Shadows & Sorcery #182
Were we ever gone?
Big announcement: next week, no new S&S, no new Path of Poison chapter. Gonna take a week off because it’s important that I do that every so often, not just when something horrible happens, so I can more clearly plan stuff out (and I am planning stuff). In the meantime, though, I’ve messed around with the settings on here a bit, and although I haven’t exactly been able to implement a random button, I have been able to offer up a “best of” section that sorta works like a semi-random button? Go take a look at what people liked best and see if they’re right!
We’ll be back in two weeks’ time for the next chapter of The Path of Poison where things are gonna kick off in the Free City of Farhaven. You didn’t Sepp and the gang were gonna have it easy, did you?
As ever, friends, please leave a like—let the stories know you enjoyed them!
This week, we seek in the fiery depths the power of a Ruined Crucible, a young girl awaits one who wields the Ancient Magic, and the dragonmagick sorcerer Alzared joins an unlikely ally within a Draconic Sanctum…
Ruined Crucible
One was a friend of many years, the other clinked with generous pay, both were armed with crude, snub-nosed pistols and spears, and the third was shrouded in black—all that escaped from the veil and cloak were wheezing breaths and a single withered hand of grey flesh.
Above them, an expanse of mouldering ruination that had once been proud city. The edges of every weathered stone were tinged with burning red, and slender wisps of ember-laden smoke issued from the inside of every crack and rent in floor and wall. Burial mounds of rubble and dust that had once been homes, temples, and more were strewn in profusion wherefrom perhaps a handful of structures that resembled the function they once served emerged. In the midst of it all, the earth had caved in, and thin clouds of darkness continued to be exhaled from what lay beneath.
Below them, the crucible that had once served as the divine source of the city's might: its heat, its healing, its light, and its strength, fed by the bones of an ancient founder whose power was changed and released by the magical fire. But in a time closely becoming long past, the crucible had cracked, it had become unstable, and something in its power had changed for the stranger.
The shattered, sunken remnants of the city had served as a long and tortuous staircase into the depths. Heat billowed in spirals from the searing darkness before them, and each one lingered, like a great grasping hand around their bodies. The further they had descended, the less they spoke, until they had gone silent, the sky a pale, distant dot too far away for comfort. Deeper still did the undercity go, and in the flame-tinged shadows, they saw these oldest depths beginning to change. First had pools of ash and dust begun to, as they saw it, revert into great lumps of rippled, ragged stone, and as they descended further, the fired blocks of the primordial crypts, from which the crucible once burned away death, had begun to meld back into their earthen state.
The reality of the situation had emboldened the figure in black. The sickness was as rare as it was hideous: a wasting away which ate at the very self until a mere shade remained, and would never cease to hunger. The cracked crucible may burn away the sickness, or flay the last of the flesh.
What once had been tiered crypts had become a series of caverns which, had it not been for the tinge of flame to everything, and the fact the three of them knew what this place was meant to be, one might mistake for the untouched and unseen regions of the lightless inner earth. The fire was spread in strange, slowly pulsating coils and streaks along nearly every surface, broken at intervals as if they were the ripples left in sand by lashing waves. Many times they had to watch their step as the fire-streaks flared. The heat was becoming intolerable, but it was the guardians who were now trying to catch up to the figure shrouded in black.
Pistols cracked and spears clanged as stone-studded earth rattled to the ribbed stone ground and twisted, yellow bones splintered. The crucible had burnt away what had once lain here, and had replaced it with something else that had never walked anywhere. They did not even resemble human beings anymore, though some were far more gone than others. The moist earth strewn across the rugged stone which packed their bones had something to say in their animation, for as they fell, the damp sod grew anew over anything that wasn't too splintered to move, and they ran.
The heat of a crucible would be unbearable to anything alive. That was the idea. That was the force necessary to extract and transform what dwelt within the bones of the founders. But for someone who could not be said to be truly alive in this moment, the heat was a welcome sensation—the first one in a long time. Perhaps a sign that it was already working. And why the other two had to be left behind. The shrouded figure was not sure just what constituted ground here anymore. All was flame. One single deep chamber of ethereal flame, which lapped like ocean waves and wavered like heat haze, which had about it a lambent quality, something that gleamed in a way fire above did not, something shining like sunlight on the surface of water. Molten gold and lustrous amber with sharp tongues of searing azure. It roared like a chorus of oceans. The heat of it all choked, but in truth only made the figure in black draw deeper breaths each time.
There was a rush, a shudder, like one last exhalation a dying mouth tried to suck back in. It ran out from the crucible, each streak of flame it touched flickered low, each tinge of fire lowered, and it didn't stop until the corpse of the city above sighed and blew away its ruinous embers. By this time, the other two had fled, knowing their work had been done, and that the death of a crucible wasn't something anyone should have to bear witness to. Nor was it healthy to be around for long, so infused with fire was humankind. The amount of drink needed to forget it all wasn't healthy either, but, said the mercenary, weighing his pay, they were on him.
Ancient Magic
"You'd think," said a dark-haired woman with a sigh, and half under her breath, "that They Who See would fix things like this, that they'd bother to look down and-"
"Hush," said another woman, hair a clay red, more out of tenderness than to reprimand, nodding her head to the third person, a girl considerably younger than either of them. The first woman gave another short sigh and touched her thumb to her forehead in the prescribed manner. But the young one hadn't heard the mild blasphemy. She was too busy studying the door from the bed she'd spent the last three days in, lost in fascinations she'd been repeatedly told she was getting too old for. But she thought of them all the same. They Who See. The Seer Lords. The Living Gods. All these lofty titles, the real meaning, the real weight lost on most, but, she was sure, not her.
"We paid good coin for this," the dark-haired woman's voice was impatient, "where is that bloody seer?"
The young one was wondering the exact same thing. A real seer. Not a backalley conjureman, or some college lord's parlor trick. The real deal. Ever since she was a little girl, the Mind's Eye had held her fascinations beyond all other of the fleeting passions and interests children go through, and had remained into what would be approaching adulthood. She'd spent every scrap of coin she could beg and scrounge on a collection of mind-lore, and a rather impressive one for someone who could not See. Small, thick-bound tomes and tall, thin flimsy tracts on philosophy and cosmology pilfered from monastic libraries she'd bought from the backs of carts in travelling markets, as well as annotated collections of legends about ancient sorcerers and They Who See, and even two or three actual practice guides including descriptions of mental devices like learned sigils, ritual motions, and mnemonics for quickly focusing one's vision. She'd memorized more than half the collection, and was working on the second half which kept growing with every birthday and festival. Her guardians couldn't help but indulge her, joking one day they wouldn't need to pay for seers anymore.
There was one particular tome she owned, a weathered, well-worn, hide-bound volume of thick parchment, that had always acted as her anchor. It was not her first material on the subject, but it was the one that made the greatest impact upon her. The one that had laid everything out. Its opening lines read: "The mind's eye is the bridge between the realm of pure mind, and the physical realm of actualization. The world must be understood in terms of molten ore and the mould into which it flows, the water and the vessel, one is naught without the other. One is made for the other. The mind's eye is the channel by which all things come to be, their form drawn by the individual mind from the mental realm, and represented in some aspect. There is no world without life. Yet some visions are clearer than others. For most, the eye perceives with naught but languid gaze, yet it can be made to open—to truly see." That final sentence left her, even now, with a sense of wonder. It echoed through her mind as she awaited the hired seer with her guardians.
What will they be like? Maybe a monkish seer in heavy robes, lost in a meditative trance, seeing a path of their own make. Or some secretive hermit drawn from deep seclusion to test their resolve? Or perhaps some furtive sorcerer, enwreathed in narcotic smoke to loosen the brain? Would there be ritual dances and feasts like they say light up the night in the south? Or drums and lotus flowers and chants, the kind of which are performed and partaken within the monastery innards? Well...it was likely the latter. At least a bit of the latter. She was keen, too, to gauge this hired mind's power. It was one thing, she knew, because she'd read extensively, to visualize something new in the world, something separate, but it was another thing entirely to visualize something already existing in another way. Not just seeing a flame and producing heat, but, say, seeing the mechanics of a lock moving to open a door. Or an organ in its failing state restored. That took research, training, and focus of the highest calibre.
She lay back, and stared at the bare stone ceiling, with its little cracks and old damp stains. Ancient magic. That's what her books of old tales called it. Not the high and mighty natural philosophy of the colleges and of the monasteries, but magic. Sorcery. Occult and secret arts practiced by the chosen, learned, enlightened few, who'd seen the truth from where all mysteries grow. Mystics. Magicians. In her world, gentle wonder and tame reverence had been the only thing that survived from an age of supreme esoteric majesty. These words and thoughts often simmered in her mind, and when they did, she brought them to a boil by going over favoured passages in her collection. They spilled over into her dreams. In those, she could See. She wondered, whence came dreams? From the mind, surely. And because she could See in them, maybe she really could See. Certainly she could imagine things. But she could not as yet make what she imagined do anything. She'd had a lot of time to try that lately.
The room fell silent, and her eyes began to waver. So dim did her sight become that she didn't even recognize which one of her guardians had rushed over to her. It took the three heavy knocks on the door to rouse her. Drawn back to waking, the seer was already by her bedside as she looked up and around. Sleep clung heavy to her senses, but she noticed that when the seer's studious gaze met hers for just a second, the craggy-faced man with his high arched brows and drooping eyes flashed a quick but, she somehow felt, warm smile. He was holding one of his hands up in a weird way—her quickening brain took notice of that. A focus? The other hand held some kind of scroll, or loose parchment, she couldn't see what was on it. The dull ache which had accompanied her last few days was beginning to flare back up. She didn't sit up, though. The seer was staring down at her now, eyes only shifting a little bit here and there, every so often they'd close, then re-open. One of her guardians turned away in the background.
And then, it vanished. The dull ache, which had always grown into a heavy, paralyzing grip, simply left. It left, and a relief she had not felt in days, light enough, she was sure, to make her float from her bed, remained in its wake. She would have laughed had she not been fixated upon the seer who, with a nod to her, packed up his papers, had a quick word with her wide-eyed guardians, and quietly left. He'd been dressed in a regular shirt and breeches, she noticed. Her guardians ran over, babbling questions. She didn't even hear them for a second. That was Sight. She was part of a vision now.
Draconic Sanctum
The sweltering heat from the jungle above was matched now by the eerie chill of the sanctum's inner depths. Almost perceptible were the tendrils of cold that emanated from the dank stone tunnels through which two sorcerers now tread with great caution. The stone was rotten, decayed and crumbling with the fungal growths and countless scores of little black rivulets that ran down from the tangle above, collecting in murky pools that stank. The light that filtered in from the age-old cracks was poor and each strewn with a thousand particles of dust. The vines, bearing long, thin, wicked thorns, could be seen to creep along the walls just within the line of vision.
Had this been any other time, any other place, doubtless Alzared and Tzukh would have been at each other's throats. As it was, they had a common enemy each openly admitted they'd rather see destroyed, and so had descended into the dragon's sanctum to make it so. Alzared, master dragon-magician, did not hate the orcs. Many humans did, perhaps justifiably, for the orcs most certainly held naught but disdain for mankind. In his heart there was more of pity than loathing, though they were ultimately of draconian stock, and therefore the result of horror and suffering. But they had been cast aside by their sires, and their draconian kindred, for some sin not even the wizard had learned in his delving into dragon-lore, forever made the enemy of all the world.
This particular specimen looked to be a somewhat fresh descendent. The orcs did not breed, they spawned in pits of slime through something he would almost call an Art, their aimless existence of violence seeking some way to free themselves of their curse by brewing new generations. They hadn't succeeded, but they had begun to change. This fellow was proof of that. Less of the draconian, and more...something else. Physically, a more blunt snout, more pronounced tusks, less of a hunch. Something new, perhaps, and more distant. Yet the curseflame which flickered in their jaws, and held in their gnarled hands to light the way, spoke quite plainly that not even this mighty sorcerer was an inch closer to freedom from their race's doom.
Just as draconian sorcerers must master their own blood, so had the orcs mastered the corrupt flame within themselves. Alzared readily admitted he was impressed by their sheer will. Merely stating so in the past had cost him more than a few suspicious looks, and he already dabbled with the blood of dragons. Orcish curseflame warped things, it made weapons cut deeper, it lent a curious but very real weight to others, it bent and twisted arms and armour, and it ate away at stone and steel and silver in a way the wizard had only ever seen the most potent true dragonflame do. As an opponent, even a lone orcish warrior with minimal command over the flame was a force to be reckoned with. An adept sorcerer was downright perilous. Alzared, accomplished magician he may have been, was glad to have the aid of the orc Tzukh beside him in this place. This wasn't some nest draconians or serpent-men or spawn, this was the real thing—their home turf. A temple dedicated in some primal aeon by cowed, primitive man to the worship of the old masters, which draconic arrogance was loathe to abandon even this far down in time.
But today, a link to man's enslaved past would end, and for the orcs, another dragon would be dead.
Alzared had little reason to venture into the ice belt, and even less to venture beyond into the underworld. But the hunt for the mastermind behind the devastating raids had brought him and the greyfolk party past the ice itself, that was one reason. The veritable legion of verminous horrors, possessed, he knew, of a malign intellect, that lay scorched and smashed behind them was another, especial reason-something about the land, about the life, about the very air itself seemed so utterly infused with the boundless and ferocious might of the dragons that even he balked at the horrors their mere presence seemed to produce. No doubt there was dragonish blood in it all, fallen from the skies in ancient battles, from cast down flesh, from buried bones. He knew some of the things of which dragonblood was capable, if let off the leash. This was truly their land.
The wizard had sometimes wondered—idly wondered, and nothing more—if the cruel and withering power of orcish blood could be coaxed forth as by the same Arts and contest of wills that the power of dragons and their spawn could be coaxed forth. But he suspected there was more to lose than gain in even the attempt, for the orcs were cursed, and not altogether of the dragons anymore. And besides, he knew orcs were incapable, or at least outright refused on principle to attempt dragonmagick as humans do it. Tzukh had eyed Alzared's sceptre, dragonblood constrained and controlled, leashed, commanded—and had laughed. That was enough for them, the wizard supposed.
Dragons were strange beings. Imbued with a boundless power, an insatiable need to express it, and a vast intelligence, their personalities, for they did have them as reasoning, thinking beings, were often twisted into maniacal and obsessive forms. Simply put, dragons, large or small—and size rarely meant much where dragons were concerned for they all shared the same titanic power—had their fancies. If they took a notion and wanted something a certain way, it was in their blood to make it so. The world moved for them, and them alone. Such a dragon was the decrepit creature Alzared and Tzukh came upon. Perched upon a dais heaped with ancient, stained, and tattered drapery, its chamber strewn with bones of every possible description—some clearly human, some clearly draconian, some of nameless things which lurk in the jungles, and others still, they were both sure, of other dragons.
The thing itself was wretched in the extreme, horribly aged and imbued with a profound and malevolent intelligence. Had there been dragons with a sense of honour, or decorum, or even justice? An enemy one could in some way respect? Aye, there had been, in the past, in tales. Wishful thinking at worst, for Alzared didn't think the greyfolk who chronicled such things to be liars. This thing was not such a dragon, for they tended to bear their characters upon their flesh, in the way they moved, spoke, acted, and looked, as some humans do. A remnant of their influence. This thing was filled with spite and bitterness, it was the mastermind that had slaughtered the greyfolk, and the orcish warband they'd run into, and the mastermind that had left its own force of savage draconians to die.
And now, though bent of limb, it attacked with the mastery of its blood.
Fire flew across that dripping chamber, causing the sodden pools to sputter and steam, searing the cracked and yellowed bones around the carven dais, crashing against gouts from sceptre and gnarled claw, waves of raw force blew chunks of rock from the floor and were choked into dissipation by the black grasp of orcish sorcery. Cursebolts and dagger glints clashed in the very air, and thunderbolts were cast aside by talons. The beast finally took to the air—it knew it was at a distinct disadvantage. It had little room to do more than throw itself through the sanctum air at them. Alzared glided aside just in time, but the orc wasn't so lucky—or was it? The wizard looked on. He saw it ducking low, raking its own curseflame-imbued claws against the dragon's underbelly, eliciting a hideous screech, and causing it to cascade into the far wall of its dark temple. Dust and debris fell in sheets from the ceiling, and through it all, the flash and hiss of gangrenous fire, piled upon the flesh of the prone dragon, whose own power was engulfed and consumed by ever greater grasping tendrils of orcsflame.
Alzared could feel the dragonblood in his staff roused to anger. Even as small a measure as that held the might of the whole. The magician lived in a perpetual contest of wills with the source of his powers. This was one of the rare few times he felt as if he might lose control, twisted into such utter fury as was the bestial mind inside that blood. It wanted the orc. It wanted to kill it. Blast it to ashes, and scatter them on a thousand winds into pits dug in the earth by ravening talons. There was a brief second, in which the orc laid into its adversary, blind to all the world, that Alzared considered giving in. He knew he could easily destroy them both at this moment, and that orcish sorcerer was a threat in every way possible...
The two sorcerers stood in the slowly decaying sanctum chamber. The orc Tzukh glowered from under their heavy brow. Alzared's furrowed, his black brows bristling, his fire-blue eyes smouldering. He then set his dragonblood sceptre back into its leather girdle, and stood up straight. Tzukh considered him for a moment, before letting the curseflame in their hands flicker away.
Yes, there may have been dragons with some sense of honour and justice, in the past. Perhaps now, and going forward, there were humans and orcs who bore such traits, too.
You rest, when I tell you to rest!