“If I knew that, you wouldn’t be here!” The Yggdrasill had no mouth so they used branches to form words by rustling their leaves yet their voice still sounded angry and full of contempt. “How can Zima’s so-called greatest Forgemaster be stumped by an artifact older than himself?
“I even gave you the blueprints of Menadion’s tower! All you have to do is determine which portion of the tower core contains the enchantments of the Ears and from there, decipher how it’s supposed to work.”
“That’s it?” Honsu had felt indebted to the World Tree and honored for all their gifts, yet now the Yggdrasil had crossed the line. “Are you serious or are you as insane as your predecessor?
“The tower’s blueprints consist of hundreds of pages and even though I have no idea how you bypassed Menadion’s cloaking runes, she didn’t care about making the tower core easy to reproduce.
“She made it to be as powerful and complex as she could! There are so many runes here that my eyes water just by looking at them and I’m not even trying to understand their purpose.
“There must be thousands of enchantments, all interconnected between one another with a pattern that I don’t recognize and that makes it impossible to understand where one ends and the next begins.
“As for the Ears, even if you gave me its blueprints, it would be pointless!” Honsu’s voice dripped poison, the absurdity of the demands of his host overwhelmed his usually meek character. “Based on what you told me, the trigger is physical, not magical.
“This is not one of those dumb Nightmare Safes where the access code was written in the enchantment itself. The Ears allow to input trillions of possible combinations and only the person who set the safety measures knows how to unlock it.”
It was the reason Scarlett the Scorpicore would have never unlocked the Eyes’ true potential without Baba Yaga’s help and why those who had stolen the Mouth and Hands from their rightful owners had fared no better.
Baba Yaga herself didn’t know everything about Menadion’s Set, only what Ripha had willingly shared with her old friend and colleague.
“Let me get this straight.” The Yggdrasill pondered, their voice calm and respectful again. “You can’t unlock the full potential of the Ears, you can’t reproduce the artifact, and you can’t identify the power cores of the rest of the set in the tower’s blueprints, correct?”
“Respectively, yes, no, and yes.” Honsu ran his fingers through his long white hair in embarrassment. “I could reproduce the Ears if you gave me its full blueprints but it would still be old-ass magic.
“Even worse, the replica would bear the same seal as the original since I have no idea how the release code has to be inputted. It would take me years of study to update the runes and even longer to crack the code.”
The Master had encountered the same problems while studying the Mouth of Menadion, but it was different for him. Bytra was a Ruler of the Flames and despite Elphyn’s opinion of her, Bytra’s talent was one of a kind.
On top of that, unlike Honsu, Bytra was familiar with Ripha’s workings due to her time as Menadion’s apprentice first, colleague and rival later, and lastly by studying the Fury for centuries.
Yet if not for the help of the most ancient and brilliant Eldritches of Mogar plus Vastor’s resources and expertise, she would have never crafted the Maw so quickly.
“I thank you for your gifts, o World Tree, but I’m afraid I won’t see a tower in my lifetime. The ingredients listed here are beyond rare and even if I had them, the blueprints contain the spells, not the crafting technique.
“These papers only show the final result of Menadion’s life work. They contain no information whatsoever about how she put so many enchantments together or the order they need to be cast to form a stable network.
“As it is, what you have given me is an amazing starting point for learning tower-crafting but that’s it. First, I need to convert these runes into modern ones. Then, I have to find a way to make them form a stable tower core and work on its crafting method”
“I have no idea how long everything will take but unless a miracle happens, even updating the runes is something for my heir to finish. The Ears will be of great help to us, though.
“If properly insulated, even in their basic form they are an invaluable Forgemastering tool that…”
“Then you are of no use to me.” A wooden spike-shaped root emerged from the ground and pierced Honsu Myen’s heart, putting an end to the life of Zima’s best Forgemaster in centuries.
“Find me another pseudo Ruler of the Flames.” The World Tree said. “Promise them whatever they want, but bring them here willingly. I need their cooperation.”
“I don’t understand, My Lord.” Ghal V’horr asked. “Why did you kill Myen after all the trouble we went to recruit him? What need do you have to unlock the Ears? Once you have the tower, the modern version of the Eyes of Menadion will be yours.”
‘Silly child.’ The Yggrdrassill sighed, switching to a mind link to communicate. ‘I killed him because I need the Ears to lure Verhen and death is the only way to remove someone’s imprint.
‘It’s the same reason I want to unlock the true power of the artifact. A good story needs a villain. Someone powerful enough to require Verhen’s full focus so that he can’t notice the trap he’s stepping into.
‘I have no desire to nurture such a person and I can’t send one of my Chroniclers forward. The moment Verhen sees an elf or Yggdrasil wood, he’d understand my involvement and leave.
‘The Ears will make up for the little strength that our useful idiot already has.’
“I see.” V’horr nodded. “But, My Liege, why don’t you unlock the Ears yourself? Even better, why not make a new and updated tower? Your vaults contain all the resources you need and more.”
‘I can’t.’ The World Tree sighed. ‘I have the knowledge of millennia, but I can’t escape the limits of my talent. I had my most brilliant Chroniclers help me and we all agreed that with our current capabilities, crafting an updated tower of Menadion is beyond us.
‘We can maybe update the runes on our own and then search for a suitable Forgemastering technique, but a single mistake in either of them would mean squandering everything.
‘I don’t know Creation Magic. I can’t afford to waste centuries gathering resources just to fail and then looking for what went wrong before starting over and over again until I succeed.’
‘What are a few thousands of elves compared to the billions of people who live on Mogar? You elves reproduce slowly whereas geniuses like Bytra or Menadion are born once every century, if not millennia.
‘If I wait for one of you with that kind of talent to be born, I’ll probably be dead by then. I can Forgemaster the old version of the tower, if I focus solely on finding the crafting method, but it would be a waste of time and materials.’
