Story I: The Rift

Preferring caution over all, you scan the area for a moment first. Though your mortal eyes fail you in this darkness, your other senses are finely tuned. You can feel a tingling upon your skin, nearly imperceptible, but familiar enough to you. It is the same feeling you get upon your fingertips after holding your magical flame. It is a sensation projected from the expenditure of magical energies, the ethereal remnant of Wyrd spellpower. In short, you know that there was magic here. Either there was weak magic cast very recently, or perhaps as much as a very powerful spell that had lingered here until some time (minutes or hours) ago.

You approach the pillars and inspect the runic script. As best you can tell, this writing looks similar to Elvish,
but it is not exactly the same. Certainly, it is magical in nature. Even if you can't read the translation, you get a sense of what it means in practice, when applied to magic. These pillars certainly formed a barrier between them, but no longer. Oddly enough, when you touch the pillar, you can feel that it is shaking; vibrating. There is some manner of resonance within it,
though you do not feel except through contact with the structure.

Unfortunately, these pillars are so alien to you that it's difficult to tell what cracks are intentional, what's wear and tear, and what is intentional damage. Lighting the torch, however, gives your sharp eyes the kind of illumination that you need to spot the tracks in the dirty cave floor on the other side of the pillars. Upon closer inspection, you can see seven sets of footprints. Two of them are small, and seem to have approached from the other side of the pillars, stayed for a time, and then left the way that they had arrived. The other five sets, likely the hounds, are large, and appear to have charged toward the village.

The passage isn't too terribly wide, but it would still require a significant amount of time to block it up with rocks and the like. Especially to do a good enough job that one of those hounds couldn't break through it. There are rocks scattered about that could work, but they are not easy to move around. So, it is more a question of how long you'd want to work at it.

You focus on the vibration that you feel within the pillars. It it most certainly not natural, but you are not sure if it is specific to this magical barrier, or if it is something foreign and invasive.

You sense the presence of a monstrosity about three miles below. There's another about at the full range of your awareness, straight down into the chasm.

You are unfortunately not able to find any weak points in the cave here. It looks structurally sound.