DUSTS OF WAR, by Ben Godby: The cart creaked, its wheels full of summer dust, as the peddler pushed it gently up the slope of the road, past the first houses, and onto the main street of the village. It was late afternoon, nearly dusk, and the sun had a lazy warmth to it. It […]

SHADOWS AND HELLFIRE, by R. Michael Burns: “Dive heedlessly into death, and you will wake up.”                              — Yamamoto Tsunemoto,                              Hagakure All around him, the dead drew closer, faces ash-pale, sunken eyes blazing with hatred. Hokagé’s hand went instinctively for his sword — but of course he wasn’t armed, not in the dead of […]

KINGDOM OF GRAVES, by David Charlton: Plague had come to the lands west of the river Elakk, and so Rakhar the Half-Orc came, too. He came to their towns with only his spade slung over his shoulder, taller than any man and uglier than most. His brow was heavy and hung low over dark, sunken […]

A SONG FOR THE NEW KING, By S. Boyd Taylor: Archimandrus was fifty when the commission first came. A poem, a psalm for the new coronation. Oh how glorious! He had waited so long for this. Years. Decades. Had pushed away wife and child alike. Locked himself in dark rooms for months at a time. […]

DEATH AND DIGNTIY, by Michael R. Fletcher: Thus Far: Some three weeks ago the Melechesh Pass, held for thousands of years by the Wizard’s Guild, fell to an unstoppable army of corpses. One corpse, Khraen, Fist of Sorhd-Rach, First General of the Invincible Hand, powerful demonologist, and loyal servant to the Emperor of eternal Palaq […]