Tag: fiction

Tarot

I have mentioned it before in the most fleeting sense, but one of the long-standing goals of the Rale project has been to produce a Tarot-inspired (though structurally not really) deck of cards depicting images from the world as exemplars of the ways that humans fight death.

Many of the images themselves have been ready for some time, but they have been waiting on frames. They need frames, of course, because the frame is what indicates the card’s suit. Like so:

Cruelty and Control are here presented in the “Viscera” suit. Blame is in the “Gifts” suit, and God is in “Stories”. Not pictured here are “Embraces” and “Avoidance”, as they are still in progress, but these came together so beautifully that I had to share.

Way down the road, a deck is in the works, but if you like any of these, they are now for sale on the store!

Images include work by Quinn Milton and Rae Johnson. The “Tarot” suit frames in particular are by Rae.

The Crossroads, Chapter 4: Marko

The saga continues. Those who have been following Rale for some time will recognize the pieces of the original Crossroads story here.

The Crossroads had always been between.  Of the townsfolk who still remembered, there were yet many versions of the town’s history.  Brill the Apothecary’s was closest to the truth: It began as a tiny trading post, a makeshift connection between the waterways of the Riverlands and the mountains and woods to the north, situated at a crossroads which existed in every sense but the literal.  That enterprise which would become the town was built at the northern mouth of the Lifeline, where the Riverlands’ greatest highway became just another minor stream from the Gravestone range and where, incidentally, the eastern prairies and western hills were separated only by a thin stripe of dry, firm ground, more hospitable, certainly, than whatever hid between the trees of the Bloodwood to the north.  As the rickety post became a place, merchants and enterprisers would enter by each of these routes of convenience, transient but somehow still fixture, carrying lumber and pelts and cloth and ore.

Sometimes they would pass through; sometimes they would return the way they came, but those who settled, those who came to call the place home did well for themselves in those days.  They made fortunes in trade, and anything they could want in return somehow found its way there from afar.  And of course, those plagued by wanderlust had no shortage of opportunity to escape.  All they had to do was jump in with the next caravan that came to town, and they would most assuredly see the world.

The War was not kind to the place, but even that was mitigated by its betweenness.  The town was far enough south that it saw its share of the roaches’ horrors but still northerly enough that its people, broadly speaking, survived.  Its young men and women proudly aided the forces of Harmony at the Battle of the Ouroboros, weathered the devastation of the “bloodsick”–the Dragon’s parting gift to those who deposed him–then returned to a peaceful existence at their Crossroads.  For a short, in-between time, things were as they had always been.  But soon, new wares began to make their way through the village, and with those wares came news.

It seemed Lord Ka of the Roaches had kept a secret from the world.  It was a stone, rough, heavy to hold, unimpressive to the eye.

But the power.

To the mystics, the magically inclined–no matter their inexperience–it was a sun.  At the fall of Bloodhull, soldiers of Harmony who had never once in their lives channeled mana held this stone–the Hellstone, as it came to be known–and felt that power, that gruesome possibility thrumming in their hands.  They said that Harmony destroyed the Hellstone, that its power might never be unleashed upon the world again.  Some did not believe that story, but they missed the point.  The Hellstone’s legacy was not its power–rather it was a realization: Such objects could exist, objects that would make gods even of petty fools like Lord Ka.  

The art of putting magic into inert things was not new–hedge mages had been quietly crafting oddities for centuries.  None had possessed such power as the Hellstone, but after its discovery, that hardly mattered.  A plain man with ten or twenty weak but useful magical artifacts could play at the same superhumanity.  A new order was materializing then about a delicate but ruthless balance between mankind’s lust for power and a fear among the powerful that they may at any moment be devoured by those seeking their possessions.  In this order, the Crossroads, which had always been between, became an in-between for a different sort of trade.

At first, the artifacts were simply commodities.  Merchants who previously sold spice or textiles would arrive at the village, carts laden with curios and magical knickknacks they had bought at a pittance from looters and refugees.  Most of them were useless: stones that would chirp birdsong when thrown to the ground, a silver fish sculpture that bled an endless stream of effervescent crimson from its eyes; but the ones that weren’t found purpose with alacrity.  One villager–Sam, the cooper’s son–was murdered in broad daylight by one of the merchants’ customers, who had used a pair of gloves that rendered his hands and their activities unnoticeable.  And when the guards simply failed to apprehend the assailant, the proper merchants saw the signs.  Most left the trade.  Many left the region entirely.  Either way, the village saw fewer of them from then on.

Of course, lust for power and the knowledge that enabled it would never fade away simply for lack of sellers.  Even then there were those hovering at the fringes of civilization with fearsome arsenals and stores of wealth, willing to make very rich the one who brought them a means of surpassing their rivals.  But they were murderers.  For all their wealth and power, everyone knew they were cutthroats, and no trinkets, no magical elevation could change that.  It was no secret they would just as soon save their money and kill for what they wanted if it was an option.  What was missing, then, was a class of trader capable of persuading them toward the latter.

It was Marko who solved this problem for the Crossroads.  He had always been a scoundrel, well-connected in spite of his sclerosed reputation, surviving on his ability to find buyers for the occasional item the merchant overclass knew it should not have.  His arrival there had been timely.  In another era, Mayor Bergen might have had him jailed for one of his violent altercations at the tavern, his lewd demeanor, any of his all-too-public vices; but with the town’s mercantile lifeblood crowded out by the “scav trade”, Marko’s ability to sell the artifacts–as a middleman for the merchants who were no longer willing to face their buyers themselves–saved the livelihood of everyone there.

So it was that the Crossroads remained between: between Holme to the east and the Reach to the south; between the Bloodwood and the Riverlands and the plains and the hills; between the desperate scavs and the respectable merchants and the mercenaries who protected them and the townsfolk who made that place function and the “False Gods”, those buyers of the scav trade who propelled the entire system on with gold in one hand and abject brutality in the other.  And somehow, Marko was between it all, his greasy promises and fine-tuned survival instincts connecting those trustless, unconnectable lines which made the town a town.  Of that in-between place, Marko was its most between part.

But Captain Lan al’Ver was not about to be outdone by a scoundrel like Marko.

His errands were complete, his modest shipments had all been sold, his generous, dangerous, precisely calibrated allotment of free time had begun, and he could think of no better way to spend it than inserting himself, needed but unwanted, amidst the business of the most between man in the most between place in the Riverlands.  It was only appropriate recompense for such uppity behavior, the Captain concluded, making his way to the door of the sprawling, patchwork building Marko had made his base of operations.  He did not knock, of course–now was not a time for courtesy.  It was a time for welcome surprises.  He pulled the door open and strode into the wide, familiar interior of Marko’s “office”.

The traveler, Naples, had been correct: The build had originally been constructed as a theater by a retired merchant some centuries ago, though it only functioned as one for a short time.  The owner, it turned out, was a rather thorny artist who in short order managed to alienate every thespian in the region, and he soon sold his investment to a consortium of stall traders who utilized the structure far longer–and far more prosaically–as a warehouse.  It was only in the last two decades, under Marko’s management, that it had returned to a theatrical operation, though Marko had shaken up the formula somewhat.

Predictably, in Marko’s new “theater”, he was the spectacle.  His desk sat prominently upon the raised area which once had been a stage, leaving his customers and contractors to address him from the spacious area below, long barren of any sort of seating, though cluttered at the periphery by empty crates and other miscellaneous junk.  But Marko had included a twist in the arrangement of his spectacle: The stage was lit sparingly, a single torch at its edge affording just enough light to discern Marko himself behind the desk and little else of his disposition.  His audience’s floor, meanwhile, was furnished with braziers, torchstands, and even two scrapwood chandeliers, all spilling their revealing shine onto every corner of the space.  It was only appropriate, Lan admitted, for a man who exclusively traded with the untrustworthy.

Today’s visit would deviate little from that setup, Lan gathered, confirming the specificity of his surroundings as he swept into the space, purposefully ignorant to the consternation his entrance had elicited from Marko and his guest, the self-described Khettite monk who had earlier paid for passage aboard Lan’s own vessel.

“Ey!” Marko barked, hefting a crossbow over the top of his desk, unaimed but angled threateningly in Lan’s direction.  “This conversation’s private.  Come back when you’ve made an appointment.”

“Cease your jest, knave!” Lan shouted back.  “Lan al’Ver waits not for petty schedules!  I am needed here–’tis plain.”  The monk’s jaw clenched, eyes darting about the cavernous space, no doubt planning his egress.  Marko, for his part, just groaned.

“Ah, feck.  It’s you.”  Then, to the monk: “Relax, mate.  He’s just saving you the effort.”  The monk blinked, nonplussed.

Lan dragged over a crate and seated himself on the edge, polishing the handle of his umbrella as Marko explained:

“Intel you want’s got a price, an’ the price is a job.  Got a juicy scav tip I need you to follow up on.  You bring back somethin’ good, I’ll tell you what you need to know.”

“I’m not sure my circumstances allow me the time to run errands,” the monk replied.

“Well I’m not sure I have the spare clout to be just tellin’ you where to find my clients,” Marko spat.

“So you did sell it, then?”

“You got what you’re gonna get, kiddo.  Now do I get a yes or a no?”  The monk frowned, crossing his arms.

“Fine,” he caved.  Then, gesturing at Lan: “So where does he come in?”  Marko sat back, the shadows falling back over his face.

“Two details,” he replied, the acoustics of the room giving the words an otherworldly echo.  “First, I’m gathering from my source that this tip ain’t exactly exclusively info.  Second, it’s about a day’s journey upriver by boat.  Much longer on foot.  Y’see where this is going?”  The monk looked again at Lan.

“I’m going to need a boat.”

“Bingo,” Marko said.  “Some muscle, too, case you find competition, I’d say.  Trust you’re game, al’Ver?”

“My appetite for danger is insatiable, dear Marko.”

“Great,” Marko continued.  “Ask around town if you want an extra set of hands.  I’ll pay normal scav rates for each o’ya, along with your intel.”

“We’ll get going, then,” the monk said, reservedly.  “Though I do ask that you let me know before you bring another into our talks next time.”  Marko raised an eyebrow before glancing over at Lan.  He hawked a wad of spit onto the corner of his stage.

“Best get used to the Riverlands, kiddo.  I didn’t call nobody–Captain al’Ver shows up where he’s needed, and that’s all any of us get to know about that.”

Lan beamed, smugly aloof to the monk’s evident dissatisfaction.  But amidst his implicit gloating, he raised a finger, calling attention to a point of order which had now vexed him for some minutes.

“I do of course with to query,” he began.  “Is it your intent that the girl should accompany us as well?”  Both the monk and Marko answered only with a confused stare.

“What girl?” the monk asked.  Lan shrugged and raised his hand in the vague direction of the girl, dirty, ragged, clutching a threadbare stuffed animal, perched on a crate near the edge of Marko’s stage who now stared back at Lan, her face white with fear.  Marko turned, following the gesture.  His eyes went wide.  He reached for his crossbow.

The Crossroads, Chapter 3: Old Friends

An hour later, Bleeding Wolf stumbled on the tradesmen’s street, equal parts chagrined and impressed.  He had fallen into the trap of thinking the captain a generous man.  Instead, it seemed he was a clever one, though Bleeding Wolf had to give him credit: He really was cleverer than most.  

It was no matter, though.  Lack of care had landed him with worse consequences.  This would simply need to be a reminder.  He pulled his vest back over his shoulders and gave his surroundings a glance.  The street was longer than he remembered–the last few years had evidently treated the Crossroads well–but the surge in the town’s fortunes had cost him his bearings.  It was another fifteen minutes of sullen wandering before he finally came upon his destination.

“Dog Boy!”

The greeting came from under the awning of a smithy, uttered by the old proprietor, looking bemusedly up from his workbench.

“Gene, you look older than ever!” Bleeding Wolf replied with a smirk.  He ducked through the doorway, out of the sun.

“And you still look like a damn kid.”

“The mana yet flows.”

“That’s dangerous talk these days, what with our clientele, and the Shell knows I ain’t riskin’ the bloodsick for an ugly babyface like yours.”

“The warning is…appreciated, though,” Bleeding Wolf replied, leaning against the counter.  “Are they actually coming into town now?”  Gene scoffed.

“Big bads ‘emselves?  I sure hope not.  Marko don’t meet with ‘em here anyhow.  But they got ears to the ground, and words are loud hereabouts.”  Bleeding Wolf glanced out the door at the empty alley across the way.  For a moment, a strange scent tinged the air.  Sugar.  Uncomfortable sweetness.  Then it was gone.  He turned back to Gene.

“Who’s shopping these days?”

“Sculptor, per usual,” Gene said, polishing the knife blade he was working when Bleeding Wolf came in.  “Stays in Holme, of course, but you see whitefrocks here every day.  ‘Yond that, Marko’s got a mystery buyer who’s ‘parently throwin’ cash around wild-like, and then you got the less savory ones hangin’ on the periphery.”

“Less savory?”

“Ya know,” Gene adjusted his spectacles, “the Blaze has his…uh…people around, and I heard a rumor that Old Ouroboros himself put out a buy order a few weeks back.”  Bleeding Wolf let out a low growl at nothing in particular.

“Good to see you’re still on the gossip,” he said, sincere in spite of his choice of words.  “Tell me Marko didn’t sell.”

“Woulda killed ‘im m’self if he did,” Gene replied, glancing back down at his bench.  “Not sure the rest of the Crossroads woulda understood, though.  Town’s changed, Dog Boy.  ‘Tween the bloodsick and the newcomers from the scav trade, most folks round here don’t remember the war.  Maybe they know it’s what took their gramps, but they never saw those roaches or the…stitched things the Dragon had in ‘is basement.”

“Probably for the best.”  Gene spat.

“If the bastard were gone, maybe!  But he ain’t!  He’s still here, the old timers are all gone ‘cept me, and the damn fools holdin’ Marko’s leash don’t know what they’re dealin’ with.”

“The Bergen boy?” Bleeding Wolf ventured.  There was a long pause, then Gene sighed.

“I’ll hold my tongue,” he said.  Another pause, shorter, then: “What have you been doin’ these last five years?”

“Odd jobs around the Bloodwood.  Then I took a trip down south.  Just…trying to understand.”

“What’s there to understand?”

“Well, what’s left, for one.  Seems like after the war the Riverlands were ready to bloom again.  Then a few decades go by, the scav trade gets big, and the Crossroads and Holme and the Reach, they all do well for themselves.  But I realized I’d stopped hearing about everywhere in between.”

“And?”  Bleeding Wolf shook his head.

“There isn’t much there anymore.  Lots of stops I remember on the riverfront between here and the Reach.  Just damp and scrapwood now.  Some signs of violence, though I couldn’t tell you if it was before or after everyone left.  It’s like everywhere but here is just dying, Gene.”

“Certainly a shame,” Gene said, setting aside his knife.  “Something we oughtta be worried about, y’reckon?”

“We should definitely be worried,” Bleeding Wolf replied.  “Though fuck me if I can say what of.”

“Well I ain’t gonna fuck you, so I guess I’ll just wait’n’see.”  Bleeding Wolf cracked a smile at the retort, but he found himself distracted again by the sudden, intrusive taste of sugar at the back of his mouth.  Instinctively, he glanced back at the alleyway to see a boy, perhaps fourteen, slumped there against the wall.  Strange.  How long had he been there?

“I’m worried about those two,” Gene said, following his gaze.

“Two?”

“Boy and his sister.  Came in with a caravan a few weeks back, but I think they was just hitchin’ a ride.”

“They begging?” Bleeding Wolf asked.  “I didn’t think the merchants were a charitable lot.”

“He’s sick an’ ain’t doin’ much of anything I can see.  Pretty sure she’s stealin’ from market stalls.  Peacekeeper’ll get wise soon, but I pity ‘em all the same.  Ain’t their fault the world gone cutthroat.”

“It ain’t.”  For a moment, they sat in silence, contemplating the boy’s dead-eyed expression.  Then Gene spoke up again:

“How long’ll ya be in town this time?”

“Not sure,” Bleeding Wolf replied.  “A day or two, maybe.  Think I’ll see if Marko has any work.  If I’m gonna be worrying about abandoned villages and unseen threats, I might as well check with him anyway.”

“He certainly knows all ‘bout threats,” Gene agreed bitterly.

The Crossroads, Chapter 2: Irregulars

From here.

It had occurred before to Bleeding Wolf that the Riverlands were something of a confused identity, but the point always felt most salient when he found himself aboard a boat.  He hated boats.  They were wretched, unstable things riding arrogantly upon tangles of opaque current and manifest unreliability.  And yet, boats were the only decent way to get about west of the Scrubline, and Bleeding Wolf tolerated them for his debt to the place.  Since the war, the Green had been the only purpose he’d really known.  He belonged with it, and it, for better or worse, belonged here.

Nonetheless, despite his tenuous misery on the water, he had to admit the journey of the last week had been interesting.  He’d bargained for passage up the Lifeline from Captain Lan al’Ver, an eccentric merchant whose aloof manner and patchwork, ersatz aesthetics might have led Bleeding Wolf to seek help elsewhere, if not for the man’s surprisingly widespread reputation for reliability.  Indeed, though this was their first meeting face-to-face, Bleeding Wolf had heard the name Lan al’Ver many times, and so far, it seemed the man’s notoriety was well-earned.

Since the trip began, no fewer than twenty passengers had boarded–and since departed–their small, six-person vessel.  Lan had asked only a pittance of Bleeding Wolf, provided he would help with portage when they reached their destination, but with each new face that boarded, the captain’s negotiations seemed to take a strange, new turn.  In each case, he would offer much more than was asked–he even once fought off a pair of bandits who had chased one hapless passenger into the river–and received more than he requested.  By the time they had reached the fork with the Artery, Lan had made himself several times Bleeding Wolf’s fare, the boat was laden with food and goods and an impractical bounty of knickknacks left in gratitude by the erstwhile passengers-in-distress, and, somehow, they had suffered no particular delay for their semi-charitable excursions.

And now, in the final leg of the journey, they had picked up two final traveling companions, each conspicuous in their way amidst the Riverlands’ fluctuating normalcy.  The first was a quiet, paranoid man who offered coin for passage and no other information, whose evident desire for anonymity was likely undercut by the strangeness of his garb.  Bleeding Wolf recognized it as Khettite, though he’d thought all remnants of Khet had disappeared from the Riverlands by now.

The second somehow managed to be even stranger, despite his complete disinclination toward secrecy.  His name was Naples, and where the previous passenger could scarcely be persuaded to open his mouth, Naples seemed quite unable to shut his own.  He was traveling to the Crossroads, he explained between bites of an apple, to reunite with his lover, with whom their smoldering romance could not continue in the vicinity of her father, and also for the historic architecture, apparently.

“Did you know the Crossroads is home to the oldest theater in the Riverlands?” he asked, tossing his apple core over the side of the boat.  “It’s not used as a theater anymore, of course, but don’t you think something like that ought to be better recorded for posterity?”

Bleeding Wolf very much did not give a shit, but he found Naples just as bizarre as he was offensive.  He didn’t like the man’s carefree attitude, and he especially didn’t like his obliviousness to the concept of hunger.  Not because it was an insult–rather, these days, people who didn’t go hungry had a reason for their comfort, and the less obvious those reasons, the less they were to be trusted.  

For his part, Lan seemed entirely unperturbed by the subject of architecture, throwing in a haughty exhortation that Naples “ought rightly to have laid eyes on the Grand Amphitheater of the World City,” which earned a raised eyebrow from the would-be scholar.  Deservedly, Bleeding Wolf thought.  No history he had ever encountered mentioned an amphitheater in Kol, and even if it had existed, he doubted Lan had the requisite centuries of age necessary to have seen it.

Still, despite Bleeding Wolf’s guarded suspicion, the thread of conversation–Naples musings on various useless miscellanea met by Lan’s boasts and impossible one-upmanship–persisted for days, abating only as they pulled ashore on the Crossroads’ southern outskirts.  Naples and the Khettite disembarked quickly and politely, leaving Bleeding Wolf to help Lan with the boat, as agreed.  He admittedly wasn’t sure how the merchant intended to secure the various windfalls he had accumulated along the way, but that certainly wasn’t his concern.

“Do you want it beached here?” he asked, hopping ashore, gripping a line lashed to the vessel’s bow.

“Oh, heavens no,” Lan replied.  “We’ll be taking it into town.”  As he spoke, he wrenched down a lever near the rudder, lowering four wheels, previously nestled in alcoves in the boat’s hull, into the water.  Bleeding Wolf’s eyes widened.

“What?”

The Crossroads, Chapter 1: Orphelia

Coming from here. I’m going to try posting these in more bite-sized pieces, since I’ve been a little quiet on here lately. Hope you all are doing well.

Orphelia’s welcome, she gathered, was beginning to wear out.  Admittedly, she was surprised it had taken this long.  Most villages in the Riverlands would have noticed her and Devlin immediately, regarded the vagrant children with a tepid, kind suspicion, which would inevitably fade to hostility as their naked intent–to take full advantage of any kindness or carelessness mistakenly offered–became clear.  This town was different, though.  It had bustle, traffic in and out, and along with the stream of caravans and trade boats and wandering merchants, there was a matching current of vagrants and parasites through the town’s auspices, among which she and her brother encountered only superficial resistance.

It helped that since the Bad Stuff, she had found it much easier to be places without demanding attention.  She just needed to follow Mr. Ruffles’ instructions: Stand here.  Walk over there if they move too close.  Take the fish from the stall when they look away.  It was weird they didn’t react, even when they could see her so plainly, but Mr. Ruffles wasn’t worried about it, so neither was she.

Still, even in the mess of moving faces, someone sees yours too many times, and they start getting suspicious.  Two weeks on, the blacksmith, a gruff, addled man with sooty hands, approached her and Devlin in the alley opposite his shop one morning.

“Which caravan was you two with?” he asked.  “Best get back to ‘em.  They’s prob’ly lookin’ for you.”  She feigned bleariness, pretended to have just woken up.  Then she muttered something about lozenges and dragged Devlin away, just as he began coughing again.  It could have gone worse, she supposed, but it also wasn’t as if her noncommittal mumbling had convinced him of anything in particular.  Now he recognized her, and that recognition was one step closer to the truth that their caravan–which they’d been a part of for a full day and a half–had departed a week ago, no doubt glad of their absence.  And that, of course, was one step closer to things Orphelia needed to keep hidden.

It had been long enough, she decided.  Others would notice soon, start asking questions.  Then the Bad Stuff would happen again.  She and Devlin needed a ticket out of here–or a pretext for staying above suspicion–but Devlin was sick: The two of them would be bandit fodder out on the roads alone, and she didn’t trust that the town might pity them.  Pity required a story, and stories invited questions too.

She had been thinking on it all morning, but nothing was coming.  She clutched Mr. Ruffles to her chest as she steadied Devlin against the side wall of the inn.  Mr. Ruffles was normally so helpful, but he wasn’t talking today.  Today it was just scared thoughts in her head, Devlin’s labored breathing, and the busy sounds of commerce on the market street before them.  She watched it numbly, stowing the foreboding certainty that nothing was alright beneath the experiential barrage of simply being amidst the Crossroads marketplace.  Time passed, some minutes or hours–she wasn’t paying attention to which.  Then a break in the market’s ebb and flow caught her eye.

Down the street, she saw a strange, unwieldy contraption break through the masses.  Nominally, it was a wagon–a particularly large one, perhaps–but the ways in which it was not a wagon seemed just as important as the ways in which it was.  Specifically, it was also quite clearly a trade raft, one of the flat-bottomed, shallow barges that Father’s river caravans had used, though this raft had been fitted with wheels, affixed to the sides by some mechanism Orphelia couldn’t quite discern from her sideline vantage.  Regardless of–or perhaps because of–these modifications, the craft should have been quite heavy, which made it all the stranger that it should have been pulled by a single man, shirtless, wild-eyed, veritably tattooed by scars, as another–its owner, likely–rode atop it, waving greetings to the stalltenders all along the marketplace.

The Age of Heroes and Horrors

Another expositional story by Leland. Edited by me.

All us left the city after the bureaucrats fell. There was nothing there no more.

However much the food was a problem an’ those bureaucrats shit at solving it. When nobody was there. It got a lot worse. Can’t feed no thousands people with no planning. Chaos in the street what it was.

Only law was they ol’ blood knights. But they turn real nasty. Blood knight want your house, want your food, they don’t give a rat whisper ‘bout you. They kill you like they kill your mama. They ain’t got no more blood god, like a preacher an’ no church. They just nothin’. Big ole freaky piles o’ nothin’ with unbreakable skin an’ a sense o’ entitlement.

We had to find food. Find land for growing food. Become farmers. A whole world become farmers. Everyone hungry then, thousands people. All roaming the countryside stealing everything. All dangerous people, smart people, social people. But that didn’t matter nothin’. Don’t matter if you talk good, lie good. That don’t make no food grow from the ground.

Everyone learned how to become farmers real quick though. You figure out how to tear up the earth, plant seeds, never let no fruit get thrown away like the old time. No way. No garbage dumps. You use everything. Your poop, mama poop, the donkey poop. It was a dirty, simple kinda life.

Tiny little villages start poppin’ up. With stupid names. Things like “River Crossing” because there a river with a dirt path that cross it. Mostly trade posts where people sit for half day chattin’. Not a lot o’ chit chat on the old farm you see. Mostly the traderfolk knew what was what a little bit around an’ people wanna hear news. Most the news was gossip. 

Some the farmers though, they didn’t like this new life. Used to be someone. Used to be someone important. Had a nice life in the world city. Didn’t need t’ work hard on the farm. Some these people had some real nasty magic too. Power didn’t go nowhere an’ at the beginning ain’t nobody have nothing to steal. But after first five years or so, they ol’ blood knights start popping like wasps durin’ the summer time. Nasty little gangs o’ em, three, four, five. Come to a farm, demand food, maybe murder someone, maybe rape ‘em. Horrible little creatures they was. 

Villages start posting bounties on some these nasty types. They didn’t like no gangs o’ bullies an’ robber man coming in, messing up the place. Some those used-to-be-someone people start doing the bounty trade. Hunt down these washed up, second rate demons roam round.

Trade grow an’ grow ‘tween villages like River Crossing an’ Forest Lake. More bounties an’ bullies walk round. A certain kind of peace come durin’ these times. Not so safe on dirt roads in the middle. But in a trade post you were safe enough. Then the Monsters start really poppin’ up. Things just had enough magic no one could deal with ‘em at all. Creatures like them mages o’ the back before. Nothing powerful as the blood god, but powerful enough. They know not t’ always fight everyone. Some of them was even likable for awhile. Some of them talked real nice. But they always want weird things, strange things, twisted things.

They live on a mountain top and want virgin boys every month like some sort of moon ritual. If you don’t pay up they burn a field with hellfire. It weren’t good to live near a Monster. But it weren’t’ all bad neither. The crops grow better near, they give you these little gifts, cure the sick children sometimes. Some people worshipped ‘em.

Was all a matter of chance. Whether that old mage lived just out of town would help you or

turn on you. Never know who that stranger walked in was. They gonna cure the pox? Or they takin’ a child at midnight?

It weren’t a safe way to live.  But better than starvin’.

Words From a Severed Head

Shall Harmony reign, yet in his wake

Lie severed heads whose fortunes bore

Craven lies and notes of strife

But also those whose scales returned to balance with their vengeful roar

For each great circle ‘scribed thereof in single voice the headless spake:

***

There was once a man who wished to hide from the truth.  He gathered his flock and said unto them: “See how we cower in servitude before death and shadow.  Do you not wish to escape this tyranny?”  They did, the flock replied, but they could see no path, no way by which they might escape.  So the man gathered the clouds from the sky and wrapped them about his people, that when the agents of death came to find them, they encountered only mist and lies.  The man then swept his flock and his clouds both to a peak rising high above the land, and from there, they ascended to the heavens.

***

There was once a man who realized the world was a lie.  He saw what the Man of the Clouds had wrought.  He saw that what was real had been split in twain.  Others beheld the city in the clouds and declared it fantasy, an escape from reality.  But this man questioned: Was the world they had escaped any more real?  Was it so in any way that mattered?  He thought to the lies the world had told him, that when men and women ceased to be they ascended to Heaven or rested beneath the earth, in the domain of the Dead Queen they had left behind, but he had ascended and, in so doing, made true that great lie.  But though he could have rested in his Heaven, he could not avert his gaze from the tiny fracture now etched in halcyon Truth.  Through it he beheld a churning darkness, a Deep of ill portent which he knew would one day come crashing through.  Yet he did not recoil.  He did not wail in terror or seek to forget what he had seen, for in that Deep he saw salvation, a beautiful and terrible reunion of reality’s glassy shards.  So he smiled upon it and mad his preparations, for to perform his miracle of one only thing, to link once again the Heavens to the Deep, he knew he must descend and evoke his argument below the anesthetic comfort of the clouds.

***

There was once a man who sought to complete the circle.  He knew well from the river beneath his feet.  For it to flow, the reservoirs in the lands above must be emptied, struck, their discordant greed resolved.  He knew that memory, like water, lacked persistence.  With time its form would denature.  It would evaporate, would become mists and clouds and false shapes therein, once again to fall upon the stagnant reservoir.  He knew that were he to maintain the circle, ensure that the lake of discord always emptied in Harmony, his memory could not falter.  The circle could not fall victim to time.  He could not fall victim to time, so he separated himself from it, became a terrible grudge which remembered in cinder instead of dewdrops, that discord the world over might be met by righteous Vengeance and inevitable Harmony.

***

From these three came two and two

And circles stretched from sea to sky

To the Gyre did Seven headlong run

Then all the world

That’s why, that’s why

Old Times and Old Gods

A story by Leland. Not unlike this, but less saccharine and more anthrocentric.

When the ancient gods roamed the world we humans were harvested. 

Every bear with teeth and fur and claws could rip us apart and eat our soft meaty insides. The creatures of the wild were so big back then. Monstrous. All with terrible magics far greater than our soft skin. 

But the thing that truly hunted us was the Wendigo. It roamed in the forests at night, riding the winds, riding the cold. It cultivated us as a crop. The weakest were culled every season by that creature that sang in the dark. We humans fought within ourselves to avoid weakness, undermining our neighbors to save our children from the horrible screams. We humans developed emotions and manipulations to survive this thousand year torture. 

Then came the Bird, the Turtle, the Fox and humans received protection. A sweet gift of safety beneath the mountains of fur and feather they offered. Sitting atop the shell of the island Turtle we humans were not hunted for flesh, but these gods still had hunger. 

The gargantuan animals with their beautiful magics hungered for something else that the humans had: sweetness and sadness. Our strange emotions that ruled our universe and had been developed by seeing our neighbors and children die while wishing for their survival. These emotions became the sweet desserts that the old gods ate. 

Rituals upon rituals upon rituals were made for the old gods. Their massive eyes would watch them with an odd, thirsty calm as they drank our emotions in. Humans in groups learned different god’s preferences and built their society around satisfying a terrifying yet loving benefactor. 

The beautiful red Fox loved weddings and desire. It would curl around a group of young humans that were bonding themselves to each other. The fox required that this group never touch fully before they made their promise in its ear. Then that night they would lie in the mountains of soft, deep, velvety fur and make love for the first time on the old gods back. The fox would rumble and purr underneath the human moans. 

The Turtle was obsessed with mourning and the death of those long dead. It required it’s humans who lived on its island-like shell to record the names and loving acts of each person in each lineage from the very beginning of time. Parents would recite stories to their children about their grandparents and great grandparents and their great grandparents before them. Deep, powerful, emotional stories of pain, and they would all cry at the end, banging on the ground, the Turtle’s shell, as hard as they could. Every week the humans would light a fire for each loved one who had ever died and try to keep the fire going, heating the tortoise, while they sobbed. 

The Lark was fascinated by change in the bodies and in the minds of the humans. Parenting and adulthood were curious for the bird, for old gods never raised their children. The bird demanded clothes on its humans, feathers that covered the humans up and made them see shame in each other. Different colors for different ages, different colors for different genders, different colors for those who made mistakes. The change between colors was a massive affair, humans would get naked under the eyes of the bird and wait for a day and a night in the cold and the rain while the bird hunted down the fluff and trinkets that would cover them again. The bird required children to leave their parents upon the age of thirteen. Too young to feel safe, but old enough to survive their silent pain. The bird would stare into their eyes and then pick them up flying them to another nest of humans hours and hours away. 

The Wendigo never left. It’s horrible whistling and ice cold breath still rang through the woods at night. It never crossed the ancient gods, never stole from their herd. But it knew the sadness of being one of the enslaved. It offered freedom for humanity a chance to not need do anything but live in its forest. Some humans chose freedom and had their guts turned into ice. Some humans chose freedom and ate their children with the distended mouth of the Wendigo. Some humans chose freedom and moaned in the night, crying and sobbing and chewing the ice cold of their own hands and feet. 

In that way, humanity never lost its emotions and the gods never grew tired of us.

Prologue: The Merchant

The true prologue to the Crossroads story I begin writing a long time ago and then took offline. The plot and characters of that novella are much more fleshed out now, though it remains to be seen how much of it will end up on here.

Thago is burning.  The river is burning.  The Floating God is burning.  It began with unrest, an uprising among the slaves of the lower barges, made perilous by an attack by the servants of the Two-Eared Crown.  Coincidence, surely.  So the magisters and princes must have thought.  Coincidence, perhaps, they would take to their grave.  But the Merchant knows this was not coincidence.  It was fire, built and kindled and sparked by singed, practiced hands, spread by design and the carelessness of those who saw coincidence in such things.  And now Thago is burning.

With this certainty, the Merchant finds himself in the plaza before the palace which was once a temple.  The northern and eastern launches have been blockaded; the bridge to the trade barges is ablaze, and the flames now lick the palace’s western walls.  The southern dock below swarms with the enemy, and above, the Riversworn guard their trapped princes, awaiting reinforcement that will not arrive in time, hopefully and foolishly unaware that their only path out is through the force massing beneath them.  The Merchant draws his sword and locks his shield to his arm.  His task is impossible but clear: He must somehow give them enough time.

Five race up the steps now.  They are scouts meant to reconnoiter, but they charge anyway, seeing only the Merchant in their path.  Their spears stall upon his shield, and he dispatches them quickly.  One tumbles down the steps, two die to his blade, two are pushed from the plaza to the churned water fifty feet below.  One will drown, the Merchant knows.  The other will be rescued by his countrymen.  But there is little time to dwell on either fate, for a much larger host of soldiers has begun its determined ascent.

Many fall before him–seven more are hurled into the water, fifteen bleed out there on the plaza, nine thrown down the steps collide with eleven climbing, and two more collapse, skulls fractured by the spur of the Merchant’s shield–but the number on the plaza with him continues to grow.  He is driven back to the palace entryway, certainty resolving that his vain gift is reaching its limits.  Then the soldiers fall back.  They open a wide circle as a silhouette crests the stairway behind them.

The Merchant recognizes this one, recognizes the tattered regalia, the scar over his broken nose, the long knife set ablaze by magical gifts twirling in his hand.  This is Brother’s general, the one called Ignigoet, Pyrotechnic of the Left Hand.  It is betrayal then.  The Merchant suppresses a roar and hurls himself at the smirking man.

Their engagement is swift and brutal.  Ignigoet parries the first thrust, catching the Merchant’s shield with his offhand.  They separate.  Ignigoet throws a barrage of knives into the Merchant’s shield.  Then the flames upon them detonate, and the Merchant is scorched and sprawling, and time has run out.

He dimly notices the knife cut his throat as he stares up at the plumes of smoke in the night sky.  The general kneels over him, but the smirk is gone.  His face is impassive, and the burning eyes therein do not belong to Selenus Ignigoet.  The Merchant realizes too late that this is no betrayal at all.

And then he is gone.

Top Image: From Stories, by Rae Johnson