“You know what,” Regis got off the wagon as the first arrow hit the ground just a step ahead of the skeletal horses. “Fuck it!”

“Wait, what?” Quentin turned around surprised, but the spell weaver was already walking forward beside the wagon with his staff’s crystal glowing.

“Under imperial law, no settlement is to turn away a servant of the Seven,” Regis said as he kept on walking toward the gate. “Yet you threatened him with execution. Your lord also has no right to lay claim to the forest of this land as it counts as imperial property. He only has the right to manage the settlements he was bestowed upon.”

An arrow flew towards the dark elf, but it bounced off from the arcane shield that appeared on his left hand. The guards almost fell off from their posts as they saw the pissed off spell weaver walk towards them, seemingly undisturbed by the arrows sent his way.

“I don’t care who you are,” the finely dressed man practically squealed as he looked at the dark elf. “But this is a settlement of Lord Vidal. Any aggression towards his property will be met with the full force of his soldiers.”

“Regis.” Quentin was walking up behind him, trying to talk down the spell weaver from doing something rash.

“I’m tired,” he sighed. “I’m tired of people treating us like shit, no matter where we go. If you little rats can’t understand nice words, then I’ll have to use harsher ones.”

Saying that, he pointed his staff at the wooden gate, while a yellow line appeared beneath it. He willed his earth magic to lower the ground beneath the poles holding the gate while he cast gale blast on the gate itself point blank range. A loud booming sound resounded as the gate fell inwards as if it got struck by a battering ram.

“You knave!” The pampered man fell off the rampart along with some of the soldiers. “This is a declaration...”

Before he could finish his words, a runic arcana arrow drilled itself into the ground right beside him, forcing him silent.

“The hell do you think you’re doing?” Quentin finally caught up with his companion, trying to stop him, but a zap of arcane energy made him recoil when touching the dark elf’s shoulder.

“I wouldn’t disturb him if I were you,” Osmond spoke up as the rest of the group got there. “He’s in a trance.”

As the paladin stepped beside the spell weaver, he could see the youth’s purple eyes glowing, their golden edges practically burning.

“What’s wrong with him?” Sophie asked worried as they all watched the dark elf casually walk towards a hastily erected shack.

“Something’s pulling at him,” Valerie noted as she unfurled her whip to wave it towards the soldiers trying to help up the greasy haired man from the ground. “Whatever you’re hiding here must be powerful if it can pull on a man with his willpower.”

“This is a...”

“Yeah yeah,” Fabien shrugged. “This is a declaration of war and all that bullshit. Just shut it and stay still before my sister decides to roast you where you stand.”

While they were talking with the locals, Regis finally reached the shack which exploded the moment he got into range. Broken planks and stone floated about in the air around the dark elf as the sight of a large dark blue and angular crystal pillar revealed itself, standing in a hole almost three meters deep.

“Is that a monolith?” Osmond asked with a stutter of surprise as they stared at the deep bluish crystal pylon that sparkled as if it held the fragments of the night sky in itself.

“Holy shit,” Cruz cursed. “No wonder these bastards were so jumpy.”

“That’s an understatement,” Fabien looked back at the cowering figure behind the soldiers. “Hiding something like this from the royals would be a death sentence for everyone here and their lord.”

“And they still did it.” Amanda shrugged.

“Can you blame them? That thing is made out of pure arcanite if I’m guessing correctly. You can see some of its edges already got chipped off by pickaxes.”

“The bloody idiots wanted to mine a friggin monolith for money?” Valerie’s eyes turned bloodshot as the fire of her whip flared up. “That’s fucking blasphemy!”

“I’m sorry to butt in in,” Mary cleared her throat while the dark elf walked beside the crystal pillar. “,But what exactly is a monolith? You’re all treating it like it’s some divine treasure.”

“Because it is,” Letty explained. “See those glowing blue light fragments inside it? Only pure arcanite can hold the wisdom of higher beings. A monolith like this is pretty much the same as the tablets Moses got from God in the bible.”

“Shit.” Mary accidentally let a curse slip after hearing the wood elf’s words.

“Don’t tell me he’s going to...” Before Amanda could finish her thought, the young spell weaver put his palm on the crystal monolith.

The scattered motes of light inside the flared up as the crystal began to glow, a pillar of light shooting towards the sky for five straight seconds before dying down. While the others watched the events unfold, Regis found himself in a peculiar place. He already felt like he was a puppet pulled on strings after leaving the wagon, most of his actions and emotions stoked by an unknown force. When he touched the monolith, he was pulled into a mysterious plane similar to one’s soul-space.

Around him stood seven stone slabs, some in better condition than the other. One of the stones was filled with glowing texts, beckoning him with its warm light. ‘I guess I’m expected to read this, huh?’ He thought to himself as he stepped beside the first stone stele to read it. As it turned out, the stele held a recording of the first era; a time when the first outlanders arrived on the Shardlands, or rather the Amaranthine lands aeons ago. It went on about the cycle repeating itself, death and destruction spreading throughout the world before the arrival of the outlanders whom are supposed to thrive in the chaos, growing stronger while resolving it.

As he read the entirety of the records, the second stele lit up with words appearing on it. Regis looked at it before taking a glance at the rest of the stones. ‘This will take a while.’ The dark elf sighed as he continued on reading. The second stele recorded the supposed cycle of deity ascension. As it turned out, every millennia would ask for seven of the strongest outlanders to rise to the challenge and become the successors of the Saints and Saintesses that guarded the Shardlands. There was even a glowing counter that showed the remaining time until the next cycle of succession was to commence.

“Well that’s a bullet dodged!” Regis said, relieved to see that it was still more than three centuries ahead of him.

The third stele was in a far worse condition compared to the others. Deep cracks ran long it’s surface, threatening it with destruction. He began to read the faded yet glowing words that appeared on it. It revealed the details of the three continents of the Shardlands; the one on which Regis stood being the smallest of the three. According to the stele, a raging sea separated the lands, preventing anyone from travelling to the other continents most of the time, except the prelude of the outlanders’ arrival. As he finished reading the records, the light of the stone faded and it crumbled to dust.

The strange realm shivered and the dark elf could have sworn that he felt like it was mourning the loss of the stele. He watched as golden words appeared on the fourth stone which was also cracked in many places, but not nearly as badly as the previous one. It bestowed upon him the knowledge of the planes, explaining that Earth was only one of the five worlds connected to each other. Their home world was pretty much a breeding ground for humanity so that they could periodically repopulate the four other worlds when the planar conjunctions occurred. His reading session got interrupted as the world around him felt weakening.

‘Looks like I have to hurry up.’ The spell weaver urged himself on as he stepped beside the fifth stone. It touched upon the mystery of their Shardwakers’ mark, explaining in detail how it was an anchor to the very laws of the world, and how it allowed them to ascend beyond the ordinary mortals. The sixth stele spoke of the seven paths and how they would weave into each other or branch out, but all would lead to the same conclusion. Power. Regis barely finished before the sixth stele crumbled apart, the mysterious realm shaking once again as he felt a slight tug on his soul. ‘Not yet!’ He forced himself to stay as he stepped beside the final stone monument.

Its glowing words were different from the others as they held actual knowledge instead of historical records. It held the crafting diagrams and methods of weapons, the formulas of potions and runic diagrams of enchantments. All of them separated into seven small columns representing their targeted paths. The youth’s eyes practically jumped from one line to the other, taking it in as a whole before the words finally faded and he was thrown out of the mysterious plane. His vision shifted and he found himself standing in front of the crystal monolith that begin to crack and crumble apart into dust that floated away in the faint wind. During the last moment his fingers were touching the Crystal, a faint echo of a knowledge was passed down to him, making him understand what happened to him and to the monolith.

“Regis,” he heard Quentin’s voice from behind. “Are you alright there?”

“I’m fine,” the dark elf sighed as he turned around, reaching up to grab the offered hand so that he could get out of the hole. “How long was I under?”

“If you mean touching the stone in the hole,” Osmond spoke up. “About five seconds.”

“It sure felt a lot longer.”

“You knave,” they heard an enraged yet scared voice behind them. “You have destroyed Lord Vidal’s property, you will...”

“Shut it!” Regis said with his eyes glowing up as arcane intimidation lashed out with full force.

The greasy fellow went silent as his eyes rolled up the back of his head. He collapsed on the ground with a frothy mouth as a foul smelling pool appeared beneath him.

“Intriguing,” Osmond nodded. “But highly disturbing. It seems the strength of your arcane intimidation does indeed scale up with your willpower and your emotions.”

“You there,” the dark elf turned toward the leader of the local guards, making him shudder. “I have a message for your lord.”

“What do you want me to tell him?” The man smartened up after realizing that he might just get to stay alive.

“Tell him to run. The royals will know about what happened today. They will know what he did and they will want his head for it, so I suggest he run as far as he can.”

“Yes, sir.” The soldier stuttered as he hurried over to what they believed to be the local stable.

“Somehow,” Fabien sighed. “I get the feeling that we won’t be able to trade for food here.”

“Sorry about that.” Regis apologised.

“Don’t be,” Valerie shook her head. “Whatever that monolith showed you is worth a whole lot more than some dried food.”

“Let’s just get out of here while we can,” Cruz whispered. “The sooner we’re on our way, the further we’ll be by time sir Dickweed finds out about this. Given how petty nobles tend to be, he might just decide to send his forces after us.”

“Agreed,” Quentin sighed as he turned towards the wagon they left outside the destroyed gates. “Let’s just go around this place.”

They hurriedly returned to the wagon, followed by the amazed and terrified gazes of the locals. Cruz urged on the skeletal horses and the cart circled around the wooden wall. The area around the outpost was surprisingly clean, the forest cleared out for some farming plots and a somewhat decent dirt road followed along beside the river.

It only went so far however as the dirt road ended roughly two hours later, a rocky terrain taking over with knee high vegetation. The wagon began to shake a lot more from then on, but much to their luck, no trees grew so close to the river in the rocky soil.

“So what happened back there?” Amanda broke the long and awkward silence as they watched the dark elf sit there with his eyes closed as faint ripples of arcane energies pulsed around him.

“You said I only touched the monolith for five seconds,” Regis let out a sigh as he opened his eyes. “For me it was a lot more than that.”He then proceeded to recall the things he saw in that mysterious plane, pulling out his ‘endless’ tome so that the others could read the chapters created from the records of the seven steles.

“Well that’s not something you would hear every day,” Cruz grumbled from the coach seat. “And you’re saying that these stones were connected?”

“If I had to put it into modern terms, they were access points to a shared server. Each of them had their own personal data storage, but if you accessed one, you could check the others as well.”

“But two of the steles crumbled.” Letty pointed out.

“Three, if we count this one.”

“What would that mean on the greater scale of things?” Sophie asked as she kept looking at the records of the ‘endless’ tome. “It means that whoever finds another one of the monoliths will only have access to four parts of the whole.”

“And they won’t be able to get their hands on these sweet blueprints,” Amanda whistled as she looked at the armour and weapon forging diagrams. “These are some serious high end stuff. I would need to be over fifty in smithing if I wanted to try forging any of these.”

“The potions are weird too,” Letty mumbled. “I can understand the greater arcana, fortitude and healing potions, but these other three are just weird.”“Not really,” Osmond argued. “If you think about it, the records say that the cycle always has the same parts present. The outlanders would conquer territories for their own and try to strengthen them. From what I understand, this potion is meant to increase the quality of a Landwaker tree if it gets poured on it in large amounts. The other two are just high end corruption antidotes that would help against demonic and eldritch influences.”

“That could come in handy in case the Argents or other demons try to get in our way.” Valerie shared her opinion.