friction that the tips of the Orik’s hair caught fire and the beast began to look more like a meteorite than an animal. The trees caught fire and smoldered as it went past, but were quickly put out again by the increasingly heavy rain. A thick trail of smoke followed the two saints in their wake, chasing off most of the lesser creatures in the area.
Laurence closed in on the hollow where his wolf patient lay, and similarly the beast closed in on him. One hundred meters, eighty meters, fifty meters, as they reached ten meters distance from each other Laurence finally entered the tree. Everything clicked into place as Laurence finally grasped the situation he wanted. He cancelled as much forward momentum as he could then spun to face Garral as it entered the tree. Without stopping for a moment he yelled “JORMUGAND!” His spirit weapon was summoned into his hands instantly, directing itself straight at the horrifying beast. He thrust forwards towards Garral’s face and let his hands slip down to the base of his hammer. Garral was trapped, it could not halt its movement and could not dodge because it was stuck in the doorway. It screamed as it saw the blade at the top of that odd hammer head towards its eye and pierce through into its brain.
The spear dissipated and the corpse’s momentum slowed, but not before smashing into the young boy and sending him flying into the solid wall of the tree trunk. There was a crack and Laurence let out a scream of pain as his arm bent backwards and broke. He struggled up and looked at his thoroughly broken left arm through his tears. The bone was still inside the flesh but the arm was bending the wrong way at the elbow and had broken clean in two in the forearm. Laurence could also feel something wrong with his wrist but that was far less important now. It would be tough to do anything with it but he had to save the wolf before he could worry about his own injury. He honestly felt lucky he had not been hurt more.
He grabbed a pestle and mortar from his bag and trapped it between his legs. Not having the use of one hand meant it would be harder to stabilise things, but not impossible. Pulling out the silkweed he had found he put most of it in the bowl and began chewing on some too. Silkweed was useful for two reasons, first it boosted the healing factor of any herbal remedy it was part of, and second it had a numbing agent in it that worked incredibly as a painkiller. He chewed and swallowed the juicy pulp he had created and he began to be able to focus on something other than his arm. Laurence thanked his father for drilling all the information about healing into his head, it was probably going to save his life. He quickly made a blade of mana and cut off the ruined cloth smock he had been wearing since he left home and emptied his bag onto it.
Surveying his choices he sighed. He really had not brought as much with him as he would have liked. All that was in front of him was twenty feet of rope, two books, two large glad vials filled with tannin, five empty glass vials, a pestle and mortar, a block of limestone, a box full of water, ten fish bone needles, a ball of silk string, a medicinal filter strainer, some wood and a knife. It would just have to do.
Laurence ground up the silkweed and added a small amount of water to turn it into a thin paste, then filled each vial to the halfway point. He quickly washed out the bowl and began pulping the roses. Once they were a paste he filled the bowl with water and brought out his inner flame to bring the bowl to a boil. When the water was happily boiling he began stirring it with a bar of mana until the fluid was completely blue and smooth. Finally he slowly poured the blue fluid into each vial, through the filter. Once all five bottles were filled with the mixture Laurence mixed them until each tube was full of a thick blue goop. Laurence’s father had called this fluid Malmas Tincture, and had said it was one of the Genesis Mixtures which form the basis of all healing potions.
He poured the fluid over each one of the numerous wounds on the young wolf and began sewing up each large or deep wound. The small wounds would be healed by just the Malmas Tincture but the larger ones needed more help. Thanks to the tincture the areas around the injuries were numbed and so the wolf cub struggled a lot less than it would have. Each wound was sewed up with less skill and took longer than Laurence would like, but it was the best he could do with a single working arm. Once he had finished sewing up the wolf he washed its fur and turned to his own wound.
He pulled his arm near and winced as two of the bones grated against each other. Unfortunately he would have to cause himself a lot of pain to set the bone properly. He took off his leather boots and stuck one in his mouth, even with a painkiller in his system this was going to hurt and Laurence did not want to bite off his own tongue.
Laurence split one block of wood into two thin planks that were about the same length as his arm with a mana blade. He then bit down hard and desperately tried to hold in his screams as he moved all the bones back in place. His eyes watered and made it hard to see but he quickly managed to get everything back where it should be. Finally the arm was ready to be set, so Laurence placed the splints, tore up his smock and wrapped it round his arm like a bandage. He could only barely hold it in place with the fingers of his broken arm, and by this point it was excruciatingly painful.
Laurence stood up and walked over to the side of the tree. Despite it having a comfortable hole in its base the tree itself was still thriving, so Laurence made an incision into the bark with a mana blade and made an impromptu binding agent to seal up his arm. With the last of his cloth the young boy made himself a sling to keep his arm steady.
Laurence finally spat out his shoe and began chewing more of the silkweed. He had done almost everything he could, but he had one more touch for when the sap dried. Until then he needed sleep, but wanted to finish his work first. He grabbed the speed up box and filled it with a bottle of tannin and water, mixing with a paddle made of mana. Once it was prepared the boy stuck in the hide that he intended to turn into leather and left it.
With the other hide Laurence made sure it was truly clean, then scraped off all the remaining flesh and hair. When it was pristine he used the needles, rope and two thick branches to stretch the hide and allow it to dry. The last thing Laurence did before he collapsed was examine his mana reservoir. Through day to day use of mana formed objects and feeding it into his broken arm to heal quicker it had only emptied the reservoir by a quarter. This astounded Laurence but he could not think much more about it, so he curled up next to the wolf and fell asleep.
In the morning Laurence awoke to his face being licked. The wolf cub was up and about, but most of the nastier wounds from the fight had yet to heal properly. It was still a little wobbly, but had eaten all of the meat that had been left for it and was now exploring a mutilated set of bones in the corner of the tree. Laurence sat up, being careful about his arm and looked at his handiwork. The leather was tanned and ready to be stretched, while the vellum was halfway done with stretching out. He was quite happy with how his creations were coming to fruition, but now needed a new top. His old smock was destroyed beyond repair so he needed some better or at least more intact clothes. After about twenty minutes of thought and perusing the red book, he decided that he was going to wait for the next test room to make himself some new armour.
He ushered the wolf close to him and looked at his wounds. None were festering but Laurence washed them with water anyway just to make sure. As he finished cleaning he rubbed the head of the dog and noticed that his tattoo began spreading. It began duplicating, finally splitting and moving onto the wolf cub. As it moved it changed shape, on both its original host and new one. On Laurence the tattoo spread up his forearm and took the shape of a sigil base. It was a circle that seemed to have a nebula-like spiral coming out of it. It still had the character 1 on it, but now it took up far more space on his arm. On the wolf the star moved down to his paw and a small streak of red came out of a point. This streak moved over the body of the wolf, leaving a cloud-like pattern in its wake.
The moment the tattoos stopped changing Laurence heard Brother in the back of his head. It was not the word brother, but more the concept. The wolf cub looked up at the boy and licked him. Brother, he heard again.
“Is that you, little wolf?” said Laurence.
Brother! This time the concept held the feeling of happiness as the wolf cub nuzzled the boy, tickling him with his fur. Laurence laughed.
“Do you have a name little wolf?”
The wolf looked at Laurence, it tilted its head and scrunched up its nose. He did not seem to understand what Laurence was asking. He simply licked Laurence’s hand and sent him a happy sensation. Laurence frowned and then pointed at himself and said “Laurence”. He tried to communicate in the same way as the wolf did and sent an image of himself with the sound. The wolf made a short whining sound in response and sent back the image of a small red cloud.
“So is your name ‘Yun’?” Laurence tried to make the closest similar sound to the noise the wolf had made. It butted its head against his leg and barked, sending over that happy feeling again. I guess I got it right, thought the young boy. He smiled as he seemed to have picked up a new friend, even though he was injured.
For the rest of the day Laurence continued to work on his leather based projects, taking some time in the middle of the day to eat and then carve some healing and restoration runes on his cast. This way his arm would heal far quicker than it would, and if it was coupled with him infusing his arm with mana it would heal in no time at all.
By late afternoon, with the use of the speed up box the leather and vellum was complete. Laurence took the materials he would need and began the second last stage of his pet project. Laurence cut the rest of his harvested wood so that he had two pieces that were two hands tall, two hands wide and about half a centimetre thick. He then split the vellum he had made into thin sheets and made sure there were seven pages that were about the same height and breadth as the blocks of wood. Next he cut the leather so it had a body that would wrap the two pieces of wood up snugly.
He took all his cut pieces and began compiling the book. After twenty minutes of hard one handed sewing he had finally completed the book itself. Throughout the process Laurence had been infusing mana into the pieces, so they were far more durable than they otherwise would have been, and that was what would allow for Laurence to succeed with his idea. On the first page Laurence inscribed a series of runes, combining caveats and various sigils, to make the book itself impervious to damage and self repairing. He then sealed the page into the book itself to prevent tampering. The second page would contain runes that would affect the general pages of the book, so Laurence began inscribing.
In the end, the book had three attributes. Storing and recalling information, ‘infinite’ pages and illumination for night use. It was a masterwork, especially seeing as most of the creation was done by Laurence with a broken arm. It was also something Laurence was proud of. The final touch was to give the object a name, and Laurence found this stage far harder than the previous one. He thought up various names but nothing felt right. Finally he decided on The Absolution Codex. Laurence would be using it as a journal to note all the interesting things on his journey, and so his first entry was that fish he found with the useful bones.
After writing down all his sights and discoveries thus far, the boy and his wolf decided to call it a night and start traveling the next day. In the morning Laurence chucked the corpse of the Orik in his slow down box, put everything that he and Yun would need and said to the excitable wolf, “Are you ready to go hunting?”
Yun barked happily in response and immediately tried to get tangled in Laurence’s legs. The boy laughed, stepped over the foot and a half tall pup, and continued to follow the direction of his pointer stone. It led the two companions back the way Laurence had fled when he was being hunted by the Orik, so they had an easy time for the first hour of travel as much of the underbrush had been cleared away by the berserk beast in its chase. Once they reached the forest proper it was much slower going.
They travelled during the day and slept safely during the night. Over the next eight days the two youths saw countless incredible sights. There was a waterfall in reverse, a small forest of trees with inner flames, and even a geyser that seemed to fire out small gemstones rather than water. Laurence would have liked to collect some of the gems, but they were shot out with such force that they could be considered lethal weapons. Laurence did not have a strong sense of self preservation, but he did have one when the stones shot a bird out of the sky from over four hundred meters up. The most exciting part of the journey for the two friends was seeing new things. Neither of them had been alive for that long, so almost everything they encountered was new to them. In the first three days of travel alone Laurence jotted down and sketched over fifty creatures and interesting plants and by the time they actually reached the tower, fourteen days after Laurence entered the first floor, almost two hundred articles had been written in the codex.
Writing in the codex was not the only thing the two young challengers did over their journey. Laurence also showed Yun the red Book and the wolf began ‘reading’ it. He also tried to teach Yun to more clearly understand language, rather than using sensation to express things. The latter was the far harder task. By the end of their time in Yun’s birth plane he had picked up the rudiments of language. Not speaking in sentences or even having much of a vocabulary, but he knew how to express the important things like ‘food’, ‘sleep’ and ‘Laurence’. He couldn’t talk, but he was projecting words into Laurence’s head rather than rudimentary images that Laurence barely understood.
They walked up to the large stone stele in the middle of the jungle and looked at it carefully. “Are you ready, brother?” Said Laurence, and Yun just barked in the affirmative. The two youths walked up to the door and pushed it open, once again stepping into the void waiting just beyond.
