Shadows & Sorcery #139
We’re here! And so are you! For the one hundred and thirty ninth edition of Shadows & Sorcery!
This week is a traditional triple feature of dark fantasy weirdness, just like the good old days. This doesn’t mean, of course, that new readers (or those who missed it) shouldn’t check out last week’s Carloman Trilogy RIGHT HERE
Much like movies, you always get something out of a second reading. That’s not even a joke for views or anything, I really mean that. Always read and watch and listen to stuff twice, in different settings.
Also, next week is the new chapter of The Path of Poison, so watch out!
And lastly, my friends, please take a second to tap that little heart button and let the stories know you liked them!
This week we ascend into the grim heights above the Domain of Sacrifices, we peer into the depths of the Desert of Communion, and we join a Macha sorcerer-priest in the battle against something from the Slumbering Deep…
Domain of Sacrifices
Blade in hand and tears in eyes, the Sacrifice ascended the vast stone steps, once hewn from the mountainside itself in an age undreamed of, worn and cracked by the footfall of his predecessors. Each one was unto itself a wide shelf, pitted and chipped, and even here there were bodies, old and withered. From each one was a scrap of cloth torn with tender care, and fit into some gap in his armour. He was replete with them now, and they trailed from his limbs in layers like a lord's tattered raiment.
The City felt far away in even his memories. The scramble for survival amidst the piled towers, tangled streets, and shadowy underhangs, which were old when his elder's elders were young, may as well have been another life. The hardship was a trial unto itself. But it was like another world up here. Suffused with a serene sense of purpose and surety. Every path in this ascent through timeless ruins, dense greenery, and echoing caverns, be they solemn processions or perilous battles, led forward without fail. The current of destiny itself almost flowed perceptibly through these carven channels. It had come to disgust him utterly.
Every nook and cranny held a corpse, most little more than bones, snapped, yellowed, split, or hacked to bits. They had too been Sacrifices, ones who failed in their mission to the God. He had cobbled together his chimeric assortment of armour from the remains of a dozen ancient hopefuls, the sorrow in their hearts he knew they died with only fanning the flames in his own.
They had been lied to.
He had been lied to.
The steps looked like much of the City. Much of this higher span did. That same sandy, weathered masonry and braided and knotted stonework as below. The journal tucked into his belt probably spoke on that. They were the furious scratchings of one like himself. He had read them over and over again, each time the impact of their truth eroding the trembling doubt in his mind, a chronicle penned for him—for one who could not just see all this for what it really was, but survive the trials, and do something about it. He felt a kinship with the writer, though the fellow had been dead for centuries. And all that time before and after, this had been going on, and no soul had ever known.
The Sacrifice gripped his sword so hard it hurt. Red hot blood thundered across his vision. Just above was an archway whose inner curve was decorated with an intricate web of knotted carvings, over which shafts of sunlight played gently, carrying lazily drifting particles in their hazy light. A comforting balm for a weary soul, looking for nothing more after the ordeal than to give up their life to the God. He could feel the force of his rising anger lifting his feet.
Nothing else in the City, and nothing else in the ascent looked like this. His world was one of cracked, faded stone, stagnant puddles, and tired shadows. This mountainside reeked of decaying age, of a sense of glory long ago faded which could only be imagined out of the scraps of damp engravings. Like a whole land had been stripped clean and repurposed, then abandoned. But through that arch was a great chamber, a hall that hadn't seen the a second of the passage of time. It almost took the breath from him. No streaks of old damp stained its walls, no storm or violence had dulled or damaged the rich, deep knotwork and braiding in its lush decoration, and luxuriant vines and ferns crawled and hung with vivacious emeralds and crimsons. It was antique splendour manifest, and all of it was in service to the withered old God which sat upon a great sandstone throne far too large for its meagre frame.
It floated down, arms outstretched, looking like a figure as seen through blurred vision, its extremities fading into featureless stalks, until it came closer, and he knew that was exactly how it looked. About it flowed in some ethereal wind the remains of robes, now formless tatters, dulled from what once may have been a brilliant yellow. He looked at its limbs—it didn't touch the ground, either. Its face was nearly as smooth as where its hands and feet used to be. Not blinded by the radiance of the sun, by exhaustion, or by divine reverence, he looked upon the withered husk with disgust.
It went to speak, but stopped as he pulled out the journal from his belt, and cast it upon the ground. It looked down, and back to him, turning its head as if in questioning.
"Yeah," he though, "I bet you know exactly what that is, and exactly who wrote it." His eyes spoke for him enough.
He lunged forward, ready to duck or fling himself to the side, only the God flinched, and as his hands grasped its thin neck, it crumpled, and suddenly its stalk-like legs began to kick at the stone floor. The motions made him sick. Just before the giant throne was a slab—an altar. He threw the God upon it, and instantly, as if a veil had been torn from it, the pale stone took on its true appearance, congealed in a thousand years of blood.
"You need me," it said without a voice. "The tyrants needed a god."
"You are the only tyrant now," he said, setting one knee upon its squirming form, "and no matter what for you tell it, a lie will remain a lie."
He plunged with the blade without a second's thought through the God's chest and wrenched it back out, sending a jet of thick blood slopping to the ground. The veil dropped from the rest of the chamber, showing its sad age. It must have been keeping the enchantment up ever since it came here a high king hopeful. No wonder its limbs were in such a state.
The would-be Sacrifice and new high king took a few steps forward in the cold, free new world he had made, breathed deep, and began his descent back into the City.
Desert of Communion
Life found purchase everywhere. Even within the sandy, scorched badlands, small shoots and hardy weeds found footholds in the cracks and shade, skittering insects thrived inside extensive subterranean networks, shadow-black birds glided from their perches in the hollows of mesas. But if one went far enough in, all of that slowly vanished, until even the sand ceased to drift upon the earth. Few words could hope to ever adequately describe the innermost desert depths, wherein it had been believed for close to a thousand years, the spirits spoke their wordless tongue in divine communion.
Ascetics had been venturing past the threshold for centuries, if they ever found it in the first place. Many died and dwelt as martyrs to the cause of enlightenment in austere badlands shrines that monks after them formed a route of pilgrimage around. One simply had to trace their steps, and any step taken past that was one closer. A simple and obvious fact that became a great comfort to those haggard shapes unable to take anymore. Few monks ever returned with more than visions or feelings. But these were enough to sustain the meagre handful of true yet distant experiences the entire faith was built upon.
And then one day, a form draped in shapeless piled rags staggered into the cliff-hewn village, whose presence made the guards falter, and the people part, who was met by the palace commander and palace champion who received the first blessings of might, a shape who met the princes that became kings and too gave them and their blood blessings, and who dwelt in a gilded tower for seven years after which it became a holy sepulchre whose warmth radiated even on the deepest winter nights.
The tower-tomb has been sealed in black iron for nearly a century, and the cliff-hewn village is naught but dust. The bloodlines of the old kings, which crawled their way across the half world, are still rotten. The champion who blessed his foes-turned-friends in a decade after have only ever been glimpsed as shambling spectres in distant, lonely places. The commander was the only soul with the foresight to hide her corpse at the bottom of a lightless chasm.
For one hundred leagues around the place of communion, black iron spires stand etched with ominous warnings and dire histories in a sacral tongue—the only thing guaranteed to survive the ages now. Where the martyr shrines once stood black iron cubes detail the horrific fates of the remains within. Something did speak within that innermost space, and continues to do so, but power was never the sound it uttered, and it was not power that the pilgrim brought back from that fateful expedition.
A chronicle has it that the man lay writhing on a bed somewhere in the old palace in "divine agonies", his flesh twisted into "fantastic shapes", and gibbering of how the land became more "pure" as he plunged further and further inwards. The fanciful language of that age had it that it was place of communion, but enough naturalists lost their lives to find out what spoke there screamed, and that the bodies who heard it came away with the deleterious shudders emanating from their very flesh.
Slumbering Deep
The biting wind which had blown from beyond the mountains, from Dunmarrow, had finally settled over the east Macha coast as a chill air. The fighting had been particularly bitter. Bad blood between clans that they had decided was better spilt than bottled up. Dozens of bodies resigned to Lochod, in the deeps. Or so everyone who limped away had comforted themselves with. The dryador Draomand, who stood now on the shore, knew better than anyone else that wasn't the case.
For the past three days, something had been coming out of the water with the heavy fogs. It had driven the fishermen a league upstream, it scared them so. Slick, black, unhealthy things had come in its wake and had been the only things in their nets since the battle. It was Draomand's responsibility as sorcerer-priest to see to this, whatever it was. So, he'd gathered four people willing, under some duress, or with the promise of reward, to aid him in a matter of the gods.
The raft was of a good, solid make, crafted with smooth, buoyant driftwood—inland wood might have proven less effective in this circumstance. The small islands which dotted the Macha coastlines were considered something of a liminal bridge between Cannoc's land and Lochod's water, as were the trees which lived and died on them. Draomand's helpers were thus: two sisters, and the two woodsmen who helped lash the raft together. The sisters had oars ready to push off, but the dryador gestured for them to wait. At his feet was a small, wide brazier with an open flame, into which he dropped a pinch of something from a pouch he quickly returned to his grey robes. It hit the flame and began to fizz and spark, sending up a black trail, and lighting up a patch of the fog-laden shoreline. Draomand looked up for a second, his eyes pierced the dense, shapeless mist, his mind reached to the clear blue heavens above, and he bade Gaoth of the Sky to throw its gaze their way.
It was too big to be the sloshing of the oars, and it was too irregular to be the churn of the tide. Every time it sounded, the woodsmen whipped around, hands falling to their shortswords, and the sisters tensed, eyes darting to each other. Draomand just told them to continue. The only other occupant of the raft was a cask of rich brown ale from the chief's own private store. He'd let it go with very little argument, much to the dryador's surprise. Were it not for the comforts of hearth and drink, the Macha would be wildmen. It was determined a fine offering, and Lochod had come to mugs of it before, apparently. A whole cask ought to keep its attention long enough to send whatever was around here back to its depths.
The fishermen didn't know what to think of it. Certainly no one on the raft had an idea of what it was—except Draomand. Strange things live in deep places. Strange and terrible things that don't see the light, and the lower oceans are as dark as what's behind the stars. No doubt the fighting and the corpses caught its interest. It was probably looking for more, especially since it started coming onto the land, with the fogs. It couldn't leave the water true. Not yet. The dryador had, of course, not said anything of this to even the chieftain, save that the bitter combat had left the place "unquiet". Macha are suspicious by nature, and especially so out east. This was known, and made use of.
Draomand told them to stop, and steady the raft. The sloshing had followed them out here, and no wave or current made the furtive slinking they now heard cut through the thick silence out on the water. Everything was cold—the errant spray stung, and the air hurt their lungs. It took a lot to scare a Macha—might and its displays were the foundations of every day life, so when something got to them, it did so with a might of its own. These four were scared. The dryador nearly was, too. But a strong purpose had overcome him, and in these perilous moments, he felt closer to the gods than at any other time. He took the stopper from the cask then, a small barrel in which was a more welcome sloshing.
"Share a drink with Lochod," said Draomand as he passed the cask around. Each took nervous swigs from it, and Draomand took the last, and largest. He poured the rest into the water, along with the barrel, as he half-sung a traditional invocation that, in these circumstances, it was okay for them to hear. After a short moment, he ordered them to return home.
"That's it?" asked one of the sisters, relief waiting to break through.
"You'd better hope that's it," said the dryador.
They made it back to shore, and back to their hearths with little more than frayed nerves. Questioned were passed around drinking halls that night, of what they saw out on the water. Very little was every answer, but one. The woodsman said he, and, he swears, the dryador, saw something when the fog shifted for a second, as it does. Through that mist, he said, Lochod curse it, he saw something very big, and, he swore fives times over, each time with more of a tremble in his voice, something that looked like a great big pale human with a bent back turn away from him, and slide under the waves.