He stopped, his blue tinted pocket of the world halting.  In his stillness, Quartes listened as the echo of his footsteps faded to nothing.  It had not taken him long to repack, the long years making that a well worn skill.  The branch from the Great Road had required only a short backtracklong to reach and he had spent what he guessed had been the better part of a day making his way down the smaller road.  Now he was stepping into a realm not travelled in time even longer than the main road.  His mind wandered in wonder at how the Landians of Falden had found the sites of their Halls.

“There was a way to read the rock,” came a voice from his past.  He shut his eyes and could see it.  The warm glow from the light of their lanterns, the rhythm of each of their footfalls that filled the silence vice be swallowed by it.  He had asked the question of finding the halls in the past and she had answered.  She had brushed at her auburn hair, pupil-less eyes that shown like amethyst in the light looking to him before looking to the stone walls about them.  “Like how an illithimar smith could sense what the metal was meant to be, others of my kin could sense the layout of the mountains, know where the ores would be.”  Her free hand had brushed the stone of the wall then.  “It was just a matter then of cutting through the rock to reach it.”

He had wondered if perhaps there was a link to the skill of those Landians and to his skill.  Did he know how a battle was meant to go?  At times fighting felt…almost like the playing of a song.  Individual parts coming together into a whole that seemed pre-planned to reach some conclusion.  Rolan had spoken once of large bands, orchestras he called them.  Something he knew from the fading days of Calelden.  He had said that orchestras had contained dozens of musicians headed by one composer.  A figure who controlled the entirety of the music.  That’s almost how the battles felt about Quartes.

He’d shaken his head then.  That had brought her violet eyes back to him.  She’d learn his ticks over the decades.  “Everything ok?” she had asked.  He knew it would and so instead he had asked her another question.  Had wondered after the halls that Falden had built.

“Most halls had been built as a hub for certain mines or another.  A few were built to be great sites, the Great Halls had certainly developed into this.”  She added that Larathon had been built around various mineral deposits, even a smaller one of illithimar, but had grown into the hub of all crafts and artifice in the kingdom.  

“Serijo is an interesting one,” she had eventually reached after covering a half-dozen other realms.  “It was where the largest deposit of illithimar was predicted,” he had drifted closer to her they had talked, the others ahead of them now.  “While my ancestors had learned its workings in Larathon, the abundance of illithimar in Serijo created the greatest experimenting.  Airships were first built there, and a peak above the hall was the first to be used to make one of the sky cities.”

He had asked if she had ever been there.  Such artifacts, even just a airship or two would be a great boon to them.

She had frowned then.  “There’s a risk when you take that much illithimar from one place.  A lesson my ancestors were hard pressed to learn.  It breaks the bones of the land, the rules that they are built on.”

Quartes stumbled, his eyes reopening and taking in once more the blue tinted surroundings of his current trek.  His solitude within the empty halls.  Taking a breath, letting the memory fade, and forcing his mind back into the present he continued the long walk towards the Hall of Serijo.

* * * * * *

He felt the change now.  It was slight, but slight changes were the thing Landians excelled at noticing.  He had found it in the way his pack hesitated a moment more before it shifted against his back with each step, the way his cloak hovered in its flutter a little long with each stride, the way those strides didn’t earn quite the same level of protest from his knees.  The days in the dark, with barely an air current to disrupt the monotony, made the change all the more apparent.  Quartes was still just keeping an eye on it when he caught sight of a mark in the stone pathway.  It was just a line etched all along the tunnel walls.  His steps stopped, his cloak fluttering about him in the strange lightness of the space.  It was just a carved line, but anything knew after the hours of expertly, and nearly identically, carved stone was striking.

Reaching for his belt, he unhooked the partially filled waterskin there, and after a few steps closer tossed it.  It arced forward, falling slower than normal but only slightly so.  Until it crossed the line.  Then it drifted down like a father falling, passing beyond the edge of the torch’s light.  He stood thinking, remembering the words from his past, thinking of the implications.  Trying to conjure experiences that would match it.

After a time, Quartes stepped forwarded.  His steps slow and short.  Even that wasn’t quite enough when he crossed the line.  The change was stark and immediate.  His pack felt like nothing on his back, his cloaked fluttered up and bundled around his chest, his knees barely noticed his step as even a shortened step sent Quartes up into the air.  His stomach felt like it dropped out, panic rising to replace it.  In the center of the tunnel there was nothing for him to reach for.  Throwing himself back didn’t stop his float forward and Quartes found himself drifting as he slowly spun.  In the end he landed, gentle hitting and sliding forward in a seated position, coming to stop as his boot brushed his tossed waterskin.  He retrieved the waterskin, clasping it once more to his belt.  His cloak floated in a slowly descending tumble about him and Quartes unclasped it, gathering it about to stow in his pack.  The act of sliding his pack off his shoulder nearly sending it floating forward.

The cloak was stowed, and the waterskin and a few other items joining, before the Landian gathered his feet back under him.  Slowly, carefully, he pushed himself back up to stand.  Even in his caution he found himself floating up a step into the air.  Slowly he waited for his boots to reach the ground once more.

This was going to take some time to adjust to.