Act II, Chapter Three: Echoes Upon the Stone

DOLMEN OF NEW-DAWN | MEMORIES OF DAWN | COLD AFTERNOON
The cairns fall away, and older stones rise to meet the sky.
The climb brings the company at last to a wind-scoured saddle where the ridgeline breaks. From here the land pours outward in pale silence, the horizon softened beneath veils of drifting snow. But no eye can linger long on the vastness, for the valley below is claimed by a circle of stone that arrests the breath.

The Dolmen of New-Dawn.

Each pillar stands taller than a warhorse rearing, its dolomite faces cracked and silvered with ice, its runes half-swallowed by centuries of frost and storm. Afternoon light leans through broken cloud, catching in the grooves so that the marks shine faintly. Shadows fall long and stark between them, forming a crown of dark spears stabbing inward to the hollow at the dolmen’s heart. For a moment it seems as if the stones themselves breathe, their weight pressing against the world.

The air carries a taste of iron, sharp and metallic, stinging the tongue like a mouthful of old blood. Scavenger birds wheel far overhead, wings blacker than the storm clouds rolling from the north, their silence uncanny, as though they know their cries would wake something better left asleep. Snow slides off the cairns behind, hissing faintly, as if the ridge itself shifts in unease.

Kaelith stands a little apart, cloak snapping in the cold gusts. He studies the pillars as one would an enemy line, expression unreadable. At length he speaks, voice pitched low but clear, each word carried by the wind:

"This place was marked before the cairns, before even the Shadow. Oaths carved in stone, blood poured in frost. Remember, stone forgets nothing, and it forgives less."

His hand rests briefly on the bow at his shoulder before falling away, the gesture less threat than benediction, as though acknowledging the ground beneath. Then he turns, eyes narrowing on the dolmen below.

The company’s path has carried them through storm and silence, past cairns of the forgotten, into the teeth of the barrens themselves. Now, the final threshold lies before them: a circle of ancient stone, its true purpose long forgotten. That unknown purpose may burn in your mind, but for the time being, the more pressing question you're confronted with is:

What do you do?

We have arrived, our ebony erelander remarks. Now what?

Approaching the dolmen, Seelah stops within 60’, and closed her eyes in intense concentration. Attempting to discern any evil auras or intentions!

Jasir stands silent, his dark eyes contemplating the circle of stones. Seelah's question seems to draw him out of his reverie and he shakes himself back into the present. "Now? We endeavor to unravel mysteries that have endured for multiple ages. Years extending beyond memory." With that established he makes to approach as well, removing and setting his pack down outside the borders of the dolmen.

"Well. As is the way of many things, we begin with the basics." Jasir's hand flicks through a series of motions, drawing upon his arts to augment his perception of it. His eyes flash white for a moment before he sets his concentration to sensing and studying flows of magic.

Jasir proceeds to start in on studying.

Awe washes over the dwarrow, more powerful the closer she draws to the outer rim of the stones. She does not walk between them, however.

"Being the daughter of a smuggler offered many opportunities to look at cryptic writings and listen to their caretakers, but these runes..."

Petra trails off, squinting at the stone carvings.

While the others are heading towards the stones, Varin makes a wide circle around them. He takes some time scouting out the perimeter of the ancient henge.

Úlfr looks the stones over attempting to read these stones as he had those before. "These stones must also sing. The smell of iron is... wyrd."

DOLMEN OF NEW-DAWN | ECHOES UPON THE STONE | COLD AFTERNOON
The air around the stones hums faintly, like a string plucked far below the range of hearing.
Seelah’s senses spread first, a tide of will pressed against the silence. Nothing of the Shadow’s clergy lurks here, no burning brand of a legate’s soul. Yet what rises to meet her feels older, stranger: not evil in the shape of Izrador, but echoes of oaths broken, grief weathered into stone, intentions hammered into the very bedrock.

Jasir’s sight stirs next, pale fire flashing across his eyes. The stones reply with a slow pulse of resonance, not the sharp glow of talismans nor the prismatic skein of a power nexus, but something deeper. Lines of arcane force ripple through the dolmen like the aftershocks of an ancient ritual. Each rune is part of a greater pattern, incomplete but insistent.

Petra’s squint lingers over one stone where the runes cut deepest. Her eyes piece fragments together: not names, not prayers, but warnings. She traces out the root for "mirror" bound to the word for "gate," and beneath it a glyph that could mean "ward" or "song," depending on the inflection. Whoever carved these meant them to be read aloud, but the cadence has been lost to centuries of snow.

Varin circles wide, boots crunching through frost. The land yields little. Ravens burst from a cairn at his approach, nothing more. Yet his path sketches the truth: the dolmen sits in a hollow where the wind never stills, its outer ring shaped not by chance but by design.

The Dolmen of New-Dawn waits, silent and immense, its power not yet roused.

Úlfr matches the tone of the stones singing in the deepest bass the word, "Steinn." It is so deep that it would only be reachable to most people by throat singing. Then, "Mirror/Gate, Ward/Song."

Ulfr has spoken aloud what she thought she could make of the runes, so Petra doesn't repeat it.

Instead she tries to divine some religious or spiritual meaning in the warning.

Ulfr draws breath, throat opening to the deep, bone-rattling resonance of the north. The word Steinn rolls out, a bass so low the snow itself seems to shiver with it. For a heartbeat the dolmen seems to lean closer, as if listening.

But the echo falters. The rhythm stumbles into a cough, harsh and human against the inhuman steadiness of the stones. The sound scatters into the wind, carried off before the cadence can take hold.

The cold silence presses close, and in that hush the dwarrow feels the weight of spirits that once answered here. The warning is not a curse, nor quite a prayer. It is a binding, half-plea and half-command. The runes call to guardians who were meant to hold watch, and in turn bind the living who cross this circle to an unspoken pact.

It is not Shadow’s taint that clings here, but something older, a covenant scarred by ages of silence. What remains is cracked, but still potent. Petra senses that any act within the circle, song, vow, or violence, will not pass unmeasured.

Dawnward drawn and pointed vertically down towards wilderness ground, our ebony erelander strides to the center of the Dolmen. Eyes closed, Seelah utters a quiet oath.

I will guard innocents against evil.

The guardian opens her eyes only after a handful of seconds. Breathing deeply, exhaling, then gazing brown eyes around at the ancient stones.

After a long few moments of concentration Jasir pulls his book up and start to consult it. A few flips of pages and he quietly starts to murmur, parsing through pneumonic devices to recall half remembered thoughts and ideas. Arcane theory, the underlying currents of magic. Piecing together a mystery by scraps of knowledge and little gleans of insight into a world that many people couldn't even imagine let alone interact with.

Úlfr seeing his failing does a proper vocal warm-up off the edge of the circle.

When Seelah’s vow touches the frozen air, the dolmen answers not in voice but in weight. The hush deepens, as if the very snowdrift paused its fall. For a moment the sense of guardianship, brushes against the oath, testing its truth. No curse rises, nor blessing given; instead the pact lingers like breath on steel, waiting to see if the words will be matched in deed.

Jasir’s study threads through layers of rune and resonance. The stones mark these truths:

Spirit (21) — the dolmen binds watchers to covenant; spirits here linger as wardens, their presence cracked but not gone.

Arcana (23) — the circle channels resonance rather than raw power. Magic flows in harmonics, not torrents.

History (30) — these stones are Second Age work, hewn in the years of high resistance. "Mirror-gates" such as these were raised where elven and Sarcosan lore mingled; they served as both sanctuary and snare.

Spellcraft (23) — the pattern might be coaxed by cadence, or shattered by discord. Harmonics must be balanced carefully.

Lorebook (18) — fragmentary notes confirm the binding purpose but give no precise ritual; too much has been lost to time.

At the circle’s edge, Úlfr’s low warm-ups roll out against the wind. The sound does not stir the stones as before, but the air feels subtly less taut, as though the dolmen itself is listening for what may come next.

Kaelith had stood with arms folded at the saddle’s edge, letting the others test voice and vow against the stones. The wind pulled at his cloak, but he did not stir until the echoes settled. Only then did he step nearer, eyes narrowing as he swept the circle and its shifting weight of silence.

"The stones have listened," he said at last, voice pitched low against the gusts. "But I cannot tell if they are satisfied, or waiting to be angered. Have we gleaned anything we can use? A way to rouse what sleeps here, or bar it, if we choose? The march has brought us to this threshold, but the path beyond remains unclear."

His gaze shifted from rune to rune, then back to the companions. "What is our next step?"

Petra says, "Given the spiritual echoes of this place, this Dolmen must have been once consecrated as a threshold.

"The 'mirror-gate' rune ties it to the old compact guardian-spirits, likely meant to bind or reflect hostile forces. Though the rite is fractured by time, the power remains. Actions taken inside the circle of stones may resonate, awakening either ward or watcher."

The dwarrow nods approvingly at Seelah's attempt to communicate honorable intentions to any lingering spirits or Aryth itself, some nexus of power that may exist here.

"I don't believe my approach was wrong. The stones want to sing back... I hear their hum and it matches the runes carved. The ward would come from the note of the word... if my voice would hold... This sounds like the way. What say you makers of magic?"

Seelah stands in middle of the dolmen. She raises Dawnward into the air, and if companions join her, she harmonizes, Mirror/Gate, Ward/Song!

Úlfr tries again. He tries the words: Stone, Song/Ward and Mirror/Gate.