Tag: Free Fantasy

An identification ritual much like this one had nearly killed Cynthea, years ago. In a cramped, unlit cellar west of Valgrund, a miller had warned her of an ancient-looking goblet stamped with strange texts that supposedly charmed the eyes. Admar had been upstairs, asking the miller for more details as the quern-stone moaned laboriously and the riverwater rumbled beyond the cellar wall. She’d had all the components correct. Her salt lines were immaculate, her articulations clear. But she’d rushed the ritual, hadn’t known, as she knew now, that magic could never be forced by technical mastery. As with making love,…

Threehill was, as Harkital said, a quaint fart of a town.  They passed fields of grain that took up hundreds of acres, then homesteads and gardens of unimpressive design. Off in the distance, there stood the belltower of the Temple of the Heart—not quite grand, not quite proud, stretching just above the eastern quarter of the approaching settlement. Harkital noted that most Biluranian towns were built around temples of that clumsy faith, “like piss pooling ‘round a giggling baby.”  Strange wooden signs rose on either side of the road as they approached, displaying an odd collection of carved symbols: a…

When the sexton returned from digging the poor man’s grave, moonlight carved a thin sickle of white through the shed’s window. In the pale light, the corpse’s fingernails still looked wrong: grey-black and dry, almost earthy, splitting with web-thin fractures that exposed the dead flesh beneath.  With uneasy huffs and muttered curses, the sexton set his shovel aside, wiped his hands at the basin, then brought a candle to the table and lifted the corpse’s hand up to the flame’s spectral glow.  He gingerly pried at a hairline crack on the corpse’s right index finger, watching as the material crumbled…