Shadows & Sorcery #89
No messing! It’s nothing less than the eighty-ninth edition of Shadows & Sorcery!
And I really do mean no messing around here, because I say to you this, and nothing more: three tomb-tastic tales await you below. Venture forth and get hip-deep in ‘em.
With nothing else to report on (yet…) let’s get right into the delicious grave-tacular action! Except, of course, that if you liked these in-crypt-able vignettes, give that heart icon a quick tap and let the stories you know you enjoyed them!
This week, we learn what it takes be a Catacombs Knight, we join the red wizard Carloman as he visits a curious house in Sorcerers of Dark, and we tag along to help sort out a particularly bad case of Sepulchre Fog…
Catacombs Knight
A lone figure treads slowly a lightless tunnel.
"You will know every step of these hundred miles."
At certain junctions, a hand goes out, and fingers trace a well-worn groove in the cool, damp stone. Without surprise, the hand suddenly meets and trails over a rough, round object. A greeting is muttered under the breath.
"These are the halls you will walk until the end."
A dry padding comes from a chamber to the left. A choked rattle emanated from the darkness. The lone figure glides in, and listens. The irregular shuffling sounds again. The lone figure places a hand upon a nearly fleshless shoulder, and taking it by the hand, leads a shape of fearful thinness back to a niche in the ancient stone, into which it curls up, and goes silent.
"These walls are your charges..."
The lone figure could almost see them in the illimitable shadow. Sinew straining with old, remembered strength, testing limbs that hadn't lost an ounce of their dexterity, forms tasting for but a moment the vigor which sought to course through them once more.
"...and your legions."
With a single motion of the hand, the lone figure lays them back to rest in sarcophagi chiselled with exquisite details of lands lost to time, their form known without error by touch alone. The shapes set down their dust-coated weapons through which the lone figure knows there still dwells a keen edge, and they pull around themselves the chrysalis of the burial shroud.
"It is by your command alone."
There was no day, and no night, instead there were immeasurable periods of profound stillness in which the lone figure sat, and thought. Into those thoughts came things born of no word or picture, but formed full and perfect in the head. Comforting ideas that washed over a mostly numb mind, restorative and bolstering. The sense of a link trailing back into a distant time.
"Your every step is faithfully echoed."
It would come, one day above, the great rupture of the earth that should shake off the slumber of centuries, and the last of the knights would don the maille which lay in an empty grave at the center of the catacombs, and there call up the legions to fulfil a pact as old as the world itself.
Sorcerers of Dark
A little ways beyond the border of Voerlund, where the open country that led southeast to Mul Manatar stretched for great leagues, the red-robed wizard Carloman had come upon a small village. It was an extremely tight little commune of farmers whose sturdy homes all appeared to center around a greater structure of stately stone. The fading remains of some old estate from one of Voerlund's later imperial days, that was what he thought. But no, the moment he walked into the village, he was greeted by mild and positive surprise. As it turns out, they thought he was a visitor or guest of the House. And no, they did not think it at all odd to have a magician in their midst.
Carloman soon found out why: the village folk were the generational hired hands of a wizard who dwelt in the House. This was a rare moment for him. Magical folk were in fact numerous, at least as he reckoned them. Every settlement had a soothsayer, a cunning-man, a wise woman, this was a niche that every level of society had. But once you expanded beyond that niche, you became something else. You were considered something else. These were much rarer. Such people were secretive, for the glimpse of something greater had a tendency to make one hide away like a hermit. That by necessity they dwelt in lonely places only added to the negative image of the sorcerer, who it was believed by many performed all kinds of godless acts out in the wilds, beyond civilization, beyond humanity. And though Carloman was something of an exception, an outsider who made it his business to be inside, he was met with caution, if not suspicion, more often than not.
Magister Zakryom appeared from the single, tall doorway and strode out to greet Carloman. He was a sprightly fellow who, the wizard guessed, was no less than eighty summers. He was no half-wild hermit, dwelling in some crumbling ruin, resenting mundanity, but a gentleman of the old type, comporting himself with the grace and stateliness that the Lunderman monarchs themselves would aspire to. He had a short, thick silvery beard and gold eyes paled with age, and a full but rather thin head of hair. He was clothed in the semi-formal and austere finery of some decades past, a knee-length coat with wide, split lapels and long smooth cuffs, and unadorned black breeches. The two wizards met and fell in almost immediately, and Carloman was invited into the House.
The small, packed library felt as if transplanted from a Silverden college a century ago. There were several bookshelves bearing assorted volumes of varying size and thickness, stacked as tightly as the space could allow, some books sitting in neat piles on the floor. Between and atop them were packets of unbound manuscripts and tightly wound scrolls with highly decorated rollers. Various individual tables held easily accessible reference material. Carloman enquired after all of this with a giddiness he often didn't exhibit. But he was in good company, and Zakryom bid his guest explore the choice editions of encyclopedias and works of philosophy which formed the bulk of the handsome collection.
Once ensconced in a deep armchair, Carloman learned of the House, and of Zakryom, while interjecting every so often with his own exploits. The House had once been the manor a small Count long ago forgotten to time, now restored to some measure of glory. The magister himself had been living there nearly a decade, though this was still a new event to the people of a small, rural village. He had come upon the place after a split with his peers in a private college. The House, as the locals called it, hadn't been inhabited in years, even by far off Lundermark officials who had sometimes appeared to take stock of the place and its contents. A deal was struck for mutual services to be rendered, at first healing, which became his sorcery, in exchange for aid from the villagers. He didn't play the role of lord, although he supposed he sort of was.
Magister Zakryom implored Carloman to stay the night, to which the latter more than happily accepted. A room would be made available for him in the House, an attendant villager explained quite cheerfully. The wizard knew the powers of this world at times gave him a nudge in the right direction, and this, he felt, was one of them.
Carloman sat across from his host in a final retreat back into the study after dinner. They had succumbed to a more metaphysical discussion. The day had been filled with amusing personal anecdotes, experiences, and references to their respective wanderings in the known world, but once the village folk had left for the night, talk shifted quite abruptly to what Magister Zakryom called his "grand revelation". He became rather animated about it, exceedingly eager to tell all he could. It was an art beyond the arts of the world that people call magic, and dealt with a mightier power than any reckoned. At this point, Zakryom had leaned forward in his chair, and spoke in an excited whisper, as if someone might be listening. It was potential, pure and simple, he said. Staggeringly simple. There was no need for amulets and charms, but only the simplest, broadest symbolic devices.
"The fogged mirror, the murky pool, these and more, but above all else...darkness."
It took every fibre of Carloman's being not to bolt from his seat. Instead, he stopped, and played along, feigning a cautious interest. There was still a chance this fellow hadn't fallen, that he had merely stumbled upon something in some corner of this old house, and had not sold himself to the enemy. It had, after all, gone nigh abandoned for many years. This lone old wizard was a prime target for that which sought a way in.
Zakryom didn't waste any time explaining himself. There wasn't much to tell, he said. He had learned of the symbolic nature of the world decades ago, but had sought further and further the power behind the symbols. And then, leaving his old colleagues behind, mired in their superstitious ignorance, he came to the House, and there found the answer to his prayers.
Under the house was a small stone crypt in which there lay a body within a finely formed sarcophagus. The body, Zakryom whispered, was what had given him the answers he sought, and instructed him on how to pull powers from the dark. A whirlwind of panic had erupted within the wizard's chest. Serpent's Breath, how long had this been going on? What had he called out of the deep? And how had it affected the poor devils in this lonely little hamlet?
Regardless, before Zakryom could speak again, the red wizard made his mind up. Whatever must be done, must be done.
Zakryom offered to show Carloman the crypt. Carloman politely obliged. This was a delicate situation. A fellow magician bringing someone into that most potent of spaces where they learn and set into practice their wisdom, this was a show of absolute trust. And yet, it was a den of gnostic horror. He asked then, in his mind, for guidance, for more eyes and hands than just his own to be present here, if any healthy spirits of the world could hear him.
He could feel the potency of the crypt pulsating as Magister Zakryom showed the wizard down into the back of a cool cellar. None of the hired hands were aware of it, Zakryom had made sure of that. Yet, he said, it was here, plain as day. One just had to know what to look for. Carloman's eyes darted about the dimly lit space. Suddenly, his eyes stopped fast over it. There was a spot of shadow at the far end of the cellar. It seemed to reveal itself, and he saw, or rather perceived somehow, the shape of a low stone coffin within the dark pool, and it looked to him terribly misshapen.
Zakryom was walking towards it with a terrible reverence. Here, he said, he has worked the world as he saw fit. Grew the crops, made fall the rain, brought the cold breeze in the summer heat. Things that could be, he made so. Here he had drawn vitality from the vagaries of potential and had even healed the dying as life left them. This was a holy place, he said, a potent place. And there was darkness all around them, every day, all across the world, in the wilds, in our homes, in, he said with a sharp and excited whisper, in our very own bodies.
The second he looked back to say this, a great gust of searing hot flame shot past him and roared against the dark portal. The old man fell back as Carloman let the fire pour forth in a torrent from his staff, and the cellar was alight with blazing radiance. Zakryom rasped a confused and wrathful curse at the wizard.
"Get back, you damned old fool!" Carloman bellowed.
Within the dark portal, the stone coffin suddenly shivered as the firelight reached it through the miasma of shadow. A colossal hand suddenly raked its fingers across the bare earth, and then the stone of the cellar, as it came forward. Carloman staggered back in shock and disgust. Zakryom was on the ground, cowering. Gods above, this is not what Carloman had wanted. There was a life--a soul at stake.
It merely brushed the old man's chest with a gnarled, blackened finger, and he began to choke. The fingers played open, terribly close to the old man. Not if Carloman could help it. He thrust the head of his staff into the thing's rugose pseudo-flesh and let it begin to burn. He hissed words of fire and flame and oily black smoke flew like strands of ink into the air. The hand ripped itself and receded into the darkness, sending Carloman tumbling back. The portal dimmed, flattened, and after a moment, there was nothing left but the crumbled masonry where a wall once stood. Within it, an aged, yellowed skeleton. Almost certainly the the "forgotten" Count.
Carloman looked down upon Zakryom. He placed the head of his staff, which still burned with warm light, against the old man's chest. His breathing became stable, and his face which been growing red, calmed. It had tried to take him, and had just about succeeded. Maybe he could yet be saved, but there was a long night ahead of them. One does not return from this brink.
The wizard knew the powers of this world at times gave him a nudge in the right direction, and this, he feared, had been one of them.
Sepulchre Fog
That morning, so the account went, one of the latter generation of the Wyk family had been down to perform a familial rite, and had emerged not long after in a terrible state, complaining to the local guild representatives of a presence within. It seems the family tomb had begun to show signs of fog again. This was becoming a persistent issue, and the guild was taking notice.
The elder's association considered the situation. The Wyk people were generally regular attendants to their tomb-shrine's services, so the build up must be fresh, and as of yet, small and unintrusive. This was the perfect time to deal with it, and, they thought, a good opportunity to test out their two latest acquisitions.
During a bright but grey-skied afternoon, Immus and Thelo walked a wide, sleepy street on the East Docking, still damp from last night's rainfall. It was chilly, but not cold, and each wore the long, felt coat of navy as per their station. In their hands were things like metal torches, or perhaps highly deocrative maces. Twisted silver shafts ending in acorn-shaped heads, made to resemble a flame, greatly perforated and embossed. Inside could be seen a collection of dark lengths of material. The average person might guess this as incense, but the reality was a secret held fast by the tombsman's guild. Neither Immus nor Thelo really knew, but they had ideas.
The Grave District was a long strip of land that bounded half the city, immediately beyond it was the great enclave wall, bulwark and temple, where monks tended to and venerated the city's communal dead. In other lands, these would be the city's gods, but here, the people knew they shared blood with those strange corpses. Somewhere in the southern incline of the wall was the Wyk tomb, closer to the prestigious and historic waterfront locale. Though the district stretched a good mile or two around, it wasn't terribly deep, the enclave wall always looming within sight, battered, weathered, stained, and ancient.
Most tombs were underground, especially the older and larger complexes. And the Wyk tomb was old, and rather sizeable. A few solitary graves stood tall and grim, slab-like things of black stone. Thelo looked around somewhat nervously. A northlands borderfolk with all the superstition of the cold hills in his heart. To him, this great graveyard was a threshold between worlds, and every step threatened sacrilege. All the more reason to become a tombsman and learn to avoid such trespasses. Immus was a lot more comfortable. She weaved between the slab-gates that led into the subterranean complexes, seeking out the right family seals, as if these grounds were a second home to her. And yet, haste coloured her every movement.
At last she called her fellow agent over. The key to the crypt was fashioned like a long stake with grooves that pushed aside an intricate interior mechanism, and as it was inserted, there were deep thunks as the stone gates gave way, and the mouth of the tomb yawned before them. Wet stone steps sprinkled with soil, small torches lighting the way down.
The sounds of the city had been dim in the graveyard, but the moment their heads dipped beneath the earth, it was like the world beyond ceased to exist. There was only that faint thrum that comes to one in deep or vast places, a sound that might have been the blood in their heads, or the hum of the earth itself. They had not gone but a few minutes in before a wisp of fog passed across their feet. Thelo whipped around to his companion, who stood stark still as she gazed down at it. With a slow look to her fellow agent, she took a deep breath and moved deeper into the tomb.
At the center of every family tomb was what was known as a sepulchre, the holy resting place of the bloodline's progenitor. Though the wider details may have differed across various realms, the core belief remained the same: the body was a medium for the soul, the true self was the spirit who existed beyond and came to this experiential world for reasons of growth and maturity. The founders of bloodlines guaranteed a continued line of succession and thus means of manifestation for their kindred spirits beyond. This was why they were so revered. They were people of strong spirit.
And it seemed to the two agents that the fog was coming from the sepulchre.
Already the air had started to become murky and grey. It was only called fog by comparison. No one knew what it actually was, but top guildsmen and their scholarly antecedents had less than encouraging theories. Spirits by themselves cannot exist without a medium, such as the body...or the fog. Spirits could take shape in it and wander. But the fog was in imperfect medium, or, it was dared to be whispered, an extraplanar medium, and what manifested itself through the fog wasn't right. And that fog came quite readily under many different conditions, some of them man made. That it was coming from the sepulchre confirmed the suspicions of their training, that an old and strong spirit was involved. Immus never said so in class, but she wondered if perhaps they were trying to find a way back here, without the constraints of flesh.
There was now a strong, thick bank of fog rolling in slow waves, right up against their shins, and long tendrils of it were sometimes sent up, but by what, they didn't know. Thelo looked to his comrade, urgency in his eyes. Immus agreed with a silent nod. All they had to do was drown the fog out with their censers, simply walk through the tomb and leave behind them a blanket of incense. Thelo was eager to begin, and Immus wasn't far behind. The further in they went, the more they felt it. What the relative from this morning had reported. But to call it a "presence" was an understatement.
Thelo kept turning about, reacting to something Immus couldn't hear, or perhaps feel, his senses heightened by his superstitious fear. But, she had to admit, the place was damned eerie. She'd read every account of the fog and its manifestations she could find, and had spent more than one sleepless night gazing out over a graveyard, wondering. But to be knee deep in it was something else. Wondering just what was taking shape in here, maybe right behind them, wondering if maybe it was already crawling around just outside of sight, ready to rise up any second and turn around, and what sort of face it might have...
The censers had been lit and a thick slate smoke poured from the perforations in the thin silver material. The stuff was almost heavy, a step away, they thought, from being water. The lengths of material inside were said to have been dredged up from deep within the earth, or gathered from ancient tended groves. An old scholar had once said in Thelo's presence that it was a "supermundane matter", and he'd remembered that due to what it made him think, though he never said it to anyone. Whatever it really was, it neutralized the fog and ceased manifestations. That was good enough for most.
They arrived after some agonizing minutes in the sepulchre itself, which was half-shrouded in fog. Neither of them could bear to move any further into that chamber, and their eyes were fixed upon the poorly lit corners, seeking out shapes that ought not to be there. The tall stone sarcophagus in the center was nearly lost in the mists, and every step was a battle of wills against their own minds screaming at them to flee. They carefully poured the cascading incense over the tomb, its weight pushing the fog away, replacing it with the slowly dissipating holy smoke.
There was a scuff on the stone floor behind them. Immus froze in place, but Thelo spun around, swinging his censer out like a warhammer, sending a great arc of incense flying into the dim air. If something had been standing there, it wasn't any longer. But they mutually agreed in very few words that they'd rather not find out if there was something else. Anyway, there was no chance two agents alone could clear this place up. Whatever had happened here, it was worse than the Wyk relative had claimed, or it had become worse in a very short amount of time.
They turned to go, but Immus saw the tomb had cleared up considerably. Just enough, she noticed as Thelo grabbed her arm to go, that the great heavy lid hadn't just shifted, but was ajar. That was a sacrilege worthy of long, lightless imprisonment. But it flitted through her mind, that the fog came quite readily under many different conditions...some of them man made.
No spirit returns ignorant to the beyond, she knew.