A week later the group had rested up and Laurence had spoken to Trev about their precarious situation. Laurence told him about how they ended up in the awkward position he found them in, and explained the nature of the tower. He also treated Jake’s wound until the young man was no longer a complete invalid. He was still wounded, but he was now on the mend. During the day Laurence began instructing his two counterparts in the Inner Flame Formation, just to see if he could. He instructed them in what it would do and how it could help Jake heal himself, and within about three days both men hand got a grasp on the mana in the area. They spent the mornings breathing and practicing the Inner Flame, and the evenings travelling towards the door to the next floor.

Life went by quite peacefully until around eight days into the waste. They were two weeks from the next gate at their current rate but because of Jake not being fully healed they could not go much quicker. As they were just setting down for the night in an enclave beneath a hill when a young man, covered in mud leapt off the top of their hill. He landed amongst the group and they scattered, looking at him warily. He was a long, thin man. More bone than flesh, with dreadlocks, and beads everywhere. He was truly wild, and had obviously lived in the wasteland for a very long time.

Being the first person they had seen in a very long time they were not sure how to approach him, however he did not give them the opportunity. He looked at them, shocked, for a few seconds then said something in a language that no one understood and sprinted away into the distance. He was running scared, they could tell that, but from what they had no idea.

“Who was that?” Said Laurence.

“I think that was a wildling.” Said Jake. “That was the first I have seen, but they don’t speak the language of the empire.” He stopped for a moment and then said “That raises the point, how are you talking in Empire when you aren’t even from the same plane of existence?”

“I don’t know. I assume that there is a natural tongue that all planes in Babel follow?” Laurence replied.

“I assume that is the reason why we have different accents, yet are using almost all the same words. Most people consider wildlings to be uncultured barbarians, but he was terrified of something. There's nothing that wildlings are afraid of other than...” Jake paused and all the colour drained from his face. “Oh no. Oh no, no no no. This is bad.”

“What is?”

Jake tried to stand up but couldn't support his upper body as well as he would have liked. His feet slipped out from under him and he toppled over onto his hands and knees. "There's a «Chaos Storm» coming. It's the only thing that wildlings would run like that from. We have to move and either get underground or somehow stop ourselves from being exposed!”

“What's a Chaos Storm, Jake?” Said Trev as he and Laurence helped move all their gear near to the hill they were sheltered by.

"How do you not remember, Trevor? The storm comes once every hundred or so years in Odnw’Aldn, but in the waste they occur often and at random. If you're a living thing caught in it then it will warp your body and your mind. All that's left of you will be a withered representation of your previous self.” He paused and shivered at the thought of the storm. "Records say that people who were only slightly exposed to the storm heard it laughing as it ate the land up. It wants to send the world mad.”

“Well I will get to making us a proper place to hide out then. Can you work out how long we have?” Said Laurence. The child immediately flicked through the book of creation until he found what he was looking for, a «Quick-House» that could fit four people. It required very little technical skill, but it did need something else to be built quickly. What was required was something called «Trueforming», which was the special ability of the practitioners of the Book of Creation. In theory, anyone could craft runes and imbue them with magic, but only the Creation practitioners ever did.

Trueforming was the ability to shift the shape and nature of matter from one form to another. It used your mana to change the nature of reality in its most basic form. With just a thought a person could transform lead into gold, albeit at a large cost to their mana pool. The difficulty with trueforming was that the higher the power of the object, the greater the mana cost would be, and if you were not careful then you could easily over-use your mana reservoir which would reduce your lifespan. A person trying to trueform could easily create a Saint level weapon or material, but if they were of the saint level then they would only be able to do it at the cost of half their mana pool. If they wanted to create something of the Heaven rank, then it would take at least ten years off their lifespan as well as their entire pool.

This was all something that Laurence and Damascus had gone over during the last week. They would often talk about it during travel, which confused Trev to no end, as for some reason he was the only person in the group who could not see the odd sprite. They had spoken about trueforming in great detail, and how that it was what all children who had been exposed to the book of creation would be able to do first, but at complete random. It was apparently a way for the universe to offset the demanding nature of the skill with the children’s lack of control. Finally it was time for Laurence to put into action everything that he had learned over the week and make the party a safe place from the storm.

He began channelling mana into the air around him, bending the space he stood in to his will. It was a slow, insidious process to him but happened in mere moments to the rest of the world. Soon the muddy ground began twisting and rising around the boy as he moved it to form a wall to protect them from the elements. The mud rose in sinuous pillars at Laurence’s command, thickening and growing until all the spires reached the peak of the hovel they were hiding in. Laurence’s brow was riddled with sweat as he continued making the place stable and safe from exposure to the terrifying storm. He grew pillars out of the ground to support the roof and condensed the mud until it was solid rock then finally let go of his control. It was by far the hardest thing he had ever done, and almost completely drained his mana reservoir of all its power. The entire thing felt like it took Laurence about an hour, taking the matter around him and refining it, twisting it into the shape and form he desired, but it had taken mere seconds to raise the entire hut from the ground.

As he finished the hut Laurence could no longer stand, and collapsed onto his rear, rather unceremoniously, looking at his completed work. What he stood inside was a hill to the outside world, but inside was a functioning home. It had a pit to keep the fire going in, a smoke exit to get the smog out of the area, softer resting areas for them to sleep in and a single door, that could open and close. However the room was not finished. It could protect them from normal weather fine, but if anything could break through the three inch thick stone walls then they would be immediately exposed. Laurence wanted to inscribe the area, just to finish the job, but he had absolutely no spare mana left. He could barely stand, let alone focus.

After about five minutes of straining to do anything Laurence remembered that Tony had told him he could restore his mana using something but he could not focus enough to remember what. His body thrummed with tiredness and annoyance, so he tried to relax by practicing the Inner Flame Formation. After circulating his mana a few times he found that it was restoring much quicker than he was expecting. Laurence also noticed his tiredness also alleviated faster than even when he slept. He could feel his nerves, lined with mana, igniting and becoming molten. It should have hurt but instead he just felt rejuvenated. The weariness that permeated his entire being was just washed away by that river of fire.

When Laurence had refilled half his reservoir he stood up and stretched, feeling better than if he had slept for days. “How are things looking?” He said.

"Well you've been out of commission for an hour, and the storm is going to hit us in around five minutes.” Said Damascus, “I'm glad to see your first trueforming went well though. Are you all done?”

“No. I need to inscribe before the storm hits, but that won't drain me as much as changing the shape of that dirt did.” He replied. He immediately began cutting into the walls with a short blade of mana. He cut and cut, foregoing strengthening every section and just casting the inscription over the entire house. It would cost him even more mana, and be less powerful, but would be far quicker than any other method and now time was of the essence.

Mere moments before the winds picked up and the storm hit did the boy finish inscribing the glyphs into the walls. It was a nerve-wracking moment for the group because now would be when their defences would be tested. The winds whipped against their base as they curled up next to the fire, rain smashed against rock and lightning fired off again and again. The storm was beyond intense. It seemed to ease up for a short while, but then the laughter started. It was a low laugh to begin with, quiet but omnipresent, echoing over the landscape as creatures would scream and die, warped beyond recognition from the bizarre rain. After a while the laughter picked up and became louder. There was an underlying sense of malice coming from the laughter as if it knew the power it had and revelled in that knowledge. It was like the laugh of a mad god, giggling as it ruined all it surveyed.

The storm began firing off bolts of lightning with reckless abandon, striking in every direction. Eventually it even struck so close to Laurence and the rest that they could feel the shock wave. The only thing they could do was hope that they were lucky and Laurence's defences would hold. Finally the laughter began to fade and the storm moved on. It was an arduous wait, but eventually the world was quiet again.

Jake looked out of the hut and told the rest of them it was all clear of the cataclysm that had passed them by. They were prepared to see some damage but were not ready for the destruction they were confronted with the moment the sun assailed them once more. In front of the group was a bombsite. Beyond them for miles around were pits created by lightning strikes and torn up debris. The forest they had holed up around half a mile away from had been transplanted all around them and there were now new hills. The wasteland had entirely changed its face, but Laurence's pointer stone still said nineteen days away, so all they could do was bear with the changes and move on.

They travelled for the next two weeks without incident. The young men we able to spend the time slowly healing up, while Laurence picked up the art of enchantment. He spent hours with Damascus each night just talking about the finer points of creating a powerful tool or device, and after two weeks of learning he finally understood how the myriad of strange objects came to be. He learned that when a person gains a deep understanding of trueforming they could write his sigils on the smallest forms of matter that made up the objects, what Damascus called ‘atoms’. He began to understand that the way he had been creating tools was rudimentary in comparison, and that while it was not necessary to make all your materials through trueforming, all inscribing should be done that way.

The process of learning this took him a lot less time than Damascus thought it would have, but a lot longer than Laurence would have liked. However he did not have much time to contemplate it because they arrived at the stele the day after he finished working through that section of the book. He was now an expert on enchanting in theory, in practice he had yet to try it a single time.

Over the three weeks they had been traveling, Jake and Trev had learned a lot about the tower they supposedly lived in, and had decided that they wanted to explore it on their own. They thought it would be an awful idea to ride on the coattails of a child through this, so they told Laurence, Yun and Damascus that they would be going their separate way in the tower.

“We will miss you guys!” Said Laurence as they opened the door. It might be a long time before he met them again, so he pulled out a gift that he had been preparing for the last week of travel. In his hands were two red books, identical to Laurence's Book of Creation in every possible way. “Here's a gift. You guys are now practitioners of the Book of Creation, so use it wisely, and when you meet me you can show me how far you've come.” He gave his two friends the books and smiled as he watched them disappear into the tower.

As the two guardsmen left the group Damascus swore and looked apologetically at Laurence. “Sorry Laurence, but I am going to have to go as well. Jake never gave my ring back, so I am going to have to go with him!” He began fading away as his ring moved away from the boy and the wolf. “Before I go, I think you really do have what it takes to inherit the will of Hephaistia. Good luck kid!”

And then Laurence and Yun were once again on their own.