Shadows & Sorcery #92
The ghost on the stair, the vampire’s bite, better beware, there’s a ninety-second edition of Shadows & Sorcery tonight!
So, I had other stuff written for this week. But then something happened in my brain and this edition happened instead!
This week I lay before you a five-part tale of gothic dark fantasy, each entry exploring a different aspect of this world's darkest arts... Please enjoy quite possibly the most overwrought, purple (some might say sumptuous) nonsense I have ever committed to script.
I recommend breaking out your wine goblets and listening to the spookiest music you can find while reading. Maybe some old school dungeon synth like Lamentation (used while writing this adventure!) or some dank and heavy darkwave of your choice (I recommend DARK).
Or listen to THIS on loop.
If thou’rt pleased with this week’s offerings, I pray thee smash that like button and tell these tales you liked them!
This week, we meet Veney, owner of a regular old City Sword, we follow him through the old manor as he encounters a Shield Tomb, and then beyond into the frightful depths of Catacombs Mountains, and then as he passes into the Fortress of Shadow and the Tower of Fog…
City Sword
It was a simple weapon. There were a thousand just like it, hammered out in a workshop to the specifications of the guild's governance. A broad, single-edged blade that tapered sharply to a point. A one-handed hilt with a half-circle pommel and hand guard—the flat sides towards the hand, the guard bearing the city's sigil. The steel never shone, but that was part of the specifications. It gave the weapon a rough, brutish aspect, necessary in its line of work keeping a semblance of order in the roughest boroughs in the capital. It had also passed through a dozen hands since it was forged and set to task, and its current owner would not be the last hand to wield it.
The mouldering western district of the city invited all sorts into their dark arms. Thief cults, smugglers, killers, and stranger types who wanted to do things beyond the reach of prying eyes. It was common rumour that the guilds worked secretly to keep those seven boroughs in such a state so that they knew where the worst of their criminals and madmen were contained. But still, it was also home to honest folk fallen on bad times, and so a detachment of guards had that span of the city as their charge. Where most guards carried a baton or at worst a blunted axe, the watchers carried swords sharpened every day and every night.
It was half built into the rock, and looked as if someone had taken a knife and made a long, jagged cut in the earth, then filled it with thin, teetering boarding houses and squalid shacks, each one a nest of vipers. And then there was the house at the very bottom. Evidently once a burgomaster's residence from before the guild takeover. It sat with its back to a body of sheer rock which grew into a mountain that leered over the city. And beyond it, more mountains. Beyond that, even more. It was for that reason Veney always kept an eye on the house at the bottom of Bray Lane.
The mountains hadn't always been there. What was left of the world knew that. But they were here now, forever. No one knew why but everyone had their ideas. The magicians said it was so they could get closer to those crystalline heavens they concerned themselves with, to the exclusion of all else. The clerics and their crimson theurgies said it was because the survivors of the world had survived the initial cataclysm where more than the half world failed and perished, and that the mountains would make us prove we were worthy. Still others, like the furtive shamans, said the mountains were the work of an enemy god, blocking out the powers that man once was beholden to, that only they could dredge out of the deep. And still more believed stranger, or darker things, best left unspoken, but whispered of too often in the twisting alleys of the rough old boroughs.
Veney was passing down Bray Lane when he felt it. A sudden tugging at his body. Nowhere in particular. But there was a pull. Distant, light, but persistent. He slowed down as he looked down the long, winding length of Bray Lane. Something very deep within him screamed that what he felt was wrong, but all the same, he had a duty, and the day had been rather monotonous. He set his hand onto the hilt of the sword, and set off down the dank road.
Shield Tomb
The manor was old, tottering, none of its stone felt steady, and the walls seemed to sag. Small, weak lanterns hung in the shadowy ceilings of its high, thin corridors, sending down an uneasy light. Odd drafts of air passed through unseen fissures in the masonry, hinting at secret passages and sealed chambers. The place was likely riddled with them, as even the lowliest noble houses were, each of them believing they were actors in some great and terrible intrigue. It must have been the only thrill they ever experienced, plotting against each other and perpetrating little cruelties.
Nobody seemed to live here, thought Veney, at least not permanently. Not that anybody really "lived" in the boroughs, they squatted, lurked, or hid, but all the same, this place didn't seem inhabited. It was bare of most furnishings, all that remained were rotten scraps of old rugs, dusty piles of wood, bricked up chimneys, and many corners in which the shadows hung too heavy. But someone must have been keeping those lanterns lit. And through it all, a pull he couldn't explain. Maybe it was instinct, maybe his soul knew something his mind hadn't yet fathomed, or maybe he was finally beginning to crack. Whatever it was, he followed it into the depths of the house.
He encountered the first one quite suddenly. Some of the rooms in the manor opened into each other, as the houses of old did, rather than be connected by corridors. Many of them were utterly lightless, and he was forced to grab a lantern from a wall that barely illuminated the space beyond his outstretched arm. All the time held his unsheathed blade at his side, ready to plunge it into a black-clad assassin or madman. But what met him as he awkwardly dragged open a heavy door in its rotting, misshapen frame was no human killer.
It bore the shape of a person, but the features were drawn too long, and its staring, milky eyes bore the mark of terrible pain. Long, thin fingers gripped his arm, making him nearly drop his lantern. As they curled about him, the lids of its eyes seemed to become heavy, as if drowsy, and its other hand slid out to grasp his neck. All sensation left the flesh where the thing touched him, save for an aggressive buzzing that was not pain, but nonetheless abhorrent. Veney wrenched himself free before its other hand made contact, and his arm pulled its fingers apart. He watched them dissipate in the air in wisps. The thing, the ghost, retracted its arm and looked to him with, he swore, a look that was more pained and confused than anything else.
Veney plunged through the chambers, his movements not entirely his own. He began to see more and more that the house's interior had been tampered with. Sections of floor and wall had clearly been replaced, and the more of this he saw, the more ghosts appeared. He passed through one room in which a corpse lay, half sunk into a broken floor, two dreadfully thin ghosts clinging to it. Veney chased them off with his blade, and they cowered in a corner as checked the body. It was cold. In fact, it was frigid. He knew then what it was these mournful wraiths sought. But more importantly, he found in the body's hands a hammer and chisel, and in that half sunken floor, he found not some sealed oubliette, but a small depression in which lay the skeletal, cramped remains of a human being.
"Blood o' me kin," thought Veney, "these're graves..."
From the years he had spent walking the gnarled paths of the boroughs, keeping the darkness and misery at least contained where the guilds wanted it, Veney had stumbled across far too many dreadful things. Among the worst glimpses he caught were those of powers beyond even the bloodiest shamanism. He'd burnt hauls of strange things in the past that spoke of art darker than aught else, things that had spread and crept out of a time and world best left forgotten under the mountains: the vampiric arts of disaster and domination. The ghosts in this house were victims of it, he knew it, set as a barbaric defense of a kind once permitted under certain tyrant kings. And that meant that at the center of this was one who had gathered to themselves a trove of night-black knowledge.
Veney didn't make a habit of getting into trouble, especially not in the boroughs. Knowing when to walk by kept him alive. But he couldn't help it here. He felt deep inside of himself that he knew what this pull was, and so would use it to guide to him where the horror dwelt. It was, he admitted to himself as he descended into a cold, damp cellar, something of a moral obligation. Couldn't have something like this lurking around. Wasn't safe, not for him, or for anyone else. And besides, the job paid just well enough for him to stay his path, at least for now.
Catacombs Mountains
The cellar had been a wide, vaulted space, cold and dry, with thick pillars behind which his mind invented horrors to lurk. He powered through, only to find a passage leading through the nethermost back wall and beyond into the mountain which loomed over the city. An air of heavy dread had settled upon Veney, and one thought echoed repeatedly through his mind as the pull from within grew at every step: you can't turn back now...
What he passed through then were flights of old carved steps, hewn by hands the world never knew existed, steps that twisted through the earth with no rhyme or reason, climbing up steeply only to suddenly shoot down perilous, cramped declines that would turn at odd junctures. Other paths snaked off into the darkness, and it was only the pull from beyond that kept him on some sort of track.
But the primary feature of these labyrinthine passages were the graves. The entire mountain, it seemed, was riddled with them. From floor to ceiling, niches and alcoves, depressions near the ground, filled with bodies staring vacantly from the dark. Veney's steps echoed curiously, and he could not tell what might be the return of his footfall from afar, or the subtle shift of a corpse in its cell.
Who could they be, he thought? What could they be? A pre-cataclysm people, maybe, who died when the mountains rose up, whom the clerics would have deemed impure or undeserving of survival, judged by the earth. Or perhaps some hidden race who dwelt in the darkness and whose secrets were seeping out into the cold light of day. Veney didn't consider himself anything like a scholar, he had too many practical things on his plate to worry about sagework and such. But wandering amidst strange places for so long, he did often wonder.
The stench of mustiness, heavy dust, and the dampness of stone stuck in his lungs. His feeble lantern played uneasily across the leering shrivelled corpses which he swore peeked out from their tombs at him as he passed. Would they stir? Turn to him? He never stopped, but he did slow himself sometimes, when the need to gaze back at the dead to make sure they were so became too strong.
What he found further along his path set a shiver deep inside of him, a nervous agitation that only persisted the more he found: bodies half-dragged from their graves, some laying upon the ground completely. Yet as he threw his light into some of the other passages, he couldn't help but notice that their inmates were untouched. Only the ones on the path he felt his flesh dragged upon had been defiled, their bones snapped, their old skin torn, things from within missing.
This mountain was a charnel mountain, a sealed tomb thrown up from the inner earth. The whole range of them could be like this for all he knew.
As the mad flight of steps through the catacombs began to even out, Veney looked back only once into the twilight passage and thought he saw there a dozen or more dark spots where eyes ought to be turned to him. He wondered if he was a trespasser to them, or perhaps another victim.
Fortress of Shadow
In the midst of a great chasm of murk and darkness, out of a shifting sea of shadow, there loomed what looked to be nothing less than a great mouldering castle, lurking deep under the earth. What spectral light was cast upon it, Veney didn't know. Perhaps it was merely darker than the abyss that surrounded it. Down a sheer incline he slowly lowered himself, the horror of this place's existence just under the grim but familiar city streets beginning to dawn to upon him. But what could he do save obey the impulse which had so swiftly gripped his flesh? There would be an end to it, he'd see to that. His own, or the end of whatever dwelt in that high tower above the fortress.
He passed now through a bank of almost solid stillness that rang in his ears, no breath of wind stirred yet the air stuck to him, cold and clammy, and the must of unhallowed aeons seeped into his throat with every gasp he took. He felt as if walking through an upturned grave. The light of the poor lantern was unwelcome here, he knew that much, for the curious monoliths he passed through almost seemed to shirk from the illumination, preferring the black fog. They were rough, unshaped, but no other hand than human, or approaching human, could have reared them thus. Examples of such like standing stones could be found in the lonely corners of the surface world, but to find them in such profusion caused Veney an intense disquiet, since their reputation above was not exactly healthy. The monoliths loomed from the dark like giants in his pale orange light sometimes. If he didn't leave, he knew in his bones there would come a point where his fears were realized.
In a clearing of the monolith forest, where the stones began to thin out, Veney saw, far above, the tower at the apex of the fortress, great waterfalls of dense dark fog descending from it, enshrouding all the chasm in a cloak of half-living shadow.
Closer to the keep, the watchman crossed through a rotten gap in a colossal wall wreathed in black ivy. The vines were twisted and tough, the leaves long, trailing, ragged, and not unlike fingers. Within these great enclosing walls were more monoliths, but of a different caste. These were most certainly graves of some kind. He knew this not because of any name or marker—they were bare, but they were clearly shaped with intent. And what's more, spirits of freakish aspect writhed in pain, half-encased in them, reaching out out madly for salvation, unable to escape. Like the shield tombs far, far above. Probably where the sorcerer got the idea.
The pull that he had so far let be his guide through this phantasmagoria was quickly turning into something else. A compulsion that dragged him breathlessly through the choking deep. He knew he was being preyed upon by the arts of what dwelt in the castle. He had let this fate be written for him, but now he feared he was beyond a point where it could be undone. He had begun, quite suddenly, to feel like a prisoner in his own body.
The oaken gates of the fortress were open. Of course they would be. He feared no endless search through a maze of chambers, he knew he was being guided. He didn't expect it to be for any decent or savoury purpose, but he'd make do with it if he could, as he always had. He had seen scores of things in the boroughs over the years: celestial magics gone wrong, bleak relics he had to burn in secret, things called up from bogs and stinking pits by shamans desperate to speak to what they believed were the old gods of their ancestors, and mystic rites of crimson theurgy best left unknown to the faithful. But what that path dragged him through tested his resolve.
Most of them were ritual chambers of some kind or another. Places where the sorcerer had experimented and perfected their arts. Brittle, yellow parchment and rough scrawls on bare stone abounded, chalices of dark liquid and stained daggers were scattered about, shards of bone and scraps of withered flesh lay within circles etched with grotesque runes—this sorcerer certainly had a theme going. Vampiric arts were capable of a lot of things if rumours were true. Calling the storm, spreading the sickness, beguiling the mind, compelling the beast, and driving forth the vermin. Disaster and domination, and the vampiric magician confidently sought the latter.
Veney was pulled through winding staircases and vast empty halls—he trudged once through a library of brown hangings and mouldering tomes in countless states of decay, and shuddered to think of what their pages might have once concealed. His lantern threatened to give out, but it never quite did. He was afforded as many sights as it could muster. Through all this there was nary a sound, barely even his own footsteps. His senses screamed in hyper-awareness as he searched for anything concrete to latch onto in this twilight world—no matter what it was.
His aching feet found him then upon a wide, spiral staircase whose central column was decorated with strange faces the whole way up. The steps were wide—more like those on the grand stair of a luxuriant manor than the path to a precipitous parapet, and deeply smoothed as if from centuries of passage.
Tower of Fog
The tower was almost a manor unto itself so prodigious was its height, and now it began to be smothered in a thick mist which flowed like ghostly water down the steps, rolling back up in waves before dissipating. Trails of it clung in the air, given form by his lantern which flickered interminably but never died. He could not rest here, for the fog was so dense it was like smoke, and besides, the pull on him had become irresistible. His exhausted flesh finally found him standing before a door of black wood and iron, warped and moist. By his blood, he thought and felt to himself, it felt like a vortex sucking him inwards.
Veney was suddenly acutely aware that not once in his ascent, nay, not once in his entire plunge into this nightmare had he once let go of his sword. He wouldn't be letting it go now, that was for certain. He set his lantern down, and pushed open the great strange portal.
The interior of the topmost chamber was, before anything else to his senses, actually illuminated. So much so that he had to squint and shield his eyes, so accustomed to murk had he become. When he opened his eyes and stumbled within, he beheld a large ring of stone all around him, for the tower apex was open to the subterranean night-air, and there was too a sort of rim of fog that hung just overhead and spilled downwards, flooding across the chasm. He saw then its ultimate source in the center of the apex chamber.
Three braziers stood, one taller than the others, belching forth the dark fog which blanketed the floor entirely. At the far end of this circular space was a figure. Slowly, it turned, and showed itself to be something Veney wasn't quite expecting. It was a shockingly aged man, dressed in an antique finery of trailing robes and ruffles, but whose shaking movements belied a terrible weakness or ailment. His hair was thin, his skin sagging and sallow, but his eyes, though ringed and bloodshot, had a desperate sharpness.
He took a few tottering steps forward, coughing into a handkerchief he quickly replaced in his robes. He held in his hand an exquisite golden chalice inlaid with red and green jewels. He held his other hand over it then, and when he did so, Veney felt the tugging in his body veritably wrench him forward. A yellow-toothed grin twitched across the elder sorcerer's face.
"You were what I brought through, hmm?" He studied the watchman, flashing his eyes once to Veney's sword, and then shambled over to a small table, next to which were instruments the kinds of which magicians might use to peer at the sky, but their aspect was strange. Upon the table was a great heavy book—a grimoire of vampiric magic, Veney figured. The kind of thing he'd spent years trying to stamp out of the boroughs. The elder turned a page, then picked up something—something small, he couldn't see—and dropped it into the chalice. Veney suddenly found his limbs locked.
"Drop it," the sorcerer breathed over the chalice. The sword fell uselessly from Veney's hand.
The elder then set down his sorcerous focus and picked up the hefty tome. It caused him great difficulty but he cradled it like a child. "You like it, eh? Oh it took everything, yes, including my health, but look...look at it, it's the least I can do..." He held the book up for Veney. It would be a handsome manuscript were it not for the grim sigils and unhealthy aspect of what he prayed silently were leather plates. What caught his eye though was the strange staining at its base, which now began to drip heavily. "You see it, yes? That's when I knew I had struck true." The book was, Veney could hardly believe, bleeding.
"My death comes again, watchman, but this time, I believe, is the last time. It's all coming together. A blood moon, a moon of blood for the underworld, here!" came the rasping falsetto tone. "Life for life. More blood to get me just a little further...I can reach out across the world, with just a little more blood...I reached out to you, did I not? But I can go so much further now...to the Master's Throne of Night."
The elder then took up something else from the small table. He hesitated, then turned and peered into one of his defiled astrologer's instruments. He muttered something, and then continued over to Veney, who still stood transfixed. The old wizard had a long, thin dagger of silver in his hand.
"Raise up your arms."
Veney's arms were slowly held out, but not by his will. The old man sunk the thin blade into each of the watchman's wrists, and dug around. Though he felt a thousand miles from his body, he agony was immediate.
"I wanted you to see it..." the vampiric magician said as he looked to the sky.
Veney the watchman could move his eyes enough to see his lifeblood flow from his sundered wrists, to see the old wizard shiver with anticipation, and to see nothing less than a great blot of crimson bleed into the chasm void above. As minutes passed, he began to feel heavy at first, and then drowsy, but the impotent rage and sorrow welling up in him kept him painfully alert. Maybe it was some primeval fight response that did it, or perhaps a lessening of the power over his life as the less life there was in his body, he didn't know, and he didn't care. The second Veney could twitch a single finger, he struggled to wrench his limbs free of the spell of domination that had been set upon him.
The old wizard saw him, and shrunk back in a now very mortal fear, clinging the tome to his body. Veney stumbled every step, but he stooped down, grabbed his sword, knocked the vile little dagger from the sorcerer's hand, shoved his watchman's sword through his enemy's gut, grasped him by the neck and in mere moments cast the vampiric aspirant over the side of the tower. A sickening crunch cut through the stillness of the chasm. Overhead, the blood moon was already beginning to pass.
He had to grasp the side of the tower for support. He wasn't getting out of here. But neither was the sorcerer. The book had managed to stay on the ledge. There was a second—a split second where Veney considered the grimoire. But moments later it followed its ill-fated master into the dark below. Veney fell to the floor, and let himself sink into the fog.
Just as he was descending into a cold, calm slumber, he heard the rush of feet on familiar flagstone.