What’s the beef, everyone?
Now, as I said before, this week there is no new edition, but I’m not going to be quiet! Instead, as I do every 100 tales, I’ve created a little informal top ten of my personal favourite stories (and honestly this isn’t even all of them, hard decisions were made). As per the other two specials, these contain a mix of free and paid stories, being made available to everyone. There’s also been a good few new readers joining, so I want to show off some of the super cool stuff I have hidden in these deep, musty archives.
Next week, regular service resumes and you’ll find a new package of dark fantasy weirdness assailing your inboxes, unless they find me. But they haven’t, not yet.
Anyway, please don’t forget to take a sec and leave a like if you enjoyed what you read! Even if you didn’t! Especially if you didn’t.
By the way, if this edition is clipped in your inbox (it shouldn’t be, but Gmail users may see this happen), you can read it in full on the site, or there should be a “View Full Message” option in your email app of choice (or just Gmail because it tends to happen most with Gmail).
Demon Pilgrim
From Issue 41
The sun rises over the river Hehm'it. The water sparkles as the great golden disc touches it, and along its banks for leagues upon leagues, do the people awaken. Morning beseechments are lifted into heaven upon the breeze. Cheap transmitters relay the chants and holy songs from within the vast, domed Great Temple and run for every hour of every day, creating a calm background drone throughout a vast city that never truly sleeps. Homes of all sizes from high apartments to manors, packed hovels and sprawling shanty towns, crowd about the banks on each side, right up to the water, broken up only by the ornate, wall-like temples.
Among these homes and their waking humanity, there now emerges dozens upon dozens of strange figures. Robed in bright red, they clack carved and painted staves upon the ground in a rhythm known only to them. Many stop at small street shrines and begin to pray in clusters, but some are alone. Others make their way down to the river, and disrobe to bathe in the shimmering waters. They reveal here the extent of their inhuman physiology. They are demons, the fearsome, half-spirit people of the comet, who came to the world in an age long ago to wage a war of blood. And as they bathe and pray, they look towards the far horizon where sits the mountain, the source of the river and their redemption.
Upon its tail danced a million terrible forms, upon its body there squatted a thousand monstrous shapes, and at its head there flew a single thing of nightmare, spitting black fire and blood through fangs and tusks. The war chariot comet of the demons carried their whole race, and it meant they would either conquer the world, or be slain and cast from history. A crown of horns adorned every head and a mane of shining black hair was upon the neck and shoulders. Eyes stared, sometimes single orbs with spiral pupils, sometimes random assortments that blinked out of synch. Nostrils flared with oily smoke. Their skins were crimson, emerald, bronze, or black like a night sky. They landed many miles from the great city, and for a fortnight, the people could hear the baleful war-chants beginning to drown out their holy songs.
What ensued was only half a war, but it was of such catastrophic violence that some places in the city have never fully recovered. Curses and ghosts haunt certain spots, and the marks of the war are visible in the oldest places, untouched out of a strange, fearful reverence. The demons sacked many places along the river, and its lower reaches ran red. But then they met the bulwark that was the Great Temple, a dome which utterly dominated the skyline for miles around, and were stopped. There is no end to the many iterations of what happened there, but what is generally agreed upon is that the demons met with a divine avatar, and upon their bloody but steadfast honour, took its truth into their hearts.
The primeval faith of the river country emphasizes the sanctity of learning. It is believed that three cosmic gods - the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer, exist to teach those lower than them, and reveal truths to bring about universal harmony. To do this, they incarnate into countless avatars or aspects, beings who embody a lesson, ethic, or concept. Some are benevolent, some are fearsome, some are entirely neutral. These avatars often had children, which themselves were manifest metaphors. It states that humanity is the highest of the lowest order of life, and it is humanity's duty to uplift the beasts about it. But just because they are the lowest doesn't mean they are the least intelligent, for the demons are half-spirits, and higher on the cosmic scale, and they had fallen to terrible ignorance. Thus did a living truth come to them, rising from the waters in a great spray, cowing them, and setting them upon the path of understanding.
Their passions were not quelled, but redirected. The demons lived among humanity then in a fragile but ultimately placid peace. They became redemptors, and symbols of redemption for others, paragons to be emulated. The demon people birthed a tradition from this, and it was to make pilgrimage to the headwaters of the river which was their new home's lifeblood and from which their truth, their new patron, emerged so long ago. Red-robed demon pilgrims are seen upon the high roads and through the valleys, and once beyond the city, they vanish for months into the wilderness, only to return as if nothing ever happened. The faith emphasizes learning, and they seek to uplift themselves utterly of some ignorance only they are still aware of in themselves. The old demon king dwells within the Great Temple in a lotus-smoke meditation from which he only emerges to speak to his people during important festivals from their far off homeland, where knowledge is shared.
Shadow of the Pilgrim
From Issue 49
A pious old vampire once told me a story. He was living in a cottage on the lower slopes of a barren hill out east, where they still hold to some of the ancient customs, and his house had the icons of saints on its bare wooden walls and over its doorways, though he himself did not seem a native of the region. He explained to me that he had once been, nearly a century ago, a very loose follower of the guiding strictures of the Catechism. He lived in the northern petty kingdoms, whose extreme reaches are still ruled, they say, by vampire warlords. He had defected from his liege's militia and joined up with a pack of bandits who had little aspirations beyond an easy life of pillaging weary soldiers.
Quickly had he risen to a favourable position in the sizeable group, and one night the inner circle gathered together to make a pact. Having been a dweller of the battlefields, he partook, and together they succumbed to the curse laid upon mankind in elder days by our long vanished gods, and they consumed entirely the blood of some poor young maiden. He did not remember her face, nor did he even know her name, but all the same the fellow had a symbol representing her upon a small wooden altar in a corner in his house, which, he said, he often prayed to.
Several more times had he advanced his cursed state when bloodlust took him in battle, and he had become utterly reviled for feeding openly on his dying enemies. The rest of his circle banished him, though they were themselves vampires. After this, he believes he attacked and indulged himself upon the veins of several lone travellers, though he doesn't entirely remember everything of that time. He was half-feral, and stated he likely would have been slain by church authorities if, one late evening, he hadn't seen something incredible.
He was cowering from the sun in a deep ditch, for although it did not harm him he found it abhorrent, when peeking out, he saw a strange shadow. He remembered quite clearly that it walked with a sort of contemplative bow. It was not a shadow cast upon the trees, or a person in silhouette, yet there it was freely walking in the open, and casting no shadow of its own. He rose then, the last beams of sunlight forgotten in examination, and approached. It lay a short ways from him, and as he went to touch it, he noticed he was not alone.
There was a line of figures coming up the forest trail, behind the shadow. They were, all of them, vampires in every degree of change. "So you've seen the shadow, brother?" asked one in a far worse condition than he. My host replied he had, and was asked if he too wished to follow. The others only glanced at him, but gave polite nods. Some even seemed mostly human. He walked with them then, and spoke with many of their number. The shadow, they believed, was an ancient vampire from when the curse was first laid upon humanity. Passed almost beyond recognizable existence, the shadow wanders the world, seeking succor for its soul. It shows other vampires the way, too, and walks them to the place of their salvation, which is attainable for all who've felt the touch of the curse.
For twenty years did my host walk with the shadow. Early in that time, something of the cult spoke to him, and he found himself enraptured by ancient faith. He must have walked every border in the world thrice, he said, meeting vampires who told him they'd once walked with the shadow and had lost sight of it in the very places they now dwelt, knowing that here was where their salvation lay. In that time, too, several members of the group who'd been there when he joined found their final rest in the grave, or succumbed to the curse entirely and were slain, but many also found their place of salvation. New vampires joined, and some fell off. My host had, many times, been the one to describe the nomad cult to them.
They come across sites of conflict over the years, and had set to rights the curse they partook in, using its power for the defense of the innocent. This gave the greatest satisfaction, though my host said it never was able to dull that first indulgence in his mind. The age-blurred image of the girl screaming was his punishment, and many times was it his tool of warning.
Eventually, one grey morning, he lost sight of the shadow, here on the slopes of the mountain. He showed me through his window the exact spot it happened in, and where he bid goodbye to his friends of many years for the last time. They haven't passed through since, and part of him hopes they don't, instead having found their place. He didn't start out a faithful man, but it had found him, and he fell in quite easily with the Old Believer sect of the region he now inhabited. Though I was not a vampire, I had said to him that part of me wished to see the shadow of the pilgrim myself. He said, with a smile, he understood, and would pray that I never did.
Caverns of the Saints & Ancient Dark
From Issues 49 and 50
The tension of last night's meeting hadn't left Carloman's mind. Fears had come to a head, and things were said that, perhaps, should have been withheld on the wizard's part. But the danger was real, time was of the essence--a soul was in peril, and he had made sure they all knew.
It seems that a few months ago in the city-state of Minosmir, Stavo, the bookish son of a baron, one Ser Kistos, had become intensely fascinated with some ancient site in the south-eastern hills. Scattered about the region's range of hills were dozens of curious tombs that the folk who came to inhabit the area took to be divine ancestor Heroes, and formed a popular cult surrounding them. The noble families claim to hold some spiritual connection with specific tombs, but alas, the warrior ancestor-god of this family was a poor fit for the quiet, unassuming young man, and so his elders had simply taken it as a blessing he that he had become interested in a Hero of his own, as well as the outdoors.
But unbeknownst to Ser Kistos, the site the lad had been spending so much time in was no Hero's grave, and when he vanished, his father had spared no expense in procuring expert help in finding him. A guardswoman named Kama, whom it seemed Stavo was involved with (and rather seriously at that), had brought the issue to the father. Stavo, she said, had mentioned something in passing, something he referred to as "the cavern of the saints". None of the shamans who speak with dead Heroes across Minosmir could give an answer for it, and so it fell to a wandering wizard from far off Voerlund, clad in red robes, and with a silver-gold beard, to sort the problem out.
Carloman had begun to think his trip to Minosmir, in search of rare reagents, was in truth the subtle suggestion of divine forces who saw disaster about strike. He was glad to answer the call, as when the term "cavern of the saints" was said to him, alarm bells rang in his head. A night spent consulting his personal grimoire, a small but thickly bound little tome, confirmed his suspicions. It was an old nest of Gnostics, the kind of which can be found in many deep, lightless caves across the known world. And this poor lad had stumbled across one, and had been seduced or cowed into worship of whatever malignant things dwelt within.
When Carloman had finally blurted out the dire nature of the situation in a meeting with the baron and the guardswoman, he had a hard time talking Ser Kistos down. The man, a stout fellow with oak skin and great ruddy-brown moustache, had almost flown out the door and into the wilds. But it was magic they were up against, warned Carloman, a sorcery of darkness against which they would be at the greatest disadvantage. They needed, he explained at great length, symbols of their unbreakable connection to Stavo--the bond of family, and love. Carloman had made Kama admit it before Ser Kistos, who was unsure of the girl, but this would, he supposed, be a good test of her character.
Ser Kistos had taken with him the family signet ring, it was a symbol of authority, and of the family, and something that Ser Kistos personally vowed would be set upon his son's finger one day. Kama took with her a bundle of well-worn love letters wrapped in dark blue thread, written and slipped to her during posting changes by the young man. Magic was very much a situational thing, Carloman had said as best he could in the common Merchant's Tongue, himself unfamiliar with Minosmirii. Power waxes and wanes with every moment and movement, things must be prepared and many more things taken into consideration. Once they were inside that cavern, they would have only what they brought in with them. The dark, and what dwelt in it, was not theirs, and would brook them no quarter.
They had to crawl through several sections, and crouch awkwardly in others. Most people, Carloman believed, knew the dangers of the dark, but couldn't really put words to it. The soul remembers things, of a time before light, and it stays with one throughout many lifetimes. The fact that Kama was likely feeling that deepest of instincts right now, and was still pushing forth as much as she was, more than made her worthy in the wizard's eyes.
Carloman had set a small orange gem into the head of his finely carved staff, which provided a warm, steady illumination, while Kama had prepared several torches whose blistering radiance was helped along with some arcane words the wizard imparted to her. Ser Kistos was having a bit of a hard time behind them, unused to this kind of travel. Carloman was a somewhat well-fed fellow, he had to admit, but the noble loudly demanded short stops more than the wizard liked. But for all that, part of him was glad the the fellow wasn't feeling the building atmosphere of dread.
They began to come across signs of Stavo. Piles of small stones removed from passages, a discarded coat, an empty pack, boots left in the middle of a cave tunnel. He wasn't sure the others had gotten the implication, but it sent a vile a feeling down into Carloman's stomach. That was the sign of someone who didn't intend to come back out.
Finally, after a series of small drops, Kama's torch fell upon a ragged rock opening. The darkness behind them was absolute, but what lay ahead through that aperture seemed as if part of the world had simply ceased to exist. It was quite possible, in Carloman's mind, that it had. He took the lead now, and called Ser Kistos up to his side with Kama. He spoke to them both, and asked them merely to set their minds upon Stavo, on getting back this person they both held so dearly, think of his safe return, and of nothing else. They are being watched and probed every moment for points of entry into their minds, and their souls.
The cavern itself, Carloman was frankly shocked to learn, wasn't that big. Immediately upon entrance, Kama cast two torches to either side of them and hit actual solid walls. Those walls, however, were stepped, and Carloman couldn't help but investigate. He approached the left side with his staff thrust upward, and the light from its gem fell upon several figures, seated with their legs crossed, very much dead, desiccated, dry, with mouths having fallen open in silent agony and terror. He guessed the chamber walls were lined with them. The cavern saints. Ancient gnostics who'd taken to a lightless place to commune with whatever nameless evil promised them salvation from the world of matter, that promised worldly power and protection. Saints of dark that called out to lonely souls to join them.
They only stepped in a little further before a voice reached their ears. In the small circle of light, Kama and Ser Kistos looked to each other, and then to Carloman. It was Stavo. The wizard took a deep breath, and strode towards the voice, the others in tow. He would handle whatever may walk here, they would save the boy.
"I worship you, I worship you, please, I worship you..." His voice was weak, rasping. He was on his knees, prostrated on the ground. "I worship...I worship you, I worship you!" He seemed to sob between his chanting.
"Stavo?"
"Son?"
He shot up, his head looked sightlessly back, he raised and began to hold a trembling arm back towards the voices of Kama and his father. But something shuddered through him, and he clenched his fist and fell back down.
"We must worship, we must worship, gods forgive me, I worship you, I give my soul to-" Carloman swung his staff into the boy's side before he could finish. Kama jumped forth, but Carloman's amber eyes flashed in the darkness. She and Ser Kistos ran to the lad, and helped him up. He was completely naked, his clay-red skin seemed paled somehow, and rent with several small wounds. His clothing surrounded him. Carloman undid his great red cloak and draped it around Stavo.
There was, then, a rumbling in the air. Not quite a growl as from a throat, and not quite the sound of thunder, but steady, unfathomably deep, and it grew as if speeding towards them from a far distance. Like a wind that threatened to break into a violent gale. Carloman gazed upwards. The cavern walls might have been relatively close, but the ceiling wasn't. It was vast in the way dark places seem larger than they appear to be, but he knew in this case that sensation was warranted. This place had not only been bereft of light for potential millennia, but it was actively used to call down the gaze what dwelt beyond. There was a point above where an elemental evil older than the world was looking down, and Carloman met its gaze.
The wizard took the torch from Kama and without breaking the lock of his eyes upon the vile vastness above, set his staff under his arm and reached into a pouch, removing a small handful of extremely rare and extremely potent fiery reagents, bought only a few days before. It was going to a good cause. He felt it all line up, and was pleased. He spoke a charm of making as he sprinkled the fine powder into the open flame. It sputtered and hissed, its tongues leapt, and with a shout of an arcane word he thrust his staff into the earth and the torch into the air, and great streak of clean fire shot into the shadows as the wood was consumed.
Stavo gasped and lurched upright half onto his feet as the light flared. In the fraction of stillness, something spoke. They weren't words, not in the sense that Kama and Ser Kistos knew them, but they were emanations that made the oldest parts of their souls cower.
"Don't listen to it, don't give it any power over you," spat Carloman as he waved his staff in a wide arc, the light staining the ground. Kama was speaking to Stavo. She was saying how she'd read his letters over and over every night. Ser Kistos held his son up and told him in no uncertain terms that this signet ring was going to him whether he liked it or not. Tears streamed down Stavo's face.
Carloman bade them take him out of the cavern now, and don't look back. He didn't say so, but he felt that whatever Stavos had been supplicating was making itself known, and there was a sensation like a colossal weight slowly beginning to envelope the wizard from afar. It knew exactly who was the threat here.
"You have no power over me, I am free, I am divested of dark," muttered the wizard with a terrible rage under his breath. The demon, or stars forbid, Aeon, that sent this tendril of dread down now had caused countless souls to suffer torment and slavery in the dark beyond the world, and would do so until the material realm could finally hold all free spirits in its bounds, and be free of the Godhead. Kama and Kistos could never know just what it was that was clawing at their backs at this very instant.
"Great powers of the earth, if you can hear in this place, these souls need your guiding wings!" Carloman held up two crossed fingers in a motion of a binding. Several seconds past. Carloman's chest fluttered with a rush of anxiety. But his call was returned. Something, some power from the healthy land beyond risked itself and beat back the grasp of that which had been closing in upon the group. The wizard thought, perhaps, the flash of a shimmering humanoid image was in the air, in his staff's light, clad in curious raiment, and with a mighty hammer swung in a fine arc. A Minosmir Hero perhaps, battling an ancient nemesis. Carloman watched as he stumbled back beyond the cavern entrance with the others, and into a lesser deep.
The next day, Carloman sat in the meeting chamber of Baron Kistos. The noble was mulling over a tall mug of drink. Sitting in a chair by a window was Kama, in full guard's regalia. The magician spoke.
"Stavo seems stable, but he is fragile. He's sleeping, and I've done all I can to ensure his dreams are light and untroubled. I will give my recipe to the nurse, for he may need it in the years to come."
"Years to come?" The Baron seemed shocked. Carloman sighed.
"I can't even begin to tell you what happened to him. This will last. The knowledge of it all is...dangerous to have. You both saw more than any human soul ever should, and he saw more than that. You must understand that it is imperative you forget what happened in there. Do not have these thoughts in your head. Leave it behind you. It is done. It is sealed away." They looked to each other, unsure, and back to Carloman, who simply answered with a pleading glare.
"So be it," grumbled Kistos, "but what do we tell Stavo?"
"Well, firstly, Kama? Your orders are to sit by his side. Talk to him. Hold his hand. He needs you there. Baron, see to it with your guard commander she is undisturbed. However long it takes. Then, when he does come to properly, I will need to have a very long talk with him. Alone. So, I'll need to stay close, Baron."
"It will be done," he said as he waved his hand, a note of slight exasperation tinging his tone.
"But he'll be okay, sir?" asked Kama. She met Carloman with a steely gaze. Her tone was less concern for Stavo and more questioning of the wizard, despite her decorum.
"I think he will. But I won't lie, this is a delicate time, he won't be the same afterwards. That was closer than even I'd like to admit. Oh, also, I would recommend a thorough search of his quarters to dispose of anything in reference to the cavern, or...anything else odd. I'll help with it. I know what to look for."
"And what do we do with the cavern? Block it up, right?" said Kama, clear disgust in her voice.
"Forever," said the wizard.
"Aye, aye...will that be all, Carloman?" Weight hung on the Baron's brow. Kama looked angry.
"Yes, for now. I'll, ah, check in on him once more, but then Kama should be with him." He went to leave. His hand was on the door handle when he turned back. "And by the way..." They both looked to him with weary eyes. "You both did exceptionally well in there. Stavo is blessed to have such strong souls by his side."
***
The sun had begun its journey across the horizon, and twilight filled half the sky while the final light bathed the talls hills of Minosmir in golden radiance. But a chill in the wind from the night-side made the figure that passed through the brush now draw his crimson cloak around him. An image flashed in his mind of the poor lad who had been carried out in it some few days before. Carloman sighed.
The countryside a ways out from Minosmir began to flatten into the sweeping steppes and lush savannah of the east, but he wasn't there just yet. These foothills and ridges were steep and wild, covered in hard vegetation and with few paths through, but could be a shortcut for those who braved them. And Carloman wanted get the city as far behind him as quickly possible.
He looked up into the dense, twisted walls of foliage, the thorns, the brambles, the high leaves and stalks, and saw beneath them wilting little buds that had been fighting for sunlight. Stavo, the young man he had helped save in the cavern of the saints, came again into his mind: sitting up in his bed, amidst brilliant sunlight, surrounded by tall, lit candles, safe in his home, and yet the very image of fragility, weakness, and smallness. The wizard remembered how tense he had felt, beginning the most difficult conversation of his life.
"Before we begin, please understand that I'm not here to chastize you. You did nothing wrong, nothing at all, you are a victim in all this. But...you have been placed into a situation which can never be righted, never be undone. You've seen things that will stay with you for the rest of your life. Things you were not meant to see."
In all his life, Carloman had never heard such fear in a human voice as he did from Stavo as they talked. The wizard knew exactly what Stavo had heard, and knew exactly what had spoken.
"For all they revel in falsehoods and terror, their greatest weapon...is the truth." Possibly the hardest thing he had ever had to say, and he prayed inwardly that he might never have to say it again. The lad had broken down into tears.
Carloman beat back a thorny bush with his staff, and looked then beyond, into the growing night and the deep clouds that came with it. The slumber of the world, tainted. And what he had been forced to unleash upon the fragile mind of the young man.
"It's not human evil, which has petty motives and madness to drive it, but elemental evil, intelligent, wilful, and active."
Brambles tugged at his robe.
"A cosmos of infinite dark."
Unseen stalks raked across his face.
"A universe of masters and slaves, so that it might come to dominate itself entirely. We are of the dark, Stavo, you, and I, and every single living thing in this world, made to be enslaved."
The wizard's foot caught in something, and he was brought to his knees. He cursed as he pulled himself up. All around him was the still swirl of curling branches and stiff vines, silhouetted but barely in the dark. They looked like fingers and feelers ready to close about him. The memory of Stavo, prostrated upon the damp cavern floor, surrounded by circling shadows, would not leave his mind's eye.
The wizard sat for a moment upon a half-rotten tree stump. He looked past the tangle of the ridge. Minosmir, spread across its many hills, was less golden now, red, and the night was beginning to settle. Somewhere in there, new candles were being set and old ones relit, and the guardswoman Kama would be at Stavo's side, a balm for his soul in this tender time. Her strength was astonishing and refreshing. Not once had she flinched in that cavern, and not once had she left her lover's side since the wizard beseeched her to remain. He tried to see if he could pick out where they'd be, but he wasn't familiar enough with the land. But all the same, he looked. He remembered what Stavo had asked him with hazel eyes surrounded by bloodshot white, sunken and tired.
"Why me? What did I do?"
"You were open," Carlomad had said plainly. "Attractive to it. It saw a space it could fill in a lonely young man."
"But I have Kama, and-"
"Yes, but from what I understand your, ah, meetings were few and far between. Your father wouldn't approve, so you had that in your way, too. There was much time spent writing letters, and pining away. You were vulnerable. It doesn't matter who you are. You were the right person, in the right place, at the wrong time."
Stavo had gotten angry then, or perhaps frustrated. Understandable.
"Why not tell people this? Why not warn everyone and fight back? Why stay ignorant?"
"To have these thoughts in your head sets you aside. It's dangerous to know. Hence why I talk with you now. But, you see, everything exists, my boy, every single last thing--every thought, every feeling, every action, they matter. That is our defense, and our weapon. It wasn't my staff in your side that saved you. It was your father, your lover, and the god of your clan--the protection offered to you freely in solidarity against the Ancient Dark, which all souls in this world share."
Carloman clambered up over a small bluff. Pock marks and depressions offered natural footholds. Stubbornness had bid him refuse to try another path. He stepped up and over it, and stopped to give himself a second as he gazed upon the vista before him. The clouds had parted, or drifted elsewhere, and in their place, upon the soft black of the night, was a glimmering astral brilliance which shrunk the darkness about it and gave calm definition to the vast sweep of the east below it. The wizard thought on what he'd rebuffed his revelations with.
"Our world is not of darkness, but of light, and not of master and slave, but of guardian and ward. We were all part of that host, Stavo, we all came here together and have been reborn time and time again in this sanctuary, severed and innocent of the dark beyond. Stavo, your father Kistos believes in you, he does. Kama, she loves you. The Heroes of Minosmir gave themselves over to be your guardians. And in time, you too will become a guardian, a lord for your people, perhaps even a parent to a child. I might be able to call up flames at will, speak to spirits, and summon gods to my aid, but what we all share, across the world? That's the real power."
Knights of Madness
From Issue 52
Black smoke hung in the air, its haze dimming the sun throughout the day, and at night turning the stars sickly. The countryside was ash and cinder, the embers smouldered but faintly, flashing briefly in strange patterns as bleak winds roared towards the battered edifice of the stained castle. Upon a single thin bridge did several baying warriors roll a battering ram, reinforced with crude iron bands and heaped cadavers. And around this, for several miles, did hordes of howling, chanting madmen rush and fall over each other trying to clamber up the sheer walls, the first ones slipping into the moat, a cesspool of whitened, bloated corpses, and the others dashing quickly across their drowning comrades' backs.
No simple illness of the brain afflicted the warriors below. This was madness--twisted, perverted, screaming yellow madness, that each and every one of the crazed fools had willingly given themselves over to. One could almost see their hallucinations, skittering and gibbering incessantly at the edges of consciousness. Freakish altars, idols, and painted monoliths, before which wild blasphemies of blood and debasement were done daily, leered at the castle whose decayed stateliness was an affront to their warped desires.
Within the cracked stone and wooden supports, ragged-eyed soldiers in stained, patch-work armour stopped their ears with filthy linen strips to drown out the pounding battering ram. Some grasped frayed holy books and symbols, some stared into torches on the walls, some simply sharpened blades close to cracking. They could feel the wind creep across the ceiling, whispering things from outside. The words were trying to find a way in.
No shining army was rushing to their aid. The border had been lost a month ago. But this castle remained. They had never fled. They never could. It was either retreat into a wave of ten thousand maniacs, or defend what they were told was a beacon of reason and light in the dark of madness.
A commander in a gilded helmet that had lost all lustre gazed through a half-shattered lens over the battlefield. Many times in the night, had he seen the warriors having ceased for the moment, only stragglers continuing their singular assaults. Campfires like obscene stars fallen to the ground would be scattered across the blasted landscape when the night's black veil fell. Madmen danced around them, and their forms made unspeakable shapes. Now a stark day belched its uneasy light through the smoke-fog, and the commander saw something new.
From out of the dense haze there emerged several shapes, loping, hopping, leaping, shrieking, above them was a great banner with tears and shredded edges, displaying a tableaux of symbols that made the eyes hurt, and twisting in agony over the four things that marched to a mad rhythm, clad in the finest coats of plate warped and shorn as if some inner fire of seething force had blasted it outwards. They each carried a unique weapon: a massive scimitar with a thick blade that looked fit to cleave bone, a set of wicked axes with teeth and wavering backspikes, a spear whose tip looked designed more for torture chambers than battlefields, and a two-handed maul which dripped even now with gore.
Knights of Madness, come to stir the ailing horde that didn't know it had already been winning.
The battle was over. The castle had just become a tomb.
The commander fled weeping while his subordinate set his jaw firm and ascended the short steps to the great horn, and blew, before collapsing to the ground, pounding his mailled fist into the stone. Deep within the castle, weary soldiers listened to wave upon wave of monstrous chants flow across the field outside as the Knights worked their power upon the shattered minds of their horde. Some knew what it meant, those who didn't mobilized and were met only with laughter as they roused their beleagured comrades.
Shapes scarcely believable as human cascaded across the charred plains and corpses began to choke the moat, crushed and compacted into a sick red mulch. Bodies were heaved upon the ram and it finally split the sagging gates. Madmen screeched and bellowed as they prayed and followed their illusions into the courtyard. The Knights followed, laughing and roaring, slaying dozens of their own number as they chanced upon them. Weary, wounded soldiers were dragged from their beds and offered to phantoms, knives were plunged into flesh, skin was flayed with excruciating care for the canvases of the insane seers, and crouched creatures, little better than ghouls, supped from cracked skulls.
Arrows rained down, boulders were thrown, the bodies were piling up in the yards and into the warren of passages inside the castle. No barrier, flesh or stone or wood, could withstand the Knights who seemed to follow every assault, the small gaps in their helmets showing the foaming grimaces and bloodshot eyes within. In what was once a dining hall, unarmed soldiers were thrown onto tables and torn apart with bare teeth. There were bodies that might never be found inside secret hallways.
A soldier sat in a corner. Glazed eyes looked out of a slit in a visored cap. What was happening here was happening all across the realm, right now. He watched things eyes weren't meant to see and blinked the tears away without a sound. And then, a shape made itself known to him. A great knight in black and gold armour, with long twisting spikes that looked like fiery warping, a flowing cloak of deep, warm red. Two eyes looked out of a helmet's mask thrown back. The eyes were like stars, and the flesh had been taken and moulded into something new and beautiful. The knight extended its hand, and the soldier looked around once more. He saw warriors moving with such graceful freedom as he'd never seen anything move. He took the knight's firm grip, and was pulled upwards, feeling something slither into his head.
Warlord's Dark
From Issue 52
If it weren't for the comforts and pleasures of settled life, the Macha people of the northbank would likely have remained happily stalking their woods for all time. But even though you may give a hunter a warm hearth and all the drink in the world, you can't take the wilderness out of that blood. The woods are their home, and they have remained in its embrace, striking out from their longhalls and fire-lit huts into the misty vastness for days at a time to gather from the forest's abundance. They haven't had to settle too deep. As such, the hunter is the premier profession of the Macha, looked upon with as much respect as their warriors and chiefs and dryador sorcerer-priests.
A heavy knuckle rapped upon the door three times before it was opened by a rather thin, older man with shaved head and long, dropping moustache. He wore the loose belted tunic and kilt of his people, as did the two who stood before him now, and behind them was the grey robe and grey mane of the village dyrador wise-man. The man's nephew and his nephew's mate looked like they just run three leagues in three minutes, covered in dirt and small scratches. He bid them enter. The young woman refused, placed her cheek on the young man's, looked to the dryador who nodded, and immediately departed in another direction.
"What's all this about, Buchal?" asked the older man with gruff concern as he sat with the lad and the wise man in his hut. "Why'd ye not go to your father? There trouble?" The lad was silent for a moment as he took a long breath.
"Yeah," the lad sighed. The older man's brow furrowed.
"Where'd yer girl go?"
"I told her to fetch mallets, Olam," spoke the dryador through a length of long scraggly beard.
"What for? What've they done?" He turned to his nephew, "Were you two not out hunting?"
"We were, but...look, uncle, I had to come to you. You're a hunter. You'd know what to do."
"About what?" His nephew looked away, as if he didn't like to speak the words.
"Uncle, I think there's something out in the woods."
The dryador bent into the ear of the old hunter, and whispered the tale the girl Konna had told him.
The two mates retraced their steps as Olam followed. At each of their sides was a mallet borrowed from Buchal's father, who worked stone in the village. Crush it, the dryador had said. The wise men, who live almost apart from society, always kept a close eye on the hidden things around them. It was said they often consulted hunters about it. Out of the three of them, Konna seemed to be feeling it the worst. She had grey eyes, which marked her as connected to Locod, the great god of the water and the past. Many dryador wisefolk were grey-eyed, and the finest storytellers and loremasters venerated the water god. But all Macha have that wildness in them regardless of marking. Both Buchal and his uncle were brown-eyed, marked by Cannoc, god of the earth and the present. Almost all hunters had those eyes.
As they neared what the two had found, there was a change in the air. They could all feel it, but only shared glances to say so. The forest was disturbed. Cannoc did not walk here, and Gaoth the sky god was not looking down. The trees and the earth were holding still, and the Macha that moved there now fought against every instinct in their bodies to hold with it. The sun seemed dimmed, as if a deep cloud had passed over it, and shadows gathered upon the ground. A place not even the Dark White Ones, the elemental hidden folk of the wilds, would tread upon.
Down a low depression in the forest floor did it dwell. The land seemed almost to sag with its weight. It looked just as Konna had described it to the dryador before they sought out Olam the hunter. A shapeless lump with a cracked stone face peering from the deep green growth. Buchal called his uncle up front. Konna held her mate's arm and they shared an uneasy look. She remembered when they'd come upon it, creeping towards the stone front, and the horror the girl had felt when she swore she heard something huge shift within, and an eye peer out from the great central crack.
Olam slid slowly down the incline. The vegetation had been removed by the two earlier. He himself had passed through this spot a few times and noted its oddness, but trusted his gut and let it be. Likely Buchal was trying to impress his woman with some simple machismo. Couldn't blame him, but he could have chosen a better spot for it.
The carvings were exceedingly strange. It was a grave, a particularly old one, too, many like it are found upon hillsides and hilltops throughout the entire clanhold, bearing intricate glyphs utilizing all three Macha alphabets to tell family stories. But this one was different. The grave was low in the ground, and it told no story, no glory, no note with which a family or even an individual might hold themselves apart from the rest. The central Stave-word had a single point from which seven lines radiated, three on top, four on the bottom. At the end of each was a triangle or square, each with a rune inside of it. Between the lines were runes with omach line-script as annotations. He recognized the symbols and the sounds, but for the life of him they didn't look any words or names he knew.
Buchal and Konna had tentatively joined him. Olam unhooked his mallet, and they followed suit. The great crack running down the middle of the stone face was worn smooth with age. Olam bent down and laid a free hand on the bare earth, in a quick, silent prayer. He then took the mallet in both hands and with a shout crashed it into the crack. Buchal and Konna did the same. All of a sudden, a split flew across the face of it and they took a step back. Olam pushed it in with his foot. With a muffled thud it hit the earth inside the tomb.
A stench that they had barely noticed before rushed out to meet them in full. It didn't stink of the death common in the wilderness, nor of anything fresh--it was the mustiness of deep age. It caught in the throat and had to be coughed out. Konna suddenly grabbed the other two to the side.
"Do you not see it?" she said with disquiet lacing each word. She jumped back as a great black snake slunk out. Buchal kicked at it. The serpent didn't even take notice. Such a thing is why one brings grey eyes with them, thought Olam. He wondered, though, if that snake alone could have been the source of the shifting she'd heard earlier. They looked into the dark. It seemed more like a solid wall before them than shadows. They hadn't brought any torches, so the somewhat meagre light outside would have to do.
It was low, and they had to crouch and kneel within, and at the far end of the tomb, something else was crouching. A corpse that glistened darkly despite the age it should have. It sat like a beast on its haunches, and piled before it were rusted, corroded weapons of cruel aspect. But the leering cadaver and its torture instruments weren't the worst part--standing out starkly in the dark were a series of small alcoves in the earthen wall behind it. In each one, they saw, were intricately carved statuettes, or rather, idols. Of what they didn't know. They weren't the Nuad of the Macha, and neither were they southern foreigner gods. Gaping maws, faces of leering eyes, everything carved to resemble pulled and bloated flesh in horrible realism.
It was a warrior's grave, but perverted, inverted, the Macha celebrate clean slaughter and noble battle, but what was honoured here was murder and bloodshed. Olam broke each blade and shaft under his knee there in the tomb. Konna repeated what the wise man had told her, and Olam said he'd do it while the others worked on the idols. The old hunter knocked the mummy over and crushed its neck with his hammer until the head came off. He shoved a piece of the tomb face between its bared teeth, and placed the head between the knees. He couldn't help but the notice the deformed nature of the corpse while he worked. Long limbs, curling sharp fingers, and patches of what looked like snake skin.
They took one idol with them, for the dryador. The rest were dust now. Buchal removed his tunic and wrapped the thing up, not wishing to look at or touch it. The stone was rough and warmish in his hand, and he hated the idea that it might give like flesh under his grip. They returned with nothing more than some curious looks from their neighbours. It felt good to be back in the ringfort village, and even better in the dryador's house. Konna was the one who spoke to him, although Olam, as a hunter, could clarify a few things. The wise man examined the idol for a few moments before speaking.
"Aye. Some old warlord's tomb. Back from when Macha longships cut the waves and raided the south. We are proud of our might, but it let bad men do terrible things, and shadows in the forests, not our Nuad, called to them when they did those things. Buried in the ground, you say? Naturally. It was best you ruined him. I will defile this icon, you may go."
Buchal and Konna spent the day in the longhouse over mugs of mead after that, and then with Buchal's father. As they shared another mughorn of drink and stared into a fire, they talked.
"I swear I saw it move," said Konna.
"What move? You mean-"
"That...corpse. Yeah."
"Won't be moving again after what uncle did to it."
"Who do you think it was, anyway?"
"Pfff...who knows. Some old killer, like the dryador said."
"You know what they say happens with killers in the grave..."
"Aye, but we know how to deal with them don't we?"
They were quiet for a moment. The fire snapped, and Konna spoke again.
"What do you think happened to that big black snake?"
"Cannoc will trod on it and kick it into Locod's lake!" he laughed as he put his arm around her. She smiled at that, and said a little prayer into the last swig of mead as she downed it.
Heaven's Shadow
From Issue 54
A falling star sears the dark of night, leaving a blazing trail that blinds as it melts back into the formless veil. As it descends, a shrill roar of rage and vengeance pierces every heart that hears it with a blade of black ice. At the head of the astral streak, a figure like a man, encased in a carapace of shining sable, grasping the reins of a steel steed of fearsome aspect. The white hot starfire brings the golden city towers into midday radiance, and just as it makes contact with earth, does it suddenly leap back into the skies again.
Unthinkable sin has been committed in the deep reaches of the sky-flung golden sprawl. Souls denied succor and unlawful dominion wound tight across unwilling flesh. This aureate city moulders from within, and the corruption seeps just out of sight. One million souls whisper away from prying eyes, and in answer to their pleas there has come from on high Heaven's Shadow, the Living Wrath--the Darkdriver wielding the Divine Darksword, shining with soft sunlight on velvet obsidian.
Three demons, no longer men, creep through heavy shadows spreading terror to add more to their kingdom of eternal undeath. A nest of humans with hearts beating still-warm blood shriek as their cover is torn aside. They see a taloned limb gripping a terrible blade of spires, connected to a horror with a crown of a thousand eyes and a rippling body of black mercury. The soul-cleaving Tombsword rasps through the frigid atmosphere, but seconds away from mortal terror, a sound like a tolling church bell stills the air, and it stops dead upon the flat of the Darksword. A flurry of vicious strikes beats back the demon, and two eyes, each brighter than a thousand suns, stare, as in one single arc is the the Tombsword shattered and the demon cleaved in twain. Pieces of the blade rain down as the demon's quicksilver skin quickly flies back together. Wicked talons scrape off the Darkdriver, but in two masterful strokes, the arms are slashed to bits. Before it can reform, the spaces between the Darkdriver's armour boil with celestial force, an eclipse's corona envelopes the blade's edge, and the Darksword is sent through the thousand-eye crown head of the demon, turning it to dust.
Upon the backs of an endless field of slaves are the marks of dire malediction. Hovering above them, the formless dread shroud in whose long limb is held with imperious pride a blade like a shard of a stained, weathered stone: the Gravesword. Suddenly, a roar like a raging flame--the Darkdriver upon the back of his nameless beast thunder across the towering wall. The steed's head is like one long lance, and is thrust through the middle of the demon to the very hilt. No sound ushers from it, but the Gravesword flails in the air, and the Darkdriver parries each mad blow. An overhead strike sends the demon into defense...but from within some hollow of its shroud, another arm and another blade--or rather, another shard of it--is thrust forth. The Darkdriver quickly beats it aside, and desperately parries each new shard as it is thrust forth. Suddenly, several arms come together and slide their shards into place. A vile vision of the full Gravesword. The Darksword barely holds back the assault. The reins still in his other hand, the Darkdriver sends a subtle signal to his steed. The lance-head quickly looks down, and the Darksword is held in both hands above the Darkdriver's head. With a mighty yell, the Darkdriver brings his sword down as the impaled demon is thrown back up and the two meet--the Gravesword cracks and crumbles, and the shroud is torn to ribbons.
It was immaculate. Each plate, each segment a masterpiece, inlaid with burning gold upon the inscribed black sorceries. It stood within a great hall whose superhuman vastness and baroque opulence would cow a lesser soul. But in its strong, graceful hands was a weapon of such absolute minimalism it seemed incongruous. The Cryptsword, a simple tapering triangle with an elegant, smooth hilt, and pommel that was itself a short tapering pyramid. The Darkdriver's steed stood guard, its vents blasting searing steam, while Heaven's Shadow strode forth and met the demon in combat. Its defense was swift, but each strike was deliberate and calculated, so slow as to throw the Darkdriver off balance. In a moment of inspiration, the Darkdriver fell back but thrust his Darksword forward. But the demon didn't parry the strike. It turned the flat of its Cryptsword to its opponent, and the thrusting blade fell into its surface. In that moment, it looked less like a blade, and more like a shape had been cut from reality, leaving a void in its place. The Darkdriver attempted to retrieve his weapon, but the demon swung the Cryptsword to the side, ripping the Darksword from the warrior's grip. Though not lost, it lay beyond his grasp.
Barely dodging two lightspeed swipes, the Darkdriver thought fast--he grabbed the edge of the sword that came again, his fingers passing through the void either side, and pulled the Cryptsword down. The demon was wide open. The Living Wrath's mailled fist was driven into the demon's face, the next into the stomach, and another into the back of the head. Collapsed on the shattered marble floor, the Darkdriver sent his sabaton into the demon's back. As it tried to rise, blade in its hand, and a dread rumble of doom from deep within its frame, the Darkdriver leapt forward and sent the shaft of holy shadow that was his Divine Darksword into its back, through its chest, and into the ground.
Far above the golden city, shards of the Cryptsword fell harmlessly like ash. Flesh was reinvigorated as souls passed to their rightful forms, never to be en-captured again. Upon a streak of starfire, the Shadow of Heaven departed, and in his wake was left the tempering cool of a midsummer wind.
Abandoned Tomb
From Issue 56
I consider myself a seasoned traveller. I've been across the coasts of half the world, on and off, and have seen the winding routes of a dozen major river systems. Inland, I've walked, not ridden, the entire length of the Kamark Divide, and even spent several months surviving in the Grenerven Badlands. And for every region I visit, I make a point of researching local religious orders and cults, so that I might ingratiate myself with the powers of that region. If there is a temple, a monastery, shrine or what have you, I will make a donation or perform a small service. I consider it a necessary courtesy, and have encouraged others to do the same. I didn't always do this, you see. I will now let it be known now why I made the change.
Many years ago now, I was with a guide who'd fast become a friend, trekking through a region of singularly stark but striking cold desert landscape. Crags and crevices were what made up this wrinkled, windswept stretch, broken only by the odd taller butte. Utterly silent, save for our movement, and some curious shifting whose distinctness I was convinced was merely due to a lack of other ambient sounds. Though it did make me look over my shoulder once or twice. The going was difficult, a terrain suited more to mountain beasts than human beings, but each new summit rewarded us with another incredible view of this hard region.
He told me the tale of the land as we went. According to him, it didn't always look like this. Some two hundred years ago, a colossal earthquake, felt for leagues around, rent it all asunder, and that upheaval was responsible not only for the state of the region, but also for its absolute abandonment. It was like a great scar on the earth now. It had once been home to a small number of very old tribes, who kept pure some of the ancient practices this land was home to. Now not even animals lived here. Some old carvings and paintings still existed, some even uncovered by the disaster, which sages and scholars desired to study, but were kept at bay. Kept at bay by what, I asked. By the ghosts, my friend answered.
This land had been inhabited for thousands of years, long before the coming of the Lawgiver, the enlightened one who had come forth and set to rights the deplorable state of the land by spreading knowledge of the body's existence as a subtle instrument or tool. The body must be "tempered" or "tuned" through diet, moral living, ritual, by following the "Law", and then "played" or "applied" through the use of esoteric practices involving configurations of hand gestures called "locur", and various repetitive vocalizations, called "lomsor". According to this knowledge, all curses may be broken, wounds be mended, and spirits set to rest.
So, my friend continued, as we clambered atop a short, flat-topped mound of rock, the old tribes who lived here had become a kind of vanguard of the faith in this land. They'd been here forever, and the place was positively seething with ancient impurity. It was here, apparently, that the Lawgiver gave many lessons and passed much knowledge. The cold desert was a sort of holy place in that regard. But the old tribes couldn't contend with epochs of darkness under their feet, and the land was so discontent, so imbalanced, that it is believed it finally threw up the earthquake which destroyed it, killed most of the old tribesfolk, and sent the rest scattering to the winds.
It was never properly cleansed, my friend said with a hint of sorrow, and I think, fear in his voice. It is an unquiet place. Then he said, with a wry smile, that I probably noticed it myself. I said I didn't think so. Have you not noticed, my friend said, the shifting of the loose rocks that has been following us for hours now? Or was it something else that kept causing me to glance behind us so much? He chuckled as he said they were likely drawn to my impurities, no offense intended.
We were sitting atop the mound now, and he had closed his eyes and set his hands to chest in a curious gesture, and instructed me to try it myself. Yes, he anticipated me, we were being followed, and quite closely. About a mile or so back, we had actually passed an abandoned tomb. There were ones like it everywhere here, the dead of several thousand years, bones and ash and all, left to rot. That's likely what it was. If we just kept the configuration, it would leave. I was very explicitly instructed not to open my eyes. Not because it would break the "locur" we were making, but because he'd rather I didn't see what was going to appear.
There have been moments in the years past where I shudder to think if what I felt up there was a feeble desert breeze on my cheek, or something else. I've learned a number of the hand gestures now, and I practice them faithfully. I've even passed on a few to others. In my chambers or in my cabin, wherever I go, I recite them if I have a long voyage. Can't be too careful anymore.
City of Witches
From Issue 57
The sprawling port city of Khodra has a reputation. But then, so do most port cities. They're places people move through, every day, at every hour, from across the whole world, and with those people come other things. Cargos of precious goods, rare imports, or innocuous crates whose contents are whispered about in small back offices. There's always trouble and intrigue on the waterfronts, always an opportunity, always a deal or bargain to be struck over rum or from the point of a dagger. The smell of salt and fish, spices and perfumes create a heady aroma through which the chatter of a dozen different tongues wanders. But in Khodra, between the chatter, the scents, the cargo, something else is passed in a profusion whose like is unseen anywhere else in the world: sorcery.
That is Khodra's reputation, the reputation of every ship which docks along its piers, and the dark figures who skulk in the alleyways and in the shadows of lanterns at dusk. There isn't a single shack, shop or other building on the mile-long waterfront that does not have behind its misty panes some store of yellowed scrolls bearing black scrawls, or faceless poppet dolls with chest hollows waiting to take a scrap of hair or drop of blood, or long sticks of dark incense, or pouches of pungent mixtures that must never be opened.
Inland isn't much different. The towering old manors of the long-dead Imperial Governors and even modern townhouses have inside them chambers dedicated to the most visceral sorceries. Ghosts stalk the winding cobblestone of Khodra as much as they do lurk amidst the creaking halls of the oldest houses. It is said that when a storm unleashes its fury upon the stained streets, the drowned wraiths of all the world's oceans are riding the winds to Khodra.
But the city does not deal its magic in the open. One must know where to go, where to look, who to ask, and how to speak. The black market for sorcery cuts throats, binds tongues, and plucks eyes without hesitation. To purchase a spell, a curse, even a knotted rope with wind comes with the price that you, too, are now part of this kinship of secrecy. No merchant would dare admit to the secret compartment under the desk, nor would any aristocrat even concieve of letting it be known where they stash their ritual tools. Dock workers, drunks, fishermen and more scrawl bloody signs in corners away from prying eyes, and sailors hurry back to their cabins with vials of strange brews. Magic is a fact of life that rides a hidden current in Khodra.
Eternal Cathedral
From Issue 60
How long do you think it has stood there, at the summit of the broad hilltop? How many suns and moons have passed their light upon its stone, how many winds have caressed and battered it, how many rains and hails have hammered and soaked it through? However many have passed since man first stood upright is the only answer, and even then, the oldest stones that form its half-sunken base haven't even a fraction of the ancient immensity of the primal earth upon which they sit, where in elder days beasts gathered to peer at manifestations they couldn't even comprehend.
Although the word has only been in usage for perhaps three thousand years, the hilltop structure has always been a cathedral: a head and center of worship and communion, the seat of the holy of holies, the eye of the wisdom of the whole of the world. In fact, it's the only one of its kind. Humanity may have spread itself across the earth, but it has never once, in all its exploration, ever come upon another spot which even hints of manifestations of divinity. The nameless Eternal Cathedral is the one place where the veil is thin, where the spaces join, where the gate is open--the one place in all the world where man may meet and know the gods.
An ocean of blood has been spilled for this land. Enough flesh has been torn and rent asunder that were it gathered all up and pressed together, there would be enough for the gods to make another continent of sorrowful penance. Since the first two human tribes met under the air of what would become the Dome of Stars, there has been unceasing battle to control it. The Cathedral is holy land, it is THE holy land of all humankind. The wars of faith are fought with each army standing on opposite sides of the mount, gazing at the same rugged monument, and beseeching what dwells within for the same victory.
The struggle for the Eternal Cathedral never truly ended, but in recent times, it has dulled to a simmer of rivalry that merely spurts and sputters every so often. Well over a hundred different faiths have gathered in a sprawling city at the base of the tall, broad knoll upon which the Cathedral itself sits. Tens of thousands of blessings have poured from within the Dome from just as many different gods, from the stolid ancient faiths to the countless secretive cults that listen to whispers through the cracks in the Cathedral walls. Chants, calls, horns, bells, drums, bellows, and more echo down from the mount at every moment from dawn to dusk and throughout the night, religions vying constantly for the space in which to summon benevolences.
The Eternal Cathedral itself though is beautiful beyond compare. It wears its age with dignity and mystery. The very air around it is laden with primal sanctity. The sag of stone, the chip and fade of paint, but also the brilliance of the materials, the sheer size of the building, there's nothing else quite like it. It's no wonder that it receives a constant stream of travellers daily. Within is a smoky microcosm of human faith. Chains with censers lazily bleed heady incense, chimes ring in hidden currents of breath, arches and pillars are adorned with carvings of gods, saints, and spirits of such minute detail that one would be forgiven for thinking they might come alive any second. The aureate air is laden with soft shadows that does not dull its dusty lustre, but accentuates what they do not touch.
But beyond every alcove of relics and sprawl of shrine-tombs, beyond the throngs of celebrants, priests, hierophants, phylarchs, magisters and more, there is the Dome of Stars. Like a smudge of the night sky itself, redolent in blue and purple nebulae, silver shining stars, and a faint trilling which permeates everything around it. The Dome of Stars, the one place in all the world where the gods show themselves, cradled by a dome of pure gold, the divine center over which war will be fought til the end of time. And from its curious depth there manifests shapes, some look even human, but most do not. They half-descend and hang in the air, revealing their celestial forms for study, adoration, or the collection of miracles. Then they are gone, and another cult moves in to repeat the process.
Fun fact: Do you know Sean Hill doesn't actually say "What's The Beef?"