"The worlds never should have turned from me. They never should have left. All this suffering, all this struggle, would have been avoided. But since they must struggle, I will place tethers. Doorways, so they will not forget...even if they cannot see their brothers and sisters...they are never alone." - Book of Forgiveness, Chapter IX
Skygates would be classified as ruins, except for the fact that they are not ruined, but dormant.
Also known as Songpaths, the Skygates were part of the original creation of the
Lone God. They are stationary in this plain of existence, meaning that even if the earth and stone beneath them rots away, they will always stand exactly where they are. One Skygate of note is found in the south. It floats at a height of about one thousand feet with nothing to support it. For religious scholars, this lends further credence to the myth that the world was severely changed by the War in the Heavens. Some kind of mountain must have once stood beneath the Skygate. Now, there is no possible access.
Three Skygates in total have been discovered. They are indestructible, resisting all forms of artificial and natural damage. Children will run through them, playing at fairies, or daring the spirits to chase them. To pass through one at night has the strange affect of causing any nearby
Mistwalkers to completely lose track of you.
Mages have repeatedly examined them throughout the ages, but never been able to discern there use.
This is due to a simple fact: the Skygates are not powered by magic. They run on a different energy, unknown to the people of the world at the present time. This is called
temporal energy. This was the force created at the beginning of everything, when the Four Worlds were first pulled from the
Ura. The Lone God invented Time as a way of causing momentum, to move the worlds ever-closer to the
Cradle of Creation, to
Journey's End.
Only
Ethelen have been known to manipulate temporal energy. Again, virtually none of this is known by the people of the
Seven Kingdoms. They only know that their
Twin Gods are locked away in the
Beyond. There are no other known Ethelen, so there is no hope of the Skygates ever running again.
As of the present day, this technology is lost to the Ages. But if, hope against hope, someone were to power up the Stargates and cause something to flicker within the empty archways, they might see more than magic. They might see another world.
After all, there is
some truth to the old wives' tail..."A mirror is a window...and sometimes a door."
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