Orrison Prompts

Axiom hummed a little tune to themself as they trudged through the tundra. They'd been out here for - they squinted at their watch - almost four hours already, and had found nothing but flat snow. Somehow, they'd thought an expedition into the wilderness would be more exciting than this. The area near the Spire was completely unexplored land, wasn't it? In all the stories they'd read, you couldn't walk two steps in a place like that without stumbling over some mysterious forest or lost ruin. Maybe even a long-forgotten secret that would totally change the study of composed magic as they knew it...

Lost in their daydreams, it took them a moment to realize that a second voice was harmonizing with their melody.

"Hello?"

They stopped and looked around, but it was dead silent now. Nothing here, except a blur of grey in the distance - was that a person?

They sprinted toward it, heart thumping with excitement. The object came into focus - just a boulder, unremarkable except for its unusual height. Axiom poked at it experimentally, then kicked at the snow in disappointment when it refused to do anything interesting in response. They must have been imagining the voice after all.

They turned to the right. In front of them was a second boulder, exactly the same height as the first.

Now this was something! Throwing caution to the wind, they ran to investigate. Soon they were following a looping path marked out by standing stones. Their run slowed to a trot, then a slow shuffle. Plain as they were, there was something entrancing about these stone monuments. Who had put them here? What were they for? Had some other intrepid explorer from a long-forgotten age followed the path they laid out, stumbling as if half in a dream, the same way Axiom was doing now?

Before they knew it, they had arrived at the final stone. Acting purely on instinct, they knelt to the ground and began digging through the snow. Soon, their claws scraped against something, and they brushed the dirt aside to get a better look.

The unburied thing pulsed, once. The stones emitted a deep hum in response, and though there was no evidence Axiom knew it was a message for them.

Axiom scrambled to their feet and ran. The stories were wrong, after all. There was nothing here worth uncovering.