Shadows & Sorcery #100
YEAH YOU SAW THAT RIGHT IT’S THE ONE HUNDREDTH EDITION OF SHADOWS & SORCERY
This week was a big one, because not only have we attained #100, last Tuesday we passed the two-year mark! So happy birthday everyone!
And with all that momentous energy comes a huge announcement about the future of this publication I teased a veeery long time back. In fact, it comes at the right time, I’d say.
I am officially making Shadows & Sorcery my full time occupation.
Barring sudden lottery winnings or mysterious inheritances, of course, I’m doing this thing I love for a living. For real. That does entail some changes, though.
The biggest immediate change is that Shadows & Sorcery will be dropping to three stories a week.
BEFORE YOU UNSUBSCRIBE PLEASE HEAR ME OUT!
There’s two reasons for this: one, I’m about to become a lot busier. This small drop in quantity is going to maintain the quality of the weird, weird stuff I send you every week. I don’t ever want to compromise my satisfaction with this writing, and this is how I’ll do it.
But what’s keeping me busy? Well, to help support myself, I am also opening a professional fiction editing service emphasizing informality, accessibility, and thoroughness for independent writers like myself who need that second pair of eyes on their work. That means some less time writing, but more time helping others. News on that soon!
The other reason relates back to brand new cool stuff for Shadows & Sorcery. I will be working with artists to bring Shadows & Sorcery into vivid, visceral life before your very eyes, and with voice actors to create bumper audiobook editions of stories from the past for those on the go. And beyond that, I will be creating illustrated e-book collections of stories from worlds we’ve explored here. All those Carloman tales, all those Dragonmagick tales, and even stuff like that weird vampire shadow cult trilogy, all will be able to be read together, lavishly illustrated, and lavishly listened to, with lavish voices. Collected of arcs of The Path of Poison are even on the table!
So what does this mean for you?
As a free reader, you’ll be receiving a free story a week, just like back in season 1, and there will be free editions, like back then, too. You’ll also get access to teasers and even some free premium content. You will NOT lose access to Season 2, if it’s a free edition, it remains so. You’ll be able to support Shadows & Sorcery just like you have: with likes, comments, and spreading the word. And don’t worry, there will be seasonal deals to take advantage of.
As a paying reader, you’ll be gaining access to three stories a week, the entire catalogue from the past and going forward, and all future premium content.
There are plans underway for Founding Member benefits, too, so keep an eye out on how you can support Shadows & Sorcery.
I won’t keep you any longer. All I’ll say is this will instated over the coming weeks, and I’ll keep you all updated as it happens. After all, I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without any of you.
But enough of that, because this week, to celebrate two years and one hundred issues, I’m giving you a whole ass short story—we’re breaking the law in the best way possible!
Join the Red Wizard Carloman and the Paladin of Imaal Casimir as they hunt for a killer int he secret-ridden mountain city of Belator in Shrine of Defilement…
Note: if this story gets clipped in your email, you can read the full story over on the site
It was a small, hole-in-the-wall tavern, the kind of which infest the entirety of the sprawl of the mountain city of Baletor. Its door swung open and the hot afternoon sun poured into the comfortably shaded interior. Heavy boots tread the bare stone floor, surmounted by baggy breeches and a sleeveless vest of bronze scales, both held fast by by a wide leather belt from which there hung a thing more like a mallet than a warhammer. Tied at the shoulder and slung around the body was a loose, thick red sash. His eyes were a burning gold, and his skin and hair a rich duskiness. Lounging at a bar sat two men much like him in aspect, dark-skinned, amber-eyed, one glanced away only for a second. Best not to bother a paladin on a mission, was the thought.
Striding over to a far corner, he beheld the curious figure who was nestled there, sipping on a local vintage. The paladin studied the personage before him. Ruddy skin probably usually quite pale, amber eyes, a silvery-gold beard, and the mostly bald head of a Voerlunder perhaps in the later stages of middle life. He was clad in crimson robes from which hands laden with rings and wrist-charms emerged, holding a half-empty wooden tankard.
The wizard’s brow raised in mild surprise as the paladin sat in the seat opposite without so much as a hello. The fellow leaned in, and shot a glance to the side before he spoke in a clear and fluent, though gruff-accented Merchant’s Tongue.
“I’ll be brief. The Paladins of Imaal seek your assistance, wizard. There’s been a killing. A bad one. A strange one. Time is of the essence. This,” he dropped a small but weighty sack of lustre coins onto the aged wooden table, “I hope is enough to procure your services.”
The wizard went quiet for a moment, and looked down in thought.
“A murder… Like the others?”
“Mmm. You’ve heard.”
“Aye, hard not to, even for a blow-in like me. Must be serious, yes?”
“More than you know, wizard.” The paladin’s eyes said it more than his words did.
“Strange, you say…Tell me, where was the body found?”
“In pretty bad shape on the steps of a World Serpent temple about an hour ago.” The wizard ran a hand over his head and groaned.
“This is the sixth one. We need to-”
“The sixth?” the wizard said with grave tone. “No, I must see the body, unmoved. Take me there now, paladin.”
Just as the wizard went to rise and take his tall wooden staff, the warrior put out his hand, with a look of resolute determination on his face in place of a smile.
“Casimir.”
The wizard stopped and took it and shook firmly.
“Carloman.”
The two men descended now the thin, sloping street, one of many offshoots of a larger side street. Baletor was a maze, a city that hadn’t been built so much as it had grown, sections splitting off and sending out tendrils of connective tissue in the form of winding, crooked alleys, high arching bridges, and deep tunnels. Down a set of worn steps, smoothed by the centuries, did they descend. Weathered houses and small shops were tumbled and peering above them, of warped wood and chipped stone, of warm and dusty colours, with small thick panes and faded or peeling paint. Yet there was no air of decrepitude, for even here in the new town many homes had small balconies, and there were decorated roofs with curling edges and low, broad-arched doorways with fine old detailing.
The new town, the vast sprawl of urban outgrowth in which a populace of no less than a million dwelt, rich with song and art and faith. The tall spires of temples rose above the oceans of irregular rooftops, most dedicated to the dozens of mystery cults around the inscrutable Oros, god of the mountain of Baletor, but among them were World Serpent domes, minarets of the Manatarian astrologists, and even a couple of fire-towers to Gaoth, the sky god of Macha across the sea.
Chatter in just as many tongues and half-tongues drifted from every which way, and the smells of smoke, incense, wine, and spices drifted on the breezes with them. Baletor was nothing if not the image of life in all its curious forms.
But it was also the new town, rich with crime, and secrets, and murder, where feet tread but lightly in the dark. Tenements and cramped, squalid dwellings, hidden dens of vice, leagues of subterranean passages carved into the rock of the mountain surreptitiously by those with a desire for ease of movement, or isolation. There was a reason the Paladins of Imaal, followers of a mysterious deity known as a righter of wrongs, made their home here. If there was one place in all the known world that needed their guiding hand, it was here, where the guildsmen and royals of the old city above rarely deigned to look.
Into a larger street did the two men now stride with purpose. Passers-by gave them odd looks, but didn’t linger. This was Baletor, after all. The old, unevenly paved stone began to smooth out and glided broadly downwards, until between two tall, tower-like buildings did a wide, dusty promenade open up. It was lined with structures of great antiquity representing the wildest forms of imported early Lunderman-era Voerlund architecture, with broad facades filled to the brim with weathered but still fine stonework.
The grand thoroughfare widened at intervals as it ran along, each time with some small monument or huddle of stalls in the center, from which there came the cries of merchants and mongers. Eventually the street ended in a large, squarish court ringed by widely spaced foreign temples, between which smaller avenues snaked off. Carloman instinctually spotted the domed World Serpent temple, and a nervous fluttering suddenly took root in his stomach. A large crowd of people were gathered about it—some made the sign of the serpent over themselves, some were pointing, some stood back with shocked expressions.
Casimir pushed his way through the crowd, and the wizard followed. Near the steps, blocking the view, were royal guards half examining the scene, half keeping the too-interested at bay. The youngish fellow who seemed to be just barely in charge spotted the approaching paladin and stepped forward.
“You lot on this already?” he asked with a weary tone.
“With the Magistrate’s leave, aye.” He procured a stamped scroll from a pocket and gave it to the guardsman.
“Good, maybe you can make something of this.” He glanced at Carloman as he said this, and back to the paladin. The people had begun to disperse as the wizard came forward, staff clacking on the stone. The guardsmen started sending the crowd off as the two approached the body.
The eyes seemed to stare even now with terror. The entire neck was distended, discoloured—throttled violently, and the rope that had done it lay in loose coils, thrown about almost. But what caught the wizard’s eye were the hands. Each finger was broken, smashed to bits. Upon closer inspection, the rope was tied into knots at intervals which had nails drive through them. And, too, the body was missing its legs below the knees.
“Casimir,” the wizard stepped back and turned from the corpse, motioning for the paladin to join him. “Do you know what this is?”
“Tell me,” came the reply, laced with uneasy anticipation.
“This isn’t just murder, this is blasphemy.”
The paladin was standing with the sun behind him, but his gold eyes stood out—indeed, they seemed to flare.
“Look at this. The details of it. The location…on the steps of a temple…just outside the reach of the Serpent’s guardianship, you see? The broken hands—you know how important the sign of the dome is in the faith. And that rope...the loose coils, used to kill, and the pierced knots. Everything here spits in the face of the World Serpent, clear as damned day.”
“So, most certainly not random killing,” he almost growled the words.
“Not a chance.”
“I’m betting you’ll say the same about the others.”
“You’ve had suspicions?”
“I’m afraid we’re in accordance. The other deaths were like this. Strange. Elaborate. Come, I will bring you to my Fastness.”
Baletor’s new town was home to the twin centers of the faith of the Paladins of Imaal. In the nomenclature of the cult, they were as Casimir had called them, not temples, but fortresses. The Hammer’s Fastness sat within a close, a small district of houses, where its captains and priests dwelt. It was a grim, imposing structure, a grey broad-faced thing more like a castle than anything else, with watchtowers and a great reinforced oaken gate, at odds with the city around it. They only made a quick stop here as Casimir spoke to a guard of some kind outside, who rushed into the building with nary a word. They then continued down a long jagged street of overhanging houses and into another quarter of the city, where there suddenly rose into the brilliant sunshine the spires and tall thin arches of the Spear’s Fastness. Its stone was pale and richly decorated, hard shadows were cast across it in the bright sun, giving deep definition to its old walls. Though he had been a visitor to the city several times over the years, Carloman had never seen this temple, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that even these stern folk could delight in glory.
Within was a long, oval interior, high and triple domed, wherefrom there came great shafts of sunlight. In the first and last domes were three holes each, and in the central dome, a single aperture—these represented the Seven Rays of Imaal, the god’s illuminating light. Spiral staircases gave access to galleries above, which ran the length of the building. At the far end was a stone wall with three doors. Beyond these, Carloman understood, was a small hospital. Imaal was commonly understood as a god of justice, order, and law, but the wizard knew, as did Casimir, that Imaal was a god of righting wrongs, and was as much an avenger as a healer.
“No finer an archive in Baletor will you find than ours, though modest be its size,” said the captain. Carloman didn’t doubt her. Encyclopedias, tomes of law, medicine, and theology, even a few sorcerous tracts, they all lined the walls of the galleries, in which were little cells to read in. They had to be well-armed in all things, he supposed.
“I wish I was here under better circumstances,” he said with a sad smile.
“No better circumstances than to set to this to rights, friend. We’re glad to have your expertise. You have all you need?”
“I believe so, yes. Oh, but please thank the lad from the Hammer’s Fastness for delivering these reports so quick,” he added quickly.
“Of course. Find me or a priest if you require assistance.” With that, the captain gave a short bow and left the cell, clacking her longspear’s pommel on the stone. The instrument of mercy, as the paladins see it, in contrast to the hammer—the instrument of wrath.
The streets were thin, mostly bare, damp earth, and they had stone channels set into their middles down which filthy water trickled, leaving a dark residue. The porches of the small, packed dwellings were all deep and hidden from the high sun, they were pools of shadow in which a dagger would go unseen until it was too late. The slender alleys were crooked and irregular, with corners in which cowled figures might watch a passer-by until it was time to slink out, and strike. For such reasons did the paladin stalk forth with his hammer in his hand.
There was a good chance no one and nothing but vermin dwelt here. He’d been at this nearly two days, delving into the maze of the new town’s forgotten little corners. Right now, such hovels as these sprawled a mile in each direction. These were far, lonely places only very desperate souls sought out. Each of these bare wooden shacks might house some secret best left forgotten. It was then there came the rush of feet on the sodden earth. The paladin braced himself, and felt quickly the sign of Imaal around his neck. From just around a bend in the narrow street, a figure crashed into a wall and stumbled trying to keep running, but stopped as they saw Casimir. He saw then it was a woman, in bloodied tatters, her limbs shaking, her face streaming with tears running from wild, staring eyes. She was gasping half-worded pleas as she sunk to the ground. His brow furrowed as he took a second to take it all in, and he thought to himself no, by the gods, this wasn’t some act. He slid his hammer back into the hoop at his belt and went to her. She reached trembling limbs out to him, gibbering that he must help her, that she can’t believe she got out, to take her away.
“Where did you come from? What happened?” He didn’t hide his concern, or his unease.
“Gods help me, please help me, I’ve never seen anything-” she heaved as some image came back to her, but the paladin laid a hand on her shoulder as he crouched down and lifted her to her feet.
“Look at me, listen to my voice.”
Her eyes ceased to dart around, and she spoke between choking sobs.
“I’ve been down there for days-”
Every instinct flared in the paladin’s mind.
“Where? Was anyone down there with you?”
“I, no, gods, he shut me in there days ago—wait, please, don’t make me go back, I can’t go back.” She began to cry afresh.
“You don’t have to go back. I swear this,” his voice was soft, “just tell me where.” He placed a hand on her arm, and she shrunk into herself, and leaned into him.
“A mark over the door,” she whimpered, “the cellar, gods, a nightmare…”
He held her as she shook.
“You have been wronged. It will be righted.”
Could she have seen the paladin’s eyes in that moment, through the haze and murk of that slum, she would have seen them burn.
“...the cellar, gods, a nightmare…”
Two days passed in the Spear’s Fastness. Carloman stopped only to eat, and then to steel himself for further research. He stayed up throughout the night, reading, digging through the temple’s library for inspiration. When he did sleep, it was in an adjacent cell, and for only a few hours at a time. He kept all of his research material in the next room, from which could almost feel a trace of the evil behind it all pulsating. For that reason he plastered the walls of his makeshift bedroom with paper talismans. He didn’t relish sleeping near all that.
The details of the past three months of killings were laid out in a grim tableaux on a large desk of polished wood. Reports, statements, even sketches, all of them recorded with excruciating detail. The wizard was no stranger to oddities and terrors. He’d seen his fair share of darkness, human or otherwise. But these were bad. It wasn’t the details that made him turn away, but the hatefulness of them. It stood to reason, he thought, that if the latest killing was so blatant a blasphemy, then the others would follow suit. But in what way? And for what purpose? What connected them, if they even were connected? Were they individual killings, or parts of a larger scheme? A scheme, or a ritual? The thought wouldn’t leave his head. They certainly looked the part.
He conferred with paladins on the second day. He hadn’t heard from Casimir in some time now, but apparently that wasn’t uncommon with him. Some of whom he interviewed had themselves been to the crime scenes, and had seen the remains as they were. Each one only furthered his suspicions, because they themselves harboured suspicions that there was something far worse to this than the kind of isolated brigand or cult activity that cropped in such a city. These weren’t about sending a message, or making a sacrifice. These were targeted, and executed with vile precision and planning. They were almost certainly the actions of a single devoted individual, with a lot of time and a lot of resources. They all thought it was a guildsman from the old city above. If so, they had friends, and trying to go from that angle would be a nightmare. Better to find the bastard at it and get them there and then. Carloman was inclined to agree as he looked over his condensed research notes.
Some obscure rite of an esoteric Oros sect, perverted almost beyond recognition, the victim missing most of their face and legs...Remains found inside a lightless subterranean maze of repurposed sunken tenements, missing a head...A body immured and suffocated in a steel-lined tomb, without its arms...A corpse found inside necromantic binding circles—that one took several priests to undo, completely butchered and missing several parts of its anatomy...The victim of a brutal and swift assassination, bereft of eyes and hands...And finally, a person murdered with rope on temple steps with broken fingers, and missing their legs past their knees.
They all added up. The maze that defied the guiding Sun and Stars of Mul Manatar. The suffocation in the steel tomb, well, the Macha didn’t use steel, and it sealed against air, water, and earth. The necromancy, that was plainly against the Dunmarrow death god. The assassination, that made sense only as one against the Heroes and Immortals of Minosmiir and the Khurcham nomads—nothing was more abhorrent to them than assassination, no chance to fight back. It made sense. Serpent’s Breath, the more he thought about it the worse it got, and one possibility loomed larger than the others. A murder for every god. A death that directly defied the edicts or nature of a deity. The pattern was the great gods of the known world, and there was only one left to complete these seven blasphemous deaths: Imaal, righter of wrongs.
Just then, there was a commotion below. He heard several feet rush to the temple entrance as the gates were swung open. He heard a familiar voice call out to the others—Casimir. The wizard stood up and leaned over the gallery bannister. There he was, his arms around someone, helping them into the temple. A young woman. Spear-wielding paladins ran to her and brought her to the other end of the temple. Casimir stood, and watched as she went with them, he then looked up to the galleries. Carloman met his gaze and nodded.
The hospital wing of the temple was a decently sized, circular room, with a long row of thin windows at the back admitting generous sunlight. Ten beds ringed it, and between them were shelves and cupboards of salves, pellets, herbs, and various tomes of medicinal lore. A far cry from the Alkyrion College of Physicians in Silverden, but it was certainly well-packed. She was sitting up in a bed, looking no better, but she brightened up when she saw Casimir enter. Carloman joined him after a second. Poor thing, she was only a girl. What had happened here? The paladin gently took her hand, and spoke to her softly in the Baletorian language, asking as he could any details she might remember.
What could be surmised from her short replies in a hoarse, exhausted voice was that some days ago, she’d been grabbed off the street, knocked out, and woke up bound and gagged in an abandoned building. She had no idea where, or how deep inside she was. Her captor was a Baletorian—that just about sold Carloman on it being a guildsman—and wouldn’t stop talking to himself about strange, frightening things. Carloman asked, through Casimir, what kind of things. She didn’t know, he was a madman, but he kept talking about the “true masters” and the “true gods”, and said, over and over, a word she didn’t recongize: aeons. It took all of Carloman’s restraint not to react. Of course, he thought. A gnostic. And one last thing, she said. The cellar. There was something under it. And then she stopped herself and went quiet.
As they left, Casimir implored his fellow paladins not to leave the girl alone for a second, and tend to her as needs be. She’s been through something unthinkable. Outside the Spear’s Fastness, in the blazing midday sun, the two men convened.
“Seven blasphemous deaths, one for each god of the known world,” said the wizard.
“And she was the seventh.”
“No doubt.”
“Then his plans have been disrupted. Carloman, I know where the house is. It’s far within the new town slums, but I remember the way.”
“You think he’ll be there?”
“There’s a good chance of it, aye. But if not, we’re bound to turn up something.”
“No better time than now! Let us waste not a second, lead the way, my friend.”
Into the depths of the sprawl of shanties and hovels that made up the often overlooked eastern district of the city did they now plunge, the sun still high in the sky. The shadows ran a heavy black here. Most of the residents of this unclean outgrowth were honest folk trying to survive in a city of immense inequality. Carloman’s homeland of Voerlund had its poor districts, its dens of beggars and vagrants, especially in the ancient capital of Lundermark, but this was of an especial destitution. This was one vast wrong the paladins fought to make right, in spite of the guildsmen’s general negligence and the Prince of Baletor’s constant battle to keep the guilds from amassing even more power than they already had.
These places had grown swiftly to accommodate the growing population of the metropolis, but the guildsmen were like minor lords of other lands, and functionally owned estates of such vast and dense reaches they forgot whole sections even existed. This was one such place, once housing for poverty-stricken labour that eventually found better circumstances, but the structures still stood, silently rotting, and accumulating darkness. It was in that same grim stretch of slum that they came upon it. An inconspicuous shack with a mark over its door so brazen in its occult implications that the wizard almost set it ablaze. It was a guildsman, alright. Only some fool with money to waste in all the wrong places could come across something like that. The old town was probably rife with the stuff. Carloman shuddered at the notion.
The windows were shuttered completely, and the door was uncommonly firm. Likely he had it locked heavily from within. Not a problem for the wizard, however. He stepped forth, and touched the bar earthen ground with two fingers, he crossed them before the meagre brass lock, set his staff into the mud, and uncrossed his fingers. There was a series of dull, thick clunks from within.
“Oh, you’ve made some enemies, haven’t you?” Carloman chuckled to himself.
“How did you manage that?” asked the paladin somewhat uneasily.
“Hmm? Oros let us in. And quite readily, too.”
“You call the god of the mountain here?”
“This wood, this earth, this city, all is Oros, no?”
Casimir merely raised a brow as they entered.
The place was bare, entirely bare. Bereft of even the scraps of mouldering furnishings, but the entire place was smeared with dust. The air was thick and had a stench of dim decay. A rickety staircase led upwards to an open second floor that was little more than a small loft. A cursory check showed it, too, to be bare. So, nowhere to hide, for them or their quarry.
“Where to now?”
“The cellar is what the girl said. Whatever we want is down there.”
The house went back further than they’d expected, though most likely a wall had been removed and had adjoined with a building behind it. In that time, Carloman had set a small orange gem into the top of his staff, and blew it on it lightly, sending a soft illumination across the murky interior. In the corner of a shallow, meagre cellar they found it. A hole in the unsteady wooden flooring, a descent into an absolute pitch darkness where only hard earth ought to be. The shadows almost seemed to lap like water at the edge of the hole.
“We will need light here, wizard, can you make yours any stronger?”
Carloman turned to the paladin with a quizzical look.
“You know what this is?” he asked with a grave tone.
“I know enough.”
He didn’t show it, but the wizard was silently impressed by this gruff fellow. Casimir took a single step down, slid out his hammer, held it high, and laid his hand on the sign of Imaal around his neck, then stooped low and stalked down, the wizard at his back, gem of fire blazing to life.
The very moment their heads left the space above, it seemed as if they were in another world. In Carloman’s mind, they were. What was beneath their feet was not the stone or earth of Baletor. What was over their heads was not the slums of the new town. The ring of light about them showed a greyish, warped, rippled ground, that looked like a lava flow gone still. There were trails all about it, like the marks of snakes. There was no sound, not even the crunch of their boots. Their breaths were stifled. The silence was oppressive, heavy. This was the enemy’s deep, the wizard, and mostly likely the paladin, knew. Some hidden hollow laden with dark, uncovered by some hateful madman, now the lair of a gnostic. Carloman sent his staff out every which way, but dared not leave either of them out of the light for even a second. If aught was down here, they’d bump into it sooner or later. That was how these places usually worked.
In truth, they had only been walking a few minutes, but it felt like they’d passed through leagues. Behind them, in the close distance, the dim impression of the cellar entrance. It was Casimir who suddenly came upon it. He growled as he stepped back, cursing. Carloman threw his staff’s light upon it, wincing. A kind of slab rose from the unnatural earth, not out of it, but of it, a single, smooth, rectangular protuberance upon which was heaped a pile of rotting flesh, configured in such a way as to assume the general outline of a human being. So, that was what happened to missing limbs and organs. They were unable to look at it for long before a voice suddenly came from the dark.
“I suppose it was the girl who told about this place?” A voice that rattled the way dry earth might sound as it tumbled down a slope of rock. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll find her, and make her the first offering in my new, free state.” A voice like a throat raw and torn from screaming.
He emerged from the darkness not too far from them. Casimir’s grip on his hammer almost audibly tightened.
“I suppose you think you’re here to stop me? You’ve seen my icon of defiance. You wouldn’t understand. I don’t expect you to, clinging to the pallid, fluttering ghosts you and every fool out there call your gods. I know true gods, true masters. You can know them, too, but only if-”
Casimir flew out in an instant, arm held high to deliver a crushing blow, but was brought low mere feet from the circle of light from which the wizard cried out. The gnostic stepped forward.
“Maybe you’ll do for my defiance against Imaal. You must be nursing a hefty grudge against me, after all!” he laughed, hoarse and vile. He shot a look to the wizard. “Oh, come, you must have an inkling of what all this is. Of where we are.”
“Shut your mouth, you traitorous bastard.” Carloman didn’t hide his anger. No need to restrain himself here. And neither did the gnostic suppress the grin which spread over his face. Casimir struggled to rise to his feet—the wizard knew exactly what was upon him. The terrible totality of a black infinity gazed upon him and his soul. It wanted the gnostic to succeed. Time was of the essence here, powers waxed and waned with the passing of seconds. But as of yet, that power had no truly, fully come through.
What small spells Carloman could do in this second would amount to nothing, the vastness which had been grown here was now being thrown against him, and which each passing moment his circle of light was constricted further and further. He and the paladin were the envoys of the gods here, and every charm around his neck—wait, that was it. There was one thing in this deep that was precious to the traitor: that so-called icon of defiance. That shrine of defilement. This was not the gods’ domain, this space sat on the borderlands, but the amulets and signs the wizard wore about his neck still had on them the blessings and goodwill of the deities they were the very images of. All things leave a mark, and even that heap of dead flesh had once know the benediction of the gods. Let it know such power again, was his thought. Carloman tore off as many of the charms as he could in a single handful, and began a chant in his throat as he held them high, a chant which rose to a fierce roar:
“Serpent’s coils, and Locod’s deep,
In Starlight’s guidance now you keep,
Firstborn’s flame, and Gaoth’s air,
To Oros now, be left in care,
Dunmarrow’s call and Cannoc’s earth,
Find now peace and calm rebirth,
Righter of wrongs, Sun’s golden rays,
Let this pass now til the end of days!”
Carloman cast his amulets to the side and upon the grotesque, dark altar. For just a second, the darkness flickered, and the paladin staggered up, gasping loudly.
“Now! Strike now, kill him now!”
There was no hesitation as the gnostic went still with shock. The paladin brought his arm back and swung out his hammer in a short, sharp, savage arc, the broad mallet head crashing through the madman’s jaw. The fog of the Outer Dark began to flow back, the twitching hand of the traitor sorcerer thrust out, but Casimir brought down his holy instrument upon the head, and after naught but a flash of bloody combat, all was still. The paladin fell back and turned to the wizard. It lingered for a dreadful moment, but as they looked around, a sense of immensity receded, and the darkness was pushed back by Carloman’s light.
They would never know if the gnostic had been acting on his own, or if he was part of some coven. It didn’t really matter, his face and name were plastered across the city in every broadsheet and pamphlet, as a vile sorcerer and killer. If he had accomplices, they’d think twice before acting any time soon.
The girl in the hospital had recovered, though she was still somewhat shaken. Understandable. Casimir made it his duty that day to tell her it was done, that she was safe, that no one else would be hurt, and that they couldn’t have done it without her. Thank the gods who had engineered their meeting, at that time, at that place. Carloman added, as best he could, the gods do give us nudges now and then, as he was well aware. Before they left, the girl asked if she could return home. Casimir said she could, but asked if she was able to find her way from the Spear’s Fastness. She said she could, and mentioned where she lived. Poor girl lived in a slum, but at least it was safer now. She was offered work in the temple if she needed it, the best the paladin could do, aside from a friendly hand on her shoulder. Carloman, however, lingered a second before he followed his companion outside. He removed from his robe a small but weighty sack of coins, still unopened, placed it in the girl’s hand, and said in a faltering but friendly Baletorian:“Take this, and get out of there.”
The altar in the cellar was being removed, and what had been upon it was buried in earth consecrated by seven gods. But for two figures who sat in the far corner of a small, hole-in-the-wall tavern, the kind of which infest the entirety of the sprawl of the mountain city of Baletor, the day’s deeds were done, and all that was left was sample the local vintage.