Shadows & Sorcery #151

WOAH!!!

It’s Shadows & Sorcery!!!!!

I’m telling you now, this one was acting funny, and due to cat-shaped shenanigans I almost had to delay this edition, but as you can see, both the stories and the cat were well-behaved enough to get this out to you. He got some treats, you get some stories, everyone wins.

Actually, you get ONE story this week—a three part adventure into a lost desert city…

Now, folks, if thou (that would be yourself) missed out on last week’s edition, or thou just got here, well never fear because that one can be read RIGHT HERE, including three absolutely god tier stories, and a shoutout to a fellow indie fantasy writer Josh Walker and his books (there’s free stuff, go look)

And lastly, as ever, please leave a quick like to let the stories know you enjoyed them🙏

This week, we join a master thief on a quest through the Desert of the Unseen, past the roving Emperor’s Shadows, and into the strange Vault of Sorcery…

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Desert of the Unseen

Venwyn was a master thief. But she was not a robber, nor a burglar. Some thieves had a conscience, even if it was conditional. Most at least had strong preferences. Venwyn though, she had a code, and a vision. She considered herself an artist of a kind, though a lot of far less reputable people also claimed as such, and dirtied the word. For her, this was an expression. She did not take undue risk, and she chose her marks carefully with consideration for their background, their deeds, their honour, their standing, their wealth. No honest merchant would she practice on, and no philanthropist had to worry about her tread. In truth, she sometimes broke into places just to prove she could, and touched nothing and nobody. And neither did Venwyn consider herself a figure of justice or retribution, but all the same, it brought her great satisfaction to spread some of the wealth of her performances. There was power in that.

But what really set her apart from every other daring thief or unscrupulous footpad was her diverse range of experiences. Although the art of the break-in and escape were her bread and butter, it was in the ruins, tombs, and wilds she flexed her skills. She considered adventuring parties of noble sons, or sellswords seeking glory and fame, her peers—they were really no less looters than she. Venwyn made sure her name was spread throughout the world of taverns, inns, back streets, guard outposts, minor courts, and temple antechambers, for she did not always work alone. She was a medium through which knowledge passed. People came to her with leads, seeking a little recompense or share of, at the very least, the reputation, and she approached fresh faced bands of adventurers with secrets and wisdom.

One thing in particular passed her way a lot in whispers and off-hand comments, and which she herself passed on to others, too, for it had always a special place in her mind. They say that somewhere deep within the eternally benighted desert wastes was a lost city in which were riches untold, uncounted, and untouched. The city had no walls, no locks, no guards, it had never been besieged nor invaded. Instead, it had been shrouded in illusions so powerful that it was said they tricked even the world itself.

And for this reason was Shah-mo'Khan lost within the Illusory City.

Surrounding and melding with it at all points, rising from the silvery sands themselves, was a vast, warping labyrinth of mirages, traps, and deadly things veiled from sight. They leaked for leagues into the desert itself. Its white shimmering walls under pearly stars, pale crescent moons, and a velvety black firmament made for a striking impression, she thought, as she gazed upon it. She felt a little special being here. A handful of people had made this far before. That's how people knew the things they knew about it. Even less had made excursions into the Illusory City itself. It was her intense determination that something from the city within would be hers. She didn't even know what. No one knew what was really in there. They had been a mighty culture, though. Something of worth, of value beyond coin had to be in there. Something that secured reputation. Legacy. She hadn't been doing this for most of her life to slowly fade into the fog of memory.

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Emperor's Shadows

It was like a city cobbled together by a conclave of madmen. At no point did this place even remotely resemble a space in which human beings were expected to live. Nothing added up right. Certain streets could be seen from bridges that had no openings anywhere. Doors lay directly behind railings, or opened up into thin air from about a storey up. Arches—which were the prominent architectural feature—melded into sheer walls or stood alone in courts and alleyways. And it changed when you weren't looking. This was the secret, she was sure, to look straight ahead and keep going. Of the few excursions that made it this far in the past, they pretty much hinted at the same thing: exploration was death. Corpses sometimes appeared from shifting walls, and Venwyn made sure to see what they had on them. Peers, after all. May as well see that their sacrifice wasn't in vain, but they really had come unprepared.

She came across a few walls blocking her path, but the sturdy black rope, hook, and muffled powder charges to launch it saw her over those obstacles. A surprising amount of thieves shirked the use of anything but maybe a lockpick, for it was symbolic of their profession, seeing and boasting of themselves as a purer strain of burglar. But she owed her success not to gadgets, but to knowledge of tools and their applications. They were there to be used, were they not? There wasn't much to do in terms of traversal here otherwise, and something of the surroundings made old thoughts surface in her mind. She thought little of thief "purists", she let herself continue. None of them ever got terribly far. She was in this for the dare and the art, she had nothing to prove. Ah, but she'd gotten guff for that from a priest acquaintance before. Old Mackley always made it a point to say "At the end of the day, love, you're still breaking into people's houses. There'll be ruptions if you're not careful!". Poor old chap was right. She considered letting herself get caught somewhere unimportant just for the sake of his ghost.

The light was strong, and it made the shadows harsh. It made daggers of moonlight cut across the irregular courts and weird, twisting thoroughfares, and the sheer silence of the place began to weigh on her a bit. Mostly because she knew that while no one was still alive here, the city wasn't empty.

One especially disturbing revelation from the excursions that sent a chill into her heart even now—especially now—concerned the old, inner city's master. It was said that the Illusory City was so vast, so mercurial, the people so enamoured with their bulwark's endless novelties, that visitors from beyond ceased to come, and slowly Shah-mo'Khan forgot the world beyond their borders existed. There were numerous references in the shifting rooms and passages to an "emperor", evidently some lord who had became the ruler of the ailing state, of what they considered their whole world. There were the mouldering remains of pamphlets, scrolls, and more in the streets even now, all hinting towards some grim history and descent into decay. Everything cast into the unreal stone and sand. It said he was everywhere. The city's eternal guardian. What's more, explorers of these latter days had seen him in the streets, looking over balconies, lurking in alleyways. Sages from the outside surmised he had created illusory copies of himself to rule after his own death...only those copies began to multiply, making their own copies. There were maybe hundredth generation shadows of the mad emperor wandering about, becoming less and less recognizable as people with every new illusion cast.

She couldn't help but stare into every shadow, knowing she was almost certainly being watched, and not by anything human, and not by anything really a beast either. She got the shivers rarely, but this was permitted. And it made her wonder, was she a thief at this point? Was it worthwhile skulking about, darting from shadow to shadow when she was likely to meet something in them? A thief who is caught, she felt, was no longer a thief. A thief is someone who steals, if you get caught, you didn't steal, at least not right. Hence, not a thief. Semantics, she knew, but those were her feelings. That's why she kept the short curved sword strapped to her leg. And yet, the more she went onwards, ever onwards, the less she felt like a thief here. She thought then she hadn't really felt like a thief here at all. But neither did it feel like an ancient temple ruin, or crumbling fortress of olden times. This was a mark of a whole other kind indeed.

When it came from the shadows, she wasn't ready. The first thing she did was, in her mind, chastize herself. Then she slid the blade from its black sheathe and fell into a defensive posture. Stars of Heaven, she uttered out loud, and felt her voice crack. Is that what they've turned into? The sound it made was disgusting—it wasn't organic, it wasn't anything of flesh. It sounded like it might once have been a language, but had degraded along with these shadows into a parody of speech. It howled, and was met with a thousand returns around it. Dozens of emperor shadows, faded, malformed things whose illusions were about to break so distant were they from anything a human mind might produce, crawled from between buildings, from above porches, and dropped from high arches overhead with nary a sound. The vision of this place was utterly corrupted. The thought flashed across her mind, though it was hardly the place for it, would this city last forever? Would the world wake up and realize the falsity of the Illusory City? Maybe that's what all this melding and melting was. In a second she was bounding forth past pawing, wretched shades that cried out in the ghost of a long dead tongue, driven by a single impulse: if the city would finally fade away, well, then she'd better get going so she can claim she was here.

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Vault of Sorcery

When exactly she had entered the city proper, she couldn't say. Almost certainly that was intentional. But there had come a point when the architecture, well, stilled, and Venwyn felt confident enough to finally turn around and inspect her surroundings. She could see the echo of Sha'mo-Khan in the Illusory City. It was still covered in arches, though each and every one was actually attached to a structure as an opening or decorative feature for shallow alcoves, or around dry fountains. Free standing arches were monumental, and were they not so badly weathered and worn, they would have been beautiful. Still, under the black velvet sky, and painted a stark white by the crescent moons, they held an particular romanticism. Venwyn may have been a thief, she may have lived in the moment—she had to—but in places like this, in her mode as an explorer, she was keenly aware that hers were he first feet to disturb the dust in a very long time. In an artist's terms, she respected the canvas upon which she expressed herself. She lived in the moment, and revelled in it. Here, amidst the detritus and debris, the thin sand shifts, and even the long stagnant pools formed in sunken stone and deep cracks from ancient rainfall, constant cold, and poor drainage, she felt for the first time in her life a terrible smallness. Back west, she was a figure of repute, whispers of her deeds preceded her. In this place, the centuries of stillness she had undone in old temples and castles paled in comparison to the millennia of solitude she now stepped through.

It was in the middle of an elliptical colonnade that bordered a court so vast her home town might comfortably fit in it, that she found what her senses perceived as the center. It was like, she thought, the whole city emanated from this point, this great dome. Gods of Hell, it might very well do, she muttered to herself. The emperor shadows had ceased some while back. She didn't think they'd leave the illusion—maybe they couldn't. Therefore she had the run of the city to herself, and she took some advantage of it. She'd wandered through the dusty old single room dwellings, with their high ceilings and long dead metal lanterns, and the curiously structured townhouses built like square spirals, sorting through cabinets, chests, and bureaus and finding little more than cracked, faded scrolls and dry, warped vellum. There were ornaments of a kind she couldn't really make out, maybe idols of the city's forgotten gods, maybe frivolous knick knacks. But she had no taste for it. She felt now like nothing less than a scavenger, rummaging through the lives of those fallen prey to some madness, complicit in it or not. Some measure of horror and pity swirled about her stomach. So she had made for the great dome in the center of Shah-mo'Khan.

Perhaps more horrible than the sensation of unknown eyes upon her was the distinct lack of any impression whatsoever. Absolute silence, absolute stillness. Dead, not slumbering. There was no danger, and yet, nothing about it felt good. She could shout and dance and laugh to her heart's content, but it didn't seem right. Something of the dead city's shame had crept into her, like she must respect it, be humble before it. But kinsblood, she felt ridiculous. She marched through the pallid, soundless passages, lit only by moonshafts, through a single long winding hallway with no branches or blocked exits. Just one long corridor that opened up suddenly in an immensely wide but very low chamber. Low enough that a short jump let her touch the flat ceiling.

This chamber was, however, far from empty.

In the center of it was what chiefly drew her attention. It was a colossal ash pit in which a fire that once must have raged, considering the charred space above it, now burned feebly, little more than a smear of flames across the cracked ash. She approached the fire, whose light was almost ghostly, barely illuminating the room, and saw then in the hazy shadows something new. Surrounding the ash pit and its dying flame was what she took, upon inspection, to be a facsimile of the city outside. A model of the streets, the courts, the arcades, the pillars and arches, it couldn't be anything else. A lot of it was dust now, though. She knelt down, taking up one of the broken pieces gently. It was made of sand, no doubt, mixed and brushed with, perhaps, a kind of resin to keep its shape. It had begun to crumble long ago, and it flaked heavily in her fingers.

Was this how they cast their illusion? Was she standing in the midst of a vast ritual chamber? Winds blast her, was she right thinking the city emanated from this spot? The flames throwing the dancing shadows of the city across the walls...past the walls...yes, she thought, that made sense, didn't it? How the Illusory City shifted, it moved with the flickering of the flames. And now it was dying and beginning to fade, and collapse. Venwyn sat down on the edge of the ash pit then, and started an argument in her head. She had the chance to do one of several things right now. Maybe more. She could take something from this room. Hmm, they were brittle though. And how could she prove anything she said, anyway? Get some expert to investigate it. Sure. She knew people who could tell her things, spread the word she had found something truly incredible. That was an idea. She could...take some of that fire. Wordless ideas flashed through her head of casting her own illusions. The ultimate thief's tool. Walk unbidden through every treasury and vault in the land, fooling the world itself with her might. Only she had no idea how to do that. It wasn't like anyone was left to instruct her, and she had a distaste for sorcerers. Besides, it's not like it did these people here any good.

Or...and this shook her a little...she could put out the fire. Now there was a legacy. Destroyer of the Illusion. Forever be the one who opened up the Lost City of Shah-mo'Khan. Draw the ire of every sage who laments the loss of illusory arts. That didn't bother her. She'd been there, she could tell them what happened. Yes, she thought, everything pointed towards this. Venwyn stood up and turned around, facing the great wide ash pit. The fire was barely more than a smouldering set of smoking embers. What was it burning anyway? She didn't step into the pit though. First, she tossed in one of the facsimiles. It landed with a dry thump. She took another then and threw it into the flames. A brief rise, but they died right back down. She unsheathed her blade then, and sent it into the ash, and then, as she took a step in, she waved it through the fire. She raked up a pile of the thick, crouching ashes with her sword and with her hands piled it upon the waning fire. She did so several times, the thrown up clouds obscuring the air, the room growing darker.

She kicked and piled and threw clumps onto the embers, until there was just one left. It was then her foot went through something, and she looked down. What she saw were bones—specifically, she saw staring up at her the charred, brittle remains of a skull. And it wasn't human. The flutter in her chest told her to move. She didn't know why exactly, though she could guess, but the question of what this fire was fuelled by reared its head again. Then thought came into her head, unbidden.

Pick up that ember.

She had gloves, right? With hesitant, jerky motions, she bent down, and gently scooped up the ember in her hands. There she crouched in the dark chamber, cradling in her hands the final remnants of the doom of Sha'mo-Khan. Some nameless elder sorcery dreamed up and lost in this very vault. There were people who would pay their and their family's weight in gold and jewels for this. People who'd sell their souls for it. She wondered if someone hadn't already done so. She really didn't like how this city made her feel. Venwyn crushed the ashen ember in her hand, and the ritual chamber was engulfed in a serene darkness. She did, however, pocket the cold ashes, sealed in a little leather pouch. Someone might still very well pay for that. And if not, it was as good a souvenir as any.

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