The Magic of Anieth - An Doras

An Doras literally means: "the gate" or "the door." It is the name of three places in Anieth. First off it is the name of a place in the middle of Oak Country that is a park and a maze that is about five miles across. In the center of that maze is a small lake and and island The observatory on the island is also called An Doras, however, the observatory is dominated by a rock gate of great age, also called An Doras. The above picture is of the maze showing the magical ordering of the lanes of trees that spiral into the center.

As you can see from this map of the Shields's residence, the two mazes are identical in form, although the one at An Doras is much larger. The magic of these two mazes is that they are connected, a portal between the two worlds. The magic does not work like a portal, for to go to Anieth, you must walk to the center of the Shields's maze, drink of the fountain, which has the same water as that of the lake at An Doras, walk back out and focus on who you want to be as you step out of the gate to the maze. You then "appear" inside of your character, seeing and feeling what they feel, yet it is as if their mind is next to yours, two minds in one body.

The game, called the Invasion of Anieth, was played twice to three times a year. We all went into the maze, drank of the fountain, went out, appeared in our characters in Anieth, did what we did for six years. If we died, we woke up in the maze back on Earth. If we went to An Doras and went through the gate there, we woke up back on Earth. Yet, if Peter Shields and Bob Gallanis got to An Doras and walked back through the gate, the game ended and we all woke up back on Earth. When we went back, time and the situation had reset as if nothing had happened. You can imagine that this resetting led to all kinds of experiments. Theron Abernathy and Peter Shields brought wives back, only to find that they died in a very short time after coming through the gate.

I suspected that Lucia Shields was the root of the magic of Anieth. No one else shared my view except Marion, who knew her sister better than Peter did himself. Lucia was always with us when we went on our journeys. I was also Lucia who broke the gate so that we did not experience the duality of mind in our characters but forgot our Earth selves until we died in Anieth and woke up on Earth. She was also responsible for starting the game early that last time when she was trying to prevent Bob and Peter from destroying Anieth yet again.

Part of my suspicion was in her telling me that she wanted to have a child, but not on Earth, and a child in Anieth died every time the game ended. That was almost too much to bear, and some of us were really torn up about losing our children, like Marion, who had to give up going; it hurt her too much to be Morga, yet she would be no one else. I think she broke the gate to give her daughter in Anieth a chance, but she may not have known, for she tried to bring the baby through the gate as she was giving birth. The baby lived in two worlds at the same time, in Anieth as the daughter of Lorg Arinn, and on Earth as the child Edna Shields, daughter of Lucia, yet Lucia was gone. Marion says that she became Anieth.

An Doras served another purpose for those of Anieth. It was very, very rare that anyone who was of Anieth came through the gate. They had to be prepared and focus on their own identity and the person taking them back through. Most died before they stepped very far into the gate on the Anieth side. More often, people who went into the gate who were from Anieth, did not go very far, but passed out, experienced very strange visions or went mad by the time they awoke. They either managed to crawl back out on the Anieth side, or died.

Once, a player, Thomas Angelini, was put into the gate when he was Korutos after the gate was broken. Rather than walk through to Earth, he met Lucia, or so he says.

Some of the players found that they changed shape when entering to and from the gates. Others did not. Where Thomas found himself to be Korutos when thrown through An Doras, Tréan and Dubh (Brian and Geoff) and Theron Abernathy changed back into their Earth forms when going through An Doras. This was also the case with the gate on Earth, where some would change and some not. Once Lucia alluded to the "shape of the heart" determining the form one took in the gates. But we do know that there was a buffer between one gate and the other where a blue zone existed with two gates, one to Earth and one to Anieth.