spinning yarns from heartstrings
And so she took back Excalibur, descending into the lake once more. She would sleep within the lake, guarding the greatsword until the next worthy king came to claim it, though she knew as she closed her eyes it would be hundreds of lifetimes before she woke again.
“Don’t give up,” Sissy said. She held out her offering to the old forest god, a part of her trembling inside, both in fear and anticipation. Every day, she’d come to encourage the god, to remind him that there were still people who not only believed, but needed for him to be real. He […]
Every day the people in the village brought offerings to the small shrine in hopes of appeasing the god they believed took up residence there. Good favor would mean larger crop yields come harvest, they said. It would mean fewer deaths during the long winters. But Henrietta knew in her soul there was no god at […]
It was the one time each year she could move freely among the children, giving in to her own child-like nature without fear or consequence. No one looked on her in dread because on that night there were far scarier things than Death: monsters and fiends and devils and ghouls. And they were hungry, so […]
They put the old gods on display in the desert after the Great Purge, trapped them in glass cages and set them out like ancient relics or antiques for the masses to gawk upon and poke at like children at a zoo. Spectators brought their image capturing devices and posed in front of the display […]
He was tired of holding onto it, clutching it in his hand, fingers gripping so tight the bright white edges of it seeped out through the cracks between his knuckles. It wriggled softly against his palm, tickling his skin almost affectionately. At his back, the sounds of an argument that existed long before he was […]
The seven watched the child approach the ancient stone of a great-grandmother she’d only ever heard stories of. Spectral hands bound before them, they knew not what to expect, but they remembered Esmerelda’s promise. One day, her issue would arrive to set them free and the debt between them would be paid. They’d waited […]
It was the only way to sever the master’s ties. Bit by bit, he’d carve himself to pieces and fling them to the far ends of the riverbank until he no longer had arms to saw with.
From across the dungeon, Asin-al Liada watched the members of her party fall. Luatha of the temple of Nistaari was the first to fall, the lich dooming them all with that carefully planned strike against the cleric. The barbarian, Tom Barkskin, lie pinned beneath his maul, dead eyes staring at nothing. Laughing Isharti, the jovial […]
From the depths of a Hell he’d been destined to rule since birth, Anung Un Rama vowed to write his way out of the role in which he’d been cast.