Shadows & Sorcery #18
Welcome to the eighteenth edition of Shadows & Sorcery! This is a paid subscriber post, but as of writing, I still have a number of free lifetime paid subs to give away. Never be without something to read again! All you need do is shoot me a quick DM over on Twitter, or contact me at scrhill92@gmail.com
In this issue you will find three perilous crypts, a dark sin-wrought forge, and rather pleasant country church…
Today’s stories are:
Dragon’s Tomb
Church of the Serpent
Crypt of the Sorcerer
Drowned Catacombs
Sinner’s Kiln
Dragon's Tomb
Malaise and madness had become an ever present threat in newest quarters of the great city. The theory of a simple lingering miasma had quickly been abandoned, and the elves of steel had scoured the streets and half-dug tunnels that lay under the shadow of the mountain for answers. They did not hide their fears. A basilisk, or a nest of the beasts, had been worried over, but never before had even the most vile specimen produced this curious effect. And the mountain was certainly not home to a dragon. Neither men nor elves would have let that happen.
Architects prepared to redraw plans before the labourers began to be concerned they were digging right into a cavern. The warriors halted progress and investigated themselves. When the rock was carefully breached, they found within far more than a natural space. It was a city, colossal, on par with the greatest cities wrought by elven Art. There was no block of stone they could see that did not feature some ornate decoration. The buildings, though empty, were exclaimed as marvels of architecture. The very concept of opulence and the baroque was manifested in the twisting pillars and high-flung arches, the bulb-crowned minarets and tall stepped towers. It was beautiful, and yet the elven warriors who looked upon felt naught but disquiet, and they called the eager human explorers back from their frenzied investigation.
It didn't take long for suspicions to be confirmed. As the subterranean city lay open, the cases of maddening nightmares and wasting sickness grew in magnitudes, but the people who had begun to inhabit the first finished section of the new quarter began to turn strange and furtive in their mannerisms and speech. A lone ranger spied a number of them entering into the city in the depths of the night, and while she stayed her hand, it was warned with dire speech that they were now beyond saving. She had followed them deep into the place and had looked with blood-boiling horror at the rites of detestation and debasement they had performed within. It wasn't a city, said the ranger. It was a tomb.
Flooded with light from elven braziers, for human magicks were expressly forbidden once the reason had been revealed, a company of warriors - both man and elf - set about to destroy the vile inmate of the tomb built by enslaved hands, whose bones they now discovered, littering the 'streets'.
Humanity has a curious relationship with the dragons, even today. It is said no one abhors dragonkind more than a human, and yet, some cold, dark depth of their soul yearns to return to their ancient masters and gods. So it was no surprise that it was the human warriors who so fervently hacked the petrified form of the dragon, which grinned with jagged fangs and squatted in a great hollow as if ready to stalk forth any moment. And, too, was it sadly no shock to learn that certain enterprising sorcerers sought to gather the congealed blood of the great serpent in the three days it took to destroy the corpse. Such folk were condemned and threatened with exile, for though the friendship between human and elfkind is legendary, man's insistence on exploiting the powers of dragonblood is sometimes too much for even the most tolerant of elves, whose primal wars with the Scourge shaped much of the world today.
At any rate, the tomb was destroyed, set to dust, and flooded. The dark visions and sickness ceased and the elves of steel set about contacting their brethren throughout the world. Sorcerers bemoaned the loss of a new source of power in the battle against the dragon scourge, but certain old elves rested easier, and struck from secret records a name none dared pronounce even in their minds.
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