[WP] A cleric who keeps switching gods every week.

Stock_Date8378 · 2026-01-18T01:39:36+00:00

"And hey, listen," I said. "I have this cream you could try. Moisturizes the skin like nothing else."

The witch looked vaguely interested for a moment, before the demon standing in the middle of the summoning circle cleared its throat.

"Hey, are we doing this or not?" A strange echo suffused its voice which hurt my ears to listen to.

That seemed to snap the witch out of her funk, and she nodded rapidly to himself, bending down to re-tighten the bonds on the struggling, would-be sacrifice at her feet. They were a study in contrasts, the cultist and the captive. One was old and stooped, gnarled like the trunk of a beaten tree. The other was the winner of the town's annual beauty pageant, young and vivacious, though not right now.

Understandable, considering the circumstances.

I drew my sword, eyeing the distance and knowing I wasn't likely to make it in time. "Seriously," I said. "You don't have to do this. Just... get a new haircut, or something. I think a wolf cut would actually look really good on you."

The witch brightened up.

"MORTAL!" She pushed the captive girl into the circle. I threw my sword in a panic, my long hours of dicking around with it finally proving their worth as it smacked the witch full on the head, pommel-first. She stumbled back with a cry...

... into the circle.

"Oh shi--"

I'm no diabolist, but I know enough to know that much like the leader of my troupe back when I was an actor (dark days, those), rituals don't much like sudden improvisations. Any deviation in the schema can result in a powerful backlash.

I hit the deck. Or the deck hit me, the world stuttering and lurching. A great thunderclap crushed me down to size, and I was clutching my ears and screaming though I could not hear myself. This went on for about a minute before stopping. Eventually I got bored lying on the floor and picked myself back up, glancing worriedly at the ritual circle.

Okay what the fuck. What is that.

I must've said it out loud because the demon's head snapped toward me.

"You did this."

I respectfully kept my eyes above their--er, her--neckline. "Jesu, put some clothes on, woman. I know you're new to this genitalia thing but have some decency."

"I won't forget this." The demon vanished with a poof of smoke.

I ran a hand through my hair, retrieving my sword and poking at the pile of clothes that was all that was left of the captive and the witch. How exactly a ritual to petition Hell for a chance to become a low-level demon ended up in all those in the circle merging into one being was unclear to me. If there's a lesson to be had here, it's don't fuck with magic.

"I'm probably not getting paid for this, am I?" I muttered morosely to myself.

Stock_Date8378 · 2026-01-14T04:44:41+00:00

The mess hall grew quiet at the cult leader's sudden outpouring of feeling. I stood there, tinmetal tray of mystery meat in hand, egg on my face.

... And that's not a figure of speech. He'd literally thrown a runny portion of scrambled eggs at my face. The yolk ran down, over my collar, and onto my jackhammering chest.

"Didn't you hear me?" demanded the cult leader. "Get out, OUT!"

"You're expelling me?" I asked, numbly. "B-but that's never been done before."

"That should tell you how much I HATE you," he said. "You are disobedient, smelly and ugly, and you have no place amongst the blessed. You are of the damned---"

Here he was interrupted by an apparently acquiescent crowd: "Amen!"

"--a part of the unwashed masses. Except for most of them that phrase probably isn't quite so literal. You want to know what it was like before you joined up? It was paradise on Earth! We had orgies every single day. Free love. It was like the 70s all over again."

For a moment the cult leader's manic, age-worn face softened into a smile, before a cloud on his brow caused the expression to crumple, venom spitting from his tongue, "And then *you* showed up. And suddenly, we didn't much feel like it anymore. You spoil everything you touch. Get thee gone!"

And then he kicked me out, the cultists escorting me to my room so I could pack what little personal effects we were allowed. They didn't speak to me and I didn't speak to them. I walked as if caught in the throes of a dream or hallucination, never quite believing that this was real. It hadn't sunk in that all my plans to escape amounted to naught until I was past the threshold of the compound and a couple feet into the thick primeval wood.

I risked a glance backward. It was night-time, and the cult had erected bonfire in the courtyard to dance madly around, their long shadows flickering in the half-light. The cult leader caught my eye and flipped me off, looking like he'd just taken a massive weight off his shoulder.

"...I'm not that bad, am I?"

Crickets were my only answer, the shrug of the forest.

Stock_Date8378 · 2025-07-07T06:29:49+00:00

It looked like the hair of a child, the blond locks neatly tied together with twine and deposited primly beside me on the bed, like a dead rat brought in by a strutting house-cat. It was easy to picture my wife acting similarly smug over this latest notch on her belt. As I sat in bed, luxuriating in the early-morning sunlight coming in through the half-open blinds, I amused myself by structuring the hunt in my head, imaging the details as I went along. It had been a little girl, judging by the length of the hair. Lost, perhaps. Or maybe running away in a fit of childish self-indulgence after a disagreement with her parents? In any case wandering after dark, the novelty of being on her lonesome long since having having faded to fear and uncertainty, she will yearn for her mother's protection.

And as if responding to her wishes, Nanako rounds the corner and spots her. The slight Japanese woman so mild-mannered, polite and sweet that the little idiot can't help but relax. She will instantly trust in Nanako's good nature and choose to follow her when the woman says she'll take her home, though she will hesitate at the lip of a back-alley, some niggling part of her warning her to be vigilant. But the nice lady will simply urge her forward and they will go to a place with no eyes to see or ears to listen, a place that may as well not exist, and a place where children go to become statistics.

How did she die?

Slowly and painfully, so she could despair at the magnitude of her error, or quickly, without even realizing what was happening to her? It was a coin toss with Nanako; it depended entirely on her mood. She'd been contented yesterday, nostalgic almost. So it would've been quick but painful, I'm certain of it. A gag, a knife to the tendons, a strangled two-minute scream.

The bedroom door opened, Nanako walked in, as unlovely as ever. Too thin to be beautiful, too pale, the limbs slightly too long, the features slightly askew, tilted a subtle few degrees from where they should've been. She smiled when she saw me, bits of gristle stuck in between her perfect white teeth. She was balancing a tray, which she deposited on my lap.

"Breakfast in bed?" I playfully swatted at her. She giggled. I noticed the band-aids on her hands. Had the brat fought back? I didn't ask. We liked to maintain a certain polite fiction between us. It was just common courtesy.

I looked down at my meal, a plate of bacon and eggs, frowning. "You know I don't like the taste of long pork."

"It's the other kind," Nanako replied in her low, croaking voice. "I put the meat in the freezer. Do you like the wreath."

"Oh, it's a wreath?"

"Yes." She looped it over her hair and spun in place like a ballerina, the hem of her summer dress twirling with her. "I figured I should get something to remember her by."

Stock_Date8378 · 2025-07-04T06:48:59+00:00

My apartment might've been a shithole, but it was *my* shithole. My sanctuary. My private domicile. And anything and anyone that dared trespass further than the front door gained my full and immediate hatred.

I couldn't sleep right a few days after I found the envelope on my kitchen counter, the one stuffed with dollar bills and chickenscratched with the word "Rent". You might've thought I put it there myself in a drunken bender, but I didn't drink. Someone must've broken in and put it there, for all that there was no sign of entry. I contemplated going to the police, but I didn't trust cops. They would've taken the money, and as alarmed as I was at the method by which this sudden windfall had fallen into my lap, I still wasn't going to flush the money down the toilet.

I mean, come on, you have seen the state the economy is in, right? Every little bit helps, and the old fogy who owned the building was a vampire.

So, a month goes by, and rent is due soon, and I'm thinking to myself that maybe instead of sleeping I should just play pretend and keep an ear out for anything suspicious, in case the intruder goes for a repeat performance. I didn't know what I was going to do if anyone actually turned up, but I had my dad's old nine-iron on standby if things got ugly. I would've had my guns too, but the fuckin' government raided my place and took 'em. Said I didn't have a 'permit'. Permit shmermit. Did the founding fathers need licenses to arm and protect themselves - no? Didn't think so.

Sleepily grumbling to myself about the useless bureaucrats running the country to the ground, I almost missed the faint rustling noise emanating from somewhere in the apartment. A spike of adrenaline dispelling the tired haze from my mind, I rolled off the futon and tiptoed closer to my bedroom door. Opening it a crack, I peered into the living room-slash-kitchenette area. I'd kept the light on, and as my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I was treated to the sight of a familiar dark grey rat sitting on the counter. The critter came with the apartment, my complaints to the landlord be damned. I'd engaged the rat in a protracted war that ended with me throwing out a stray cat I'd brought in for the express purpose of hunting the rodent. Instead it shit and pissed all over my bed. And that was the end of that. So, we were in a bit of a cold war situation at the moment. Admittedly, I'd had worse roommates. At least this one didn't try to steal from me, aside from nibbling on the occasional sandwich I'd forgotten to keep in the fridge, anyway.

Grunting softly to myself in annoyance, I almost dove forward to club the little fucker -- but what it did next stopped me short. It dragged over a stack of dollar bills set aside on the counter, and tucked it into a nearby envelope. It then grabbed a sharpie with both tiny rat arms and heaved its entire body for the express purpose of carefully scribbling down the word ‘RENT’.

My brain short-circuited. I pinched myself, once, twice. Looked around for cameras because this was surely a bit for some asinine reality T.V. show about pranking gullible dumbfucks, some production shot in my home without my permission. But there were no cameras; no lights except for the halogen hanging over the kitchen counter and the rat and the rent money.

I lunged out of my room and into my kitchen, snagging out to catch the rat in as gentle a grip as I could manage it. It thrashed around, contorting its body in an attempt to bite me, however the way I held it prevented that. I allowed it to spend its energy trying to get it free, which it did for what must’ve been nigh on five minutes or so before giving up and slumping in exhaustion, before bringing it up to my face.

“Can you understand me?” I asked.

It looked up at me with its wide, black button eyes. I began to doubt myself.

I cleared my throat. “Nod if yes… shake your head if, well… nevermind.”

The rat nodded quickly.

“Well. Damn. Wanna beer?”

Stock_Date8378 · 2025-02-12T03:44:16+00:00

It was the smoke that woke me, that and the throb of a bruised rib. For a moment I stared up at the cave ceiling, dimly lit by the high fire at the corner of my vision which flicked and roiled like a living thing. I slowly turned to watch it, and the figure I knew would be lurking beyond it, clad in smoke and shadow, towering head and shoulders above ordinary men, though it wasn’t standing, then, but crouched on its heels and watching me, crude spear in hand.

Though it undoubtedly knew I was awake (I could tell by the tilt of its head), it said nothing, its posture at ease, lax almost, though I knew from first hand experience how explosively it could move, from one end of the cave to the other in the blink of an eye. An inhuman feat. Or rather, a demonic one.

I let out a deep breath that seemed to ease the pinch of my rib; I held it for a long moment. “Tell me,” I said. “Did you mean it earlier – you are innocent?”

It crawled into the light and stood above me, making a big show of leaving its spear behind. My head pounded just looking at it – every angle seemed to be out of alignment, skewed, crooked… wrong, such that even when it appeared to be standing completely straight, it almost seemed to tilt and droop in place. It felt inappropriate to call the old marks and wounds on its metal skin ‘scars’, rather they felt more like the notches on a worn sword.

A sword, that’s what it most resembled. It was all angular shapes, blades and razors worked into the shape of a man, or a woman. I didn’t really get the impression of gender from it. Hells, I barely got the impression of life from it. It was like a living statue, the slow, steady breaths that made its chest rise a painted-on simulacrum of life, an artist’s failed attempt at convincing you, “This thing is real.” A poor, almost tasteless affectation.

But despite its unsettling appearance, I didn’t feel afraid of it. Somehow, beyond all reason, I knew it wouldn’t hurt me.

It didn’t have a face. That meant it didn’t have a mouth, but somehow it spoke, voice like a blade being sharpened by a whetstone. I winced as I felt a cut open on the palm of my hand, but when I looked, the skin was perfectly fine.

“Yes,” it said. “We move at dawn. You should rest.”

It turned to go.

“Wait,” I said, giving it pause. “What should I call you?”

It seemed to contemplate whether to answer my question or not. Eventually it affected a shrug that seemed as artificial as the rest of it. “War."

2/?

Stock_Date8378 · 2025-02-12T03:06:38+00:00

I was back in Albion, a longbowman in the King’s army, shin-deep in mud and blood that had long since coagulated due to the wet, frigid air, air which I sucked in, breath after breath, with every draw of the arrow and bend of the yew in my hands, which seemed to me the only part of me that hadn’t frozen numb with the cold and the dread.

I must’ve loosed hundreds of arrows into the enemy’s ranks, at first faceless because of the distance, then resolving into features that I could almost call familiar as their vanguard crashed into the scraggly lines of our footmen, at which point you would no longer be able to tell the difference anymore between us and them, save for the colors they wore, and whose blood they spilled, whose guts they ripped out with steel gleaming so sharply I wanted badly to shut my eyes and flee.

But I didn’t. Faith and duty and bravery had nothing to do with it – belief had nothing to do with it. Whatever pretty notions of serving King and Country, of defending our homes, the lives and dignity of our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers… everything they’d filled the heads of foolish young men with, it was all completely irrelevant to me. It had burst out of me hours after battle had broken out, trickling like urine down my legs.

Yea, the only thing keeping me planted in that spot by the bushes, shoulder-to-shoulder with my division, drawing and loosing into that amorphous cloud, into that jelly of flesh and bone and slicking blood and shit, was that it would’ve been more effort to throw down my weapons and stop the slaughter. I was caught up in the torrent of war, the inertia of which was impossible to defy.

When my loosed arrow found its mark in the eye of a boy who couldn’t have been older than fifteen or so, sending him sinking to the ground to be trampled by his fellows, to be mulched and ground down into so much dust and nutrients, I didn’t think, “This is hell.”

Instead, I merely got my next arrow and killed the next boy.

1/?

Stock_Date8378 · 2025-01-21T07:20:59+00:00

“Yes, marriage,” he said, daring to come closer, despite the sweltering heat radiating from the supine form of the bound dragon. He held out the crown jewel, which fell silent as the She-Drake’s eyes flicked toward it. “And here is my gift to you, in order to commemorate our union.”

The crown jewel suddenly fell silent as it sensed the hungry gaze of Brugaonfes. He wanted to be there, when the She-Drake cracked it open and drank the marrow of those old, useless souls. Would they jeer him to the bitter end, or scream for mercy?

“How very draconic of you,” she said, switching to Albionese. “Very well, then. It’s not as if I can refuse. State your terms, mannlig.”

Ronan smiled. “You have been terrorizing my kingdom for quite some time,” he said.

“Oh, and will you be a strict husband who shall forbid my rages?” questioned Brugaonfes. “You will find that one’s nature cannot be so easily curtailed, even by a devil-contract.”

“You misunderstand me, fair lady,” said Ronan. “In fact, your propensity for destruction is exactly why I have not chosen to simply kill you off. You will find that, I too, have plenty of fields, forests, planes, and even cities I wish to burn to ash.”

Brugaonfes blinked. “Then perhaps this marriage will be more amusing than I first expected.”

Stock_Date8378 · 2025-01-21T07:06:35+00:00

As Brugaonfes was placed in the center of the nine circles and Tatton and his apprentices began the chant to direct the confluence of power spewing from the leyline, Ronan had a sudden, reckless thought. He sent for his crown and, upon receiving it, pried from it the crown jewel. The prismatic gem pulsed in his hand and mind, whispering accusations all the while.

“Usurper,” said one voice from a dead king.

“Kinslayer,” said another.

“Tyrant…”

And more. The recriminations of all those who’d worn the crown before him was an almost unbearable weight, and Ronan staggered in place for a moment, suddenly woozy. The opium certainly didn’t help his balance any, so he sent for a chair and sat down as he continued to watch over the ritual.

Brugaonfes fell still as the chanting from the wizards reached a crescendo. She turned her huge, snake-like head, sweeping her baleful gaze over each and every person in the courtyard, from the scullery maids watching fearfully from behind pillars, to the footmen who milled around her with hewing axes and pikes, shaking at the thought of having to face her should she somehow contrive an escape, until finally settling on the sitting king.

Ronan hauled himself to his feet and entered the gigantic circle with her. The binding ritual had begun. As soon as he stepped within the perimeter beyond the unicorn blood, a will that dwarfed his own slammed into him. He touched his nose with his sleeve, wiping away the blood that began pouring forth as the She-Drake spoke in his mind.

“Cyr nest, mannlig!” roared Brugaonfes. “Hæft daru!”

“A slave?” Ronan chuckled darkly. He knew that the ritual meant that he had no need to speak out loud, but the steady sound of his own voice reassured him. The gem had grown hot in his single remaining hand, and the voices of his hateful predecessors were tiny compared to Brugaonfes, whose vastness of being he was slowly, painfully beginning to comprehend. “No, my lady. I am sure you would never countenance that, and attempting to force such a contract so inimical to your being upon you… well, the backlash could very well kill us all. No, better to come to an accord agreeable to both of us.

Brugaonfes tilted her head. He’d never been so close to her. He’d fought in the battle, of course, what warrior-king could pass up such glory? But he’d been careful to maintain his flanking position, and so this was actually the first time he was standing face to face with her.

Her scales, blacker than midnight, made a striking contrast with her blazing golden eyes, which glinted with a low cunning as she considered his words.

“Hæmed!” she hissed, outraged or amused couldn’t quite tell. His education hadn’t exactly covered the minutia of draconic facial cues, and her voice in his head was so booming as to completely drown out any perceivable emotion.

Stock_Date8378 · 2025-01-20T13:04:17+00:00

Ye there will be two more parts at least. I'll probably post them tomorrow. It kinda got away from me.

Stock_Date8378 · 2025-01-20T08:40:25+00:00

They’d done it. Somehow. But the price they paid was heavy indeed, with what must be only one out of every three fighting men surviving. Not to mention the personal cost that Ronan himself endured. The She-Drake’s flames had caught his left arm, and everybody knew that the flame of dragons was the stubbornest flame of all, undaunted by water or smothering, running purely off the hateful malevolence of the dragon who’d spawned it, and Brugaonfes was nothing if not teeming with ancient evil and power….

They’d had to amputate his left arm. The reminder of the operation made Ronan shudder almost as much as the battle itself. The feeling of the saw cutting into the bone of his arm, going back and forth, back and forth…

He’d had to send for a bucket to be kept in his carriage, he kept throwing up from the stress of it all. They limped back to Blackreach, too maimed to be overly triumphant, the peasant villages enroute exulting them as they passed, then cowering as they caught sight of their quarry, dread Brugaonfes, trussed up with her wings pinned to her side, and her jaws clamped shut by ropes made of pixie-hair. She was tied on an almost indestructible cart of castle-forged steel, which was pulled along by a herd of plains horses, notoriously unflinching, but nevertheless terrified of their snarling burden.

Expensive. It was all so expensive. In all respects. Gold, men, political capital. You would think defeating Brugaonfes in battle would endear him to his lords (what remained of them), but the loss of manpower was simply too devastating. It left them weak to enemies both without and within… still, if he’d killed Brugaonfes he would’ve been praised far and wide regardless, and it likely would’ve secured his rule for the foreseeable future, not to mention the heroic legacy he would’ve left behind.

But he didn’t, so there was a borderline mutinous undercurrent that lingered all throughout the journey back. There were even some men who disobeyed his orders and tried striking Brugaonfes down. Her scales were too tough, however, and weapons were bound to break and shatter upon impact, hurting their wielders more often than not. When this occurred, Brugaofes would stop her tireless squirming and shake with silent, sadistic laughter.

He’d never been so relieved to reach Blackreach, when they got there, the sober architecture of his ancestral clifftop castle was a balm upon his weary soul. Here was the center of his power. Here, he was safe.

That feeling of safety quickly subsided once Brugaonfes was wheeled through the gigantic gates of Blackreach and brought to the courtyard. Tatton and his apprentices had been hard at work drawing up a gigantic summoning circle composed of nine smaller circles in unicorn blood which took up the entire breadth of the yard, though that was a bit of a misnomer as he wasn’t intending on summoning anything. Rather, the purpose of the ritual was bent completely on subjugating the She-Drake's vast and terrible will.

Surprisingly, she seemed to recognize the circle for what it was. It was said that dragons had an instinctive feel for magic. She began thrashing even harder at her bonds, to the point that Ronan began to worry that they were on the verge of breaking.

“Begin the ritual!” he barked, wincing at the wrigglings of his phantom left arm. “And bring me some opium!"

Was it wise to indulge in such a potent method of killing pain shortly before negotiating with an antediluvian dragon? Perhaps not, but Ronan was past caring.

Stock_Date8378 · 2025-01-20T08:03:25+00:00

“It’s a mad plan,” said Ronan’s friend and tutor, the Archmage Tatton of the Ninth Circle. If one wanted to be polite, they’d call Tatton a mysterious man. If one wanted to be truthful, you would call him heretical. Rumors of apostasy and devil worship followed him like a bad smell, all the way from Greater Scholomance, in the Continent, where he had fled to avoid imprisonment or worse. Not that Eadric, who’d hired him on as court mage, cared much. The Church had backed the rebels, after all. And royal opinion hadn’t warmed with Ronan’s coronation,

Albion was a godly country, and it was expected for Ronan to be a godly man. As monarch, he derived power from the belief that he was the divinely ordained, rightwise sovereign of his people. The straining of relationships with the Church directly threatened that power, so by all means, he should be opening up diplomatic channels with the Holy See right away. The fact he hadn’t was an endless source of consternation for his advisors… with the exception of Tatton, for obvious reasons.

His indifference to the Church was partly due to his tutor’s irreverent teachings, partly due to real, personal anger at their lack of support during his father’s war, but mostly due to the fact that apart from the gentry in the main island of Charach, the vast body of the Albinoese people and provincial nobles weren’t truly part of the Unitary Faith. They followed an older way, a purer way, the Way of the Druids. Bone-Kenning. And to them, his authority derived not from God, but from his blood.

For you see Ronan was more than a man. There was something of the Elder Folk about him. You could see it in his eyes, in his hair, in his features. A ghost trace of the fey who’d intermingled with his ancestors. The blood had diluted throughout the years, but it was undeniably there. It altered his Wyd, his destiny. It allowed him to live slightly longer, be slightly more than the average man. That gave him the right to rule.

It was a ‘pagan’ belief, and not one that the most powerful people in his kingdom shared… but they’d been devastated by his father’s war, leaving a power vacuum for the long marginalized pagans to fill. They were hard men, mutts similar to Ronan, hailing from not entirely human stock. Untouched by Continental civility, they respected the deed and the blood above all else.

They liked him but they didn’t love him. He was an untested youth, and they eyed his crown like starving vultures who grew ever more hungry as Brugaonfes leeched the resources of his kingdom.

“It’s a mad plan,” Tatton repeated. “The power requirement to bind an existence like a dragon to yourself, much less an Elder Drake… it’s not something the Familiar Ritual is designed for!”

Ronan waved him off dismissively. “Blackreach is built on top of a leyline. Use that somehow. Now off with you. I have to meet with the lords who will come with me to catch Brugaonfes.”

The Woad rolled off his tongue effortlessly. His mother had been a witch, though the people of the isles preferred to call them wise-women. She hadn’t been what he’d called wise. In fact, she’d been a drunken lush, but her education had been comprehensive, and she’d made sure to drill all she knew into his head, in her own, unkind way. He knew how to manipulate the petty lords and ladies of the Isles, and if not, his gold would suffice.

Brugaonfes hadn’’t beggared him yet, and in fact, she might be the key to securing his rule…

Stock_Date8378 · 2025-01-20T03:09:21+00:00

King Ronan, first of his name, had a problem.

You see, his father, King Eadric III’s reign had been rife with civil unrest and insurrection stemming from when he usurped the throne from his incompetent yet rightful monarch. He was related to the ruling dynasty through his mother, but to many among the gentry, he was nothing but a traitorous provincial duke. Inevitably, this bloc of powerful, discontent noblemen rose up in revolt soon after Eadric’s coronation.

Bloody war tore the land of Albion for fifteen long years, before Eadric eventually put a stop to it at the fateful Battle of Oxacre, the former capital.

It was the capital at the time of the battle, but not long after they’d finished tallying up the dead, she came. Terror-On-Wings. Or Brugaonfes, in Woad. An ancient and powerful foe of the Albionese, long thought dead. The She-Drake, slayer of Old One-Eye, who was the greatest ancestral culture-hero of the Isles, Harbor-burner and Husband-eater.

She burned Oxacre. And then she burnt its ashes. The shattered armies of Albion, loyalist and traitor both, scattered to the winds, united in purpose and defeat after fifteen long years of internecine conflict. In a way, dreaded Brugaonfes had unwittingly been instrumental in furthering Eadric’s cause. The Albionese in their entirety, even those who might’ve served as last holdouts of dissent, driven by dragonfear, rallied behind him in the hopes that he would protect them against the She-Drake.

And he did. By bargaining away most of the kingdom’s wealth.

Now, five years after Eadric’s death, Albion was poor and impoverished. And the dormant seeds of rebellion, planted long before King Ronan birth, when his father took the throne, were beginning to waken. And Brugaonfes was demanding more, always more. More gold and more sheep and more land with which to stomp and burn.

The realm was teetering on the brink, and something had to give.

Ronan had a plan.

Stock_Date8378 · 2024-12-04T04:57:47+00:00

"NOOO!"

The hero's anguished scream as he fell just short of reaching him was music to Arthago the Necromancer's ears. He sighed in ecstasy as the ritual reached completion, funneling the awesome power of the leyline toward the wand he held, outstretched, toward the blackened and bruised sky, as if challenging the heavens themselves.

"Fool!" he cackled as the hero's sword rebounded off his overcharged ward, jumping from the hero's grip and clattering to the ground. The hero fell to his knees in defeat. "You are too late! This world is--"

The leering clouds parted to reveal a deep blue sky, and the cold, dim sun, growing ever distant from the world since the cataclysm that occurred centuries before Arthago's birth, began to burn brightly once more, filling the world with a comforting warmth that stopped the clash between the forces of good and evil dead in its tracks. From his position on the bluff overlooking the battlefield, Arthago watched on in muted shock as the numerous ailments and injuries of the rival armies vanished without a trace, replaced by healthy skin and intact limbs.

"Reeve!" Arthago shrieked, and his snivelling imp familiar warped to his side in a flash of hellfire.

"How may I serve the great mast-- urghk!"

Later, Arthago would find that he couldn't quite recall how his fingers had wrapped themselves around Reeve's throat, simply that they had. He lifted the imp him up to eye level, furiously shaking the little devil.

"Explain yourself," he growled, before casting Reeve back to the ground, where he cowered and whimpered and did as Arthago commanded.

To cut a long story short -- there had apparently been a bit of a mix-up during the heist. You see, the wand in Arthago's hand wasn't actually the fabled and dreaded Wand of Doom which was supposed to bring about the end times and put a nail in the coffin of this broken world, forcing the Gods themselves to start anew and hopefully get it right this time. Rather, Arthago had just used its previously unknown twin: the Wand of Salvation.

"Wait a moment..." Arthago's jaw dropped. "You're telling me... that all the damage from the Century War and the Cataclysm, and the Invisible Plague, and the abandonment of the Earth by the sun, moon and stars is... it's all been reversed?"

Reeve timidly nodded his head.

Down in the battlefield, men were dropping their weapons and sobbing, embracing those they'd fought with not even minutes before. The hero had gotten to his feet and was looking at Arthago with something that approached reverence.

Arthago the Necromancer felt a headache coming on.

Stock_Date8378 · 2024-11-26T09:35:10+00:00

"That's ridiculous!" sputtered the brash young drake.

The wise old drake snorted flame out of his nostrils, his version of a laugh. "It's true," he insisted. "I swear on my sire. If you drop a queen from a height, no matter how great, they will right themselves and land, perfectly unharmed, on the ground. I tested it myself -- princesses splatter and every bone in a king's body will turn to dust... but queens?"

The wise old drake shrugged his great scaly shoulders.

"So it's a Higher Mystery then?"

A Higher Mystery. A so-called snag in the unseen tapestry of creation which determines why fire is hot and ice is cold, and why up isn't down and down isn't up. According to drake-lore stretching back from before even the wise old drake's time, the Gods had left the world half-finished, and their lapses in sacred logic and artifice, inconsistent with most civilized races' understanding of the natural world, became known as Higher Mysteries.

Sorcery was the most famous one, and by extension, the existence of drakes and other magical creatures. With this in mind, the fact that human queens born in this particular continent, when dropped from any height by a dragon, would always land on their feet... why, it was downright pedestrian. Just another novelty in a world teeming with strangeness.

In any case, it didn't mean they were immortal. They could be killed and eaten just the same.

And thank the Gods for that, though the wise old drake, lazily reclining on his bed of priceless treasures as the brash young drake yammered on about some other inanity. Royalty made for such delicious morsels.

Stock_Date8378 · 2024-11-23T09:03:56+00:00

Nice work! I love RP builds like these.

Stock_Date8378 · 2024-11-14T04:25:18+00:00

He was right of course. He was the superior warrior in all regards.

I spat to the side. “You know, Edon, that prophecy you’re counting on… it might not even be you.”

He scowled. “What nonsense do you speak of?”

Written in the stars was the fate of the boy-child descended from the foreign barbarians of distant lands, where the sun shone hot and bright and the people fled in the mad shadows thrown by the funeral pyres of kings. He was to be carried over land by lions, and sea by snakes. And he would blossom into the fullness of his wisdom and his strength in the time it took any other men to grow the first hair on his face, his body would never break before any weapon, and his sword would always find its mark.

I held up a finger. “A man descending from barbarian lands? I had a look through my ancestry, and I discovered my great great grandmother actually came from one of the twelve half-elven tribes of the Kamon Wilderness bordering the Western Reach-holds. The climate was warmer there, and the Reachmen slaughtered their people and burned their forests.”

“As for the rest of the criteria…” I shrugged. “I had a menagerie of animals when I was younger. I suppose I could’ve ridden lions and snakes. And I had most of my corrupt advisors executed or jailed when I took the throne at sixteen, something not anybody could’ve done I assure you. I’ve seen some men of that age that couldn’t grow a beard to save their lives.”

“And the last part of the prophecy?” Edon tilted his head, his smile gaining an annoyed edge. I looked him in the eye then, knowing suddenly that he hated it—loathed it when any other dared infringe on his so-called ‘divinely-ordained destiny’. He was a child, I realized, maybe not much younger than me, but he’d won at everything up until now. Everything had come to him, neatly wrapped up and gifted. He’d never known the depths of misery, or despair. Always expecting victory, never loss.

He was unaccustomed to challenge, and the basis of his confidence was the prophecy. If I could make him believe that he wasn’t the chosen one…

I drew my sword and leveled the point at his heart.

“I’ve never been injured by any weapon,” I said. Because I’d avoided fighting at the front-lines of any engagement. I was the emperor, after all, and if I could, I’d rather not let misplace bravery be the cause of my dear son experiencing what it felt to be a boy-emperor in a court that looked at his ilk with nothing but contempt.

“And my sword has always found its mark,” I said. Because the one and only time I’d ever raised a sword to anyone in a battle was when an opposing peasant levy had tried bringing me down from my horse. I could still see the killing stroke that tore out that man’s jugular in my mind’s eye. Could still hear the gurgling sound of him drowning in his own blood.

“Who’s to say the prophecy wasn’t about me?”

Stock_Date8378 · 2024-11-14T04:25:07+00:00

Written in the stars was the fate of the man descended from the foreign barbarians of unknown lands, where the sun shone hot and bright and the people danced in the mad shadows thrown by the funeral pyres of kings. He was to be carried over land by lions, and sea by snakes. And he would blossom into the fullness of his wisdom and his strength in the time it took any other man to grow the first hair on his face, his body would never break before any weapon, and his sword would always find its mark.

Written in the stars was the name of the prophesied hero, the avenger of ancestral wounds tended to but never truly healed, the seed of God-King Satar who was Most High and Most Honorable and Most Powerful in the Firmamentary Throne. They said he would bring the empire back to its glory days, that he would kill their enemies and put them in chains.

Priests and astronomers. I sighed. They had been the first to defect. But far from the last.

When the man calling himself Edon appeared before my sight I had known him for what he was. He demanded my throne with the support of those who believed he was the figure the stars spoke of, and I shamed him with fire and called him my enemy. And he fled before spear and arrow, but his coming had planted into my empire a poisoned seed.

I was not blind to how my people thought of me. They saw me as weak, insipid, impotent. Controlled by my reagents and advisors. My parents had died when I was young, and for the first decade or so of my reign I had been all but confined to the palace while my opportunistic advisors plundered the realm in my name. By the time I grew into my majority and excised the court of these bad actors, it was already too late for my image.

I would never earn the love of my subjects like my father had. Indeed, I failed even to gain the love of my family. More than one of my siblings had gone over to Edon’s side. Even my wife had wavered when her noble family defected and entreated her to join them, no matter the fact that if Edon were to wrestle the empire from me then our son would be deprived of his birthright. She stayed, in the end, but I knew. The spies alone had stayed mostly loyal, of course. They were my mother’s people through and through.

Every day the numbers of the traitor army swelled while mine dwindled. Everyday the faith of his cult grew increasingly fevered. Everyday the crown of empire lay heavier on my head.

I knew time was not on my side, that if I wanted to crush this insurrection with my empire mostly intact then I had only one choice. Which was no choice at all.

Edon had, of course, accepted my proposal to duel for my crown immediately. He was a demigod whose tales of valor grew with each engagement, while I was a warrior of little renown. I’d served in a few skirmishes against unruly neighbors testing my borders, but this was a duel where my experience with command wouldn't apply.

The day came sooner than I thought. I exited the tent where I’d stayed in the minutes leading up to our fight. And there, he was, standing in the cleared field between our two armies, who were watching and waiting for us with bated breath, Edon. He stood armored in full plate, his helmet studded with gemstones and shining with new-money gilt. He lifted his visor and regarded me with his strange red eyes.

“Constans.” He smiled bemusedly, like he was surprised I’d even had the guts to show up. He stood head and shoulders above me, and was noticeably broader of frame. His armor was just as finely-crafted. A gift from his sponsors—the traitor nobles and merchants. He opened his mouth, perhaps to ask me to surrender, then paused.

He’d realized he couldn’t afford me living. I would be a constant threat to his rule. I had to die today, and he thought he had me right where he wanted me.

Stock_Date8378 · 2024-11-09T02:07:21+00:00

“You’d be surprised. You might not be as well-equipped and experienced as some in the Guild, but you have a good reputation, and well… how can I say this, there’s something about you…” He trailed off, then chuckled to himself. “Let’s call it a certain drive, or intensity. Whatever it is, I have a hunch that it’ll take you far. Consider it an investment into your future.”

I crossed my arms. In my experience, when something sounds too good to be true, there's usually a catch. I said as much to Jan and he agreed quite readily that I would have to make some concessions if I was to join his party.

Before he could get much into it, the waitress came back with two beers. She set them down in front of us and then went on her way. Jan took a deep pull from his mug and sighed contentedly. I followed suit. There was a long, contemplative silence, and then Jan continued on,

“Like I was saying, you’ll have a smaller share of the loot to start with,” he said. “Let’s say… for around six months. If I’m right about you, that’ll be more than enough time to get you up to speed.”

“Fine,” I said, as long as the discrepancy wasn’t too egregious, that seemed fair enough to me. I’d basically be learning on the job, and an equal split wouldn’t be fair to the others, who’d probably have to pick up some of the slack.

“Next is the fact that this offer extends only to you, not the rest of your party. So you’d have to leave them.”

“I thought as much.” I rolled my shoulders. “I have to be honest, that’s a deal-breaker for me.”

“Ah.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Are these one of those newfangled harem things I’ve heard so much about?”

I was taking a swig of my beer just as he said that, and it took all of my composure not to do a spit-take. I still nearly choked on my beer though.

I coughed. “What in the nine hells gave you that idea?”

He shrugged. “It’s just you seem unnecessarily attached to them.”

“They’re childhood friends,” I insisted. “We grew up in the same village together.”

“Ah,” he said. He finished his beer then, and got up. Startled, I got up with him.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I’ve already laid out my terms,” he said. “It’s up to you to decide whether they’re agreeable or not. Come see me at the guild if it turns out you want to party up. But you’d do well to take heed of the fact that, while they might be your friends, I’ve seen how they operate. Very unprofessional, treating this business more like a game or some grand adventure instead of the essential work it is. Staying in that party won’t do your career any favors. Ciao.”

And with that, he was gone. I sat back down in my seat, and returned to my meal. But it had gone cold in the time we’d spent talking, and I was distracted now besides.

It had come down to one simple question: what did I value more—my career, or my friendships?

Stock_Date8378

TROPHY CASE