Can you believe it? This is the FIFTIETH edition of Shadows & Sorcery, the world’s most powerful fantasy flash fiction newsletter!
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This week, we get a small sequel to Carloman’s adventure last week as we muse over the Ancient Dark, we descend into the frightful Hunter’s Dungeons, we meet a Royal Demon, we uncover the vile Sword of Defilement, and we take a seat upon the Throne of the Stars…
Ancient Dark
The sun had begun its journey across the horizon, and twilight filled half the sky while the final light bathed the tall hills of Minosmir in golden radiance. But a chill in the wind from the night-side made the figure that passed through the brush now draw his crimson cloak around him. An image flashed in his mind of the poor lad who had been carried out in it some few days before. Carloman sighed.
The countryside a ways out from Minosmir began to flatten into the sweeping steppes and lush savannah of the east, but he wasn't there just yet. These foothills and ridges were steep and wild, covered in hard vegetation and with few paths through, but could be a shortcut for those who braved them. And Carloman wanted get the city as far behind him as possible.
He looked up into the dense, twisted walls of foliage, the thorns, the brambles, the high leaves and stalks, and saw beneath them wilted little buds that had been fighting for sunlight. Stavo, the young man he had helped save in the cavern of the saints, came again into his mind: sitting up in his bed, amidst brilliant sunlight, surrounded by tall, lit candles, safe in his home, and yet the very image of fragility, weakness, and smallness. He remembered how tense he had felt, beginning the most difficult conversation of his life.
"Before we begin, please understand that I'm not here to chastize you. You did nothing wrong, nothing at all, you are a victim in all this. But...you have been placed into a situation which can never be righted, never be undone. You've seen things that you will stay with you for the rest of your life. Things you were not meant to see."
In all his life, Carloman had never heard such fear in a human voice as he did from Stavo as they talked. The wizard knew exactly what Stavo had heard, and knew exactly what had spoken.
"For all they revel in falsehoods and terror, their greatest weapon...is the truth." Possibly the hardest thing he had ever had to say, and he prayed inwardly that he might never have to say it again. The lad had broken down into tears.
Carloman beat back a thorny bush with his staff, and looked then beyond, into the growing night and deep clouds that came with it. The slumber of the world, tainted. And what he had been forced to unleash upon the fragile mind of the young man.
"It's not human evil, which has petty motives and madness to drive it, but elemental evil, intelligent, wilful, and active."
Brambles tugged at his robe.
"A cosmos of infinite dark."
Unseen stalks raked across his face.
"A universe of masters and slaves, so that it might come to dominate itself entirely. We are of the dark, Stavo, you, and I, and every single living in this world, made to be enslaved."
The wizard's foot caught in something, and he was brought to his knees. He cursed as he pulled himself up. All around him was the still swirl of curling branches and stiff vines, silhouetted but barely in the dark. They looked like fingers and feelers ready to close about him. The memory of Stavo, prostrated upon the damp cavern floor, surrounded by circling shadows, would not leave his mind's eye.
The wizard sat for a moment upon a half-rotten tree stump. He looked past the tangle of the ridge. Minosmir, spread across its many hills, was less golden now, red, and the night was beginning to settle. Somewhere in there, new candles were being set and old ones relit, and the guardswoman Kama would be at Stavo's side, a balm for his soul in this tender time. Her strength was astonishing and refreshing. Not once had she flinched in that cavern, and not once had she left her lover's side since the wizard beseeched her to remain. He tried to see if he could pick out where they'd be, but he wasn't familiar enough with the land. But all the same, he looked. He remembered what Stavo had asked him with hazel eyes surrounded by bloodshot white, sunken and tired.
"Why me? What did I do?"
"You were open," Carlomad had said plainly. "Attractive to it. It saw a space it could fill in a lonely young man."
"But I have Kama, and-"
"Yes, but from what I understand your, ah, meetings were few and far between. Your father wouldn't approve, so you had that in your way, too. There was much time spent writing letters, and pining away. You were vulnerable. It doesn't matter who you are. You were the right person, in the right place, at the wrong time."
Stavo had gotten angry then, or perhaps frustrated. Understandable.
"Why not tell people this? Why not warn everyone and fight back? Why stay ignorant?"
"To have these thoughts in your head sets you aside. It's dangerous to know. Hence why I talk with you now. But, you see, everything exists, my boy, every single last thing--every thought, every feeling, every action, they matter. That is our defense, and our weapon. It wasn't my staff in your side that saved you. It was your father, your lover, and the god of your clan--the protection offered to you freely in solidarity against the Ancient Dark, which all souls in this world share."
Carloman clambered up over a small bluff. Pock marks and depressions offered natural footholds. Stubbornness had bid him refuse to try another path. He stepped up and over it, and stopped to give himself a second as he gazed upon the vista before him. The clouds had parted, or drifted elsewhere, and in their place, upon the soft black of the night, was a glimmering astral brilliance which shrunk the darkness about it and gave calm definition to the vast sweep of the east below it. The wizard thought on what he'd rebuffed his revelations with.
"Our world is not of darkness, but of light, and not of master and slave, but of guardian and ward. We were all part of that host, Stavo, we all came here together and have been reborn time and time again in this sanctuary, severed and innocent of the dark beyond. Stavo, your father Kistos believes in you, he does. Kama, she loves you. The Heroes of Minosmir gave themselves over to be your guardians. And in time, you too will become a guardian, a lord for your people, perhaps even a parent to a child. I might be able to call up flames at will, speak to spirits, and summon gods to my aid, but what we all share, across the world? That's the real power."
Hunter's Dungeons
The ancient tradition of the hunter has taken some curious turns throughout the history of the realm. Where once those skilled with bow and spear went out and fetched meat for the tribe, the professional hunter of today does comparitively little gathering of food ever since the mile-high walls of the cities were raised. Hunters have been, since the beginning, dwellers beyond the gates, the half-wild folk of the furrows, keepers of earthen lore. They knew the secrets of the land, where to go, and what to avoid. They knew the calls and warnings of beasts. Yet they were not representative of man's connection to wider nature, they were man's tools against it.
The world is inhabited by horrors beyond count. Things stalk the dark that almost defy description. Sometimes not even the city walls are safe from black wings. And so there were made the hunter's dungeons, bulwark prisons between the wilds and the walls, wherein the hunters corralled and kept some of the worst examples of the world's monsters. Deep tunnels and artificial chasms were dug at great expense, into which beasts were put to fend for themselves. The strongest adapted to their environments, creating lairs that nothing would survive entry into, every new beast either rose to command a new nest, or was devoured. It kept these things in place, able to be watched, controlled, and slain swiftly if they somehow ventured out.
But no better a crucible for a new hunter was there than the depths of a fiend-infested dungeon where every trick and skill mattered from moment to moment. Countless neophytes descended into the depths, never to be seen again, well aware of what they had entered into. But those that emerged were killers beyond compare, fully-fledged members of a primal tradition that had at their beck and call the lore of the ages, and they were never without work.
Many dungeons are long gone now, filled in or collapsed, impassable mouldering tombs of ancient corpses best left to death. They serve as nests for hordes of nameless things that certain city magistrates fear may one find a way under the walls. But if they do, the hunters will come, and the stricture of the cities will be cast down in a night that will show humanity the brutal hell that lurks not just beyond the gates, but within themselves.
Royal Demon
"Maria! Put that thing down so Ser Roquesh can finish your portrait," said Sasha, brushing back her silvery-blond hair as she rushed over to the young girl. The child pouted as she gently set her pet down, rubbing its loose flesh as it rumbled deeply. The pet, named Zothek, snuffled her hand with its wet snout and shuffled away to its bowl of ichor. Its talons and hooves clacked on the marble floor and its gaping maw left a short trail, salivating with the dim prospect of dinner.
Maria looked absently over at the creature. She studied the brutish demon as it lapped up its drink with a long, bumpy tongue. They each had a red flower, hers was in her hair, Zothek's was tied to its left horn. Across from them and Sasha, who returned to her seat, was a thing with an unmoving, plump face, thick maggot-like neck and rugose, fat body squatted on a short stone plinth, with long dextrous fingers working a brush in minute detail over a large canvas. Sasha shifted uncomfortably in place. She didn't like having that thing's eyes on her daughter for hours every day. Sasha had never been at home with them, and often thought of her grandfather who had let them into the court after the war with the Red Men. Sometimes she couldn't believe it had been thirty years since that day. Maria never had a bother, though, she was well behaved around the “Guests”. She seemed more frightened of the banal wolf-beasts and blood-suckers of the peasant's stories than the behemoths of flesh-like stone and the skittering devil-totems that raced about the shadowy corners of the court day in, day out.
Roquesh's long arm groped for another brush as the door to the portrait room opened. A tall man in proper uniform, plastered with seals and badges, and wearing the bristling moustache and chops popular among his class, swaggered in followed by two smaller men with similar facial hair, and a tall devil, a shroud of dragging spider-limbs surmounted by an eyeless face. Sasha had always thought that, despite the lack of certain features, it held a slightly uncomfortable resemblance to her late grandmother.
"Hello, my love," smiled Nicolaus as he gently embraced his wife-to-be. "How goes the portraiture? Ser Rouqesh-haz?" The plump-faced thing turned its flabby neck towards the commander-general and the unmoving flesh suddenly pulled into a smile. From somewhere on its body there escaped a whisper in a devil-tongue lauding little Maria's patience and composure around so many adults and others. The commander-general dramatically, but earnestly, went to his daughter-to-be and hugged her.
"My little Maria! Ser Roquesh-haz says you’ve been very well behaved."
"Daddy?" she squeaked, a thought bursting forth past the compliment.
"Yes, little one?"
"Can Zothek-durn..." she had only stuttered slightly, trying to recall the exact spoken honorifics, 'can he be in my portrait?' She spoke like a true lady, intonation nearly perfect. The lessons were well worth the money.
"Oh! Well...' Nicolaus looked to Sasha and quickly back to Maria. 'You know, if you’re good—and he is too—maybe we'll look into getting him his own, to put beside yours!" Maria's eyes shot open and she stifled as gasp. Nicolaus looked to Sasha with a quick flash of an "Oops" on his lips. Sasha couldn't help but smile. He was terribly good with her.
Roquesh gurgled and Nicolaus and jumped up. "Yes! Of course, of course, I'm terribly sorry, Ser-haz," Nicolaus bowed quickly and then turned to his bride-to-be. "I have to leave for the day, going to Byronhest, the Haalmakers are talking about letting the Guests in and I know we-" Sasha cut him off with a finger to his lips.
"Of course, my love." She knew these excursions were important, and how they reflected on a soon to be leader, however much it ached to be apart so much. He smiled and kissed her on the cheek. He turned and called a goodbye to Maria who waved back, but remained silent as Roquesh raised two long fingers for her to stay still.
As Nicolaus and his retinue left the room, all fell to proper silence again. Sasha listened to Roquesh's brushes on the canvas and watched Maria, while Zothek huffed and gurgled very low in his throat a curious black speech of mild frustration, searching the borders of the room for a meal not yet prepared for him.
Sword of Defilement
As the city grew, so did the sewers. The modern metropolitan sprawl of shining glass and steel demanded it. But most people don't realize the extent to which the tunnels stretched under the earth into countless caverns and drains. Some weren't successful and were blocked off, some were diverted, repurposed, some even forgotten as better architectural developments came to be. And most of them didn't have surface access. There were leagues upon leagues of lightless, flooded passages caked in centuries of filth and run-off, and vast empty cisterns long forgotten by the world above.
Such a place was naturally home to outcasts, thieves, madmen, heretics, and sorcerers. To call what dwelt there communities would be a stretch, rather, over long spans of time, singular persons drifted together for various purposes in loose enclaves. There were people down there who never knew sunlight, sickly, strange people who came to hate the surface world. Yet, not all was utterly destitute in the sewer realm. Treasures, knowledge, things both lost and purposefully cast away made their way into the depths.
The sewers, of course, were not simply built and abandoned. Sometimes unpleasant maintenance was required, and teams of labourers often descended into sections to clear blockages, fix collapses, or expand. And sometimes they encountered the dwellers below. Such encounters were relatively minor until workers began to surface every so often with freakish, festering, and utterly untreatable wounds. The flesh had not merely been rent apart, but warped and misshapen, unable entirely to heal and reform. Workers were armed, and sometimes sent down with freelancing warriors. It was from them the true horror was known.
There was sympathy from those above. Many had an idea that people lived in the sewers, from things they saw or from the countless tales that surround them. But there was also fear. The sewers weren't just the haunt of unfortunate vagrants or those unjustly shunned from society. Those who didn't wish to be seen could go there, and such folk brought with them the things which they desired to be hidden. The full extent of the story may never be known, but it was enough for the city officials to keep a close eye on the sewers from then on, and periodically "flush" it out before anything like that which spread so much panic could form again.
Into a rank labyrinth did five figures descend: three anxious workers, and two tense riflemen. The sewers were almost silent, and so any sloshing, or dripping water, or anomalous thuds naturally sent the heart racing. Deep into the tangle were they when their lights began to fail them in a wide, low chamber, and in the rush to re-light their aid, did a frightful sound emerge from the noisome dark.
It was in the flash of rifle fire did they glimpse something that hadn't been seen in the world in many an age. Browned with rust and dirt, dented, torn, but still whole, a suit of monstrous plate armour off which their missiles plinked dully. It had a helmet like an eyeless mask with a vile visage wrought upon it in excruciating detail. It was breathing, and each exhalation was through pus and phlegm and gritted teeth. The shape plunged its arm into the ankle-deep, excrement-clouded water, and pulled, as if from another space, a great, long-bladed sword.
In a mere second was it drawn forth. A worker cut down, blood mixing with filth, flesh severed in the cruellest fashion. The scream slithered through a mile of tunnel before choking away. Jagged, chipped, stained, but long and wicked, emerging from a crossguard shaped like hands, looking more like the remains of some horror than a true blade. Thrust forward, it seemed to leave a trail in the air, and it rasped. They knew then what had been visiting its wrath upon those who invaded this realm of defilement.
Ultimately, their rifles prevailed through repeated assault against the shorn metal and twisted chainmail, and finally the visage was cast aside to reveal a shambling soup of putrescence that perhaps may have once been a human form. But the blade it carried couldn't be left behind. Instead, they took great pains to wrap it and carry it forth as it wilted all that it touched. In the light of day a brownish, waving aura seemed to surround it, as if befouling the air itself. They hadn't dared leave it behind to find its way into the grip of some occultist or madman.
But the riflemen were never the same, as nicks and bruises from the short but tense combat never left. They found themselves on poor pensions, nursing unnatural wounds, each fresh with the memory of what they saw, and what may yet still lurk in the oldest sewers where has collected the filth and forgotten memories of millennia.
Throne of the Stars
There are countless descriptions of fate across the world, every culture has one. A river, a web, a thread, you know how they go. But the Kive knew different. Something about those mountains, living so close to the sky, to the stars, they seemed to know better. They used to say that fate was a fog, and in that fog were beacons we were drawn to. No matter what, we'd arrive that those beacons, but the way to them was murky. Basically? Only certain points in your life are determined, and the time between those points is free. Something will always happen to you, you'll always meet someone, be in some place, things will conspire at certain times. They will never change. But the time between, anything can happen.
The Kive knew these things for a particular reason. The mountains are harsh, unforgiving, with long stretches of barren earth, perilous slopes, beetling peaks, but it wasn't the hard life that gave them insight. Hidden away in certain nooks and crannies, at clifftop peaks and narrow summits, there are thrones. Great big stone thrones, unmistakable as anything else, given their size and ornamentation. The carvings upon them don't correspond to any known civilization, depicting highly stylized humanoids plucking or perhaps placing stars.
These thrones are why the Kive knew what they knew. They made grand expeditions to these thrones, seeking them out across the entire mountain range, and they found dozens of them. Settlements began to appear around them, or as close as they could get, considering the deleterious height many of them existed at. They elected sages among them to go up, sit upon the thrones, and gaze into the fog of life. At first, they saw dimly the beacons ahead of them, and used trance-inducing techniques to see them clearer, so that the destinies of individual people could be uncovered.
But they didn't stop there. The higher the throne, the further the vision, the more fog was lifted, and they were able to map the entire span of whole lives from those single spots. They saw lives leading into vast distances, and some ending sharply. The stars could not be changed, for the stars were the beacons, and stars represented the points of all life below. Some say they are reflected in the blood, or in the palm of the hand, or other such superstitions, that didn't matter--the Kive people knew, and they saw.
They're gone now, though, a long dead race of destiny-seers who chafed in the confines of their rigidly imposed existence. There was only so much freedom, only so many things that could be mapped and brought forward through one's pivotal moments. When they tried to manipulate it, it failed, and they were eventually lost to time. No knowledge of what they did, other than they did it, remains, thankfully.
Stellar stuff as always!