A Statement of My Intent

A body of water, left still, inevitably rots. 

Short Story Shorter

Ah, nuts.

I didn't win the Secret Weapon competition I mentioned last month (hats off to the man who did, it was a great read). The store voucher I got instead will go a long way towards soothing my wounds, bringing various interesting terrain options my way as it does.

Now, I'm not being suckered into trying to keep the chain unbroken or anything - it was tough enough padding out December, in all honesty - but just in case anybody in the entire world is wondering, I thought I'd stick my semi-finalist piece out here. Definitely not for the chain.

No sir.

Remember what Fleetwood Mac said.
That's right. Don't stop thinking about tomorrow.

Phlologue

Night.

The bulwarks of Clan Garn's Hearthold didn't look quite as Phlothos remembered. Perhaps it was the passage of time, the inevitable creep of stonesplitting ivy and lichen that had eroded the features of the embossed guardians. Perhaps his mind was playing tricks.

Perhaps it was the gaping holes where his sorcerers had conjured rains of sour venom, leaving nothing but dead earth and burnt stone.

Reskinning

The Ruinous Rover

Captain Karkan's ship, the Brass Mermaid, was a whaler out of Erengrad. A small, fast ship, it could keep up with the sleek blackwhales that bred in the nearby Sea of Claws, and turned a decent profit bringing their carcasses in to port to be stripped for fat, meat and tough hide. 

This changed on the day the first mate, Dorgsky, spotted a sinking vessel during a hunting trip. 

Death, Be Not Proud

They had him trapped.

The Grey Wizard's lair was an unassuming place. A milliner's on the outside, making and selling fine hats for the gentry of Kemperbad. Excellent cover for the use of strange chemicals and unusual materials. Who would guess that mercury and peacock feathers were being put to more esoteric purposes than the creation of fashion? The hatmaker and his wife were no doubt pawns of the wizard. Well-thought of locally. They would have to be careful.

Death and Shadow

"Is he dead?" the masked man asked.

"The Pharoah is avenged!" the second one replied, holding his bloody hammer aloft. The announcement did nothing to prevent the panic of their fellows, running amock over the many tiers of the Deliverance Engine. Whirling pistons and shrieking valves did nothing but add to the picture of bedlam. A man balancing in a large copper dish in the middle of it all really wasn't going to make any difference, even if he was waving a gory hammer and yelling about revenge.

"His body!" the first Shining Sun cultist asked. "What's happening to it?"

The hammer-wielder looked down. At his feet, the corpse of the shadow wizard was folding in on itself. He could feel it melting under him, collapsing like a bag of snow in an oven.

"I don't understand," he managed to say.

And then there was light.

Roaring He Shall Rise

Bruno walked down the ruined street in silent awe.

The witch hunter Schorsch Undrache paced warily alongside him, axe in hand. Their feet scraped on the cobbles. It was the only sound after the battle. Running through the streets behind his master, unable to keep up, they'd heard the roar of the fight. Screams, the clatter of steel on steel, clarions trying to restore military order.

Then a great blaze of light, a great grinding sound like the rolling of massive millstones, and silence.

Dying of the Light

The Pharoah's head exploded with a sound like a hippo biting on a cabbage.

Shadow and Light

I shall not smile, thought The Pharoah.

Members of the Shining Sun stood round him in overlapping circles, arranged all over the many decks of the Deliverance Engine. He had personally instructed the acolytes in its use. Not that user error could be entirely eliminated, of course.

But these weren't cultists, hoping for quick power through risky means. Or acolytes, mere mules to haul energy. These were scientists, the finest minds of their generation. Some were his fellows of old from the Light College, men and women he'd graduated with. They'd all worked hard for this.

At the cardinal axes stood Foci, the senior elected members of the group. Not that all of them could really be considered senior, exactly. Somebody had been picking off many of the original founding members.

Somebody who had been dealt with.

Death and Beasts

They'd been at the inn for all of half an hour when the Witch Hunter turned up.

Bruno was so exhausted, he could barely concentrate on what the man was saying. He pushed his plate of stew away, glad of an excuse not to finish it. He wasn't hungry. He kept seeing the life drain out of that woman's face as his magic gripped her.

Unbearable Lightness

Schaeffer screamed.

The light was everywhere. It was everything. It was tearing through him, impaling him on brilliant shafts. His auric armour was being ripped away, taking hanks of hair and skin with it.

Around him, scintillating figures hammered at his golden guards, smashing them apart with hammers of pure white energy. The sky, if it was a sky, was painful to see. And the clouds of tidal magic that scudded underfoot reflected that same searing light.

The Pharoah was an impossibly vast figure, somehow both as bright as the midday sun and dark as its eclipsed corona at once. He seemed to flicker, although the flickers brought no shadow. He brought light to the world, he was the world. Schaeffer cowered at his annihiliating presence

And then he was gone.

Life in the Shadows

The Museum was near silent again. The tall ceiling drank up sound in the same way that the gloomy halls drank light. The distant drumming of the rain outside, that was all now. A gentle fire had started in one corner, where a dropped lantern had fallen on the foot of a heavy tapestry. If it was quiet now, it was the sort of quiet that promised worse to come.

The Beast of Heaven

Victor von Esel felt good.

He liked horses. He liked their simple, easily-understood minds. He shared their love of speed. They were strong and healthy creatures, a study of muscular action wrapped in sinew and skin. Horses, he could have a conversation with.

Pity they'd eaten them all under the influence of his savage spells.

Dying Fire

It hardly seemed fair, in the end.

Gesper hadn't even arrived by the time the duel was supposed to begin. He'd been moping around the tower even more than usual, sighing into mirrors and making cryptic allusions to the end of all things. He sent Bruno on ahead with apparently deep regret, but then everything he did was mired in such. It was impossible to say how much was showmanship and how much was the kind of chronic depression you got from spending your entire life contemplating death.

Bruno sat on a horse amidst a stern group of his father's knights and waited, wondering what he was supposed to do if his master didn't show. Could he call the duel off?

Metal and Light

The machine took up fully four fifths of the warehouse, filling the creaky wooden structure with gleaming pipework, glinting angular crystals on revolving mounts, vents that snorted occasional gouts of icy vapour and a twitching array of needled dials.

"Ready?" asked Schaeffer, his oil-spattered yellow overalls buckled tightly to his lean form.

"Ready," confirmed the wizard known only as The Pharoah. In his full ceremonial splendour, backed by a quintet of acolytes, he certainly had the stage presence of some ancient Arabyan lord. The difficult-to-master powers of Hysh, the Light Wind, were his to command.

Shadow and Life

"You're a plague in the town's body, nothing more, Farren!" Arabella Artz called into the empty museum. "It's time to cure the disease!"

Beside her, the captain of the town's soldiers stood alert, sword drawn in one hand, lantern held aloft in the other. His men were scattered through the wings of the museum behind them.

"There's nothing there," he whispered to her. "Just shadows."

Sure enough, the hallways were dark. Darker even than the stormy night outside seemed to warrant. Arabella snorted impatiently and marched forward, forcing the soldiers to keep pace. Her polished boots echoed on the tiled floor. Stuffed animals stared from glass cases, portraits of ancient Teutognans gazed down from the walls. But of the traitorous wizard Xander Farren, there was no sign.

Heavens and Beasts

"Of the skies!"

"Of the land!"

"I tell you it's of the skies!"

"Land!"

Herr Bleimpf cleared his throat politely. Neither wizard paid him any attention. Nor had they, since beginning their clash in his office.

"It has wings! It is quite clearly an emblem of the skies!"

"It's got the heart of a beast, the mind of a beast and the temper of a wild bloody beast! If you think it's anything but a beast, you're an even greater clod than you look!"

Fire and Death

"I'm ready," Gesper announced. Bruno, his apprentice, looked up.

"Ready, master?" he asked.

"Yes. Send out the challenge. We shall see who takes up the gauntlet first."

Bruno swallowed. As one of the masters of the Lore of Death, he'd expected Gesper von Sterben to be a morbid sort of man. He'd not been expecting the turn of events his master was putting into action, however.

"Are you certain, master?"

"Death calls to us. The omens are clear," Gesper said, stalking to the window of their decrepit tower room and pressing his wan face against the glass. It overlooked a miasmatic stretch of gloomy swamp. Cypresses wreathed the few hummocks that managed to emerge from the water. Crows hacked and cawed as they circled overhead.

Storm and Calm

Odeou chuckled to himself.

The campsite was carnage. He could hear the screams from his hiding place, a good couple of miles distant. Sinister lightnings flickered from low clouds, underlit in the night by burning tents. Shadows flickered along the sides of the valley as warmachine and wizard alike erupted with the pent-up violence that had simmered all along under the unnatural misery his generals had laboured under.

He could hear the shrill keening of witch elves, ululating as they slaughtered. And the presence of demons sent flickering shudders up his back. The gods were watching, all right. He could almost see their faces in the thunderheads.

In his lap, the frozen tears were slowly sliding back together. It was too soon to say exactly whose brow they might adorn. Odeou had his hopes, though.

Hunchbacked and bitter though he was, he was still kin to the greenskins. The primitive tribal orcs he'd recruited were hopelessly outmatched in the thick of the melee, despite their brutal strength. The other generals might be unwinding after months of repression, but they still had some elegance, some finesse in their violence. The orcs were killing each other as often as they killed anything else.

Odeou just hoped there would be enough of them left over to finish the Grey.

Losers

Odeou Shabapnup grimaced. It was no good, he just wasn't miserable enough.

Hard to admit to himself, but the hobgoblin shaman knew what defeat looked like only too well. And here he was again, staring right at it.

He'd been great once. Master of a mighty collection of tribes, his word had ruled the actions of what was nearly civilisation. Unusual, for his people. Usually they either served or were dinner for the larger or more organised creatures found out in the wilderness. But unique amongst the hobgoblins, he had forged something that was almost an empire.

Then the Empire had come.