Shadows & Sorcery #15
Welcome to the fifteenth edition of Shadows & Sorcery! This is a paid subscriber post, but the first story will be completely free for everyone to read. If you are a free subscriber and you’re interested in more, as of writing I am currently giving out nine free lifetime paid subscriptions on my Twitter. All you need do is DM your email there and the sub is yours. Or if you can message me here on Substack, that works too!
Below you’ll find all manner strange burials and cultish practices…
Today’s stories are:
Graveyard of the Sea
Cathedral of Winter
Lake Grave
Abyss of Offering
Forsaken City
Graveyard of the Sea
Foreigners who pass the lonely northern cliffs have remarked over the years on the strange aspect of those half-drowned graveyards whose headstones seem to rise eerily from the encroaching waves. The smell of brine is thick in the air, noticeably more so than elsewhere in the area which routinely suffers high waves and storms that descend from the ocean skies. Visitors have not unreasonably put it down to the accumulation of salt in the sodden earth, but the truth of it is a secret the sea-faring folk are loathe to speak of.
The seas out yonder are forever black and heaving, laden with froth and thick fogs, they seethe with ocean life and the cascading wrecks of unfortunate vessels, caught forever in the maelstrom, never being able to fully drown and quietly rot in the depths. But the real dangers of the ocean lie not in the perilous storms, it is something in the air itself, which swirls violently and invisibly about the waters, and manifests itself as an crust of salt upon the ships that spend too long traversing the region. What's worse, however, is that it affects the crews of those ships. It gathers upon the skin, the collects in the eyes, mouths and noses. It gains entry to the inner body, where it grows and grows, causes harm, madness, death, and worse. It seems perpetuated by the ocean air, for time spent inland causes the salt to dissipate. But not all sailors are so lucky as to afford lengthy periods away from the water.
If a salt-laden sailor is not killed by the crew after the madness takes them, they will die. But they will not remain so. There are stories told by salt-stiffened old captains, tales of ships crewed by the insane dead, their bodies shimmering crystal shells. Still further are other tales of dead risen from their shrouds, crawling over the decks on frosty nights, or from a mortician's dead hut, to return to the sea. And so it is that a sailor who has succumbed is laid to rest in a sea's graveyard, with the sea water washing over their entombed corpses to keep them at peace, for as of yet no old sea-farer can say if a sailor taken by the salt will die when shot or stabbed, damaged as they may be.
The sea-folk don't have a particularly good reputation, and not without reason are they regarded as sly and coarse, but they are relied upon as a hardy people who fish where others have not the skill or bravery. And so they simply affirm the foreigner's suspicions, and acknowledge not the spear-wielding men who sometimes steal down in low tides to seal back in the soaked earth crystal arms that search with vile vigour for something no living soul can guess.
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