The Primordial Record

Activating all his senses and focusing it all solely on the ring, the world around him disappeared a single panel at a time, as if he was unraveling the essence of reality, he heard fragmented whispers as if from a mother calling her child from a place far away, and the Spatial Ring before him was now no longer a ring. It became four different things existing side by side.

It took a while for Rowan to become used to this new State of Reality, for this Spatial Ring was far more complex than he thought, and yet also elementary in its execution. Like a god seeing the true reality of things, his sight had unraveled the very nature of the Spatial Ring.

In his perception, the ring had now expanded until it was tens of thousands of feet in length, there were deep marks and imperfections in the metal that one could only notice when it had been scaled to such a length, and unlike the bronze coloration that could be seen when it was at its normal size, now it was revealed that the ring had different hues and shades, from purple to ultraviolet to blue, yet these colors were buried so deeply in the metal, it became invisible.

This ring told him a story all of its own, from its birth as a lump of mineral in the depth of the earth, to its forging as it was repeatedly heated and quenched, Rowan could taste the heat of the flames that went into forging her, even after 450 years since her creation there was still the ghost of a flame left inside the ring.

Over time, this ghost would slowly ground and in 800 years from now it would eat through the metal, and the Ring would be no more.

In a single glance he had been able to see the moment of its Birth down to its death.

Suddenly, Rowan saw a crack begin stretching from one side of the Ring to another, and he knew it was a result of his gaze. The Ring would show him it’s secret but if he peered at it for long enough it would perish beneath the weight of his sight.

Rowan peered at it one last time, memorizing all the cracks and gaps in the metal before he looked away.

Beside the ring was a hexagonal purple Rune, that was similar to the Runes in his Spatial Bracelet, but they contained fewer strokes and was far simpler, each line of purple Rune was made from many thousand intersecting lines that would have been really complex, but now he was able to trace each of them, and it took a few minutes, and he saw the beginning of the Rune.

It was like he was retracing the steps made by whomever created the ring, and now he saw the place where the crafter once placed his pen.

Unlike the Spatial Bracelet that had tens of thousands of intersection lines that created a single line of Rune, this one only had a few thousand, and it happens that he was able to fully trace every single line with his perception.

Whoever had created this Spatial Ring left to crest on the product, but it was still masterful work. If the Rowan of before had tried tracing each of these lines manually, it would be impossible unless he used a few years and made countless mistakes.

But with his perception in that single golden pillar inside his Palace of Ice, he was able to easily trace the twists and curves in each lines as if they were simple doodle of a child, but it did not detract from the charm.

Because what he was looking at was Aether that had been constructed in such a precise manner, each stroke of the Artificer was a work of art. The Artificer did not just wield the Aether and placed them inside the ring, he constructed a stable structure where any slight shift in the pattern would break it apart.

This was where the main difficulty lies when crafting Alchemical Items, which is the proper utilization of Aether. There was a certain skill needed to hold Aether in a specific form while keeping a continuous stream of that molded Aether into the item you wanted to create; that was just the first level.

Subsequently, you needed to draw a complex Rune that to a novice would appear as hasty scribbles containing ten lines or more, but only with very close observation would reveal that each of the lines contained thousands of intersecting lines of Aether that had to be precisely drawn, else the crafting would fail.

It was a testament to the perseverance of Rowan when he was still a human that he had learned the pattern of hundreds of Runes even as a mortal.

Even though he would not be able to comprehend Runes such as these that contains thousands of intersecting lines, it gave the present Rowan the foundation to build his understanding upon.

After going through the rich lines of the Runes, he turned to the third which was in the semblance of a green box, and Rowan recognized it as the "room" he saw anytime he entered the Spatial Ring with his mind, and from this angle he saw that it was not green box was not truly a cube, but had more edges that had been trimmed off.

This green box must be a physical entity that was merged with the ring with the aid if the Runes. He knew the material was special and if he had to guess using the color and the texture, it could be one of many things.

The last thing he could see was a small cloud of purple fog, it swirled around and seemed as large as a continent spanning cloud and as small as a steam escaping from a tea cup.

Further examination of the cloud showed him a light glinting at the center, and it was yellow. It reminded him about the gem that carried him to the world with a red moon, and he desired to pull it out, but he stopped himself.

He was sure doing that would destroy this Spatial Ring, as he knew what he was looking at was the energy bounded to the ring to create the storage device by the Artificer, and now before Rowan’s sight every secret had been stripped away.

This was not Aether but a form of Spatial Energy he had not come across with before. Knowledge such as this would have stumped Rowan before, but did he not have access to the Oracle?

Although he wanted to be careful with the questions he asked so as not to easily reveal details about himself he wanted to hide, he knew he had a place to find information when he needed them.

Rowan escaped his deep inspection of the ring, the alchemical knowledge of the prince he had once discarded to the side had begun to itch with the desire to begin Rune Crafting.

This was a fervent desire of the prince, to be an Artificer, one of the top profession in Alchemy, but he could be much more.

The barrier to this profession had been torn wide open, and if it were before he would need to worry about the many Alchemical instruments that he would need, but to him, all those were crutches.

Rowan began to feel excitement because he knew he was on a dawn of a new path. With the new abilities of his Empyrean senses paired with Telekinesis and his other Abilities Runes, then it was not impossible to become a mobile Alchemy Forge.

He knew of rumors of Alchemy Forges. Supposedly one of the most guarded secrets of the Empire, it was the beating heart of the Alchemy Union. An instrument of power that could be used to fabricate virtually anything!