The Pathmaker by Caleb VanSteenwyk, Caleb VanSteenwyk (e textbook reader txt) 📕

I yelped in pain as my hand was crushed and bit by the ice at the same time. My vision started to blur, and I saw another guard approach the one who had injured my hand. Before I could get a good glimpse of either of them, one of them hit me in the face with the side of their spear, and I fell unconscious.

I woke with a start to cold water splashing in my face, causing pain to course through my veins. This was followed by a second of extremely warm air that surrounded me, and then was gone. The air completely evaporated the water that had just woken me up. I opened my eyes to a cold, dark room made of black stone. It was featureless, with just a barred gate to the left of me for a wall, which led to many more identical rooms. All of these rooms were featureless, and I could faintly hear painful moaning echoing from the hallways.

I looked across the room to a strange figure that was sitting in the corner of the stone room. His hair went down to his eyes, and was very messy. The clothes he wore were unlike any I had ever seen – they were perfectly cut and sewn together, and had pockets in the front. He was wearing black pants of a cloth I couldn’t identify, and shoes of an unnaturally bright color. All of his clothes were precisely made, but were badly torn, including one of the pockets of his shirt, which appeared to have burned off. In his hand, he held a short, golden crystal with dark red patterns that were constantly shifting. It glowed that same dark red color, and then slowly lost it’s light.

I had no doubt that this was an item of power; and a very powerful one by the looks of it, which would explain the water and the air that had hit me a moment before. “You finally awake?” The strange man asked. His voice had a deep, thick accent unlike any that I had ever heard.

“Who are you?” I asked him. Between his strange clothes and demeanor, and the glowing crystal in his hand, this man was surely mad from magic.

“My name is Darien, owner of the Second Pathmaker. Who are you?” I assumed the Pathmaker was the crystal object he gripped in his hand, which had stopped glowing. He seemed to think that calling himself the owner of the Second Pathmaker would impress me, but I had no idea what that object was, and I had never heard of a Pathmaker before.

“My name is Sawyer Gha’dani.” I replied. He gave me a confused look, as if he expected me to say more, but didn’t seem bothered by my lack of clarity. “Can you please tell me what is going on?” I asked him.

“I can’t tell you a lot.” The man replied, shrugging it off as if it was nothing. “All I know is that the people who run this place – the old lady and the man with the golden spear, who I assume you’ve met, despise magic and any items of power. I assume it’s because everyone I have met in your world who comes in contact with ‘magic’,” Damien made air quotes with his fingers when he said the word ‘magic’, “Has gone insane with power, usually craving more items with murderous envy.” My world? I thought. This guy is making less sense the more he speaks.

“What do you mean my world?” I asked him. The man chuckled, but not like the crazy, deranged laugh of the foreigner from before. It was a mocking laugh, as if my cluelessness was hilarious to him.

Damien stopped laughing, then looked at me with a cold seriousness. “Look, we have little time to do any explaining, so I’m going to tell you how everything works in the simplest sense I can before we need to get out of here. They are planning to burn both of us alive for being magic users. They seem to believe that reducing us to ashes is the only way to properly get rid of our ‘magic trail’.” To demonstrate how dumb of a concept this seemed to Damien, he made very exasperated hand motions while he spoke.  “But in all actuality, there is no such thing as magic. What you call magic I call quantum summoning. It is the taking of things from other worlds, and bringing them into ours using links set in place by items of power. For example, if I want to, say, shoot a lightning bolt out of my hand, I just take an object of power, and tell it what I want to happen. If such a link exists, it will be provided, depending on the strength of the object of power. Understand?” Damien asked. Clearly I didn’t, and it showed through the confused look I gave him.

“Ok, we don’t have time to get into the details, but if you don’t want to be burned alive, you’ll need to just roll with it, alright?” I just nodded in confusion, still confused on just about every subject.

“Ok, first I need to know what you can do naturally because of your mark.” Damien said, indicating to my glowing forehead. I reached up with my hand to touch the stardust that would probably never come off, and pain shot down my arm, and I yelped.

“Easy, easy.” Damien said, trying to calm me down. “Here, let me help.” He reached over towards me with his golden crystal outstretched, and I quickly crawled away, despite the painful protest from my hand as it hit the stone floor.

“Get that thing away from me!” I yelled, louder than I should have, and I heard some screams of others who were being held prisoner. Damien looked at me oddly, shocked by my sudden fright. “I don’t want anything to do with that thing!”

“I’m afraid your choices are minimal. Now do you want me to heal your hand or not? You won’t go crazy by simply being near it, trust me.” Damien eased.

“You haven’t given me one reason to trust you. All you’ve given me is a bunch of crazy theories about multiple worlds, and a brief explanation of the situation. Why should I trust you?” I asked him.

“Because you have no choice.” He replied simply, and without further speaking, he extended the crystal towards my hand and touched it. From my forehead, I saw the stardust fly off and stick to the crystal very quickly, so fast it almost hurt to have the dust ripped off. The crystal instantly glowed a dark red color, baking my hand in a blood-like color. As I watched in agony, my bones rearranged on their own, and my skin mended itself back together. After the pain of my bones moving around, however, all pain in my hand ceased suddenly, and I was able to move it around easily again. I gaped at this wonder, and thought to myself that maybe magic did have some very good benefits, but then stopped that thought dead in its tracks. This was the thought that had surely driven the foreigner and countless other people insane from the power of the items. The Pathmaker in Damien’s hand could make anyone go insane, and there are plenty of people that would be desperate to get their hands on it.

I looked at his badly ripped clothes, and the burn on his shirt, and felt a moment of sympathy for Damien. Countless men, who were looking to get their hands on the crystal, had probably hunted him down. He looked as if he had defended it with his life, which he probably had. Despite all these signs of insanity, he still appeared calm and collected, in full possession of his mind.

“Now that you’re healed, we need to get out of here.” Damien said, with no delay after my sympathy or him.

“And how do we do that?” I asked him.

“I’ve been looking for a long time for someone with a mark, like yours. A very long time. And now, you can unlock the full powers of the Pathmaker, and that is how we will get out of here.” Damien replied, surprisingly calm. He tossed the Pathmaker in my direction, which I caught greedily, much to my dismay. I could already feel the crystal’s power having effects on me.

“Now, pull the Pathmaker apart.” Damien instructed, and I looked at him in horror. I couldn’t possibly break the item that had just healed my broken hand. Damien looked at my shocked face in worry, probably wondering if I was going to try and run away with it. “It won’t break, it will just shift forms.” Damien explained, worry deeply rooted in his voice.

I dismissed his worry and did as I was told. When I pulled the crystal apart, the form shifted dramatically. The crystal was now four feet long, and had an entirely different shape. It was now a sword with a golden crystallized blade, and the familiar blood red patterns glowing from within it. The handle was also dark red, and extended on both sides, resembling two hour hands on a clock. The blade’s grip was solid leather, making it very mobile and easy to handle. The end of the handle was tipped in gold, wit h strange shifting patterns dancing around on it. All the moving patterns and the maroon glow was very disorienting, and my vision started to become blurry.

“Don’t stare into the blade.” Damien urged, breaking my trance. “It will drive you mad. That’s why I like to keep it in its crystal form.”

“Right,” I said, only half paying attention. I was marveling at the amazing beauty of the blade.  

“Now, focus your mind. Think of where you want to go to escape – I suggest outside of the city walls, so that the guards don’t catch us and we can make a quiet escape. Once you’re focused on where you want to go, close your eyes and swing the sword through the air. Don’t stop focusing on your destination, or it won’t work properly, got it?”

“What will happen?” I asked him, doubting weather or not it would do anything at all. This behavior was unlike any item of power I had heard of.

“A portal will form in air, and we can step through to our destination. It’s as simple as that, just don’t loose your focus, got it?” Damien told me, putting extra emphasis on the last sentence.

“Okay, I got it.” I replied, and took a deep breath. This would be my first act of magic that I had ever performed in my life, and according to Damien, it’s a powerful one at that. Most items of power can only do little things, sometimes only one specific task. But the blade I was holding had already spawned water heat, and healed my badly broken hand. According to Damien, it also unlocked the task of how magic works.

I closed my eyes, and imagined where I