Shadows & Sorcery #146
EVERYONE SHUT UP SHADOWS & SORCERY JUST GOT ITS 100TH SUBSCRIBER
There are ONE HUNDRED of you reading this. Now imagine if we were all in a room together. Would be really awkward, but you get the idea. Thank you, each and every one of you, for subscribing and reading this weird stuff every week.
Speaking of weeks, this is a new week, and a new edition, and this edition is a three part cryptacular adventure. Strap on your good boots, because we’re heading down, deeper underground…
But before we begin:
I’ve considered, here and there, expanding the material I publish through Shadows & Sorcery, into things like small essays or opinion pieces on films, music, and games as sources of inspiration or how they may tie back into flash fiction. If you read this nonsense (which you do since you’re reading this), would you be interested in my blathering on about, say, dungeon synth music, found footage movies, and Dark Souls games?
Anyway I keep saying this and by God I mean it: last week’s edition was awesome, so if you missed out on that one or you just signed up (lookin’ at you #100) may I suggest taking a gander at some tales of primal magic, desperate quests, and dread occultism?
And lastly, my friends, please take a second and tap that little heart button to leave a like! Let the stories know you enjoyed them!
This week, we learn about the nature of Crypt War, we learn an unsettling truth about the Sorcery of the Catacombs, and we descend into the mortuary depths to seek out the Tomb Lord…
Crypt War
Deep below the beetling minarets, the great arching bridges, the vast stained glass domes, the broad open thoroughfares, snaking side streets, richly adorned arcades and courts, deep beneath the oldest manors and temples, stretching for untold leagues in the hazy shadows of the chasms between fortress walls and below the winding sewer passages, there were the crypts, an expanse of ancient graves that were as the very foundations of the city. The very bedrock. After them was the primeval sediment, and then the inner darkness of the world.
Whether they came first, or whether they were hewn later on, not a soul remembered, and no record could hint at their origin. They were a fact of existence in the city. But those who dwelt within the catacombs vastness would tell you they had been here long before the first stone of the first tower was set above. Most city historians silently held to the belief they were right, too.
The crypt folk were peculiar in the extreme. All kinds of folk ended up below, for it was a refuge, then sanctuary, then goal for the unwanted, the unseen, the lost, the mad, and most of all, the believers and the fanatics. Those with zeal to spare for whom esoteric, distant faiths held little allure, for whom signs and visitations were best grasped in the hands. Under their care, the sanctity of the crypts was absolute, and everyone who came to dwell below fell in line sooner or later. It was a funereal theocracy in which the lore and keeping of the crypts was the end and purpose of all life.
But the catacombs were far from being anything remotely recognizable as a unified society.
It would be more correct to say that the crypts were akin to a collection of warring states, rather than a city. Borders were determined by family lines and singular burials, and these shifted with influence. Almost every conflict in the undercity was over contested and stolen remains—the currency of power in the mercurial territories. For all the cryptfolk held fast to the sanctity of the ancient dead, bones and mummies were torn from their tombs with alarming regularity.
The crypts were considered the bane of the city watch above. Theft of supplies and weapons, property damage from tunelling, assault of suspected conspirators, and even murder inevitably bubbled up from the wars which raged amidst the tombs, unseen and unheard by most.
Sorcery of the Catacombs
It was some time past noon on a dreary day in the middle of the Month of Rain when two very curious figures slid into the central guard barracks in the Great Avodas District of the city. A captain and his aide were sent down to meet them, and were speechless when they were met with nothing less than two crypters. It wasn't long before they were ushered into a small side room, the eyes of every watcher following them with unsteady gazes. Crypters almost never came to the surface. It was never for a good reason, even when it was with a merchant. Such merchants usually ended up dead, too, by the hands of other crypters. For them to come to a guard barracks was practically beyond comprehension. A dozen guards passed that room as slowly as they could in their duties, listening in for a vital scrap of information to spread in the mess hall later.
It was one of several armour fitting rooms for times when civil conflict flared up. Mercifully it had gone unused for some time now. The crypters were clad in the sandy wrappings and rough robes typical of their kind, their great wide hoods thrown back to reveal pallid features. There was trouble, they said. It was bad. Worse than it had ever been. Wasn't just a war—they knew better than that. They'd each been born in the crypts. Righteous conflict for the honoured dead was a way of life. No, it wasn't war. It was conquest.
It had spread from the east. It was never quiet there. A lord had risen among them, from the deepest tombs where even the light of fires was rare, where grave mystics dwelt in the eerie silence, meditating upon and with the primal dead. Crypt-life was about continuity and preservation, they said. It was about a living connection. But some went too far into death, and, they swore, making signs around themselves, touched its very essence. Like this new lord who now holds swathes of catacombs in his palm, and whose territories grew by the day.
Well, what was so different, the captain enquired. It was a fair question. A fine warrior this lord could be, but none ever rose to prominence and remained for long with only martial ability or even strategic brilliance to aid them. The fighting was quick and decisive, the crypters explained, learning from those who fled before the curses could take hold.
Curses?
That was it. The lord in the east sent not armies to conquer, his forces were comparatively quite small, no, he was weaponizing the curses the ancient dead placed on their tombs to deter graverobbers that had never come. They had been sitting there since times ancient beyond memory or record. It would seem they were regrettably easy to stir. That was what he did. In some fashion the graves were defiled, or felt as if they were defiled, and their curses lashed out on the inhabitants of the crypts around them. Withered and weak, the eastern lord's forces easily took control every single time.
The captain asked, with some measure of skepticism, did not the crypters themselves battle over corpses, steal them, and move them around? The crypters didn't deny it, but admitted that the captain, and likely most people in the city, would never be able to understand the difference between the arts of exhumation, and defilement. That was fair. But what made little sense was this undercity lord ruling over a bunch of cursed subjects. That was the real trouble, they said. Once loyalty had been sworn and enforced, the curses were lifted. The graves were re-sanctified. It could not possibly be stressed, they both said at length, how quite genuinely unbelievable such a feat was. What it implied. Fact was, there were regions considering joining him before he came to conquer based on that alone. Crypt cults spoke in blasphemous whispers of returned ancients and risen dead. For the rest, the threat of a curse was a powerful motivator to bend the knee.
But if he lifts them, if he re-sanctifies the graves, why not feign fealty and then rise against him? The crypters came close to captain then. A look had come into their eyes no one in that room could describe, but it was not fear. Things done in and with, things drawn from death, the crypters spoke, lasted forever. Just as death was the state of eternity. And so they could be unleashed again and again as this new lord saw fit.
So, the captain asked, the image of a seedbed of curses bubbling under his feet, what did they want?
Tomb Lord
Of all the mouldering testaments to human brutality and arrogance, the city's fortress walls were some of the finest examples in the world. They were as layer upon layer of thick, nigh impenetrable stone and steel, built during ages of conflict that never seemed to end. They held innumerable points of egress from within, entrances into countless damp, labyrinthine passages, open sewer grates, rises to windswept battlements and cold watchtowers, dusty shelters that were as little villages unto themselves—the walls were both the first and last line of defense in a war that never really came, but had thrown tendrils towards the city many times. Whole armies once dwelt within them, ready to repel the enemy. The city had shifted its focus from them long ago, leaving them to become little more than dens for thieves, beggars, and crypters.
It was not into one of these walls five troopers now slunk, but between them. The walls had breaks in them intended as funnels and chokepoints and traps, but now they stood as luxuriant little wildernesses. In the midst of a grey, dank stretch of imposing walls, rising like sheer cliffs either side, fringed with dead vines and weeds, was a small opening upon which a thick wooden door had been set. As their guide put it, that opening, of an age-smoothed stone, was epochs older than the fortress wall built around it, but by some measure of grace, it had been preserved. A cramped, lightless, arched passage led down, down a flight of thin, cracked steps, and into the catacombs.
They weren't sure what to have expected of the crypts. Legions of thin, ragged figures worshipping enthroned parchment-skinned corpses? Choking dust and jutting bones strewn about the pallid halls? Grotesque displays of mad devotion too horrid to mention? What was revealed to them by their guide was a long, low, vaulted passage of ancient stone festooned with minuscule lanterns, small braziers, and bundles of candles. Old dead vines snaked their way over most surfaces. The air was dry and warm and utterly still. Minute sounds carried from far off reached them through the silence: the crackles of flames, the sound of distant footfalls, the settling of stone. Just beyond sight, more corridors branched away, and it was through one of these they now passed.
The captain, bearing a wide-bladed spear, took point with the crypter guide. The other one had left some time back. Behind them, two stakemen stalked forth with their spring-loaded bolt-throwers, and two axemen brought up the rear, throwing glances behind themselves every few minutes. The crypter seemed at ease with what he called the "serenity" of this region. It had already been conquered. The stakemen almost bolted at the words. The captain grabbed the crypter by the arm, demanding an answer—this hadn't been part of the deal. This is not what they had joined hands over. The region, the crypter hurried to explain, had quickly gone quiet again. He had made sure of this, because he had been among those who had stepped forward to swear loyalty before curses could be stirred. It had been the plan all along. The new lord was here, marshalling his followers, his guard let down after such swift success. It was good enough for the captain, and he made sure it would be good enough for his troopers.
The general architecture of the catacombs seemed to be wide and squat, the pillar and the long arch were omnipresent, and made for fine load bearing structures. Alcoves between them were omnipresent, too, filled with bones older than anyone could guess. Some were within lines of dusty stone sarcophagi, some were niches in which desiccated remains lay. Some were simply collections of skulls on shelves. The crypter passed a gaze over each one, and stopped a few times to shift a tibia or spinal column back into place with the movements of someone cradling a newborn infant. They moved through, after some time of stopping and starting, listening to sounds of motion from directions they couldn't be sure of, into a broad open court with a ceiling that was lost in shadow. It should have been bustling with activity, the crypter said, but no one wanted to go out. No one knew what to do. Calm it may be, but wars of conquest would rage again soon, and they may be called to serve. There was a sting of hate in that final word.
They found out exactly why not too long after. A tall but thin corridor forced them to march single file. The captain led them, a stakeman behind him, the crypter in the middle, then two axemen and the final stakeman at the rear. It was from out of the darkness ahead that a figure emerged, one that looked far more in line with the nightmarish visions of the catacombs the troopers had held their entire lives. Something with withered flesh from which protruded knobbed bones, thick strings of hair, and cadaverous features in which dwelt still living, staring eyes, shambled from the darkness, carrying in its arms like a standard of a battle a crudely bound mummy. Its gaping mouth issued sharp, rasping breaths as it saw them too emerge from the darkness. It shook, with fear or madness they couldn't tell, but it gripped the corpse in its arms tight, and hunched as it loped towards them. The crypter fell back almost instantly, hissing through bared teeth in disgust and fright, but the axemen held him, and the captain ducked so that the stakeman's bolt-thrower had a clear line of sight. A single heavy thwack later, at a steel-tipped shaft flew into the ribcage chest of the cursed slave, sending it to the ground to be finished off by the captain's spear.
He looked back, retrieving his weapon from the wretch's head, and saw the crypter still held by the axemen, hand clamped over his mouth, eyes streaming with tears. In that moment they understood, and bid the crypter guide them forth.
The gallery overlooked a grand chamber lit by yawning braziers, the upper air of it dimmed by smoke. The floor was all but tiled by long grave slabs bearing low relief carvings faded with the ages. At the end of it, before a quartet of vertical tombs whose figures had been shaped so that they seemed to peer over and down at those below, was the lord of the catacombs. The troopers slunk along the gallery, listening to the speech his gave to his captive crypt rulers. Nothing in it was particularly inspiring. Dreams of empire, a formidable united catacombs, the foundations of the city above upon which he had his eyes, a seedbed of curses to stir at his command and in his wrath, a world ruled from below—the captain listened only as far as seemed sensible. Here was the head of the serpent. No power had his followers, their guide swore. Unwise, arrogant, it drew all eyes to him. Fear would only get him so far, said the crypter. If he had brought anyone else into his power, they hadn't what it took to conquer this underworld. Thankfully.
And so, for all the descent had taken them some hours, and for all that each moment of those hours had seemed drawn out with interminable tension, it was over in seconds. Two bolt-throwers aimed, one shot to the chest, the other corrected its aim, and sent the second bolt into the skull. The fallen blood seemed to seep into the stone, like it had been sucked down by one with great thirst. This dry vastness must thirst, they thought, as they retreated amidst the clangour of confusion. They must never speak of this, and by the gods they hoped they would never have to. The crypter told them as he escorted them out that the lord had known things. He must have touched upon something deep, but frankly, if it resulted in this, he was glad to remain ignorant. And what of the catacombs now? An unsure future, mostly fresh conflict as petty lords staked their claim on tomb-regions, but, the crypter admitted, he hoped the recent troubles may alleviate some of this. What he really worried about were curses that could not be lain, graves left unconsecrated, and that would bring great sorrow. But those of the crypts would manage. They always had.
At an opening in the fortress wall, five troops bid goodbye to the crypter with reverent bows, and each returned to their cities.
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