The Well of Mimir

…After the Wars of Extinction, the Cleansing Wars, the Champions of Rajaat became the all-powerful sorcerer-monarchs of Athas, overthrowing their master when it was found that they, too, would become victims of his desire to return Athas to the near-mythical Blue Age…

“So, do you think we did the right thing?”

“Destroying the world?”

They looked out upon the barren dust, the heaped corpses their armies were piling onto a massive, smoking funeral pyre downwind. Carelessly tossing bodies of comrades and enemies alike onto the blazing, stinking pile. The billowing black column of greasy smoke could be seen for miles. Centuries ago, such a scene might have disturbed either of them.

Read the rest of this entry »

His fingers had withered to gray, brittle sticks, worn down by years of rape and defilement, of rampant excess and the sickness that comes with too much power left unchecked and unopposed. This punishment extended to the rest of his body as well, which was withered and decrepit. He wore skin the pale color of the diseased, skeletally emaciated except for the bloated paunch of his naked belly, his back bent and cratered with ridges of bone and thin flesh.

“Why do you hate me so?” the decrepit man queried, his voice a strained whisper of age, the whole done without gesture and immersed in a slack wantonness.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the second Year of Dragons during the reign of the illustrious Emperor Flying Cloud of Silk, of the tenth century of the Noble Dynasty of Sleeping Water, a great festival was held in the province of Exalted Daughter of the Moon in the capital city of that province, and citizens came from all corners of the province to celebrate. Among them were many who had never been to a great city before.

Read the rest of this entry »

Night had crept cold around the mountain, wrapping the air in an icy blanket and sucking the day’s heat from the barren stones on the heights. Thorsur slapped his numb fingers against his thick, bare arms and breathed a cloud of white from between clenched teeth. It did little to warm him on this night.

He sat in a crevice long ago formed from rock slabs fallen off the mountain side, without the warmth of a forbidden fire, and stared down into the dark valley below. Somewhere in that black mass was a forest, cloaked by night, and his village, visible only as inviting, burning-orange sparks in the enveloping darkness around it. High above, the night was clear, the stars shone blue and white, glittering crisply in a sky that seemed brighter than the land below, a dark blue opposed to inky black.

Read the rest of this entry »

They blamed the sun, so jolly and yellow, too full of itself and too bright, hanging up above the world. Well, that is what the most-bitter said, for the sun was beautiful and bright, and brought joyous color to the world, like the emerald green of grass and the endless blue of the sky. These were colors no one wished to miss, brought out only by the sun.

Still, everyone blamed the sun, the beautiful sun, for drawing the sirens up out of the depths to sing their terrible, beautiful songs and keep little girls from sailing their toy boats across their swimming pools on sunny days.

Read the rest of this entry »

Patience had never been a virtue – not one of his in any case.

He let the fine, dusty red sand sift through his fingers to blow away in the weak and inconstant breezes that teased the thin air of the deep deserts. The black sun hung above him — a quarter of its journey away from the blazing, dry heat of noon — sucking the last vestiges of moisture from the air and soil, eating the pale sky in its endless, cyclical fury.

Read the rest of this entry »

He was going down under the mountains, down to find the roots of the earth from which the stone peaks grew. Down where it was said fiery dragons dwelt, gnawing on the roots of the mountains, stealing away precious metals and gems to hoard and hide in cavernous galleries.

The old women told of a world his people had lived upon before they lived here, where the dragons had gnawed away the mountains and the earth had crumbled into the sky, leaving endless clouds and winds, with not even a rock to stand upon or a pebble to throw. They called the lost world Iapater. Some said if the dragons gnawed upon the mountain roots long enough, this world too would crumble apart and fall into the sky.

Read the rest of this entry »

The almost invisible line floating above the glass-smooth water suddenly tensed and jumped, the dark pole it was attached to bent and quivered as something on the other end fought like mad to escape.

“Caught yourself a giant,” Mun commented to his companion, who lay at the foot of a tree on the pond’s bank with his double-horned, fur-lined helmet angled down over his eyes, arms crossed over the stained leather vest wrapping his slowly rising-and-falling chest.

Read the rest of this entry »