One With the Earth

One With the Earth

                Right after Dorian finished explaining the situation the warrior clutched her chest, wheezing. Dorian was initially concerned but a moment later a cacophony of laughter burst forth from her. She was so amused that she stumbled backwards a little before falling over, still laughing.

                It took her a few minutes to calm down and even then stray thoughts seemed to cause additional tiny bursts of laughter. Dorian sighed. This was the great Dytja? Finding and summoning her to his castle had not been cheap. At least she had a nice laugh.

                Eventually Dytja seemed to get past whatever she found so amusing, and propped herself up on the carpet. Her tanned but still very light skin blended with the white of the temple carpet quite intriguingly – Dorian had only seen skin like hers amongst a handful of traders.

                “Let me just get this straight,” she said, crossing her legs. “You’ve lived here all your life, as did your father, and your father’s father, and so on. Generations of you – at least a thousand years, likely longer – have.

                “This temple”- she slapped the white wood walls -"has stood, according to legend, since your ancestors came here. You asked me here because you’d like me to delve into the depths beneath, through the crypts and older temples this one is built above, to find out precisely when that was.”

                “That is correct,” said Dorian. He walked around to the other side of his table in a stately manner, and then squatted in front of her. The trails of his ceremonial ribbons coiled around his feet.

                “Now,” said Dytja, “The reason you wish to ascertain exactly when this temple was first built is because of the new settlers that have come to your lands.” Dorian looked as if he wanted to say something, but Dytja held up her hand. “They have come here because their lands are full, and because they claim to be the true descendants of the portal builders – one with the earth, true inheritors of the land.

                “You hope that the temple is old enough to make them reconsider their demands that you leave ‘their land’ I suppose?” Dorian nodded. “Alright. Their claim is based around their ability to control the land; move the earth, call the rain, feed life to plants and make the harvest bountiful. The very land obeys them and seems to love them – so, they reason, they must be the true owners of it.”

                “Their claim is without question,” said Dorian. “They have shown time and time again that the land answers their calls alone. They are the portal makers themselves, kept pure by breeding only amongst their own.”

                Dytja wriggled her lip as she thought of the best way to say what she had to. “They aren’t. They really, really aren’t. If they really have kept themselves ‘pure’”- strangely, this concept seemed rather unamusing to Dytja -“they are far less kin to the portal builders than your people are.

                “They have a lot of magic, but it isn’t that of the portal builders. The portal builders were the masters of sigils. All of their technology – the stuff in the legends that go around that is actually true – used them. Any other magic is not part of this world’s raw makeup; their magic was brought here by the portals.”

                “That cannot be – they claim their inability to use the sigils is a sign that they are-“ began Dorian. He was interrupted by Dytja losing her shit again.

                “Hahahahaha what?” she said, leaning back and bracing herself with her arms. “Haha, that is amazingly ballsy. Also interesting. I can use sigils a little despite … several complicated things, the simplest being that I’m not from around here. Their magic is probably the reason they are unable to use the sigils – unfortunate for them. But you might be in luck. You told me the sigil magic in this wood has been passed down from the very beginning?”

                “Yes,” said Dorian. “From the very first iteration of the temple. What it does… I am unsure. That was lost. Yet the magic is there.”

                “I doubt it ever worked,” said Dytja. “It’s a garbled copy of something I recognise – the right words, but in nothing like the right form. Uh, you’re actually really lucky it doesn’t work. The sigils are those used for a particular type of secured door that needs a key to be opened. If they worked you wouldn’t be able to enter the temple.”

                Dorian looked somewhat abashed. “I am… embarrassed by your knowledge of our traditions,” he said. “Perhaps what you speak of is the reason for the forbidden room?”

                “Forbidden room?” asked Dytja.

                “Yes, several floors down. None can enter; though nothing is inside. An old story says that it was built, and then suddenly none could enter,” said Dorian.

                “Then it’s almost certain there’s a door down there. Most likely an access corridor…” Dytja’s voice trailed off as she turned to her thoughts.

                After a while – during which Dorian patiently watched – Dytja spoke again. “I’m going to head down to the door and check it out. I’ll bring up a device from the portal era and part of the temple – you can ascertain their ages to prove how long you’ve been here, and that sigil magic has been here for longer still. I’ll be heading back down to explore after I’ve handed over these things.”

                Dorian stroked his stubbly chin thoughtfully. “I think I see. We will challenge them to use the device to show their ancestry, and when they cannot, we can show that we are the descendants of the portal builders,” he said.

                “Something like that,” said Dytja. She stood up, stretching her arms, then chuckled. “I still find it funny that you believed a bunch of guys rocking up with land controlling powers when they said ‘oh yeah, we’re the owners of the land, check it out’.”

                “Their claim was much more stately,” said Dorian.

                “Keep an eye on the what even when you’re dazzled by the how,” said Dytja.

                Dorian just raised an eyebrow, prompting Dytja to shrug.

                Dytja descended into the temple a couple of hours later, loaded down with a large amount of stuff. She didn’t return for two days, though when she did she carried with her a piece of very old white stone (part of the original tiled temple floor, she said) and several strange tubes that could be made to produce light.

                “Those are useful,” she said, “So don’t lose them.” Then she left, heading into the depths of the temple a second time. Dorian expected her to return, but she never did. Given who she was it seemed most likely that she took another exit.

                As for the tubes; they proved to be exactly what Dorian needed. They were just over ten thousand years old – six thousand years older than the stone. The tubes proved that sigil magic was from before the beginning of the portal era, roughly nine thousand years ago.

                In turn, the inability of the settlers to activate the tubes proved that they lacked the magic of the original inhabitants of the world. They were not the descendants of the portal builders. Dorian’s people were – or at least in part.