Chapter One

 The Pathmaker

The snow-covered city in front of me was the largest structure that I’d seen for months. I could only vaguely see the outline of the city through the harsh wind and blowing ice, which bit my face. I was only wearing two layers of worn out clothes, which seemed like nothing here in the mountains. As I got closer to the city, I could see large marble walls that surrounded the city, broken only by a single gate guarded by two silhouettes with spears shaved to a point in their hand. Every ten yards, there was a supporting pillar on the wall, each painted with a familiar symbol on it. It was a circle with a symbol of motion, fire and energy within it. All of these were crossed out with a large red X: It meant no magic was allowed within the city walls. I was fine with this; I had no need for it. In the center of the city was the structure that stood out the most. It appeared to be a large temple, with multiple pointed pillars that stretched up much higher than any other structure. These pillars were all deemed colorless by the harsh snow.

I approached two of the guards, whose faces were hidden well behind the fur outlining their hoods. They each wore very thick coats, and probably multiple layers of clothing underneath those. Both of them stood motionless, except for their visible shivering. “How much is the stay?” I asked one of them. He looked up shocked, and he clearly had no idea of my arrival. He looked up and revealed his very angular face, with a long beard that extended further down than was shown through his coat.

“Five pieces to enter.” He finally said, with no emotion. The guard had probably repeated this phrase countless times before, causing it to loose all meaning. I wordlessly reached into the pouch I had tied around my waist, and pulled out five dull, freezing coins with a lion crudely engraved on one side. Slowly, the guard extended his hand and I dumped the five coins into his outstretched palm. The second guard went over to the gate, took out the lock, and let me in.

As soon as I entered the city, some of the pain in my face loosened. The city walls blocked some of the snow and ice that was blowing around. The people inside the city looked lost and scared, moving around slowly, most of them carrying barrels or baskets full of goods. A couple times one of the citizens would stop, exchange words with another, and then trade some of the items in their baskets. Other than these quick exchanges, none of the citizens talked to one another, and it was eerily silent. They all stared at the ground, and never spoke a word. When a woman finally looked up and glanced at me, I nodded to her and she quickly scurried away. When I started walking around, the people stayed far away from me, forming a path as I walked. In case I was frightening them, I checked to see if any of my weapons were exposed, but they weren’t.

Suddenly, a loud bell sounded, coming from the center of the city, at the highest pillar of the temple. The citizens instantly scattered, running into the nearest building, as if this is what they were afraid of all this time. Just a simple bell that caused all the insanity, but I knew this couldn’t be all.

Within ten seconds of the loud bell, the only people left outside were two others within eyesight and me, who were also obviously foreigners like me. It was obvious because of the clothes they wore, and because they didn’t seem scared of everything like the citizens were. I walked over to one of the foreigners, who was shivering violently in the freezing wind. He was tragically unprepared, and only had two layers of tattered clothes on, just like me. But he had obviously been out in the cold longer than I had. His face and hands were bright red, as well as his ears. It seemed possible that he could start getting frostbite very soon.

I walked over to him and spoke. “Do you have any idea what’s going on in this city?” I asked him, which made him jump suddenly. He looked at me with wide eyes, as if I had threatened to hurt him, but he slowly calmed down.

“It’s just a, uh, mandatory thing they have every day.” He paused as his teeth chattered loudly, and he continued to shiver. “They come out and test all of the foreigners for, uh, magic. It’s just… to be safe.” He said, and continued to shiver.

“Who exactly are they?” I asked. The foreigner just laughed a crazy, cackling laugh that echoed throughout the city. He looked at me, realized I was serious, and shook his head, to inform me how clueless I was.

“They are the people who run this place.” He replied. “They live in the, uh” The foreigner pointed to the huge temple in the center of the city. “Temple up there. They’re super suspicious. It’s just the ruler and some crazy old, uh, bat.”

I paused at this, and looked at him shivering so violently. “Don’t you have someplace to go, or money to buy someplace to stay?” I asked him.

He just laughed that same, crazy laugh that sent chills down my spine. This man has been dealing with magic, I thought to myself. He’s gone insane. As if reading my mind, he said “They caught me with a small item of power. It wasn’t much, just a, uh, dagger that could warm up, but it was enough for them, ooh boy.” He said, and laughed that crazy laugh again. “They took my knife, beat me up, took my money, and told everyone in town I had a magic item on me. No one in town, uh, would even consider letting me stay with them, no matter how many pieces I had, no sir-ee. Everyone here is, uh, crazier than anywhere else I’ve ever been”

I considered the irony of this statement, and then walked away from the poor man. I saw the two people the foreigner had been talking about, walking down the streets. There was a very tall man dressed in a very thick fur coat, and he held a spear that had a razor sharp tip that appeared to be made out of gold. He had a rough expression on his face, and looked like he would to all those things to that poor foreigner. Walking next to him was an old woman who was much older than any human should live. She could barely walk, and he movements were slow and stiff. She also had a thick coat on, that seemed to weigh more than she did. With her she held a brown sack in one hand, and a walking stick in the other. Her walking stick was much different than the man’s, and would be no use in combat.

Even though they had done all those terrible things to the foreigner, I wasn’t worried. I had no items of power with me, and I stayed well away from magic. As far as I knew, I had never been near magic and was incapable of using it. Any usage of it would surely drive me mad, and I had to stay sharp if I wanted to survive wandering around.

As I watched, the old lady walked up to a foreigner, and said a couple words that I couldn’t hear. Then she took out a handful of shiny red powder from her sack and blew it into his face. When the powder cleared, the old lady nodded in satisfaction, most likely taking an enormous amount of energy on her part. The powder she blew into the man’s face was stardust. It was a strange substance with unknown origins, and was very rare. When near items of power, it will start to glow and become very hot, usually revealing the item. When blown into someone’s face after a few ancient words, It will form a symbol and glow if someone is capable of using magic on their own without an item of power, which was very rare. The old lady walked painfully slow toward me, the man practically at a craw so that he won’t pass her up. I waited ten seconds, and then casually began to walk up to them, to speed up the process. I was tired of waiting. Although I had never been tested by stardust, I was certain I wouldn’t be suspicious of anything, given my aversion to magic, and I was eager to get it over with.

“What is your name?” Croaked the old woman, whose voice was barely audible over the harsh winds. She was even more revolting close up. She was covered in wrinkles, and she appeared to have soot all over her face, in strange, twisting patterns. Her hair was stringy and scarce, and hung over her eyes like a torn curtain.

“Sawyer Gha’dani” I replied. The old lady nodded with a scowl, and reached slowly and painfully into her sack full of stardust. She spoke a few ancient words that were unknown to me, and included Gha’dani somewhere, although in what context I had no idea. Soon, she took her hand out, a pile of stardust on her palm. Some of it blew away in the wind, and stuck in the snow like shiny, crystallized blood. She blew stardust into my face, and I closed my eyes to avoid being blinded. I spat out some of the disgusting dust and shook my head. Her foul breathe reached out into my nostrils and stung. It smelled like a rat had climbed into her throat and died.

I felt a faint burning sensation my forehead, and the old woman gasped. “Take off your hood!” Screamed the man, and I obeyed, confused.

“Alchemy!” Screeched the old lady, and I reached up and touched my forehead. Stardust had stuck to it, and I felt around to see in what pattern it was, and my fear was confirmed. It was the familiar symbol of magic that had been painted on all the pillars surrounding the city. I tried to wipe off the glowing red stardust, but it held its place, not coming off.

There was an instant reaction to her scream, which echoed throughout the city. The larger man threw me to the ground, and put the spear to my throat, it’s gold tip shining. This is how I’m going to die, by some crazy old lady who thinks I am a magic user, I thought. But the man did not kill me; he just held his spear at my throat and stared at me like I was the devil, which to hid spoiled mind, I must seem like. Soon there were more men in thick coats with spears that were surrounding me, although only the spear at my throat was tipped in gold. One of the guards took my pack off of me, and I could see the lady blow more stardust onto it, although none of it stayed. I already knew I had no items of power with me.

Soon, one of the guards halfway picked me up, and started dragging me by my shoulders through the snow. My back suddenly became freezing, and snow began to get into my clothes, making the cold unbearable. I couldn’t get my hood back over my face, and the ice and snow once again bit at me.

Thinking I was going to die anyways, I elbowed the man dragging me, and reached for the dagger I kept in the pocked inside my shirt. But the guard’s reactions to this were swift and effective. He let go of me, and let me reach for my dagger before pinning my hand to the ground with the butt of his spear. Then, he reached into my shirt pocket, retrieved the knife, and crushed my hand under his spear.

I yelped in pain as my hand was crushed and bit by the ice at the same time. My vision started to blur, and I saw another guard approach the one who had injured my hand. Before I could get a good glimpse of either of them, one of them hit me in the face with the side of their spear, and I fell unconscious.

 

Chapter Two

I woke with a start to cold water splashing in my face, causing pain to course through my veins. This was followed by a second of extremely warm air that surrounded me, and then was gone. The air completely evaporated the water that had just woken me up. I opened my eyes to a cold, dark room made of black stone. It was featureless, with just a barred gate to the left of me for a wall, which led to many more identical rooms. All of these rooms were featureless, and I could faintly hear painful moaning echoing from the hallways.

I looked across the room to a strange figure that was sitting in the corner of the stone room. His hair went down to his eyes, and was very messy. The clothes he wore were unlike any I had ever seen – they were perfectly cut and sewn together, and had pockets in the front. He was wearing black pants of a cloth I couldn’t identify, and shoes of an unnaturally bright color. All of his clothes were precisely made, but were badly torn, including one of the pockets of his shirt, which appeared to have burned off. In his hand, he held a short, golden crystal with dark red patterns that were constantly shifting. It glowed that same dark red color, and then slowly lost it’s light.

I had no doubt that this was an item of power; and a very powerful one by the looks of it, which would explain the water and the air that had hit me a moment before. “You finally awake?” The strange man asked. His voice had a deep, thick accent unlike any that I had ever heard.

“Who are you?” I asked him. Between his strange clothes and demeanor, and the glowing crystal in his hand, this man was surely mad from magic.

“My name is Darien, owner of the Second Pathmaker. Who are you?” I assumed the Pathmaker was the crystal object he gripped in his hand, which had stopped glowing. He seemed to think that calling himself the owner of the Second Pathmaker would impress me, but I had no idea what that object was, and I had never heard of a Pathmaker before.

“My name is Sawyer Gha’dani.” I replied. He gave me a confused look, as if he expected me to say more, but didn’t seem bothered by my lack of clarity. “Can you please tell me what is going on?” I asked him.

“I can’t tell you a lot.” The man replied, shrugging it off as if it was nothing. “All I know is that the people who run this place – the old lady and the man with the golden spear, who I assume you’ve met, despise magic and any items of power. I assume it’s because everyone I have met in your world who comes in contact with ‘magic’,” Damien made air quotes with his fingers when he said the word ‘magic’, “Has gone insane with power, usually craving more items with murderous envy.” My world? I thought. This guy is making less sense the more he speaks.

“What do you mean my world?” I asked him. The man chuckled, but not like the crazy, deranged laugh of the foreigner from before. It was a mocking laugh, as if my cluelessness was hilarious to him.

Damien stopped laughing, then looked at me with a cold seriousness. “Look, we have little time to do any explaining, so I’m going to tell you how everything works in the simplest sense I can before we need to get out of here. They are planning to burn both of us alive for being magic users. They seem to believe that reducing us to ashes is the only way to properly get rid of our ‘magic trail’.” To demonstrate how dumb of a concept this seemed to Damien, he made very exasperated hand motions while he spoke.  “But in all actuality, there is no such thing as magic. What you call magic I call quantum summoning. It is the taking of things from other worlds, and bringing them into ours using links set in place by items of power. For example, if I want to, say, shoot a lightning bolt out of my hand, I just take an object of power, and tell it what I want to happen. If such a link exists, it will be provided, depending on the strength of the object of power. Understand?” Damien asked. Clearly I didn’t, and it showed through the confused look I gave him.

“Ok, we don’t have time to get into the details, but if you don’t want to be burned alive, you’ll need to just roll with it, alright?” I just nodded in confusion, still confused on just about every subject.

“Ok, first I need to know what you can do naturally because of your mark.” Damien said, indicating to my glowing forehead. I reached up with my hand to touch the stardust that would probably never come off, and pain shot down my arm, and I yelped.

“Easy, easy.” Damien said, trying to calm me down. “Here, let me help.” He reached over towards me with his golden crystal outstretched, and I quickly crawled away, despite the painful protest from my hand as it hit the stone floor.

“Get that thing away from me!” I yelled, louder than I should have, and I heard some screams of others who were being held prisoner. Damien looked at me oddly, shocked by my sudden fright. “I don’t want anything to do with that thing!”

“I’m afraid your choices are minimal. Now do you want me to heal your hand or not? You won’t go crazy by simply being near it, trust me.” Damien eased.

“You haven’t given me one reason to trust you. All you’ve given me is a bunch of crazy theories about multiple worlds, and a brief explanation of the situation. Why should I trust you?” I asked him.

“Because you have no choice.” He replied simply, and without further speaking, he extended the crystal towards my hand and touched it. From my forehead, I saw the stardust fly off and stick to the crystal very quickly, so fast it almost hurt to have the dust ripped off. The crystal instantly glowed a dark red color, baking my hand in a blood-like color. As I watched in agony, my bones rearranged on their own, and my skin mended itself back together. After the pain of my bones moving around, however, all pain in my hand ceased suddenly, and I was able to move it around easily again. I gaped at this wonder, and thought to myself that maybe magic did have some very good benefits, but then stopped that thought dead in its tracks. This was the thought that had surely driven the foreigner and countless other people insane from the power of the items. The Pathmaker in Damien’s hand could make anyone go insane, and there are plenty of people that would be desperate to get their hands on it.

I looked at his badly ripped clothes, and the burn on his shirt, and felt a moment of sympathy for Damien. Countless men, who were looking to get their hands on the crystal, had probably hunted him down. He looked as if he had defended it with his life, which he probably had. Despite all these signs of insanity, he still appeared calm and collected, in full possession of his mind.

“Now that you’re healed, we need to get out of here.” Damien said, with no delay after my sympathy or him.

“And how do we do that?” I asked him.

“I’ve been looking for a long time for someone with a mark, like yours. A very long time. And now, you can unlock the full powers of the Pathmaker, and that is how we will get out of here.” Damien replied, surprisingly calm. He tossed the Pathmaker in my direction, which I caught greedily, much to my dismay. I could already feel the crystal’s power having effects on me.

“Now, pull the Pathmaker apart.” Damien instructed, and I looked at him in horror. I couldn’t possibly break the item that had just healed my broken hand. Damien looked at my shocked face in worry, probably wondering if I was going to try and run away with it. “It won’t break, it will just shift forms.” Damien explained, worry deeply rooted in his voice.

I dismissed his worry and did as I was told. When I pulled the crystal apart, the form shifted dramatically. The crystal was now four feet long, and had an entirely different shape. It was now a sword with a golden crystallized blade, and the familiar blood red patterns glowing from within it. The handle was also dark red, and extended on both sides, resembling two hour hands on a clock. The blade’s grip was solid leather, making it very mobile and easy to handle. The end of the handle was tipped in gold, wit h strange shifting patterns dancing around on it. All the moving patterns and the maroon glow was very disorienting, and my vision started to become blurry.

“Don’t stare into the blade.” Damien urged, breaking my trance. “It will drive you mad. That’s why I like to keep it in its crystal form.”

“Right,” I said, only half paying attention. I was marveling at the amazing beauty of the blade.  

“Now, focus your mind. Think of where you want to go to escape – I suggest outside of the city walls, so that the guards don’t catch us and we can make a quiet escape. Once you’re focused on where you want to go, close your eyes and swing the sword through the air. Don’t stop focusing on your destination, or it won’t work properly, got it?”

“What will happen?” I asked him, doubting weather or not it would do anything at all. This behavior was unlike any item of power I had heard of.

“A portal will form in air, and we can step through to our destination. It’s as simple as that, just don’t loose your focus, got it?” Damien told me, putting extra emphasis on the last sentence.

“Okay, I got it.” I replied, and took a deep breath. This would be my first act of magic that I had ever performed in my life, and according to Damien, it’s a powerful one at that. Most items of power can only do little things, sometimes only one specific task. But the blade I was holding had already spawned water heat, and healed my badly broken hand. According to Damien, it also unlocked the task of how magic works.

I closed my eyes, and imagined where I wanted to be, right outside of the walls of the city. I wanted to be on the other side of the city from where the gate was, that way we wouldn’t be seen, and we would avoid a fight. I took an extra blade, and raised the blade to strike. Faintly, I could hear Damien back up from where I was about to slash. The blade came down with a whistle, followed by the sound of air splitting, like thunder. That made me jump back, and open my eyes. In front of me was a rip in the air, with edges of reality folding back like pages of paper. Inside this rip was a black expanse decorated with shining stars, and dotted with galaxies a million times larger than I was. Without question to how much sense this made, I walked inside the rip in the air in front of me.

My experience inside of the portal is one that is very hard to explain. I seemed to have lost all my position in both space in time. The space inside the portal was even emptier than a void. There was no longer any stars or galaxies to marvel at, there was just emptiness.

I have no idea how long I was in the portal because I had no perception of time while in the blade’s path. My existence was minimal, at nowhere in the universe in space or time. I then understood why Damien had called the blade the Pathmaker.

Soon, my reality came back to me, and I was thrown into the snow face-first, the crystal blade underneath me. The glowing light from the blade was easily visible through my closed eyes, and for a second I thought I was bleeding.

There were lots of gasps and screams as I came out of the portal. Soon after I hit the ground, Damien landed right next to me, but he landed on his feet. When I stood up, I realized the path had failed. I was out of the prison, but the path had led us into the center of the city, for everyone to see. The villager’s panicked screams would draw the city’s guards fast.

“You lost focus, didn’t you!” Screamed Damien.

“I didn’t!” I screamed, surprised.

“It doesn’t matter, we need to get out of here! They’ll be very furious now that we used the Pathmaker.” He screamed. Guards were already rushing towards us from all sides, spears in hand. The guards already outnumbered us by at least twenty.

“Throw me the Pathmaker!” Damien screamed in panic. I struggled to haul myself out of the snow, the Pathmaker in my hand. It was now back to its crystal form, and glowing that dark red still after its usage to make the portal. I was about to throw him the Pathmaker when a voice spoke in my head. NO! It screamed at me. The Pathmaker is MINE! MINE! The voice screamed. I was horrified to realize the voice inside my head was my own.

Fighting back instinct, I chucked the crystal over to Damien. As soon as he grabbed it, he expanded it back into sword form, and muttered a few unintelligible words that hurt my ears, making me wince. The words dripped with evil. The blade changed colors, and Damien was knocked back ten feet by some unseen force, right into a guard with a spear ready to swipe. He fell onto the ground, face first, and yelped. The guard raised the spear above him, ready to strike.

Without Damien visibly going through any effort, he rolled over and swung the now pitch black blade at the guard’s knees. As it swung, it began to glow black, and I glimpsed the stars and constellations dancing on the blade. When the Pathmaker hit the guard’s knees, the guard screamed and began to disintegrate into thin black mist, which disappeared into the air, until there was no evidence he was ever there.

So Damien had protection, I thought, but I’m still by myself. I grasped my belt and felt around for my dagger, but it wasn’t there. The guards must have taken it from me while I was unconscious. Guards were closing in on me fast, and I need protection. I doubted that they would be gentle if they got a hold of me. OK, so Damien said I had the mark of a natural magic user. Does that mean I can use it without an item of power? I wondered, doubting that my train of thought would get my anywhere, but it was all I had.

I thought of how I used the Pathmaker by thinking of where I wanted to go. So, I turned towards a guard that was charging at me with his spear, and held my hand out, pointed at the charging guard. I dug deep into my memories for the few times I had seen magic. Eventually, I focused on the time I had seen a magician play with a small ball of fire. I managed to catch some of the words he said, although I tried forgetting them. But magic words had their way of sticking in your mind, for each of them had their own power within them. He had said ‘Dancing Inferno Ignite’, before the small chain he had around his neck started glowing bright red. 

[CONTINUING CHAPTER SOON]

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 30.03.2013

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