Fresh off the one year anniversary, we’re barrelling headlong towards our next big fat milestone. But we’ve a ways to go yet, and plenty of dark fantasy weirdness to devour before then. One such thing is this: the fifty-third edition of Shadows & Sorcery!
The fourth chapter of The Path of Poison is coming NEXT WEEK. I’m giving it just a little time to make sure it’s all right, and because hey, the flash fiction is still important too! So that gives new readers and those who’ve yet to check it out the time to, well, check it out!
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This week, we learn just what really happened in the Cursed Sanctum, we take a trip through the darker streets of the City of Echoes, we learn a healthy fear of the tomb in Forgotten Graves and Graveyard Submerged, and finally we see in the heavens the sign of the Stars of Offering…
Cursed Sanctum
"I can't stop you, no, but I can make it so your campaigns suffer at every turn, and that your reign, and the reign of your children, and your children's children is remembered as a black mark on history never to be repeated!"
Arrows struck his body from all angles in seconds, but it was too late—the blade had been plunged into the center of the circle. It was done.
King Sylandus II did not sleep well that night. Despite the hours-long cleansing of the priests and his own court magician's assurances that the curse had been uprooted and cast away, the king sat by his window and brooded, looking out over the peaked roofs of the capital, to the horizon where stretched the bounds of the kingdom. The horizon which had called to his father would call to his progeny until all the world knew the might of Kysandur. His armies even now displayed their strength in conquest in far away lands. Every new dawn for the past five years had brought with it another village, another town, another capital under his banner. So why then did the raving maledictions of a mad sorcerer bother him so?
The skies blazed with the richest cerulean, a cool wind's kiss offset the sun's embrace, and the Archpriest of the Phylarchs reverently placed the Tower Crown upon the brow of the newly ascended King Lysandus III. The crowd cheered, but behind their voices was not joy, but anxiety. Not three nights ago had the old king's covered sarcophagus been paraded down the mile-long capital road to the royal tombs. A dozen foreign lords had paid tribute, and all the pomp that could afforded was piled upon the ceremony. But unquiet whispers had snaked through the vast throngs at every step of the procession. The old king had died badly, and the strange phenomena that plagued the city was getting worse. Foreigners had been arriving for months, seeking escape from the bad dreams and dark phantoms that plagued their homelands, only to find them in the capital as well. King Sylandus III let out a subtle but shaky breath. There was much to be done.
Far above the din of the city, the jewelled tower of the king sparkled in the moonlight. Lotus smoke wafted on the breeze that came through the open arches, twisting slowly in curious shapes before dispersing before they could be properly caught. Half-eaten meals were strewn about tables with half-full cups of wine, and half-clothed revellers lay in numb slumbers. All but King Sylandus V, who shot upright in his bed with a choke in the throat. Another nightmare of his grandfather's madness. Gods above, the things he'd said—the things he'd did. The young monarch searched for a pipe or cup near him, unwilling to rise and stir his concubines who'd fawn over him when all he desired was quiet. He sat with a gourd of some drink, and guessed there were scenes like this one all over the city, from the slum dens to the temple sanctums. The temple sanctums...all but one, of course. Walled off for eternity at the decree of his grandfather, whose word had become law. The king now saw no reason to undo it.
How dare that Bar Shakan cur bring up the "shame" of her father! Need she remind him that nearly half the world lay in the palm of her hand, and that his miserable mountains were next on her list? Let him laugh it off in the dungeons, his status be damned. No one would oppose the newly drowned Empress Sylandus VI, no longer a mere Queen. The word of the Lords of Sylandus was absolute. Lesser men than her father had died of worse. She shouldn't let it get to her. She'd just seen off a regiment of elite warriors that morning, it was proactive, no more relying on the border countries for their drafted hordes. Let proper Imperial knights take the new lands and banish the the ghosts and nightmares.
Oh, no no, he'd have to ask his cabal about this. He sent an aide scurrying off into the black corners of the courtroom. Moments later, several red robed figures glided towards the throne and knelt by it and over it, while Emperor Sylandus X whispered the news. Unrest in the far regions, open revolt in the next archdom, every week brought more reports of madness, of restless natives screaming that "they" had brought it with them, that "they" had seeded phantoms and horrors into the dreams and shadows of the lands they took. Lately he'd been inclined to wonder, and more than wonder. The cabal said not to worry, these were merely tests his ancestors had faced and overcome. He would too. Just at that moment, a figure strode into the throne room. He knew this fellow to be a phylarch and a high ranking member of the secret Order of the Brazen Star, one of his personal favourite mystery cults. Asking for charter for another ritual den? Of course, the making secret of the faiths had been a boon for the entire empire, no more holy wars, no more slacking labour.
Fires a mile high lit up the golden rooftops of the Kysandur capital while deep black shadows settled in the valleys that were its ancient streets. Mailled feet stamped across shattered stone and bloody ash. The great brazen gates to the palace were already open. The so-called traitor knights gripped their blades tight. It ended now. The empire would fall, the madness and spectres, the decadence and brutality that had haunted the world for three hundred years ended now. The advance force had cleaned the place out well. The throne room wasn't hard to find. The twins were cowering inside, spitting insults and threats. Grotesque, stunted, the products of practices best left unspoken for all time. It was the lord commander's duty, not honour, to dispose of this rotten bloodline. There was no grand speech, no heroic cheer, just a filthy deed to nip in the bud a problem that should never have been.
The lord commander sat over a makeshift table in a courtyard, a mug of some fragrant, watery swill in his hands. The kind of gutterwine served to dull the senses in this hellhole. Noon had risen and word was flooding across the capital of the bloodline's collapse. In weeks it would be in the middle archdoms, in a month it'd be in the far regions. The empire had fallen. It wouldn't end the fighting, the tyrants, the brutality, not yet, but the madness would abate and the people would begin to heal. No more did the Sylandus blood reign. The curse could end. Eyes on the horizon, he thought.
Suddenly, a welcome sight appeared, a friend and his finest knight. She had that look on her face. Something was up. They'd found it, she said. Hidden behind about seven different walls, stained black on the inside, and the strangest part? A skeleton, bones browned and surrounded by old arrows, laying in the middle. All the incense, prayer beads, and icons in the world wouldn't cleanse a place like that, she joked. They may not need to, said the lord commander. Demolish it? No. Absolutely not, came the firm reply. Let it stand. Leave it open. Let people see, let them know why they suffered, what happened and what must, upon the souls of all the world for all time, never happen again.
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