Visions

Sapta, as the Farseer had told him earlier in his studies, was a potent mixture of ritually significant ingredients that infused its drinker with the ability to see and contact greater spirits. The small boons Kazimierz had been thus far able to secure were acquired from minor beings of only animalistic intelligence-still useful, to be sure, but far beneath what a greater spirit might be able to offer. However, it was not without risk to use a sapta-if the spirits rejected the drinker, they would do so with violence.

Kazimierz, however, did not fear the possibility of death-if the spirits wished him dead, then he would join the ancestors that much sooner, albeit in a somewhat less exalted way. Still, the changes wrought by the sapta’s influence were unsettling. The shockingly clear sky of Durotar shimmered away, fading into dull greyness. The guards and other novices scattered around the den also lost color, becoming silver-black silhouettes, but it was the ground that changed the most. No longer solid and burnt-orange, it glowed and twisted, yielding to his sight. Far beneath its surface, it seemed alive, with twisting tendrils that pulsed to an unknown rhythm and deep, thrumming centers of energy.

A flash of light in his peripheral vision jerked Kazimierz’s sight back to the drab aboveground-drab save for a being of dazzling brightness, twined with focused threads of the power that twisted purposeless below.
“Do you see the patterns of the earth, Kazimierz?” asked Farseer Stormeye, her voice sonorous and distorted. She slowly raised a hand, rotating her arm as a tendril pulsed brightly. “Watch it twist and flow at my request.”
Kazimierz stood in awestruck silence as a great flare erupted from the depths of the earth and spun into a concentrated, luminous line that wove like a skein around the elder shaman.

“Go now. Follow the paths to the focal point,” Stormeye said, the threads of spirit-power wrapping around her like a second skin. “Speak the Litany of Earth to the one you find there. Waste no time-the sapta will not last forever.”
“Dabu,” Kazimierz replied, bowing his head in submission. As his gaze swept his feet, he saw the same tendrils flowing up into him, barely visible against the luminous subterranean ebb and flow that seemed to come to a center in the rugged hills to the south. He took his staff in hand-itself vibrant with the elemental it played host to-and began to scramble up the wind-sculpted sandstone.

The path, such as it was, would be all but invisible to a casual wanderer. Indeed, the barren hilltop it led to held nothing but a crudely shaped stone block, the dark granite of its blocky form a stark contrast to the orange stone of Durotar but otherwise unremarkable. To Kazimierz’s altered sight, it was a pillar of scintillating light, almost blinding in its intensity. Nearly as bright was the jumbled figure of roiling stones which stood lordly above a mass of smaller, dimmer shapes. Though it had no eyes, it seemed to perceive Kazimierz as he approached-it turned towards him, raising its amorphous arms in a gesture of challenge. Eyes wide, Kazimierz began chanting, the alien words he had spoken every morning and night for the last year coming smoothly to his lips.

Earth, giver of our sustenance, take my offering.
The spirit loomed closer, jagged shards clustering around its hands, as Kazimerz dropped a small handful of cactus apples at his feet.
Earth, guardian of our homes, take my offering.
Kazimierz gently placed a baked clay brick at his feet, and the spirit before him drew itself up, hesitating. Heartened, Kazimierz drew the steel knife from his belt and placed it point-down in the dirt.
Earth, strength of our warriors, take my offering.
The spirit seemed inquisitive now, twisting and craning its head to inspect its strange, fleshy supplicant. Hands shaking with anticipation, Kazimierz took the final object, one he had spent many days seeking-a plain, black stone, taken from an elemental summoned to this world and left half-crazed when it could not return to its own.
Earth, to which we all return, take my offering.
For an eternity, all was still-a perfect tableau of kneeling orc and looming spirit, as worry began to gnaw away at Kazimierz’s focused calmness. Finally, the spirit raised its arm, swinging its hand over the shaman’s head.

“You speak an ancient tongue with reverence, and bring gifts that show respect,” Kazimierz heard, or understood; he would never later be able to remember hearing language from the spirit, only the sensation of great and terrible authority. “You give me honor, fleshling, and so I shall grant the boon your kind has asked for so many times before.”
The spirit’s connection to the flashing cores of power deep within the earth surged with twisted ropes of light, folding and coiling into a dazzling point of light no larger than a human’s thumb. With an effortless motion, the spirit drove the radiant shard through the hand Kazimierz bore against the ground and through it to the stone below, wrenching it back out a moment after. Suppressing a hiss of pain, Kazimierz watched the wound steadily knit itself closed until he heard a single irresistible command:

“GO.”

Kazimierz shook his head muzzily, vision blurring, and the sounds of the spirit world faded, replaced with an ever-louder rush of toneless noise. Grunting, he swayed on his knees until his vision ran together into a formless mass of rapidly darkening grey.

He woke up sprawled on the ground, his muscles aching and his mind spinning. The gleaming stars above gave an imprecise but welcome estimate of ten hours spent on the rocks. Staggering to his feet, Kazimierz realized he held something in his hand-a stone, fist-sized kin to the black granite monolith beside him. A surge of euphoria welled inside him, and he flung his head back to scream a wordless cry of victory to the wilds.
An earth totem…woven from the threads of the spirits and bound in my own blood!
The thoughts of his accomplishment-and those that must surely now follow-burned in his mind as he climbed back down the wind-worn hills towards his home...