Shadows & Sorcery #5
Welcome to issue 5 of Shadows & Sorcery! This is a paid subscriber post. Below you’ll find dark rituals, strange deeps, and divine horrors…
Today’s stories are:
Profaned Offering
Vale of the Forsaken
Sacrificial Catacombs
Fire of Heaven
Lake of the Dark
Profaned Offering
It was the golden age of the High Lords. Their faith, established when they were still mortals, stretched the breadth of the continent. Divine power was manifest in the land and in the people, and darkness wasn't merely held at bay, it was being defeated. Prophecies from ages past, spoken of only in crumbling parchment and primal tablets, were being fulfilled. It was the early days of a long coming end times.
It was a time of bounty in most lands that weren't host to legendary battles. But there were corners, and not all remote, where darker prophecies were being unearthed, and plots drawn to see them to fruition. The darkness had no name, no master, it was a force beyond humanity, beyond the gods, towering and malevolent. But it had its cults down through time, and promised power to the desperate.
Even in this gilded age, there were those who brokered in corruption. For some, times had become loose and salvation was guaranteed. Mere evils of flesh were just that. So, for the right price and no small amount of coercion, secrets were dredged from slumbering deeps. Under baleful moons as yet uncast from the great murk did furtive figures gather and prepare.
The oldest temple in the world is a small, squat edifice, surrounded by millennia of devotional structures, walls, monasteries and more. It is held in the highest esteem by the faithful, though grander temples exist across the world with mighty legends and deeds attached to them. This temple is where the elder monks hold audience with the High Lords, and every ten years, give an offering, a tribute made in honour, generostiy and loyalty, which the High Lords personally receive.
Fervour was high the day of the tribute. Prayers had lasted long in the dawn hours, and a vision of the High Lords momentarily foregoing their astral war would gladly restore the bulwark of faith. But the dark is deepest just beyond the light's reach, and even the venerable tradition of the elder monks harboured secret shadows.
Months secret meetings in dark stone cellars had let them infiltrate this holiest of orders. In the blazing sun, through a throng of the devoted did two slaves to darkness proceed amidst the procession of the holiest figutres in the faith. The tribute was upon their shoulders, helped along by two who believed them brothers. Eyes peering beyond the veil of day, they passed through the Eight Gates, were blessed by the silent orders of vanguards, and finally entered the weathered stone walls of the first temple.
An empty stone throne sat upon a rough, round dais. The temple was roofless and the sun was overhead. The four entered alone. With quavering voice did an elder monk announce the tribute. The light began to change and assume a silver hue. In seconds, the two traitors unseathed wicked bloodletters and opened the throats of the monks. Their corpses were cast upon the throne's steps. The infiltrators threw back their hoods to behold their enemies descend from on high. As tall, shining forms touched the very stone, the barque's veil was thrown back, and a poisoned offering was thrust into their presence. Amidst the cries of the faithful did a great black shadow pass over the sky.
Crumbling monastery cells yawn into the twilight, and great open courts are host only to gusts of chill wind. Weeds poke out from the masonry, and streets have begun to collapse inwards. At the centre of it all, a shadow-laden temple of rotting stone. A tarnished old barque lays broken, and upon a stained black throne of cracked rock, a profane offering squats, dead and poisoned. Above, the gods falter and a gilded age fades.
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