Welcome to Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Issue 20! With this issue we return to our regularly scheduled random mix of adventure fantasy fiction, poetry and art. And by all that’s good and right, for once we will not be talking about the weather in our editorial. Well, except to give a shout-out to our hometown OKC […]

MOUTH OF THE JAGUAR, by Evan Dicken: Hummingbird was to be the final sacrifice of the day. The man before her struggled on a raised stone slab, chest heaving as a flock of blood-spattered priests pinned his arms and legs. Sunlight glittered on the Cazonci’s obsidian dagger — curved like a jaguar’s claw to better […]

BY WAY OF THE EASTERN ROAD, by Jesse Knifely: Ren Terrowin skidded on the grimy kitchen floor and the tray of baked apples he held tottered. He slowed his steps as he picked his way across the flour sacks and potato peels littering the stones. A day of celebratory feasting left its debris. Ren delivered […]

THE CHALLENGER’S GARLAND, by Schuyler Hernstrom: Molok rose from his resting place in the damp earth. He mounted his black warhorse and rode through the gray mist, past broken tombs and stunted trees. Before a cliff’s edge he brought the mount to heel. Tendrils of fog coalesced in the heavy air, weaving themselves into a […]

THE TAMING OF THE BEAST, by Brinsley Gale: He rode through darkling forest mere, feeling that the dawn was near And closed his eyes to banish fear; he rode to slay the beast. The Dragon slept within his keep, tossing in a dreamful sleep By little left of a village sheep, remains of last night’s […]