Shadows & Sorcery #110
Look at that big number up there! One hundred and ten editions of Shadows & Sorcery! Bloody unnatural, that’s what that is.
What’s going on, you ask? Wizard FIGHTS! Wizard FRIGHTS! And something ELSE! One of these stories took two weeks to write for no reason at all, it was supposed to be in a completely different edition, see if you can guess which one.
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This week, we venture into the temple’s heart to perform righteous Crystal Sorcery, we join Carloman deep in the woods with a Demon’s Moon, and we learn of the power that may dwell within a Sepulchre of Armour…
Crystal Sorcery
Azureal the Amaranthine trod with purpose the oaken halls of the old temple. Old bowls with withered, un-replenished incense sticks lined its whole length, sage branches lay in cold, brittle heaps upon the floor, and the natural growths of quartz were dull and cloudy. Evidently, spiritual battle had taken place here. A grim omen, but the lightworker let not these feelings overcome him—especially not in this place. The angels had come forward that morning with messages of tentative hope. Though the battle had been lost, there was still time to cleanse the Grand Quartz and restore balance.
The temple was constructed as a square spiral with five turns, each one representative of the five corners of the magical world. At the center was the Grand Quartz, the lodestone of the temple's centuries of positive energy. Azureal was currently within the third turn. Around his neck, worn as a great pendant, was the Pentalpha Star, another symbol of the magical world: five points arranged in a humanoid configuration. On the left foot, the vital leylines which coursed through the earth. On the right foot, the stars which influenced fate. In the right hand, the angels which were the guardians of all living things. In the left hand, the crystals, whose powers awakened the first humans so long ago. And finally, the head, the seat of the third eye, whereby mankind channelled the powers of the world.
Azureal's staff was a full length of deep, rich, hollowed amethyst with accents of gold upon its smooth, finely polished surface. His robes were of similar hue, though perhaps a tad darker. He clacked his staff upon the venerable wood, whose light echoes travelled down, past the oak floors, and into the ground beneath, which resounded well with the leyline which flowed beneath. All was not yet lost in this place. But he must make haste. Already had he channelled one of the powers by taking this day and this hour, as bidden by the turn of the stars, to make his move. It was his plan to cleanse the Quartz with the leyline below, his guardian angel would see to his defense—he looked to the mark upon his palm of its sigil, ever a comfort—and then, his staff would see to the occultist within the temple's heart.
On the fourth turn he heard it, coming from deeper within. A low, guttural chant, like a stream of low, sharp, hissed words in a tongue of hard sounds, one that held no sense of strength or might, only of harshness. Sounds it was hard to believe could come in such rapid profusion from a human throat. Azureal was all too familiar with the old demon words to believe otherwise, however. This was a shadow he sometimes felt would plague the world for all time, the mouldering remnants of an age of malevolence that would continue to seep upwards from those deep pits where they had been sunk, vile vortices of negative energy and the demonic spectres of ancient dead sorcerers at their cores which promised power, vengeance, and desire to those who faltered.
A short corridor led into the central chamber of the temple, the heart where the Grand Quartz sat and received vast suffusions of positive energy, where the leyline's power was channelled, where the priests spoke to the angels, and where the stars were read and the cycle of the seasons studied. But more than that, this temple was a bulwark against a well of darkness that threatened at every moment to pour into the leyline itself—something the occultist who stood before it now sought to see to fruition.
The great stone was smeared with the blood of the high priests. Their bodies lay sprawled across the bare stone ground, faces contorted in their final moments of terror. The occultist stooped down and wrenched a handful of gore from the open chest of a dead priest and lay it thickly upon an exposed portion of the Quartz. Every motion was infused with negative force, emanating nothing less than pure hatred. If the stone gave off any light from within, it was frightfully weak. Azureal had to act fast.
First, he had walked with the guidance of the stars, now he must walk with the stream of life energy directly below him. The lightworker set his left foot into the central chamber and drew his focus upon a point within his mind, wherein resided his third eye. Azureal could almost feel the tremulous thunder of it below him, rising cautiously into him, unsteady as it was with the well of darkness piercing it. And, it seemed, the occultist felt it too. A face of sickly, pallid flesh looked back, bereft of even any pleasant paleness or healthy ruddiness, a face worn and gaunt with sorrow and fury. Without a word, the occultist shut tight his eyes in focus, then held up his hands. Upon the palms, cruelly incised and intricate sigils. He clasped his hands together, and at the moment of impact, a grey-tinged darkness flooded from them towards the lightworker.
Now, for the third power: Azureal held out his right hand, upon whose palm was inked the sign of his guardian angel, and made its sign in the air before him as he spoke its grandiloquent name, and at the moment of completion, a rush of calming warmth enveloped the lightworker as a great white-gold wing flew out to shield him just as the wave of darkness was about to strike. He withstood the assault, though his stance faltered against the sheer force of it. A deep hatred had been drawn up, he knew. Powerful, no doubt, for negative energy held a dark allure to those who thirsted for strength, but could not find it in themselves. Thus they drank far beyond their means to control.
As the dark wave melted away, so too did the angel's wing dissipate into a cloud of feathers which scattered themselves upon the temple ground. Azureal strode forth, the gold accents of his wine dark robes shining. The leyline responded in kind to the touch of the angel's feathers, and the well shrunk back in the face of such divine manifestation, enough for the lightworker to approach the occultist. Azureal was raising his amethyst staff when the occultist, who seemed to be backing away, instead shot out his hand with a wild look in his eyes. Azureal froze as a sudden sharp chill fell upon him—the sensation of arresting fear and weakness. It bloomed in his chest with icy tendrils, and sent sharp jabs of paralyzing pain throughout his body.
Negative energy had the peculiar quality of creating a torpor in those who welcomed and emanated it. It veritably sucked the vitality from its victim. It was said there was a bitter balm about it, a numbness some folk were all too ready to accept. A great cloud of shadow seemed to fall over Azureal's eyes, making them heavy, making his limbs tremble as a fragile, nervous force began to seep throughout him. Images of fathomless vortices of swirling darkness flashed in his mind, maws ready to close about the world above.
The spell of despair nearly shattered the lightworker's channel.
All focus shifted to one thing then: the final power. Time for a different plan, risky as it was. In moments of dire struggle is it that sometimes the greatest miracles could be performed. Azureal thought only of his left hand and the polished amethyst staff he held within it. From the depths of its crystalline matrix he channelled its power—the power of cleansing. With the staff, he made a circle in the air, and held it for but a second before raising it up high and bringing it down hard upon the stone ground of the temple.
It was as if the all world for but a flash was stained in brilliant amaranthine.
Light the colour of the richest orchids blazed from the amethyst staff, and Azureal called upon his angel to catch the occultist as he fell stricken to the ground. The light receded as the blood upon the Grand Quartz flaked away, its iridescent light once more shining forth with the strength of centuries. The bodies of the priests, too, wilted and faded. Azureal gasped as the channel was closed, the power of the leyline all that was holding him up. Drained, he knelt down beside the slumbering occultist, and waited with the poor soul until the other lightworkers of his order arrived.
Demon's Moon
The red wizard Carloman sat at a wooden table before a small inn and public house in southern Silverden. It was one of a few tables, and all were empty, save for him, as it was only an hour or two past day break. He slowly downed a hot bowl of savoury oxmeat and spud soup, mixed with a few spices. A pitcher of sweetwater sat beside him. Odd breakfast, perhaps. The people who passed by on the road certainly seemed to think so, considering the odd glances he got. But Serpent's Breath he'd needed this, and he'd made sure he got it by slipping the innkeeper a fist-sized sack of lustre coins. It was the only thing, he'd decided, that could raise his spirits after the night he'd had.
The evening before, the sun was slowly drifting into the distance, and Carloman was searching for a suitable place to sleep. The village was a little too far off now, and he didn't want to be knocking on doors by the time he'd arrive. But no matter, he was more than accustomed to sleeping "rough" as the parlance goes, only he knew what to look for as to make it, well, not rough. A little deeper into the woods he went, taking in the cool fragrance of the pine needles and musty forest floor detritus. Good smell, rich and heady, this wood. However, either the ground was a bit too uneven to rest on, or the trees a little too packed, so he went deeper in, seeking, perhaps, some old gulch to spend the night in.
As luck would have it, some few minutes more of searching presented a sudden opening into a pleasant little glade, ringed by taller trees with dark wood and the deepest green leaves. The colours had about them, in the soft glow of an orange gem atop his staff, the vitality of primal forest that has seen the passage of and gone untouched for a thousand seasons. The ground was strewn with small, flat stones, encrusted with lichen, but the majority was a stretch of soft, thick, dry moss. Almost like a grass it was, but spongy. The wizard spent no time in hunkering down and rolling his cloak up like a pillow under his head. Night had fallen, cloudless and full of stars. The clearing in the treetops almost made a little pool in the sky.
Carloman then removed a small length of a root from one of his pouches. It was the fragrant, juicy root of a plant found clear across the southern half of the known world, used by Silverden hunters to heighten their senses and commune with the animals they hunted, it was burnt and inhaled by oracles in Minosmir to speak to Heroes, Khurcham nomads used it in making bargains with Immortals, and Baletor imported it by the wagon-load for all sorts of esoteric mountain cult rites. Carloman used it similarly, and while it didn't exactly focus the mind, it most surely made things more far more vivid. That helped with the magic sometimes.
The wind hushed a cool song over the forest as its cycle of life was winding down into slumber, while swift night beasts were emerging from their snug dens and warrens to creep about in the silent time. Carloman may have been listening to it for hours, maybe for minutes—it was hard to tell. His consciousness drifted up and down with the waves of the gentle night wind. The perfume of the old wood filled his lungs and sometimes bad him open his eyes a few times, only for them to quickly droop back down. Eventually, he fell into a heavy slumber.
As Carloman awoke, a nervous, weighty dread filled his chest. It was morning, barely. The absolute edge of something slunk past the canopy above. He rubbed his eyes to catch it, feeling quite suddenly like he was caught in the open. Like he'd been watched. In a crushing few seconds it came back to him, and he let out a ragged sigh, and sat up and pinched the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath to control himself. Images flooded back unbidden to the forefront of his mind, and he was unable to stop them.
Bad dreams. A moon the colour rotten flesh low in the sky. A wound in its surface into which the sickly light fell. Something in that wound, deep in that wound, peering out, squatting within, every second it was getting closer or he was falling in—and the worst sound the wizard had ever was heard howling inside that wound. In its curling talons, under its twisted feet, writhing feebly, reaching out impotently, clawing to save themselves, living souls stolen from the sky by a wandering demon's moon.
Like he'd been watched, he thought. Mocked was more like it, by that gibbous abomination while he slept, alone, unaware, infesting his mind. He low had it come? Enough to touch the treetops?
Into the glade?
Carloman suppressed his every inclination and shudder and retch as he staggered upwards. He grabbed his staff. He felt now the chilly morning, and saw the mist which clung to the ground inside the forest proper. The sky above was a slate grey, the sun was growing close but the day would be dim and cold. He looked around the glade which had seemed to pleasing the night before, but now looked naked and empty. He spoke then in a low voice to it, and said how deeply sorry he was, and that such feelings were not what he'd leave this place with.
The wizard sat over his empty soup bowl. It wasn't the image of the demon that kept coming back. It was everything else. Everyone else. In that moon. Use that anger, was his constant refrain, but Serpent's Breath sometimes he felt so powerless. But that's exactly what it wanted, wasn't it? Bastard.
That night, Carloman bought a round of stiff ales for every patron of the sleepy little public house, ate at least two more bowls of that soup, and set off into the forest, speaking challenges under his breath to the dark. Within the glade, he sat cross-legged and built a sizeable campfire. Within the standing cone of sticks, plucked with permission from the trees around him, he set his orange gem, fished from the fiery depths of the world, and breathed an old arcane word of fire over it, his fingers crossed in a seal of binding. The flame roared and leaped to life at his bidding.
For the next seven hours, Carloman, clad in robes of crimson—of blood and life and flame—threw with shouted incantations pinches of dust and leaf and spice into a holy fire which threw up a great column of spell-filled smoke. Not until his limbs gave out and his voice cracked did he stop, and he let himself fall into a doze, which itself fell into a dreamless sleep.
He had not intended this as any kind of a fix, or a defense, or even an attack. No, it was a promise, to the spirits within a moon that cowered in the reaches of the sky.
Sepulchre of Armour
Just as life flows from the earth and into living things, so does life flow from living things and into objects around them. This is especially true of human beings, whose various and complex tools tend find themselves soaked in the life essence that naturally leaks from the living. Such is the case that certain objects begin to resemble, in certain ways, living things capable of growth and self-repair. Most often is this the case with tools, objects, and even places involved in the most vivacious actions and activities.
War and battle are states where life teeters on the brink and is felt to an absolute maximum—thus no more vital a state is there than mortal combat, perhaps save childbirth itself (it is for this reason that hospices are riddled with life force). So soaked with blood and ferocious life essence are the brutal weapons employed in battle, that they often take on rather fearsome forms of growth—these weapons are many, and they do hunger. It is a vicious cycle that mankind seems unable to break, if it wants to at all.
Of course one of the best examples is armour. More so than weaponry, armour is the self's lifeline. The only barrier between death and survival. A soldier's, or sellsword's, or even simple adventuring folk's armour will become soaked to its core in life essence. That armour will grow, will reshape itself, in tune with its wearer. Some armour can become like a second skin, the plate or padding or chain, adhering close to the wearer, slipping on and off easier, even growing rigid or lax when needed.
However, unlike most objects in the world which attain some measure of life, not much else has the ability to gain animation as armour can. When certain veteran soldiers die, their armour becomes restless, and must be retired. It must be disassembled. Reduced to a state where by its life essence leaves, or is left, perhaps, in a safer, slumbering state. Such armour, however, receives no crude treatment, but is given burial with full honours. It is very strictly considered to be of no less import than the soldier who donned it. There are calm, dark sepulchres wherein armours are interred, where they wander to and fro for many years, almost patrolling, until their life essence dissipates, and they are quietly replaced into their sarcophagi by faithful attendants, sometimes the pages or men-at-arms of soldiers of high rank, even knights, performing their final duty to whom they once swore a wilful fealty.
Some armour, though, is harder to deal with. The maille and plate of heroes, of the greatest, the most courageous warriors, of swordsmen of genuine legend, martial masters of a calibre without equal, their arms and armour become utterly inseparable from each other, and from the bodies which are clad in them. When exactly motion passes from hero to armour is sometimes hard to determine, as is the distinction between a hero and their life-suffused armour. There comes a point where the wearer is dead, sometimes long dead, but something of them has passed into the armour—their sheer living potency, their very guiding will.
This armour is loathe to be set into a sepulchre for rest, and it is nigh impossible to separate its pieces for internment, but the great Margraves and Castellans are quite happy to let them roam free, for their lands and charges are kept ever from harm's reach by the tireless stride of heroic armour and weapons which all but pulse with life. It is a sight to see, upon a wild, lonely hilltop, wreathed in mist and surmounted by naught but steely sky, the figure of an armoured warrior stride forth, shining as if it never suffered a dent, scratch, or drop of blood, its blade, hammer, or lance held at the ready, edge and point no less keen than it was when it left the smithy so long ago. Sometimes, the gaunt, withered face of the occupant is visible, and sometimes they are dust, and the armour has grown over the cavity in a serene facsimile of its long vanished corpse.
No less striking is to find, in some wild and nameless place, a suit of armour embraced in a verdant moss, without rust but damp, heavy, and at long last quite dead. And they must ancient beyond reckoning indeed.