The Path They Made

There was something no longer right about this place for Aldrich. He stood there, made still by the feeling that this world had been taken just a quarter turn off of its natural hinge.

Taking his way through he had passed over grass still green and wind still blowing, and that was right. He had heard the distant lap of waves against the coast and seen the rummaging of a litter of wild boar, and that was right as well. He had watched wagons pass with nods, children peeking out with smiles, and still his nerve was not assuaged.

It was not until he found the stones, those particular monoliths, that he felt the full weight of that which was amiss. There were two of them, each fifty feet at least from one end to another, more flat in one dimension than another and of a rough coalish character. They had toppled to the ground, lying heavy like the adjoining dead. They left Aldrich feeling exposed, lost in air too open.

Tracing in a wide arc around the fallen, now, Aldrich knew how they would have been. He had trampled beneath stones such as these many a time, in his youth when his mother was prone to tugging him along her travels. In their state of rightness, these pillars would have been all stood up to lean against one another. They would have formed an arch, a span under which to walk, a slitted iris of open space directing a traveler through. Standing there, the craggy walls would have given you blinders to either peripheral such that you could see only the next set of two looming far off ahead and the land you’d need to walk to get there. They put anything off of that line out of sight, and in so doing they formed a sort of path from one to the next to the next.

It was a quiet sort of blasphemy, to Aldrich at least, to see that way broken. He had lived on Athal for long years now, had seen the going and coming of a kingdom in favor of a league, and as a fellow of that league he had traversed more of Athal than just about anyone he knew of. 

These worlds were vast and varied, at times discordant and dissonant from one to the other. They had not been of the same place in the world before, that much was evident, but they were bound together now and to Aldrich’s mind there was only one thing that they all held in common and that was the idea of the path. Roads and tacks, routes and flows. They were sometimes vague, and often the best places were off of them, but every place had some way of giving you a direction in which to move. Here, that direction had been interrupted.

Aldrich moved to set that disservice to right.

He settled himself, on the path and out of the way of where the stones had fallen. He pulled out a scroll, a scroll of many runes, runes enshrining more words of power than any one mage could ever hope to master in a lich’s lifetime. It was a feat made possible only by collaboration, and Aldrich silently thanked those of the League who had worked so hard on his commission of such a wonder. 

“Uid Ely’suntur Tezu’cime” He began to read in chanting tone. He felt the magic flow out from the scroll, across his mind and his hands and his tongue as a conduit. The ink began to glitter and spark, igniting off of the page to swirl past him.

“Lisr Vowd” The spell continued, watching as the lacing energy of this magic swiped across the monumental pillars, lashing underneath and all around them. The parchment itself crumbled nearly to dust, but it was no matter any longer.

“Wekt’iwe Styce Gwiffjald Cec’brol” Aldrich grunted, pressed by what could only have been some minuscule fraction of the exertion that the spell managed as the massive stones began to telekinetically heave up into the air. He guided them, as gently as he could, to hover together in concert.

Clod dirt rained all around as the two monoliths were settled back into the ground, placed upright against one another with a resounding clack.

Aldrich breathed heavily, tense for a moment longer as the last of the spell energy faded and gravity took its critical hold once more. It was not until the breeze blew again, ruffling the hood of his cloak, that Aldrich felt confident his work was not going to crush him in any immediate moment.

He closed his eyes and took tentative steps on sore legs, moving under the shadow of the now reformed the arch. When he guessed that he was just at the center of the columns, he turned around and opened his eyes. The overwhelming sea of open grassland was gone. In its place there were black stone walls, and a looming set of standing stones much alike to these far off along the horizon. There was only the path they made between them. Aldrich took the first step of the journey back, and to walk it felt right once more.