Shadows & Sorcery #106
Hell’s bells! It’s the one hundred and sixth edition of Shadows & Sorcery!
Man, there’s some weird stuff down there this week. Stuff like magic doorways, astral metals, and alchemical forces. You’d better go take a look!
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This week, we step through and learn the power of the Doors of Sorcery, we take from the heavens the Steel of Stars, and we learn the truth behind the power of Undead Communion…
Doors of Sorcery
That the old man might see dawn would, at this point, be a miracle, and would be preferable. The physician had done everything possible, now all they who were gathered there could do was prepare for his passing. He had little to bring with him over the threshold, and when the physician had made the final diagnosis, he had been agitated almost into action. If there was one passage that mattered more than any other, more than birth itself, it was death.
Of the small group gathered quietly in that bedchamber, two most certainly did not belong. There was the physician, the personal servants, and then them, whose debt to the old man was beyond imagining. He requested for them specifically to be there when it happened, and it was they who he now addressed in a faltering whisper:
"Go...go to the Camoril Wood..." there were pauses between almost every word as he struggled for breath, "there is a door...you understand, a door...take the threshold stone...bring it to me...I must pass my feet over it..."
They looked to each other only once, nodded in assent, and said to him it would be done. Without another word, they left, touching an amulet that hung on the doorframe before they stepped over the decorated wooden saddle. There wasn't a doorway, closet, or cupboard in the house that didn't have one.
The house lay in a spread of open woodland, the tall trees had broad canopies that almost touched, and in the strong, clear daylight the leaves were a luscious green-gold and the estate was in a perpetual pleasant shimmering shade. But in the night, when the sun wandered into the void and threw its far off pale beams onto the treetops, there was something always a little unworldly about its unquiet silveriness which always seemed to, as it did now, shift about restlessly in winds that weren't there. They knew it was simply a breeze that didn't reach quite below the canopy, but still. Wind wasn't always wind along a roadside.
The road which wound from the house was lined at intervals with small pillars, upon which were wooden shrines—they touched each one as they passed. A road was, after all, a liminal space. The old man was a firm believer—and more, if his instructions to find the stone of a door of sorcery meant anything. The estate's path led to a broad country road then, at the intersection of which was another pillar, this time with a wooden cylinder atop it on a roller. They each spun it one full revolution before continuing until the country road led to a crossroads.
The various shrines, prayer wheels, and amulets had thus far been of the old man's design, but the great stone monolith before them now, with its deep alcove, was very much of the region. Belief in thresholds was strong here. No doubt part of the reason why the old man was the way he was. It was customary to speak, at least in one's mind, the old rhyme carved into the hollow in the stone, written in a language gone unspoken in ages too long to recount, the meaning of which had been lost to time. A plaque which sat before it had written on it a close as possible phonetic translation for the benefit of the modern people, cobbled together from old memories and chronicles.
The left hand path curved northwards into the much larger Camoril forest, whose interior was almost totally black. The treeline was kept immaculate so as to not confuse the threshold. There was a single gateway that led within—it wasn't necessary to use, but the weather-stained wooden amulets on the left post were, at least to the folk around here. They lit their lantern before even touching the post, so as to include it in the blessing.
The vast black trunks rose far higher than the pleasant glade of the estate, and whole rows of them were as foreboding walls to their progress. Where the door might be they had no idea, and they must have its stone back before dawn. That was hours away, but the forest ran for miles into the valley between the dark hills. Within that valley, they knew, lay the low entrance to a cave which ran for untold leagues into the earth. The bare rock of the exterior was carved with numerous ancient threshold spells. A good place to start, they thought.
At intervals they stopped, and performed small prayers before moving on. A threshold really never fades once built, and there was always the danger, they had been taught, of passing over some forgotten gateway in the wilderness. Almost certainly it was their diligence which had them stumble quite unexpectedly upon the door of sorcery.
It was, in no other words, a free standing door in the midst of a small clearing of the towering trunks. It was a fine piece of craftsmanship, even in its abandonment, chipped, smoothed, and stained. Every one of its panels had deep-set, flowing symbols, engraved with extreme care, and the frame was handsome and set with no less than ten amulets to be touched before passing through. Nonetheless, they approached it cautiously, for the door was wide open.
A doorway, a window, a road, dawn, dusk, birth, death. These transitory spaces and states existed all around, all the time, and were the connective tissue of the world. Just as blood flows through the chambers of the human anatomy, did things flow through thresholds. They arose naturally, from trampled trails to paved thoroughfares, from cave entrances to front doors, they were extensions and evolutions.
But to make a new threshold, one that did not arise naturally, to make things flow in a way the world did not intend...that was power, and that was what stood before them. Their caution had come from an old memory that anything that could pass through a threshold could back through the wrong way. Artificial thresholds were particularly susceptible, or so it was said. Especially ones that had been abandoned.
They could read very little of the symbols, and of what they could read they could only half-guess. It was directions, it seemed, directions and what the old man would have called "things to keep in mind" as you stepped through. The threshold stone which served as a door saddle was likewise carved with utmost care, though it was mossy and held slight cracks. The cave mouth carvings were of a similar ilk to this, and likely had served as inspiration.
In a small circle of light, surrounded by a night-black vastness of melting shadows, the two dug out with their hands the threshold stone. Taking care to never pass even a limb over it, they dug from beneath, and finally pulled out the long, irregular flat rock. It was heavy, but not terribly so. All the same, they shared its weight to ensure it got back to the house in one piece, and so they both could touch every amulet from here to there with ease.
The night was hurrying onward, and they didn't tarry. Their way was poorly lit, but they arrived, performing every small act of ritual along the way with no exception. The stone would know. The old man would know, too. The servants helped them through the house, and into the bedchamber, after pressing their fingers to the amulet outside. His breathing had become shallow and wavering, and the physician had fought to keep him awake. He was propped up momentarily so that he might do this own part in this death rite, and see the fruits of tonight's quest.
His feet were held up, and the stone above them was then slowly lowered, its carven face parallel to his soles, so that in a quick movement his feet touched and passed the threshold stone, and it was drawn away.
With that, he was lain back down, and passed away just as the first rays of dawn came some few hours later. Fortuitous indeed. The stone was lain at the foot of his bed for good measure.
Steel of Stars
First it fell from above, through a scarlet span of crimson-stained clouds and tumbling xanthous moons. A heaven that still bled from the making of the world. A prismatic streak through the gore-drenched sky, it crashed into the still steaming flesh of the earth, gouging a deep canyon with teetering ridges either side, into which the gnarled limbs of the first people tread. The sun bled its great amber tendrils over the gorge, sending harsh shadows skittering about. Their torches, each one a drop of sunfire, only made those shadows dance with greater fervour. In the depths of the gorge, they found it, a searing silver.
Hot gold stars sometimes shone through the red heaven, and sometimes they changed to an argent hue and fell, producing unspeakable displays of sparks in the sky as they disintegrated on their descent. But this one survived. The dying core of a once mighty star. A molten ore they took and hammered with the bones of dead monsters into the very first blades. But this wasn't the first star to die, and soon the great black sweep of the world beheld the opalescent shimmer of the steel of stars, weapons which held within them the final vital spark of the astral bodies they once were, clashing in catastrophic combat.
With a single swing could one warmaster fly across the battlefield, with a concentrated series of strikes could one warmaster flit about a group of warriors in a dance of destruction—casting themselves about as if they were stars themselves. The meeting of two star steel blades was a thunderous, nightmare cacophony that could crack stone and skull alike, and many lesser warriors were sundered when their enemy clashed with them. Monolith forests were reduced to ash, settlements to bloodstains, and heaving wine-dark oceans flooded the lands.
And then, a nameless, faceless warrior clad in absolute black trod the shattered earth, slaying with storm-fury and laying waste to the reign of the star steel warmasters. From under their shadow did cowering mankind rise up and gather about a jagged mountain to bear witness to flashes like a thousand cold, lustrous dawns threatening to flood the world in nacreous radiance. But at last it ceased, and there glided down from the summit the nameless warrior, robes rippling like liquid shadow. In their hands, a great instrument which thrummed with vital force. Before the gathered tribes of half-bestial humanity, the warrior decreed that each clan would find its new home where a star that roared their name fell. And with this, the warrior plunged into the crimson skies, and to the stars.
Across the fog of darkness that was the universe, the warrior killed the aureate stars which were as suns themselves, and took in their hands the molten silver core, and flung it to the flesh-world of man, where new peoples gathered about them in awe and reverence, and it wasn't until the last star was slain did the warrior return and instruct in the mysticism of steel-shaping. There rose iridescent cities across the earth—then there rose leaden cities on the ochre moons—and finally, the sable void saw the streaks of a thousand star-crafts as mankind landed on the rotting remains of unmade worlds and infused them with astral sparks from the void-nulling engines.
And in the furthest reaches of the searing darkness wherefrom the cosmos still seeped into being, new stars—and new steel—shone in the skies of alien worlds, waiting to be taken.
Undead Communion
When the dead began to outnumber the living, the many chiefs, high councils, lords, and more of the sundered world convened to discuss a solution.
Hordes of ravening, withered corpses, greyed cadavers, and mangled, animate remains, in throngs miles in length. And yet, for all that life seemed to teeter on the brink, the true horror was that they were perfectly cogent, existing in perpetual lament, starvation, and vengeance. Their insatiable hunger for life had not dulled their minds or emotions an ounce, they were people who feared and cried out for salvation. Armies lay in wait for the word to spring forth and cleanse the earth of their curse, their masters bidding stay their hands just one more day every time.
And then, finally, when the tension across the world was fit to break, an alchemist came forth in a dire hour with a radical solution.
Alchemy is the study of the obscure divine undercurrents and imprints that exist all throughout the world, the practice of breaking something down to find the quintessence within, and using that knowledge to replicate true miracles, the kind of which formed the world, created life…and birthed the undead.
Many undead test subjects had been alchemically broken down, but their quintessence had sustained such a fundamental shift that there was no chance of a single grand cure, for it was not really an affliction, and neither was it some kind of break in the imprint. They were simply something else now, on a level few could really comprehend.
So instead, in secret, high alchemists had cast aside tradition and stricture and had worked beyond the bounds of their orders to come to the aid of all the world. The result was an alchemical messiah, a living ouroboros to lead a new undead faith.
The alchemists never disclosed who she had been, but to the leaders of the world, that didn't matter. As far as they were concerned, it was a noble sacrifice and martyrdom. One that would be given over and over again, for all time to come. A messiah of unending flesh and eternal blood, who poured forth ceaseless life, enough to sate every undead in the world. It was quite possibly their finest work to date.
The first prophets of the Everlasting went into the undead wastes, and there preached to their suffering kin, carrying with them one thousand chalices of blood that when supped from, refilled and overflowed in abundance if even a single drop was all that was left. That was all it took. A week later, and there was not a single walking corpse in any human land, for indeed, the dead travel fast. It was to a reserved land in the far north, that stretched half a continent, to which they were rallied and led on a long march, so that they could dwell in peace forever.
For five hundred years did humanity recuperate and regrow, under the auspicious eyes of ascendant alchemists who directed the sacred rebirth of mankind, an age where men had ceased to return from their graves. And then one day, two strange figures in black tattered robes strode with purpose into the court hall of a minor noble and beseeched the fellow in a fawning tongue of several centuries ago: "Where lies the saviour?"
The news spread like wildfire. Things more bone than flesh with parchment skin and hollow eyes, things that hadn't been seen in the world since the days when rabble ruled the sundered lands of men. The world had been healing, and suddenly it knew the tread of undead feet once more. When the alchemists got wind of it, secret meetings were conducted through scrying mirrors and secret chambers—was the blood gone? Had they, in their inhuman greed, consumed it? Apparently, no, though a few had been lost, licked clean by desperate undead years ago. They were in fact poor devout wanderers come to the lands of life to beg of the saviour a drop of blood for a new township.
Thus did the undead come, now and again, into humanity's dwellings, seeking for their faith entrance to the tomb in which the messiah slumbered. It was during those visitations did humanity learn what became of the northern reserve. The undead had, over centuries, constructed grand, sprawling cathedrals where they enshrined, in the cavernous ceilings, the holy chalices that overflowed and rained down blood upon them unceasingly—the blood washed everything in the undead temples, for they had not houses, they did not need them, and it flowed freely in the streets, a rich vivacious scarlet, the very vapours of which were sometimes almost enough to satiate the hunger.
The image of towering, blood-soaked cathedrals of black stone, the hot steam of "holy ichor" forming "warm and enwreathing fogs" in the pallid, frostbitten reaches of the north, spoken of in words with all the reverence and devotion the cracked rasps an undead throat could muster, left the people who heard it silently horrified. But the corpse walkers were calm, polite, even friendly. They sought nothing more than to lay hands upon the sleeping messiah, and to take a single drop.
Over even longer ages, an undead priesthood emerged, and it was they, more often than pilgrims, who came to taste of the flesh of the saviour, a privilege befitting those who had been the second generation of prophets and drank from the first chalices. Sometimes it was undead with grievous, crippling wounds who sang the praises of the messiah as their withered flesh was not restored, but at least reshaped.
And as epochs passed, undead, lead by chalice-bearing high priests, came from the north to dwell in the lands of humankind, in the holy city of community, where undead mystics gazed with dry, aged eyes upon the tomb, which had all but been given over to them in an age where the alchemists—and their secret—had begun to fade from the world, and new prophets foretold a coming era of resurrection and restoration for the living, and the for the dead.