Shadows & Sorcery #64
We’re back once again, only this time it’s not for what you think—well maybe it is, because it’s the sixty-fourth edition of nothing less than Shadows & Sorcery!
So what’s the deal this week? Five flashes of strange worlds and their stories, which are gonna live in your head long after you’ve set them down. Turn ‘em over, see what’s under them, shake ‘em and see what rattles. There’s all sorts of stuff in there.
This turned out to be an edition of sequels, for two of the stories this week are additions to earlier tales: one from last week, and one from way back, plus a two-part tale! Check out the tale “Altar Ash” from issue 44 to get up to speed with its sequel here, and if you’re a free subscriber, grab a 7-day free trial and check it (and the rest of that issue) out!
And lastly, as ever, if you liked what you read here (even if you didn’t), please take a quick second and tap or press or smash that little heart icon and leave a like!
This week, we see what became of the sage’s nightmare in Winter’s Knoll, we follow the strange trail of the Huntsman’s Witches, we join a metaphysical mage as he trains within the Echo Chamber for a descent below ground to seek out Forbidden Echoes, and finally we see what happened to the world of altars far into its future in Ash Altar…
Winter's Knoll
It stood tall and apart from the land, rugged, flecked with rich dark rock and heather, trees with whirling trunks and bright blooms of leaves crowned its ridges, and its wide summit looked over calm, sun-drenched vastlands.
That is how the hill was remembered. Now it stands stark, pale, its stone is black, its heather replaced with shrouds of fog, its trees are bare, crackled twists. From its summit there flows frigid, whipping winds that roar and wail. This is Winter's Knoll, the frostpeak, ice-borne domain, land of death.
Malo, the mad prophet, saw it first in a dream that came not from the sprite-stream which flows across all the Land of Summertide, nor was it fed to him from the vast Mycelium underbeing which connects all the world. It came from beyond. Only the elfolk could articulate to the rest of the creation that an inconceivable opposite was making itself known to this world of endless life. And so, it is Malo's grave, and his grave alone, which crowns the gale-ridden peak of Winter's Knoll.
When the first snows began to fall, and chill crept into the air around that hill of once wild beauty, the eldest elfolk sages and scholars spoke for a full seven lunar rhythms with the Mycelium in its entirety. The gathered wisdom of nameless epochs churned and finally that council came forward with their resolution: find the source of the Winter intrusion. Use the power of Summertide's life to overwhelm the cold death with hardiness and warmth. For this were born and blessed the Evergreen Knights, deep of green, and barkskin of a dark richness unsurpassed by any flora that never paled. Life apart from Summertide, deathless wandering warriors of the winter waste, armed with pine-spike lance and mace, each knight accompanied by a holy Springspeaker who carried a shard of Mycelium and loop of sprite-stream to act as a new world-mind and flow of life within the cold.
They were ultimately successful in the creation of a grand bulwark and transitory land between life and death, between Summertide and Winter, that great belt of golden rot now called the Autumn Gate. It was only possible with the power of the Springspeakers who left their knights to usher up whole generations of flora to die, a tide to staunch Winter's grasp, death met by death on their terms.
The dim golds and dark reds of putrefying matter chilled the elfolk more than the winds they sought to hold back. The Springspeakers who dwelt there as monastics did not perpetuate like their kin in Summertide, but died, and melted back into the soil to add to the bulwark, the Mycelium within them connecting to each other in the corpse-rich earth. They were, after poor Malo, some of the first elfolk to ever die, but unlike the old sage, were afforded no grave other than the Autumn Gate itself.
Not all left their Evergreens, though, and half-cracked with frost as they were, they walked with them seeding green shoots from Evergreen flesh in the hard earth and tending what they could, fighting back the blizzards and hailstorms while the knights broke the ice and snowbanks. Though the Winter may not be slain, it could be fought at every turn, surrounded with the warmth of Summertide to melt the ice.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Shadows & Sorcery to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.