Shadows & Sorcery #160
WHEW there we go
There’s three stories for you to read below. You don’t have to read them, of course, but you did get this email, in fact you did sign up to this thing, so you may as well. I mean, the second part of a three-part adventure, full of revelations, comes with this edition, and it would be crazy to not continue the story. Also there’s some stuff about arcane ruins and another tribute to my beloved kung fu movies below.
Speaking of, if you just got there, the first story this week is a part two, so go read part one in last week’s knight-tastic edition (which also contained a tribute to my beloved kung fu movies) RIGHT HERE
Terribly indulgent writing, isn’t it?
Before we begin, please tap the like button if you enjoyed this week’s edition! The stories have spirits and become unruly without appeasement! If you didn’t like it—run.
This week, we check in on the haunted knight and her quest to learn about Winter’s Sorcery, we join three soldiers on a mission to hunt down someone versed in the Sorcery of Ruins, and a powerful magician prepares for combat in a Sealed Abyss…
Winter's Sorcery
The library was one sheer shaft rising to a dome, all of it of a warm cream hue, a great bronze brazier above lending the entire space a generous light, the smoke rising through a short flue at the very apex of the dome. Five massive bookshelves created a square enclosure—two shelves had between them the actual doorway to the chamber—in the middle of which was a great round table covered in open manuscripts, plainly magical tracts and treatises. Two figures sat at this table beside each other, engaged in deep conversation.
"And there's naught else in that whole thing which can help?" she nodded towards the leather-bound grimoire.
"Alas, no, though I must say, I am impressed. It seems your father had a spell for every season, yes," said the old sage, slowly thumbing through the book of spells. He set it down for a second before continuing. "The magics are tied to the seasons—they ARE the seasons. Spring, you see, is the time of life and birth, but it is also the time of virulence, the time when poisons and diseases are both at the height of their power, as are the powers of life and mending arrayed against them. So, unsuitable. This melds right into its opposing season, the Autumn, the time of rot and decay, the time of weakness. A time when disease and poison are, too, potent, and can, too, be quickly banished. Closer, but in truth they are mirrors which feed into each other, as they do their extremes. Summer is the time of abundance—in all things, this does not preclude drought and famine. Again, close, but it...ah, cancels itself out, if you catch my meaning. This extreme also feeds into its mirror. Winter sits somewhat by itself. It is the time of death, silence, slumber, cold, but most importantly, the time when all the world is closest," he turned slowly to one particular page, speaking with great deliberation, "to the veil of death." He slid the grimoire over to his guest. She studied the grimoire page open before her. That her father had been a necromancer in his time had lent her deep wells of disquiet. The sorcery of knights was by and large an open secret, a private practice, a knowledge been kith and kin, but not all sorceries were created equal. If anything like this ever got out...
The sage had been digging around on his study table, he made a sharp exclamation and took up a complicated sidereal chart scratched upon a length of yellowed parchment. "So, you see, the seasonal oscillations between Spring and Autumn are forecast to end. We just got out of two Autumn years, and observations have placed this Spring as already fading. There is too much of decay right now. No doubt you've felt the lingering Autumn. Heavens know I have," he chuckled, not wasting a beat to continue, "so next year will be a Winter. That will be your chance."
She sat back with a slow exhale through pursed lips. She couldn't see him, but she knew the ghost was nearby, listening. The older sage knight caught her glance around the room, and himself threw a look around.
"Have you," he began to ask with a slight nervousness, "ascertained where the grave is, ser knight?"
"I'm not a knight yet," she said with a sort of low, tired chuckle.
"Ah yes, I suppose then I should be calling you swordstress," he said with a look of mocking incredulity. She laughed more properly then.
"I have an idea of where it is. It's somewhere in Braslam."
"Heavens..." he said with furrowed brow, "I dare say it couldn't be somewhere worse."
"Well," she said, sitting forward again, "I can only hope the rumours are just that. I have long to go until I even reach its borders."
"The old hinterlands were never quiet, not even in Imperial times," said old fellow, "but I'd wager your country's council will accept this as your errancy!"
They'd damn well better, she thought, still staring at the scrawls of necromantic spells in her father's own hand.
Sorcery of Ruins
The priestess stood aside as the three militia men knelt before the seven candles and took in the blessing of the slumbering power. It began as a tingle in the extremities which worked through the limbs and grew, reaching finally the heart, where a perceptible warmth flared and each took in a deep breath as the invigoration of the ancient power deep below burned. The priestess extinguished each candle as each militia man rose, bowed, and left the small shrine. A moment of peace they would need to keep close if what their captain feared was true, if their vanished commander had found for himself a ruin and a power to raise.
The bare, smoothed walls of the town, and of everything within it, were streaked with rivulets of damp, and bore the green stains of moss and lichen. Each individual stone bore the mark of age beyond count, in ways beyond count. They passed over the loose cobblestone of the grand square, the earth building up between each stone, and over the uneven, mud-smeared paving of the great thoroughfare, jostled from their original, ancient positions by hundreds of thousands of feet. The smell of stone was all about them, as was damp, fresh earth, and rain, cut by wafts of smoke and spice every so often on the cold winds. As the three soldiers clinked and padded through the earthen streets in their chain and leathers, they took in the weathered, ragged masonry which had stood long before the living memory of their distant grandsires. The humility and wonder, the continuity, was ever a comfort.
And then, they passed into the wilderness.
In the light haze brought down by the drizzle, the low cloud, the dimmed sun, and the dull rush of high winds, the landscape had seemed more grey and hard than the city's stone on their long march out west. But the fruits of their training and endurance had brought them after some hours to the incongruous sight of a bonfire. It was sheltered in the embrace of a split open tower ruin, whose wide base was missing sections of wall, but housed a number of excavators more than happy to let the militia men spend the night. Much effort was exerted by both parties to lessen the inherent tensions between a group of people unearthing the powers of a ruin at night, and a trio of armed men wandering in the wilderness.
The excavators were not only happy, but enthusiastic in their detailed explanations of the process and history of excavation. The trick, several of them said over each other, was fire. It not only drew up, but actually exuded the power which dwelt within the countless ruins which populated this ancient world. Well, they probably knew that, another two chimed in, of course they did, what did they think all that work in temples around the braziers, candles, and torches was for? But, it was continued, not all flames were equal, and the exaction of both size and fuel became an art that determined what exactly, and how exactly, one might draw up the powers of the ruins. The militia men listened quite politely, much of this above their general understanding, but gave their own comparisons to little home candles and shrine bonfires, which received exuberant confirmations from the excavators. Once a loose conversation on the sun as a divine flame drawing and exuding the earth's own power, which is heat, and which is why fire is hot—the soldiers slowly and quietly retired to let the ensuing philosophical debate peter out of its own accord.
They were awoken by screams, gasps, and the padding of naked feet on stone. The first thing each of them saw was the bonfire roaring—roaring as with a voice, reaching up like a great incandescent pillar, and seemed more to make the shadows and the night darker than dissipate either one. Then they saw the bodies, gored and flung about, staring madly. They accounted for each other as swiftly as they could, came to the swift decision this was not for them, then grabbed their armour and weaponry under their arms, and ran. They each fought every single urge to glance back once—just once, into the flame, and to what fed it. Whatever that gout of flame was exuding, they had escaped its effects. Why, they could only guess, but attributed it the waning warmth of the blessing from back home.
Morning saw them cold, shaking, and sodden from dew at their feet, from fog which clung to the air, and from heavy drops from the vast cloudbank above. It saw them through leafy gorges, across undulant slopes of heather and thickets, and standing before the treeline of a great murky forest. But for all it was a shadowy dimness, it was inviting, and nothing in their bones could stop them from entering, wandering to and fro from each other as a soothing, calming weight was gently draped about their shoulders. It was the weight of an approaching slumber which never came, but was as a pleasant balm upon their aching limbs. It could easily have been their bodies exhausted from their flight throughout the early hours, but as they began to see ridges of earth, which became low square foundations, which then began to rise into walls, they knew it wasn't so.
All within was a deep, rich green—every last stone was smothered in seeping loam and hanging moss, tinged with silver from the strange light they could see beyond the slim trunks and free standing sections of ancient wall. In a low depression of the lichenous stone, long trails of smokeless pale flame danced and wavered slowly into the air. It gave off waves of warmth as they approached, avoiding the long, low growths and mounds which surrounded it. The compulsion to simply drop to the soft, spongy ground and fall into the slumber they had been robbed of the night before was just strong enough to shake the heaviness from their eyes. Two years of drilled in discipline under a harsh sergeant forced their feet on, and kept them moving past the treeline, where the shapes around that fire seemed to their clearing minds more and more conspicuous and unsettling.
Scouts, spies, secret documents, and the last known sighting of the commander had driven them towards the lost, lonely tower which crouched before the shores of an unquiet lake. Its smoothed corners were missing chunks and sections of stone so that it tapered upwards at all angles, resembling a petrified tree trunk whose boughs had been rudely torn away. A great rent gaped open where once an arched portal might have sat, and within that was a darkness that likely saw little intrusion from the sun. The commander was a celebrated figure in their land. Learned, chivalrous, ambitious, some guessed it was these qualities which led to him seeking a ruin of his own away from the prying eyes and petty tyrannies of priests and counts.
The last any human being would ever see of the commander was a flash of eyes turning into the dark, deep within a rough-hewn tunnel littered with the remains of countless fires fed with rags, wood, and bones, now long gone cold, leading up to a charred hole and tower interior similarly strewn with dead bonfires. Eyes that did not bid those they met to follow. The last any human being would ever see...that was all they could tell their captain, who listened intently to the little they had to tell, and stood a moment in her office, silent, before dismissing them—with a quickly appended order that they were to take some leave. What was it the captain thought was found down there? "Don't know," was all she would say, her back already turned from them, hands clasped a little too tightly behind her back.
Sealed Abyss
The opening was not very large, barely enough to admit a human figure. The black speckled grey stone leading in was damp, rounded, pitted, and smoothed from centuries of erosion. The solid iron seal had patches of rust upon the engraved edges, but nothing bad enough to warrant the utter ruination it now bore, having been burst and rent asunder from within. The parchment talismans which had once plastered its surface had been thrown to the earth, old, faded, ragged-edged, and half consumed in the mud and rain which ran in thin little rivulets. Only a few remained in a pitiful state upon on the twisted remnants of the iron seal.
Levardis only studied one or two of the most legible specimens, noting their immense antiquity. With a quick flourish of the wrist, three new talismans of intricate design flew out and plastered themselves to the surrounding stone, and the thick pool of seemingly solid darkness which leered from just within, as if waiting to overflow, thinned and receded. The talismancer entered the abyss.
The remains of talismans littered the uneven, rugose passageway. Mere tatters, some were cloth, some were thick parchment, and nothing which had once been upon them could be seen. The darkness began to thicken again, tinged at its edges with a deep purple. Levardis raised his hand, and as he did so, two talismans flew between his fingers. He struck these upon the walls each side of him, watching the purple edge shudder, and the deep shadow dissipate and fall back. He took a second before moving forward. This outermost layer was surprisingly pliable. That meant it was new. Fresh. Raw. It hadn't any time to settle and seep in. He had no doubt that would stop soon. The graven portal outside and its one hundred plastered talismans spoke to that, for the folk who had erected them over a thousand years ago paid handsomely for such a dire barrier.
Braving the unbroken shadows was simply out of the question. This was a war of attrition for which Levardis had no time, and none of his great stores of patience would do much here. The passage had been snaking its way perceptibly deeper, but he could be walking like this for hours, stopping every so often to set new talismans on the walls. He stopped, and began a series of focusing hand seals. His psionic abilities were formidable on their own, but they had been trained and tuned specifically to the spiritual frequency of the talisman. They flew to his hand as desired, they were cast about with a mere motion. The inscriptions and powers of each one were as a second nature. It was with five quickly executed hand seals, and with the final double palm push, a stream of talismans flew from his robes and cloak, fluttering wildly down the passage, plastering themselves to the walls, the purple-edged darkness quivering and shattering before each one.
Levardis thanked whatever spirit had granted him the notion to cast those talismans at that point, for not too much further in, the passage opened up into a curious chamber now ready for exploration. It looked for all the world like a stone village, with rows of buildings and little towers and walls, all of it seeming almost as if carved out of the walls and floor themselves, and tinged with a purple shimmer in the strange light, or what was analogous to light in this space. But there were no doors, no windows. Just vague resemblances of shape or contour or layout. A mirror. A mimic. A shadow. Perhaps of something far above him right now.
It did, however, seem to be inhabited. Levardis did not waste a second. A handful of talismans slipped between his fingers and he advanced with slow, cautious footsteps towards a number of shapes crouched motionless together between two structures. They were mere outlines, silhouettes of bent-backed people in what he could only recognize as loose, hanging tatters. The only sense of definition provided by them were smatterings of a sort of greyness along their limbs, chests, and heads, almost like reflections upon a wet surface, but they did not reflect any human physiology. Levardis wondered with a pang of horror, followed by a welling sorrow, how long these ghosts had been down here, putrefying in this darkness with whatever it was they had either sacrificed themselves to contain...or had been sealed in with.
It didn't matter either way. A talisman cast upon each forehead withered them away to flaking dust and long, low sighs. Levardis gained the exit from the village as quickly as he could.
A long, uneven, but wide descending passage opened up into a frigid gulf, with only the merest hint of ghostly illumination on the broad, stepped descent to show where he must go. Talismans pushed back the great bank of darkness around him, allowing him also to retread his steps. This, he guessed, was the abyss proper, and for all he knew, it stretched on for unspeakable leagues within a hollow earth. But, he also guessed, he wouldn't have to look far for his quarry. It wanted out, and almost certainly, would find him before he found it.
Levardis dropped down from one of the taller steps, and immediately landed ankle deep in what he would have called water, had it been wet, or made a sound as he moved. But it was cold, and it clung. He sent out several talismans upon its surface, but it didn't dissipate. It didn't even thin in any perceptible manner. It was absolutely featureless, unlike the curious murk that he had been travelling through which retained some sense of detail. Things of spirit cast a kind of light, no matter what they are. That his talismans did nothing but sit on that pool, utterly lightless, shook him just a little bit.
He began to perceive, then, a hushing sound. He stood and listened to it. Not the sound of wind in the fields, and not the sound of falling water. A constant, unbroken rushing drone. With a flourish of his wrists, a dozen talismans flew out, covering a wide area of the black pool, which, as far as he could see, stretched as far as the abyss did. But the one furthest from him did light up something. Not the inkiness at his feet, but something above it. Some boulder rising from the murk. Levardis inched towards it, calling fresh talismans to his hand, and seeing not just the black stained stone rise from the darkness, but the thing which squat upon it reveal itself—in that moment he became crushingly aware that he had gone through over half of his supply already.
The thing was a grotesque parody on the human form. Bowed but terribly muscled legs held up a great swaying gut—entirely hollow, from which there poured forth the hushing torrent of darkness the talismancer had been wading through, and which, he guessed, and been flooding this entire subterranean region. By its sides were long, densely muscled arms and dextrous taloned hands. Its longish neck tapered sharply to a human-sized head, somewhat out of proportion with the rest of its bulky frame, and was entirely featureless save for a mouth bearing long tusks.
Levardis, with a flurry of palm strikes, shot out several talismans upon the thing's body as the torrent ceased, and it reared back to lunge. The parchment hit it like strikes from a mallet, stunning the thing, but only for a moment—it wrenched itself free and sunk its talons into its hand, making a fist, with which it attacked as it flung itself at the talismancer, swinging its great arm like a club, swiping with its other claws at one point and grasping Levardis about his waist. It held him up, as he struggled to call new talismans, and sent him flying back into the black pool with one almighty swing of its hammer-like fist.
It was already thundering towards him—Levardis jumped up, shaking his head to clear it, and leaped to the side just in time, casting back a talisman upon the ogre's fist. It roared, staggering back, shaking its entire arm, before using its other hand to tear the talisman free. It pulled its claws from its palm with a spurt of blackness falling into the pool below. Levardis threw back his cloak, revealing his wooden ritual sword. He had hoped this wouldn't be necessary. It flew to his hand from its sheathe, and in his other hand, he called a talisman. In one swift motion he pierced the parchment on the wooden blade, drawing it down to the hilt, and leaving a roaring spirit fire in its wake along the length of the sword.
The ogre's talons came in, deflected off the flaming riteblade again and again, the talismancer ducking in to score hits along its limbs whenever the thing's assault paused. What he couldn't fight with swordplay or sorcery were the blasts of darkness it let loose at him, and thus seemed to be the source of this particular problem. He had one final and absolute measure that came only when something such as this presented itself. If the ogre escaped the abyss, the village up there wouldn't last a day. Within three days the valley would be flooded in a vile darkness. It was worth the sacrifice. Levardis summoned a special talisman to his fingers. It was a long, flowing talismans of thick cloth, and had been wound about his waist as a belt. It was intricately inscribed from end to end, and had about it a radiance which bloomed when it was called. He could see the ogre a bit better now. It was craggy, stony almost, much like this entire abyss. Whether it was responsible for the abyss, or vice versa, he was happy enough to never know.
He drew the talisman through the air in the prescribed rite as the ogre lumbered forward again—it knew well enough what he was doing. With the sigil drawn in spiritual space, itself hanging in the air as upon a gentle breeze, Levardis cast the talisman forward into the heaving globe of shadow that was the ogre's gut, where it landed, and seemed more to float than actually land. It felt it, and staggered in its approach, just enough time for the talismancer to rush forward and thrust his ritual sword through the great talisman, pinning it right up to the hilt within the malevolent source. The ogre's talons were a hair's breadth from his head when it fell back three steps, shuddered, exhaled a sound that might have been words, and its arms fell slack by its side.
Levardis held out his hand to the side, drew it overhead, and then held it parallel to his chest, intoning a single blessing, before giving himself just a second, and then getting to plastering the entire ogre in his remaining talismans.
"They each fought every single urge to glance back once—just once, into the flame, and to what fed it." I see what you did there!