Melora, Great Circle

Melora, Great Circle

Passing Through Life and Dust

After we saw the lands outside through the eyes of Melora, we returned to the Station of the Summer Solstice and the room with the blinding torches. We stood before the relief of Life, closed our eyes, and walked forward.

We found ourselves in another station, almost like the one before. The relief of Life and the relief of Death were different than in the previous station. Both had empty holders for torches.

This station also had stairs going up and going down, except that the stairs were reversed:

(drawing to go here)

We went outside, and much time seemed to have passed in the world (a third of a day), even though we had take mere minutes to move from one station to the next.

We found a similar circle to the one at the Station of the Summer Solstice, and we looked again through the eyes of Melora.

(drawing)

We returned to the room with the reliefs. Firinne lit a torch and placed it before the relief of Life. She closed her eyes and walked through alone. We waited for a minute, and she did not return. We closed our eyes and walked through together.

We found ourselves in yet another station. The relief of Life and the relief of Death were also different here than in the previous stations. Both had empty torch holders. Firinne was nowhere to be seen.

The stairs were again reversed here:

(drawing)

The door to the stairs down was shut and was covered with dust. It seemed that no one had used the stairs for a long time. The floor as well was covered with dust and showed no signs of recent activity.

We heard some noises coming from the stairs. Bran stealthily crept up the stairway and peeked out. There were a number of orcs working in the rooms. It appeared that not much time had passed in the outside world -- perhaps only an hour.

We still had no idea where Firinne had gone. We decided to move forward, in case she had somehow gotten ahead without visiting this station. We stood before the relief of Life, lit the torch, closed our eyes, and walked through.

We found ourselves at yet another station. We found no signs of Firinne. There were no torches in the torch holders, and there were no signs of recent activity on the floor and at the stairway down.

In this station, the relief of Life was blocked behind a mound of stones. It was almost as if someone had gone through a lot of trouble to prevent anyone from going through that relief.