We’re back at it—back at what? Why, the sixty-first edition of Shadows & Sorcery!
This week I’ve done something a little different.
For the past sixty editions, I’ve written, as I’m sure you’re well aware, five flash fiction tales a week. But with three hundred of the things under my belt, I thought, hey, let’s try something new.
Why? I’ll be blunt: flash fiction is a hard sell. Was probably a hard sell to you folks at first, too. It’s an inherently, shall we say, experimental style. It’s the absolute antithesis of the seemingly default fantasy trilogy that holds such a prominent place in the genre landscape. The stuff here is often a bare thousand words. While I believe this has immense, hidden strengths, it might not just click with some people. So I want to be able to provide something else, too.
This week, instead of five bite-sized tales, I’ve written three much larger, much meatier tales that stick true to my aims and philosophies with flash fiction: exploring and describing a single, central strong image or concept, or joining in on the pivotal moment of an adventure to flesh these things out. While I’ve written longer tales before to go along with the flash, now I’ve done three whole ones that, all together, are nearly 9000 words as opposed to the average ~3000.
I don’t plan at all on replacing the flash fiction, just alternating! But I’m hoping this suckers in interests a greater number of readers to share in this weird corner of the internet.
Most importantly, this issue is going to be free for everyone. I know I’ve just released two free issues on the trot, but this is an experiment. And as such…
The only thing I ask in return is please leave a comment and tell me what you think! I need to know!
Also psst next week will see the release of the sixth chapter of The Path of Poison, so keep an eye out!
This week, we join a barbarian warrior’s quest deep into the lair of a cult of snakemen to rescue a dear friend from the Hammer of Offering, we join a holy man on the road to divinity and along for the ride is the Pilgrim’s Demon, and finally we witness the dread rise of a terror beyond imagining which can only be contained in the Catacombs Labyrinth…
(please note: if this issue shows up too long in your inbox preview, you should be able to open it in full right there, or you can read the read full issue on the site)
Hammer of Offering
Gonar muttered a curse as he stooped down to examine the tracks in the dusty cave floor. His muscles rippled with a barely contained fury and he slammed his fist into the bare rock. She'd been taken this way, the imprints were fresh, but not fresh enough for his liking. How long ago she'd been here or if she'd be taken somewhere else only the gods knew—aye, the gods, not least of all the vile deity of these snakish degenerates Gonar had learned were responsible, who, the mountain peasants of Orsic fearfully whispered, was to be ground up as a sacrifice with the cult's frightful Hammer of Offering.
He hated the mountain lands. Though not without a certain fierce beauty, and a penchant for producing strong warriors, the ceaseless bitter cold, endless whipping winds, and constant war with the ice bred furtive, superstitious people, and jarls and barons who sang tales of and lamented the end of the "old days" while they grew soft in their high-peaked forts, planning bloody raids for the plunder of other lands they could never hope to produce themselves. Gonar hailed from a land immediately to the southwest. While this place of jagged peaks was grim and epic and proportion, his home was wild and somber, with steely skies, dark forests, tumbling hills of heather and menhir, and deep vales of mist. His people were the Fuadrim, wandering barbarians of the hill country which demanded grit to survive in, but rewarded those that did. Their land bred them to not cower before nature, but instead called for pragmatism in all things. As such, they burned no scented fires nor spilled blood for their god, Moroc, master of devils and who oversaw the cold slumber of the righteous dead. To Moroc, a hand clasped in prayer could not hold a blade, yet valour pleased the god, and those who stayed true would know his aid.
It was such aid that Gonar now sought in his quest as he crept through the tunnels with his sputtering torch. The daughter of a Hurgan horse-chief, a girl named Cimos, had been captured in the night by slithering half-men from the dark below. The Hurgan had been great allies to the Fuadrim, and had in past ages fought side by side against Orsic invasions, the hillfolk striking from their hidden places while the horse-lords stampeded across shield walls. A slight against their warrior-kin was felt as keenly as if it were aimed at themselves, and so it was that Gonar gladly took up the search for the chief's daughter, especially once he learned she'd been taken across the border into Orsic lands.
What the barbarian had thought was merely the blood pounding in his skull was in fact something else. Drum beats, or more likely, the hammering of cudgels upon the rock. They were whipping themselves into a frenzy below, but from where? The trail was a mess, sometimes heavy, sometimes so light it nearly vanished. Clearly the girl had put up a fight. Gonar wished desperately that he could call his allies to him, but they were on horseback, striking out for leagues across the icy wastes. He laid his hand upon the hilt of his bronze longsword and rumbled as he held a shred of cloth in the other, something the girl had cast away at the mouth of the cave, probably as a marker. He himself was clad merely in a horse-hide kilt—a gift from the Hurgan—with scraps of his clan's coloured cloth about it. His feet were merely wrapped in cured leather straps, his taut-wire chest and arms were bare, save for spralling tattoos of woad, and built not like a southern strong man who lifts steel weights for the amusement of the masses, but with the savage economy of a wolf.
It became clear they had managed to subdue the girl, as the trail became much clearer, her feet dragging in the dust. But Hurgan are a fiery lot, and the drops of blood he saw in the dust were more than likely from her captors than her. Gonar chuckled darkly and sped on into the tunnels. It wasn't long before the pounding of cudgels became louder and louder, something that while it sounded vile beyond reckoning, meant she may still be alive. He hadn't considered just how to get her out of this place, but hoped it was through a knee-deep mound of snakeman corpses.
These horrors infested the hollow earth. A mixture of snakish monsters that had learned to walk, and ruined men driven into exile, they met in the middle as the sinewy, stooped, vampiric things which slithered from the earth at night to suckle upon human throats and wrists. They were blood drinkers, and so numerous were their attacks upon folk the world over that a body of vile legendry had grown about them. But they were flesh and blood all the same, vampirism or even dark sorcery be damned.
The incessant drumming was now accompanied by a cacophony of throaty hissing and yowls. Most likely they were getting ready to do their dark deeds—he had no time to lose. Gonar bounded forward but all of a sudden found himself face to face, from out of the shadows ahead, with the form of a snakeman guard. He instinctively dropped into a defensive stance, his blade out in a flash, his torch held out in warding. The snakeman before him was of an aspect not even the foulest human had. The limbs were bowed, almost as if boneless themselves, the body was lean and wiry, and in its clawed fingers was a short stabbing spear. It was clad in naught but a loincloth and bits of tarnished jewelry. It bared its teeth—its fangs, two rows of jagged, yellow spikes from behind a lipless slit maw. Gonar waved his torch, goading it to attack. The bright healthy flame made it wince, but he didn't dare rush in. These things were quick to the attack, and that spear looked made more for torture than battle.
It crouched low and sent out two lightning fast thrusts, Gonar side-stepped one and parried the other with his blade, which shone like golden fire in the torchlight. In the mere second his enemy was recovering from the glancing blow, Gonar drove his fist into its face and tackled it. The spear clattered to the stone floor. Gonar was about to take his blade in two hands and deliver a killing blow when the snakeman sent out its wicked, filthy talons, sinking them into the barbarian's arm. He roared with the sting of it, but had to force down his rage and dodge another swipe, so he could lunge forward and beat the pommel of his sword into the thing's face, the bone giving way with a sickening crunch, before he retrieved it and sent the vampire's head flying off with a singing arc of his bronze blade.
He didn't spare a second. Gonar descended the sloping passage into a hazy, mist-like firelight, the dimness of which was comfortable on snakeman eyes. His hand tightened around the hilt of his sword as he braced for the worst. But Gonar did not enter upon the orgiastic scene of debased vampiric revelry he had dreaded.
Cimos was not the slip of a girl he expected, but the full figure of a woman. She stood atop the gore-stained altar with a snakeman cudgel in either hand, clad in tattered green skirt and beast skin mantle flung about her shoulders, her body completely bare to receive the grim maul of the snakeman cult. Her wild black hair framed her sharp features and her almond eyes shone darkly, making her look like the image of a wrathful deity as she fought back the foes which would see her blood and soul offered to the monstrous idol which squatted behind it all. For but an instant did their eyes lock in recognition, and Gonar let out a mighty bellowing laugh and cleaved a cultist from shoulder to breastbone in one fell strike.
Snakeman cudgels splintered harmlessly against the flat of Gonar's bronze blade and flew from crushed fists as Cimos' hammers swung in wild arcs. Bestial hisses and croaks sounded amidst battle cries and death rattles. The number of vampiric snakemen was not that great, and Cimos had herself already thinned the herd somewhat, but what they lacked in strength, prowess, or even intelligence, fighting more like beasts than the humans they approximated, they made up for in sheer speed. Darting and leaping and tumbling about, Gonar missed more than a few swings of his blade, while Cimos had to duck from several cudgel heads that seemed to suddenly appear before her. They fell back to back then, crashing against each other for the reassurance of each other's ability to still stand. Spittle and hateful gurgles surrounded them. The snakemen smashed their cudgel heads against the ground and stamped like furious apes.
In this single quiet moment, Gonar suddenly thought to himself—where was the high priest? Bearer of the bloody hammer of the vampire god? He whipped his head around. Was it possible Cimos had slain the priest first? He was about to turn to her and ask, and she about to tell him what had happened, but before either were able to utter a sound, the vampires about them went still and darted their eyes to the altar, as something made itself known. The two warriors followed the eyes, and saw then, a much larger figure leap atop the dark-stained rock. It looked much like the snakemen about it, with the same needle teeth bared, lipless maw and curious eyes, it even stooped like them, but it was taller, broader, limbs like taut rope, in proportion it approached humanity in a particularly perverse way, even having a mane of long stringy hair. And in its gnarled hands it gripped tightly the Hammer of Offering.
The cudgels had been made in pale imitation of it. It was a great worked lump of pitted black stone, with smoothed, worn edges, fit into a brace of darkish metal attached to a long decorated wooden handle. The snakeman priest leapt from the altar with the hammer held high, the two barely dodging the fierce strike. The stone clashed against the earth with a great dull crash. The priest used the rebound to bring the hammer back up and swing at Cimos. She, after all, was the intended sacrifice. The cultists whooped and hollered like baying hounds as the trio did combat. Gonar didn't hope to deflect that maul with his blade, but, he knew, his enemy could easily block with the thick hammer shaft. The creature didn't seem like a warrior, none of them did really, but it had the ferocity of a zealot, and the desire to spill blood. Those things alone could never hope to match a seasoned fighter, but one small mistake, and he'd be open. Cimos had done well herself, but he didn't dare leave her to face this brutish lot alone. And he didn't much like his own chances against them should she fall either. This was life or death for them both, at any cost.
Cimos ducked and weaved through desperate hammer swings. The vampire must have needed a fair strength to even heft such a monstrous weapon, and judging by its relative size, it had fed well on much human blood. It leered at the Hurgan woman with vile hunger. She lunged in, intending to strike at its knees with a low swing as it missed her head. She was about to find her mark when it brought down the square pommel upon her back, knocking the breath from her. She collapsed to the ground, kicking to try and make an immediate move away. Gonar rushed in, his bronze blade singing, but was met by the head of the hammer, and it was all he could do to block is desperately, sending a resounding gong-smash through his wrists and up his arms, knocking the sword from his hands. The snakeman was preparing for a reverse swing of the hammer when Cimos tackled its wiry midsection, throwing it off balance.
She recovered and winced, the blow of the hammer pommel still aching freshly. She'd lost a cudgel in the confusion, but that didn't matter. She brought the stone head down upon the recovering high priest's shoulder. It howled like a demon and spun around with an unnatural twist to slash at her with a short thick claw and grab her wrist. The other claw was going for her naked stomach as Gonar let out a war bellow, having retrieved his sword. The vampire, in a flash, skittered away on all fours, the tip of the arcing bronze blade barely missing the Hurgan woman, she having luckily leapt away as she saw the barbarian's advance.
It eyed them from its stance on the dusty cavern floor, limbs bent in ways humanoid limbs ought not to. They stood side by side, and between it and them, the hammer. Shining slit pupils darted from hammer to woman, and back again. An oath had been made in the dark speech of the serpent-vampires before Cimos had escaped, and the high priest must fulfil it, lest its wretched soul be tossed about and torn to shreds for eternity by the Underdevils. It scrabbled on all fours, but unbeknownst to Gonar who sprang forward with a Fuadrim battle roar, not for the hammer. The vampire arched up like a rearing viper ready to strike and sunk its needle teeth into the barbarian's sword arm. A string of curses flew from his mouth as he drove his fist into the creature's shallow jaw. Its talons hooked into him and he yelled a malediction. Gonar didn't beat at the monster which even now lapped with its forked tongue at his open wound, but rather grabbed its rugose flesh, which gave way all too easily and made him shudder, as if connective tissues were somehow loose, and through the agony, pulled the clinging vampire from him and cast it with with a roar atop the altar stone.
Suddenly from behind him came the ululant war-cry of the Hurgan horse-warriors as Cimos flew at the prone high priest of the snakemen, hammer held back for a mighty overhead strike. Gonar grinned with bloodthirst. There was a dark poetry to it. Cimos brought the hammer of offering down upon the torso of the vampire and black blood spurted into the air as the life and soul of the horror from the underworld was wrenched from it instantly. It didn't even twitch upon the stone, which had tasted for the first time the blood of its own. They looked around, almost having forgotten the rest of the cult that surrounded them. The last of the things was scurrying away into the shadows through hidden openings only their kind could use. They wouldn't return any time soon, he knew, as they fled from the wrath of their capricious and frightful devil-god. Perhaps the regions would know, for a time, peace from night terrors. At any rate, no other nest of serpents would dare do such a thing as this for a long time.
Gonar looked to the Hurgan warrior woman, dirty from the heat of triumphant battle and standing proud. Now there was something to stir even the most somber of barbarian hearts. She caught his glance and returned it with a laugh, seeing the snow-pallid hill-dweller with the sleeve of rich crimson blood trickling down his arm onto a blade of golden fire.
"I'm sure you've seen worse, Fuadrim!" She shouldered the hammer of offering and made for the cavern exit with only a sideways glance back.
I've scarce seen better, thought Gonar to himself with a smirk.
Pilgrim's Demon
A pilgrimage to the ruins of Har Kazin is not something to be undertaken lightly. Indeed, it is only the highest echelons of the clergy can even be expected to begin preparations for such a quest. Each and every priest and monk who states their intent to set foot upon the holy ruins, to return with a divine prize, is elevated first to the status of Martyr, for beyond the walls of the Enclaves does the world grow wilder and darker with every step, and should they come back at all, they are venerated as Living Saints. Trained in the arts of survival, tracking, hunting, provided with ample supplies for bartering in other Enclaves, they are also trained in martial arts with the staff, the dagger, and the axe, for there are passages that gold cannot open, out in the far wilds.
Har Kazin is believed to be first city of humanity, from before the cataclysm which reduced the world to a state of monstrous wilderness. It it said that the humans of that age dwelt in full view of divinity, and freely drew upon its abundant power in all things. Such power is said to have soaked into the very stone and earth, and the ruins are believed not to be decaying, but rather leaving the world. Alas, the cataclysm, whose origins are to this day hotly debated in theological circles, sundered the world and man was forced to flee from paradise, each wave carrying with it a relic that the tribes, which would later become the Enclaves, would be built around. Human development was, it is feared, permanently stunted, and it is only through faith and knowledge can one start back upon the divine course.
The Enclaves, the great walled fortress-cities, are not just the places where the wandering peoples settled, they were the most easily defensible positions against the legions of creeping shadows that infested the world after the cataclysm. The lands are beset by nameless demons who shroud themselves in darkness to fly and creep and prey upon witless humanity. Only through the correct and arduous application of relic power can one cast off a demon's shroud and slay them. Or bind them into service and use them as guides and bodyguards in the wilderness, an art peculiar to both sorcerers and pilgrims to the ancient paradise.
The image of the pilgrim upon the country road with a demon creeping or striding before them is one etched into the collective consciousness of the Enclaves. Folk tales, legends, and even grand cycles of myth all incorporate this near-universal image, either as a focus, one of several central components, or as an incidental encounter in a larger narrative. Of these various appearances and manifestations, most are wholly baseless, constructed to impart some kind of lesson, or to act as cunning entertainment. But not all. Some happened, and are far stranger than the fictions.
From the southernmost Enclave came Suranq, a learned scholar-priest turned pilgrim, who strode forth into the night alone with a relic shard and returned, a demon bound to his will. Like so many before him, Suranq set out on the well known path, but his mission was not merely to attain the ruins of Har Kazin, but gather unto himself the remains of the pilgrims who never made it to their goal, and bury them amidst the holy city. Many would be easy to find, for the corpses of martyrs are often taken and enshrined. Others would not be so easy to track down, for they died lost in the wilderness. But that was what the demon was for. Not only a scout and bodyguard, but a bloodhound to boot.
In the shadow of the mile-high Enclave wall, stained by many ages of weather, crawling vines, and clinging trees, did the pilgrim Suranq go. Wearing the thick grey robes of his order and a decent pair of travelling boots, at this side was a short axe with a small, wedge-shaped head. An appreciable weapon as well as general tool. He had, too, slung over his shoulder a large, long hollow gourd. It had become apparent to him that carrying the remains of potentially a hundred or more dead pilgrims was going to be an issue, so having convened with a council of religious elders, determined that cremated remains, all compacted into a single blessed container, would easily suffice.
Stalking in front of him was his demon. It wore the general outline of a person, but that comparison ended immediately upon the details. In place of joints, the demon had orifices—specifically, it had mouths from which its limbs extended. Every joint on its body was like this, even down to its individual fingers, which ended in black claws. The head was a smooth, round lump with two heavy-lidded eyes (themselves resembling open maws) and a slit mouth from which a thin, feeler-like tongue periodically lolled before receding back into the toothy aperture. The demon was bound by no tether or leash, but rather was cowed by the prowess of the monk. To the countless demons of the wilds, might made right, and so they would obey the whims of those who could beat them. Pilgrims knew this, and used it to their advantage, their training for the journey intended not just for personal survival, but for the continued control of their demon. Demons also believed that meekness was weakness, and they would do anything within reason to stand up to their betters. Pilgrims also knew this, and it was by far and large the greatest threat on the road.
The tales of Suranq are a veritable cycle of myth unto themselves, much of them historically verifiable, and much more of dubious origin. There exists a story for every hundred martyr bodies that Suranq and the demon recovered, with some of far greater popularity in different Enclaves. There are inns and taverns, hostels, monastery cells, waystations and more which all purport to have housed Suranq for the night, and some even claim to have housed the demon with him. The tale of Suranq is of particular importance because of one central detail that exists in the "latter tales", which take place near the middle and end of the monk's journey to Har Kazin, a fixture found in no other popular pilgrim legend. The most oft repeated snippet of fireside story is The Tale of the Village and the Grave.
Suranq arrived at a village dwelling in the open forest, a full mile outside of the closest Enclave walls. It was nearing night, and the pilgrim wanted to make camp, but having come upon this peculiar sight, he knew he must investigate. In the center was a tall wooden podium, with an arched space at the top into which a withered old corpse had been shoved, knees pushed up to its chest. It was, Suranq knew from sight alone, the body of a martyr. He had already collected a full fifty remains and had bid his demon burn them to cinders, to which it had complied every time through the application of the monk's still residual relic energy. Every step of the journey saw the pilgrim reminding the demon that he was master, and several nights early on had nearly ended at the end of the demon's wicked claws. An axe stroke and heavy smiting had cowed the thing again and again. But their altercations hadn't been entirely physical, and the monk had extended tolerance and restraint many times, both to show he wasn't easily phased, but also because something like a curious respect had grown in him for the forthright and blunt ways the demon handled its affairs. It was, if anything, terribly honest. It asked Suranq if he wished the corpse retrieved and burnt, to which the monk thanked it, but refused. It was a holy symbol for the strange people, and he must know its significance to them.
Though the sun was still up, no one was around. The place was eerily quiet, and as Suranq investigated, he noticed the buildings were in a desperate state. Not quite fallen, or ruined, but had an air of decrepitude, and were shuttered, suggesting secretiveness. This place was hidden away in the wilds, beyond the safety of good Enclave walls and divine protection. And yet, there was a martyr's body in full view, a confession of faith. Some cult sect, perhaps? Certainly not sorcerers trafficking with demons, for Suranq's demon told him it sensed no other presences nearby. Such things were how demons communicated, by presence, and they never hid that from each other. It is as a puffed chest and swagger to a human braggart, a challenge to all others of its kind, and there is no greater braggart than a demon.
The monk tried a door, one hand upon his axe shaft, his demon just behind him. It opened upon a dull interior lit by dusty windows. Several figures sat around a long table, deep in talk and drink. The second Suranq peered in, they stopped. The pilgrim saw then what manner of folk they were. Men and women, each with the distinctly scarred face of outlaws, people cast beyond the reach of law and divine protection for crimes and trespasses of nigh unforgivable magnitude. Little better than a straight execution. Perhaps worse. They had been exiled, perhaps alone over time, perhaps all together, and had come here to make a place where they might survive. Such things weren't uncommon, exile camps, but often these people lived in the direct shadow of Enclave walls, so why had they had come all the way out here?
Suranq introduced himself and his demon. They asked what it was called, to which it replied—and Suranq allowed it to—that demons didn't have names. It thought all humans were called human, and thought it absurd each one was called a different thing. Only pilgrims should have names, is what it thought, because they are strong. The monk inquired about whether or not there was a place for lodging, a spare bed, even a pile of straw would do. The demon did not need to sleep. The outlaws conferred among themselves for a moment and, to Suranq's surprise, quit eagerly acquiesced. For a holy pilgrim they would of course have a place to sleep.
Suranq learned very little about them, for they were a reticent people. He noticed the devotion they gave to the enshrined martyr, and then informed them of his mission: to bury the remains of every martyr he can in the holy ruins of Har Kazin. What amounted to a leader, or at least appointed spokesperson, said that the shrine was too important for the village, it was a focus of divine power by which they survived. Understandable, Suranq, thought, but he pressed the importance of his quest. He offered to leave lasting benevolences upon the village and the people as they clearly had expressed commitment to faith and penitence. The spokesperson mused upon it, and said there would be a consideration. Suranq ended the dialogue by asking just how long the village had been here. Quite a while, was the reply. The current inhabitants were not the first, and their oldest member, who had recently passed, had been one of the youngest arrivals back in the day. The pilgrim wondered just who the martyr was, and how one corpse had provided for several generations of a village. The spokesperson simply replied, quite cryptically, that they got by well enough.
That night, after a meagre meal, the monk retired to his bed. The demon would wait somewhere nearby, as usual. Some hours passed, and Suranq awoke in the dark, but he was not alone. Three shapes thrust a sack over his head and bound his arms. In minutes he was beaten and dragged violently from the shack in which he'd dwelt. Where was his demon, was all the pilgrim could think. The voices beyond were strained and muffled. But he caught enough that a dark picture began to form.
"We used nearly everything driving that thing off."
"No matter now, I told you another would pass through soon."
"He'd better last a while, glad we caught him before he wasted his power on pointless blessings."
The pilgrim continued to struggle, but was beaten for every movement he made.
Eventually he was thrown down, and someone removed the heavy sack over his head. In his quick flash of sight, he saw more than he'd ever have liked to see. Two villagers—two outlaws, traitorous exiles performing what looked like the rites of the priests, using a great big tome he feared was almost certainly stolen from an Enclave. Between them was the corpse of the martyr, from which they were drawing and using the remaining vestiges of divine energy. He was dragged up then as he saw another person come and take the withered old corpse. There was a stench in the air, of extreme stagnancy. He looked in the flickering torchlight and saw he'd been brought to a bog. Hoisted up onto a rope hanging from a tree bough by his wrists, he was made to dangle diagonally over the stinking fetor below. Within the bog he saw clearly the remains of many human corpses, withered, like the martyr. His suspicions were immediately confirmed when that same mummy was cast in unceremoniously.
"Priests are worth more dead than alive, nothing personal," said an outlaw as a blade was drawn from a sheathe. Suranq had never seen Har Kazin, engravings and paintings and such of it didn't exist. Such visions were for Saints alone. But even so, he tried at that moment to imagine the splendour of it before he drew his final breath.
All of a sudden, there was a terrible cry near him. He couldn't turn to see what was happening. All he could do was listen as bestial snarls were mixed with death rattles, cut-off screams, the squelch of rent flesh and wet snap of bone. The pilgrim steeled himself for the appearance of a tittering shadow and grasping talons. What he saw then was a demon, but it was his demon. Dripping with gore and its mouth-joints rasping and sucking with delight, Suranq's demon carefully cut the ropes and helped the monk down.
"They used relic power to drive me away, but I was stronger. I think you are still strong. I do you that honour at least."
According to the stories, Suranq did indeed reach Har Kazin and stand upon that blessed earth. His gourd of 100 martyrs was buried there, and each one within became a posthumous Saint, and he returned to his Enclave where he lived out his days peacefully. At some point he bid goodbye to his demon, about whom it is sometimes believed ministered to other demons of the wilds. Whether Suranq was even real has never and likely will never be addressed by Enclave clergy, for church records run very deep and it is hard to find much info about a single Saint. But still, a small order persists due to his legend, and sometimes members go out into the wilds and minister to demons, who say they remember the pilgrim's demon.
Catacombs Labyrinth
Imagine the human body as a key. Now, this key can be reshaped to open different locks, and this is done by subtle motions of the hands, and by certain repeated vocalizations, for they are how we manipulate the world around us. But though there are many, many keys, there are only a certain number of doors. Seven, to be exact. At the dawn of time, the long-vanished beings we remember as gods forged seven great seals and behind them bound seven unspeakable powers in a great battle that shaped the world as we know it. Only fragments of it are dimly recalled in the oldest myth cycles. But the gods, before they vanished, left in the hands of a divine order the secrets of the seals, what dwelt behind them, and most importantly, their maintenance. But through the spans of centuries, the order crumbled, and many things were forgotten, but the secret of seal shifting remained and spread, impossible to contain. Where once great tomes existed to list in agonizing detail the powers being held back, there are now countless hidden troves and libraries with grimy spellbooks that describe arcane methods half-veiled in symbolism and metaphor, the way by which a seal can be shifted, the power behind drawn out, and the ways and means by which that power is shaped for the magician's intent.
But again, though there are many keys, there are only seven doors, and every magician is accessing the same seals, all at once. It is impossible to know how many sorcerers are operating at any given moment, to know just how far those doors are being opened, and for how long. That's the danger the world faces, the danger wizards laugh at in their arrogance. It can only be hoped that some think twice about it, ever since the undead came to be.
Magicians of all kinds are notoriously tight-lipped, jealous, haughty, and paranoid. Their libraries are perhaps of more worth to them than the power itself. This goes doubly for black marketeers, whose livelihoods depend upon the scraps they accrue. And they are but scraps pilfered from tomes stolen in transit on lonely roads, or from within the lair of hermit-wizards, or from the corpses of their rivals. But there's a lot of it out there. Hidden wars rage under the streets, in dingy alleys, in back rooms, assassins stalk with dagger to kill and flashpaper to transcribe. As such, the general level of magic in the world is mercifully low for the most part. The deepest secrets are well hidden and well guarded.
So, taking all this into consideration, to manifest such a power as was called down by a certain three sorcerers creates implications that would make most folk lose sleep if they could even half comprehend them. What had they done to gain that knowledge? How much blood was spilled for it? And worse yet, is it still laying around, ready to be picked up by anyone at any moment?
Sorcery is rarely remains a curiosity for long. It is not a frivolous pastime or source of parlour tricks. It is a means to power, and knowledge is dangerous. Everyone who learns how to shift a seal even an inch knows then and there if this the path they will tread for the rest of their lives. And the three sorcerers who performed the Great Work knew in their hearts the path they tread. It is said only in whispers that the night they performed the spell, magicians across the earth felt the shift. Who this trio was can only be guessed at, but most tend towards the belief that they belonged to one of the shadowy cabals of elite wizards who jealously guard troves of lore handed down through the ages, access to which is granted only to those with the coin and influence, or the cutthroat desire to amass knowledge. What is known is after the shift was felt, black rumour spread through magical underworlds of spellwork gone awry. Secret societies of mages, who often knew each other only as rivals, met as councils, but were all of them confronted by the sight of the new undead masters.
This began a long and secret campaign of power-building, striking out into various black market nests, coercing allies and subjects in newfound underground armies and courts. It was also during this time that two things became clear. If there was one saving grace in all this, it was that being dead, or at least considered dead by natural law, something was lost, and they could no longer shift as they once did. It was most likely that they had intended to free themselves of mortal limitations on shifting, allowing themselves the full luxury and potential of fully opening seals in ways that would cause a mortal body to balk. But instead they found themselves utterly unkillable, severed of all sensations of pain and numbness, and so while they couldn't perform their displays of raw force anymore, they instead merely shrugged off the efforts of their opponents to subdue them, and time after time, cowed their enemies into submission with both physical prowess, and the fact that they had destroyed their libraries—the knowledge of their cabal dwelt entirely in their heads now, and the reward for loyal service was the knowledge all magicians craved.
They didn't have to shift themselves anymore, the trio had a mighty cult of sorcerers, rogues, and sellswords under their control to provide fodder.
Quickly did their reach spread, and they began striking out into the world beyond the black markets and closed-door cults. The deathless masters sought control, and began to wage devastating raids on caravans, small settlements, and eventually towns, with designs of capturing strongholds to cement their grip on regions. Thus did the eye of Markus Helbreck fall upon them. A general and eldest man-at-arms commanding the forces of knight-lord Ser Sereck, and quite openly whispered to be the brains behind the operation. Helbreck had spearheaded countless defenses of Castle Sereck, had fought in the War of Inches where he earned his commission as general, and was wielder of the magic sword Gorbrand, which never dulled and had been seen to cut clean through chain and plate, and even sever spells. He was a typical specimen of his land, with oaken hair, icy eyes, and a healthy bronzing of the skin.
The claws of the dark trinity were closing around the castle, the cult of wizards who shifted for them sending out sorcerous assaults they were barely able to hold back. Helbreck could only do so much on the battlefield, and felt at a loss in the general's tent as the battle lines retreated further and further towards the castle. Fact was, this battle meant everything—if they took a great fort, their foothold would be nigh impossible to break. Helbreck was eventually forced to accept the aid of his lord's court magician, a foreign wizard named Alzared, of night-black hair, dusky skin, and eyes with an almost amber tinge. He was a regrettably good source of information on the powers being employed by the enemy, for he was a veteran shifter and had attained a particular sensitivity to the openness of the seals. No doubt they knew he was in here, seeking his personal library, which the wizard vowed he would rather burn and cast into the void before he'd let another even touch one of the volumes. That outburst alone had won the general's grudging respect and trust.
In the end, unfortunately, Alzared was unable to alone contend with an army of zealous mages, and he made it known that he dared not open the gates any more than the opposing army was already doing. The danger, he mused darkly one evening as magical mortars battered and hissed across the air, wasn't in the potential loss of control, no, it was in the full undoing of a seal. When a wizard shifted, they were allowing a primeval terror to loose itself just a little, to let some titanic, living force have a taste of freedom it had been denied for aeons. This was a dark secret lost to time, only resurfacing every so often, and Alzared was one of the few burdened by its knowledge. It forced many wizards who knew to check their power, but not all. And, sadly, much wisdom and learning from the elder time was long lost, and what actually dwelt behind those seals none could even guess. But with every spell and counter-spell employed, the threat of unmaking loomed closer and closer.
They required aid. The standing militia of Castle Sereck was thinning and reinforcements were slow to arrive as more forts went on the defense. Alzared made to contact the court mages across the realm, but found that his potential allies were either dead, having been found out as traitors or burned at the stake out of paranoia, or had fled in the face of the abominations. It disgusted both general and shifter, but there was an alternative. It was risky, potentially one of the greatest risks, but they were running out of viable options. So much of this combat had been shifting seals to deny Alzared their use, clearly the enemy force being peopled with learned sorcerers. The mage had found his potential spells were being cancelled before they could even begin due to the movements of the cult army. And so it was that Alzared wondered if they might not contact a black market.
Into the audience chamber strode a tall, gaunt young woman of somehow darkly pallid complexion. Green eyes searched from under a tightly bound mane of black hair. At her side was a long saber with a broad curve, a wicked slicing weapon. Semra knew full well she was a thief and conspirator in the house of the land's authority, but even with all these guards and jailors around, she was free to move she pleased. She knew they needed her, and would dare not make a single slight against her person. What was the price she demanded for the knowledge in her black market stores, as yet unallied? General Helbreck offered half the castle's coffers for whatever they could take, but she refused gold, jewels, estates and more. She looked to the wizard, whose eyes were aflame, and said the price was knowledge for knowledge, but she was not greedy. A single choice tome from Alzared's library would suffice. The magus would have blasted her to cinders and wisps right there had it not been for the restraints of his good breeding, the situation be damned.
It was only due to the good graces of the marketeers that Alzared was even allowed in to help search the texts. In truth, underworld knew just about bad the war was getting, and just what danger had loomed. After all, they had been assailed first. They had countless envoys from the undead magi seeking alliances, but even thieves sometimes have a conscience. The price of the book from the wizard's library was mostly symbolic, and to keep him humble. Regrettably few books in the black market stores mentioned anything pertaining to their predicament, but it was a grim blessing that the wizard was there, for one old heretical tome he found had been a treatise on mad sorcery. It detailed, among countless awful things, the potential dangers of the undead, which left them reeling. No wonder they had sought this post-existential state in which to wage their war of dominion. Not only were they deathless and immune to all agonies, despite even dismemberment or burning to ash, they would, given time, recover from anything. Anything at all. That is not dead which can eternal lie, is what Alzared mused darkly.
It was Semra who finally forwarded an idea, formed from a dozen concepts in more than a dozen books pored over by herself, the wizard, and a force of magical researchers. It was astoundingly simple in concept: lock them way. Seal them behind something, in an ironic twist of fate. Bury them. They can't be hurt, killed, or destroyed, but they can impeded. They have no power of their own, they are functionally just people—vastly intelligent, but still limited by every other physical foible. Find a dungeon so deep, so dark, they might never escape. But they have eternity, thought their wizard, and given eternity they might dig their way out of mineshafts and caverns. But imprisonment could work, not mere physical restraint. Something to beguile both body and mind, something to fool. And then they came upon it. A labyrinth. Inter them within a vast labyrinth in a lonely place, which seems at every turn to offer freedom, but never does.
It would be a magical working to rival the undead themselves. The construction of the labyrinth must be swift, and it must be planned in excruciating detail. Master artisans and logicians were procured at great expense—the knight-lord Sereck was making quite a name for himself as a host and war-councillor. Helbreck might have been spearheading most of it, but Sereck had the funds and the connections making a lot of things possible. Two full weeks were spent by top minds, secreted across the nations to the besieged keep which had admirably held, where they planned a vast looping labyrinth that the wizard Alzared committed to his prodigious memory. The charts and blueprints must be destroyed, he demanded, and hoped no spies had been in their midst. He would have put out the eyes of all those present were it up to him. At last the wizard, along with a force of black marketeer shifters, untrained but enthusiastic amateurs compared to him, gathered in the mountains that Castle Sereck overlooked, and began an arduous preparation.
Meanwhile, General Helbreck and Semra set out to capture the trio of undead masters. Their restraint and capture wouldn't be the hard part, they knew that. It was the legion of slave-mages between them and the undead that was the problem. So plan was to redirect attentions. Helbreck had ordered a slow march upon the undead battle lines, to make it seem like a last desperate offensive, while he, Semra, and a small force of militia-men and seasoned thieves made their way into the frightful manse in which the undead cabal had set themselves apart from life and the world, and where they still dwelt. Helbreck knew he had likely signed the death warrants of many soldiers, but he was hoping their commanders knew when to fall back into the defense once the mage army had been drawn out far enough.
The forest in which the undead manse dwelt was strange, haunted, filled with a far off cacophony of strange sounds, and a feeling in the air none could quite describe. Semra said, grimly, she bet the wizard would know exactly what it was. There was something sorceorus, otherworldly about the air there, like there had been some kind of deep, fundamental change in the fabric of it. Nothing seemed right was all they could say, a feeling past sensation, like something that went right to the brain. It was a place in which the veils of life and death had been sundered. Just what that could do to a place, none really knew. Nothing assailed them there, but they felt that at every turn, presences moved with them.
Inside the manse was worse. The place squatted in a large, damp clearing, half-overgrown with weeds and creeping vines. The fogged, dark windows each seemed to leer at the small force. Nothing ever seemed quiet around them, in a way they didn't hear or really feel, but sensed. The thieves were let to practice their craft, and the unspoken problem of what to do with each other when the war was over every so often loomed upon the mind. But it could wait. As they made their way silently through the dark, musty house, Helbreck had it in his mind to offer employ to these people in honest work at the castle, to find them pardons for their heroism. But the underworld was the underworld, and there are folk who prefer a life of secrecy and, he was sure, excitement. In truth he had been planning all kinds of counter-offensives and taskforces against rampant sorcery in his head with the resources of the black markets, and hoped Semra might feel similarly. Such a thing as this must never happen again. If anything, they might agree on that. Sometimes it takes unspeakable disasters to bring disparate groups together.
The capture of the undead was swift and brutal. They came upon the trio in what was once probably an audience chamber, but had now become little more than a charnel house. The undead masters walked brazenly through a group of a dozen slave-mages, each cowering and firing of spells that rebounded harmlessly off their masters. The party saw then just what manner of beings the cabal had become, revelling in their painless, deathless existence, slaying at will their masses of disposable slaves. Semra guessed they had "died" countless times, reformed, and tested it all over again. True wizards to the end. But they had come back each time a little more broken, a little more mad. She wondered if they were trying to find ways in which to feel again.
Once the militia-men made themselves known so that the thieves might flank the enemy, the slave-mages did the last thing they expected, and fled, begging forgiveness. Either from the masters or from the infiltrators, it was never known. In the moment of confusion, the militia ran forward to the attack. The battle was decisive, but something about the image of the wracked flesh and insane eyes, the image of something that should not be, sent a shiver into each soldier's soul that never quite left. They were apprehended after a short, nasty struggle. Bound, slashed, stabbed, bones broken as best could be done outside a torture chamber. For a moment, Helbreck wondered if his magic sword Gorbrand might sever whatever spell they had placed upon themselves. He raised it, but the jeering sneer that met it told him everything. They were beyond hope. Only when more loyal sorcerers under the command of the undead masters appeared and set to attack did they they make their escape, dashing madly through that strange forest with the shouts of zealot wizards at their backs.
Tied within tight winding sheets, the squirming forms of the broken bodies within, and the sounds they made, resembled great pale maggots more than anything. The impression made upon those who saw them as the bodies were carried up the mountain left nightmares in its wake for many months after. Within the vast mountain space that had been set aside for the labyrinth, the air practically shimmered with power. Alzared was ready to snap the stone into place with a final spell. All was set. Helbreck and Semra personally placed the three undead sorcerers into the spot where a vault was to be erected around them initially, and used large hammers to crush the heads completely, so they might not see or hear anything that happens.
With a single great crack, a whole section of the mountain itself suddenly crumbled into a vast cloud of dust and hung in the air for but a second before Alzared held up a hand in a particular motion, and slowly turned it. The seven seals each shifted all at once. The cloud swirled in a great roaring torrent and out of it there was formed before their eyes the labyrinth drawn up in haste mere weeks before. Foreboding and monolithic from outside, the walls reached a mile into the air, but within was an almost unimaginable maze-like honeycomb of corridors and passages that would take untold centuries to map out alone, sections looping upon themselves in subtle psychological tricks, and countless open expanses meant to mimic exits into the open. Was it ultimately foolproof? Alzared didn't think so. Eternity will provide an answer of some kind for them, the best they could hope for is that the undead will have long lost their minds by then, and be harmless to the outside world.
The army of mages likely felt it all and were scrabbling to understand what had happened now that their masters were gone. Forces must be sent to round up the magicians who were already fleeing. Much work was to be done, and Helbreck was grateful for it. Semra had approached him and talked at length about the post-war situation. All the ideas of taskforces and initiatives were greeted with welcome enthusiasm from knight-lord Sereck, and Semra was at least glad, she said, to not have to watch her back. Alzared didn't say so, but he feared that the combined war and great work of the labyrinth had come too close to undoing a seal in its entirety. Power of magnitudes unguessed by most had been moved here, and he wondered in his spare moments if some damage hadn't been done, a seal shifted permanently, maybe not undone, but loose. The flow of force from behind it would tell, in time. Meanwhile he lamented the loss of his one book, but set down in empty manuscripts everything he'd taken from the black market libraries.
Helbreck, Semra, and Alzared are long within their graves, vaunted heroes of a dark age. Every so often, the descendants of their Inquisitions probe the labyrinth walls for weaknesses, but it still stands, and nary a sound has been heard from within for several centuries. Airships pass over to inspect what might dwell below, and some have reported figures within, some haven't.
Initially I held some reservations about this week's edition which I expressed directly to the author and I am happy to say he was glad to hear and receive my feedback. I continue to strongly recommend this newsletter to all.