A Gleaming Path

by Jeffrey Pawlak

  “They’re all tombs, aren’t they?” Alamor asked.

  “I would assume so,” Raissa answered. “If I had to guess, these that were built into the walls came first, and once the people of this region ran out of room, they began to place their dead in caskets out here on the floor.”

  Alamor turned and peered across the chamber. The opposite wall’s lower half was also composed of the same granite blocks that surely housed countless persons who had been laid to rest over the ages.

  As his eyes scanned the many tombs, Alamor’s gaze was eventually drawn to the upper half of the wall, where several paintings lay over the sandstone surface. The paintings were done almost entirely in red dye, portraying what seemed to be humans, although they were not realistic depictions. Their figures were painted in simplistic, ovular shapes that sported little or no detail, and their limbs were merely slashes of red dye that curled at their ends to represent hands and feet.

  Their faces were more accurate, being given unique eyes, noses, mouths, and even various expressions. They were clearly given far more attention than any other part of their bodies, as evidenced by their eerie realism and the variety of colors used to create their features. All of their faces were lifted skyward, and while no one person was painted in the same exact pose, each held their arms up in what looked to be some kind of prayer-like stance.

  Alamor’s eyes ran further up the wall, settling upon another figure painted in red. It was nearly twice the size of any that lay below. The figure stood with its arms and a pair of outstretched wings reaching to its sides. Its face was only painted from the mouth-down, as the rest of it was concealed by what seemingly represented a hood—a clear indication as any that the figure was none other than Ralu.

  Alamor would have stared at the extensive murals along the walls for much longer, but Raissa eventually turned and began to make her way back to the center of the chamber.

  “Let’s keep moving,” she said. “I believe that we are actually very close to the portal to the Hallowed Plane.”

  Alamor followed behind Raissa, and as they crossed the massive burial room, he realized that Raissa was likely correct in her assumption. The magical presence that had guided them ever since they entered the Sandstone Mausoleum was especially strong now, growing more ubiquitous with each step they took. What was once a fading echo had grown into a sonorous cry, the essence of a sacred realm—and an unequaled source of Serenity—permeating every inch of the air around them.

  They came to the far side of the chamber, where a new hallway emerged, leading deeper into the burial grounds. The passage’s floor was a carpet of sand. At the end of it were two burning torches that jutted from the wall of an adjacent hallway, the glow from their flickering flames revealing a huge pair of doors.

  Behind those doors was the origin of the great Serenity that Alamor and Raissa sought. They started forward, both eager to find the portal to the Hallowed Plane, and thankful to have likely found it so soon.

  They were halfway down the passage when Alamor sensed that something was amiss. His first few steps across the sandy floor were steadier than he expected. It felt as if he walked across solid earth rather than loose sand and grit. As he and Raissa progressed further, his feet sank incrementally into the sand—never so far that it was obvious danger, but enough that it roused Alamor’s suspicion. The sandy floor gave way beneath his footfalls with bizarre consistency, each step being pulled just slightly further into the grit.

  Alamor looked to Raissa. Even though he wore armor from neck to toe, and she wore fine, light garments as part of her royal attire, along with a cloak, Raissa’s feet appeared to be sinking the same depth into the sand as Alamor’s.

  Raissa stopped in the middle of the hallway before Alamor had to alert her. The look on her face told Alamor that she knew—not merely sensed—that something was wrong.

  “Head back,” Alamor implored, suddenly feeling that they only had moments to escape the trap.

  Raissa turned, forcibly pulled her feet from the sand, and hastily sped down the hallway back to the huge burial chamber. Alamor was right behind her. The length of the passage was only a few yards, but they ran with the same urgency as if they had to cover a mile, desperate to keep their footfalls as brief as possible.

  At one point, Alamor glanced over his shoulder. In the middle of the hallway, right where he and Raissa briefly stood, a gaping pit had suddenly formed within the sand. It looked like the floor of loose sediment had parted to reveal a giant maw. The depression spread by the seconds, its reach rapidly stretching the entire width of the hallway as the sand fell away into a shadowy void.

  Alamor and Raissa kept running even once their feet returned to the Sandstone Mausoleum’s solid, stone floor. They only stopped when they came to the rows of pillars and caskets, where they felt safe from the strange hazard in the hallway.

  It was a few moments before they had the courage to approach the hallway again and inspect the sand that seemingly attempted to consume them. The mysterious pit had already retracted by the time they returned. The sand receded back into place, filling the depression and making the floor whole, once more.

  Alamor bent down and picked up a loose rock. He threw it to the far end of the hallway. It landed in the sand, and within just a few seconds the rock sank into the gritty depths. It was as if the sand was a ravenous creature that devoured whatever touched the hallway floor.

  “Quicksand?” Raissa asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Alamor answered, his voice low. “I’ve never actually seen quicksand in my life, but from everything I know, it doesn’t react so…deliberately, like this did.”

  “Joth was right, then, about there being traps inside of here,” Raissa said.

  Alamor nodded. “Like you said before, I’m sure the spirits have ways of keeping out the unworthy.” He indicated the adjacent passage where the torches and doorway stood. “There’s no sand over there, and the floor at least seems solid, like everything else. We just need to be careful going forward.”

  Raissa began to look about the burial chamber. Her gaze eventually set upon another hallway that ran off from the right side of the enormous room, and what appeared to be the only other path they could take. “Let’s head that way and hope it leads to the same doorway this hallway leads to.”

  She started toward their exit, but Alamor remained behind for just a moment. As he stared at the long hallway before him, he thought he saw a shape move beneath the sand surface, like when a large fish briefly breaches the surface of the water. Alamor quickly followed behind Raissa, grateful that he and the Princess of Tordale had not tread further down the sand-covered hallway.

  They left the burial chamber and entered the far passage that Raissa had spotted. The hallway ran only a short distance before it formed into a steep stairway, which ended with a view of the outside world. Even from the bottom of the steps, Alamor and Raissa could see the azure sky and rays of sunlight. The possibility of open air spurred them up the stairs in a hurry, and before long they emerged onto a wide walkway carved into the rocky hills. Alamor and Raissa were initially blinded by the bright sunlight. When their vision finally adjusted, they surveyed their surroundings. To their left, the ground fell away into another sprawling courtyard like the one that their party entered earlier.

  Instead of pillars, this courtyard housed a number of tall statues that Alamor believed to be of past Spiritcasters and Champions of Light. He discerned the Spiritcasters as those who were dressed somewhat plainly, usually by robes, vests, or tunics, while the Champions of Light wore armor or a cape. Each figure was frozen in the same pose as the giant effigies of Ralu and Xogun that stood above the doorway to the Sandstone Mausoleum. Their gazes were bent skyward, one hand reaching above them, and the other hand held over their heart or bearing a weapon.

  Alamor also discerned two yawning entryways within the courtyard that stood on opposite sides of the space. Although he was certain that one must have led to the corridor that he
and Raissa had been unable to reach because of the strange sand, there was no way for them to enter the courtyard from where they stood, for the walkway rose some thirty feet or more without any safe passage downward.

  He turned and looked to the right. The opposite side of the walkway was bordered by a wall of rock, but most of the bottom portion was hollowed out in the form of a window. It revealed a sweeping view of the desert that lay beyond the sandstone ridges. The Arid Reaches ran into the horizon seemingly without limit, a land of nothing but sunlight and sand beneath the immaculate sky.

  As Alamor stared at the desert before him, he was reminded of the time when he first awoke on Onda Reef and looked out over the ocean from the cliffs. Just like that morning when he gazed at the endless world of blue waves, he felt now that he stood in one of the furthest corners of the kingdom, as far away as he could possibly be from other life and civilization. It made him realize that the Arid Reaches was its own kind of ocean—breathtaking in its vastness and emptiness, but also frightening for those same reasons.

  “I’ve been in this desert for nearly two weeks now,” Raissa said as she joined Alamor by the window and stared into the horizon, “but I feel as though this is the first time that I’ve truly been able to appreciate how beautiful it is.”

  “I understand what you mean,” Alamor replied, certain that he knew why Raissa had been distracted during her time journeying throughout the Arid Reaches. “You and I have both been preoccupied lately. It’s hard to take in everything that’s around you when you’re placing your entire focus on one person and their Serenity like we did.”

  “I hope that someday I can come back here when I’m not completing such an important mission,” Raissa said. “I want the opportunity to explore more of this region, to see what other amazing things are hidden in this part of the kingdom. If there is one thing that the desert has taught me in the last several days, it’s that the reputation it carries across the rest of Tordale doesn’t fairly represent all of its beauty.”

  Alamor shared that sentiment. “All that you usually hear about this region is that it’s hot enough to melt rock and that only the most miserable things survive here. You never hear someone speak about sights like this, the Sandstone Mausoleum, or a Grimali herd. After all of the terrible things I was told about this place, I never expected that I’d ever look at the desert the way I do now. It’s amazing how a couple of days—and even just a change in elevation—can give you such a drastically different view of the world.”

  It was a few moments before Raissa added her own thought, and when she spoke, she did so with a soft, solemn tone. “There are many people throughout the kingdom who should see this same view,” she said. “All of those who say that the land here is inhospitable, or that all who dwell here are either wild beasts or savage outlaws—they are wrong. There is so much wonder here that goes unrecognized because of ignorance, even after Scourge tried to destroy it.”

  Alamor felt that he knew why Raissa spoke so pensively about the subject. “Your father must have felt the same way. He understood that there were great things to be salvaged here. Scourge’s rampage scarred this region, but it didn’t destroy it.”

  “And he never saw much of it with his own eyes, let alone a distant corner of it like where we are now,” Raissa added. There was a trace of awe in her voice as she recounted her father’s intuition.

  “Your father’s judgment was something to marvel,” Alamor said. “Even more, the way that he saw good in the world when it appeared like there was little. It’s hard to imagine that any other person in Tordale would have trusted enough in this desert to do what he did to rescue it.”

  Raissa turned to Alamor. Conviction and desire pooled in her eyes. “When all of this with the Radia and Baldaron is over, and we have brought peace back to Tordale…maybe my brother and I can continue my father’s mission. Maybe there will come a day when this desert is as prosperous as it was when the Sandstone Mausoleum was first built, before Scourge swept through here.”

  A confident smile managed to cross Alamor’s face. He stepped away from the window and started across the walkway. “There’s only one way for that to ever happen,” he said, gesturing for Raissa to follow him.

  They proceeded across the rest of the walkway. It eventually led to a stairwell like the one leading from the burial chamber. Even as they headed back into the depths of the Sandstone Mausoleum, the heat that they encountered outside did not recede. In fact, it grew more intense as Alamor and Raissa descended further. The air became thick and oppressive, not so different from the forges within the Bachu Caverns.

  The stairs eventually brought Alamor and Raissa into a new hallway, but they could not see how far it ran, for a sheer wall of gold flame blocked their view. The strangely-colored fire sprang from the stone floor, dancing and crackling without any discernable fuel source. Many of the flames reached high enough to caress the ceiling with their touch. Perhaps even more inexplicable than the fire’s color was that Alamor could not spot any burn marks along the stone. Not a single inch had been charred or seared by the roaring blaze, even as its heat alone felt like it could ignite one’s clothing.

  Alamor was seized with horror when Raissa stepped up to the fire and extended her hand into it.

  “Raissa, no!” he screamed.

  He froze just as he reached out to pull her away. To Alamor’s utter astonishment, Raissa did not so much as blink while her hand hung within the gold flames. The fire lapped against her skin, yet it caused no burns.

  Alamor was again startled when Raissa stepped forward and disappeared within the fire. She entered the flames’ embrace as confidently as she would the cool mist of the ocean shore.

  “It’s okay, Alamor,” she assured him. “This fire isn’t what you think it is.”

  Alamor still balked at the frightening prospect. “I don’t really have any thoughts on what this could be…” he muttered.

  Against everything his instincts would normally tell him to do, Alamor hesitantly reached into the fire. He was nothing short of stunned when he felt a soothing, energizing sensation wash over his hand. He eventually built up the nerve to offer his whole body to the fire as Raissa had.

  When he stepped all the way into the gold blaze, the sweltering heat was suddenly gone. Even as Alamor’s vision was consumed by fire, the air around him immediately became subsumed by an unearthly, empowering presence. As he and Raissa slowly proceeded through the fire—which stretched further down the hallway than they initially suspected—Alamor encountered far more than just sensory elements like temperature and color. He perceived incorporeal essences amongst the flames, emotions that had taken physical form. Alamor felt the presence of extraordinary willpower, passion, ambition, and other attributes of mighty beings who once knew a mortal form. He could not be entirely certain, but he believed that the flames were the souls of ancient Spiritcasters taking form in the temporal world.

  Alamor could not tell how far he and Raissa walked before they eventually stepped beyond the fire’s embrace, and back into an empty, shadowy hallway. The moment their bodies left the flames’ touch, the oppressive heat returned to the air around them.

  “I need to see something…” Raissa said aloud, her expression tight with curiosity as she removed the dusty cloak she had been wearing over her royal attire. She casually tossed the cloak into the gold fire. The garment was immolated before any part of it could land on the floor.

  While Alamor’s eyes widened at the results of Raissa’s experiment, she was stoic in response. “It’s just as I thought,” she said. “This fire is meant to ward off anyone who does not possess mastery over Serenity.”

  Apparently satisfied with her conclusion, Raissa casually turned from the gold flames and started down the rest of the hallway.

  “We definitely made the right decision coming in here alone…” Alamor said, still staring in wonder at the fire as he followed Raissa.

  In time, the long hallway led Alamor and Raissa to the
foyer they had seen earlier, where the stretch of sand ended and a great doorway sat within the wall. Sensing the immense source of Serenity more than ever, and knowing that only a few inches of stone separated them from the portal to the Hallowed Plane, Alamor pushed opened one of the heavy doors and stepped inside.

  Beyond the doors was a stone bridge that stretched across an enormous rotunda. Each step they took seemed to echo for an eternity, and it was only when Alamor looked off to the side that he realized the room had no floor. The rounded chamber looked like it had been hollowed out. A drop into total darkness surrounded the bridge on both sides. Alamor could not tell where it led or how far it fell, nor did he particularly want to know.

  The bridge that he and Raissa stood on reached out to a cylindrical platform which rose from the gloom. Its wide, flat surface held the altar that served as the opening to the Hallowed Plane. A huge torch stood on each side of the platform, their gold flames dancing within the candelabras and producing the only traces of light found inside the stygian rotunda. A lone pedestal rested between the two torches, the block of stone sitting silently, almost forebodingly as Alamor and Raissa approached the altar.

  They stopped where the bridge ended. Neither of them said a word for several moments as they stared at the altar and felt the unfathomable presence of a sacred dimension bearing down upon them.

  Nearly a minute went by where Alamor and Raissa stood in silence. It was finally broken when a faint sigh escaped Raissa’s lips as she started forward. “Stay here while I open the portal,” she said.

  Her voice was filled with uncertainty, as if she feared the task ahead of her. Alamor was not entirely surprised by this; he harbored a suspicion for as long as they traversed the Sandstone Mausoleum that Raissa was concerned with summoning the spell that would take them to the Hallowed Plane.