Shadows & Sorcery #39
Welcome to the thirty-ninth edition of Shadows & Sorcery!
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Now, big news: next week’s newsletter is going to be very special, because it’s gonna feature the 200th story I’ve written, it will be released alongside the first chapter of my new serial novel THE PATH OF POISON, and - AND!! - both are gonna be 100% free for all to read.
Lastly, I’d like to show off the final illustration by local Irish artist Jessica Sharkey (@jessyphus on Instagram) she did for the newsletter (click to see full size!):
This week’s tales bring us aboard a vessel in midst of a ritual storm, we learn about two very, very different groups of the wandering faithful, a magic moon bears down upon us, and the dank dungeons of a dark age are thrown open to fearful aspirants…
The stories are:
Storm of Ritual
Pilgrim’s Dungeon
Stars of the Pilgrims
Cathedral Moon
Pit of Knights
Storm of Ritual
"The ship will be dashed to pieces if we go any further!" the captain cried as the mad hermit staggered about the deck, his laughter rising above the roaring winds and crashing waves.
"Even you must be able to feel it!" he said whipping around, drenched in rain and sea water. In his dark rags, he looked like some dreadful thing that had crawled from the depths. "The storm your lord sunk all that coin into conjuring is paying off!" And the hermit wasn't wrong. The captain had taken the wheel when the helmsman had been blown overboard, and was looking out into the tempest which lifted the very ocean up with its might, the charge of elemental power crackling across every surface.
This was a gambit beyond all desperation. Surely the enemy's ships saw the storm, and surely their own sorcerers were converging upon it even now. Yet here they were, half the crows dead, and the captain desired for at least someone to return, even if it was only the mad old hermit the duke had dredged up from one of his dungeons.
"Call them out! Now!" bellowed the old wizard. The captain tugged on a rope laid especially for the purpose. Several crew members lay in wait far below the deck with the ritual apparatus the wizard had the duke commission. They resembled large metal torches, crafted from precious metals and painstakingly crafted with twisting shafts and flanges with esoteric designs. When the captain saw them being hoisted onboard, many leagues back, the thought did occur that the wizard had simply been draining the duchy coffers as a joke. But the second they were unwrapped from their sigil-painted skins and touched the tempestuous air, the torch heads burst into alien flames.
Though fearful, and barely able to stand where directed, the crew's movements were charged with a strange, nervous vitality. All the while, the wizard moved quite naturally through the sheets of rain, practically giddy. His chants and wild calls slithered through the cacophony, reaching the ears of the captain with uncanny clarity, rasping and hissing, the fires flaring in response to certain words. The captain felt sure that what was happening was not meant for mortal eyes.
Above the din of raging winds, lashing rains, and the hermit's calls, there now galloped overhead the roar of thunder in the wake of great bolts of serpentine lightning. The boom of it practically shook the deck and bowed the crew members. But the wizard followed every streak of it with outstretched hands. The captain looked on, trying to keep control of the vessel, but darkly fascinated by what was happening. The hermit wasn't merely entranced by the squall, no, it almost seemed - and the captain dared think so - that he was taking control of the storm.
With every blast of the lightning, the wizard wheeled about and bellowed some dire word of power. The flames jumped and spat, and the old hermit reached his hands out in time with every deafening peal of thunder, and finally, in a moment of supreme focus and with a string of monstrous incantations, the wizard grasped at the leaden sky, and with a strained yell, thrust his entire form forward as if launching a spear. A silver bolt of thunder shot like a falling star from the clouds and into the distant horizon.
All of a sudden, though it did not completely dissipate, some heaviness within the storm abated. The crew broke rank and fled into across and under the sloshing deck. The wizard stood breathless in the much straighter downpour.
"Somewhere," his voice rasped as he turned slowly to the captain, "a prince has fallen dead, a seared hole in his chest, within the smoking ruins of a sundered keep."
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