“This stretch of coastline is straight as Abadar’s hair part. We’ll just have to go in full sail and fuse-ready, and hope the conjured fog gets us close enough.” Shimali Manux drummed her fingers on her cabin’s fold-out desk, glowering at a map of Chelaxian waters like it had spat in her tankard. Esidries, her first mate, ran a hand through her long, shaggy hair, then adjusted her eyepatch. She seemed to have her own grievances with cartography.

Well… Shimali’s face spread its wings into a smile. She was admiral of the Vidric navy, a hero of the Cart Fire Uprising that had sparked the revolution. One of only a handful of Firebrands with their fourth mark. This is the exact kind of trouble you go looking for, isn’t it?

It was the night before their planned attack on the Chelaxian port of Laekastel. A little raven had brought word that the Bellflower Network was ferrying a number of recently liberated families into the port from Westcrown, then on to freedom in Andoran.

The dottari were apparently less than thrilled. The Salt Breakers, among them Shimali and Esidries’s host ship, the Sunburst Shackle, had been called in to head off any Thrunic naval efforts. But the diabolists had moved faster than expected—Laekastel was now under blockade.

Hence the last-minute tactical discussions between Shimali, Esidries, and an irksomely frank and accurate map. There was more than enough to consider. By the time they settled on details, the sun was filling the sea with fire and molten gold. They’d crafted a sound plan. The rest was up to the crews, captains, and Desna herself.

“And if it doesn’t work…” Shimali said through a lopsided grin.

Esidries was smiling now, too. She recognized Shimali’s expression—the one that meant her sharp-fanged intellect could smell prey.

“...the best tales tackle tall odds,” Esidries finished, lifting an imaginary tankard. Shimali laughed, tapping her own mock vessel against her first mate’s, and the two knocked back their airy beverages.

“What’ve you brought this time, Admiral?” Esidries cocked her chin at a small box holding down one corner of the map. Shimali’s mementos. There was a much larger collection back in Anthusis, but she always brought a few with her on these three-day ‘I’m just a crewmate like anyone else’ tours.

She rolled her eyes. “Mention rank again and I’m pushing you through that window. I get enough Admiral above deck.” She undid the little wooden chest’s simple latch and lifted the lid.

Her expression softened. “You remember these?” She pulled a crumpled metal spike from the box, followed by a quilted square in a flower pattern. “One of our first Bellflower undertakings. Much more helpful coastline than this blighted stretch”

Esidries chuckled. “I remember that armiger’s face when you sidestepped his flail and he caved in the lictor’s pauldron, yes.” She hid a smile in her drink. “How is the Order of the Chain these days? I’m sure they keep in touch—you made quite the first impression.”

She was waiting for a quick-witted retort, but none came. The admiral had lifted a necklace from the chest, a blue and red cord threaded with rounds of broken bone. Her eyes had gone far away and long ago.

Esidries nodded. She knew the expression. Had worn it herself, on plenty of occasions. Sadness, solemnity. And hope, a brilliant flag waving in a clear sky.

---

Eleder was chaos. Embers, smoke, and screams choked the air above the Sargavan colonial capital, while the clamor of fighting and the smell of brimstone filled its alleys. The revolutionaries had almost pushed through to the baron’s palace. They’d charged into New Haliad with a fury stoked by centuries of oppression. But the dottari kept coming, and now they were getting surrounded.

Shimali, Esidries, and some two dozen of their Salt Breakers were high above the plaza surrounding the plaza, crouched behind a red-shingled roofline. This was the tipping point. The fulcrum of her people’s future. She could feel it in the air, read it on her comrades’ faces.

This would be the perfect time for a rousing speech, she thought. But she was too tired, too sore. She simply looked back at her Salt Breakers and nodded. They vaulted the roofline.

Coats and hair flapping behind them, they careened down the shingles and into the plaza. Righteous anger thundered from them as a wordless roar. Shimali felt the crunch of a soldier’s neck beneath her boot. Before she could register the symbolism, they were in the thick of it.

The Salt Breakers pushed into the rear of the Thrunite formation, the beleaguered revolutionaries’ cheers driving them on. Esidries laid into the Chelaxians with a miner’s pick she’d acquired somewhere along the way. Each blow punched through steel and flesh and sent tremors up her arm. Shimali’s cutlass penned its own red-inked story.

“Shimali!”

She barely heard Esidries’s cry in time. She whirled around, her blade only just turning aside the longsword meant for her guts. The dottari staggered into her. His breath was hot on her face, heavy with the smell of the whisperleaf caked to his gums. His eyes held surprise and hatred in equal measure.

She drove her forehead into his nose, shoved him aside. Her sword shrieked across the breastplate of another charging soldier. The sound almost masked the crash of armored boots approaching from behind. Without looking, she drew her pistol and fired. Her desperation was rewarded with the sound of two hundred pounds of bootlicker clattering to the ground. She shared a wide-eyed I can’t believe that worked grin with Esidries, offering a silent prayer to Desna and Lubaiko both.

Illustration by Alberto Dal Lago from Pathfinder Lost Omens Firebrands

Then fresh Hell arrived. The air above the plaza split and screamed. A fiery gash shrieked open, becoming a burning eye with a bone-white pupil.

Shimali’s blood ran cold. She could taste the wrongness of the extraplanar intrusion, something caustic at the back of her throat.

“Bone devil! Gods-damned bone devil!” Her fear was galvanizing. “Rally! Rally for loved ones, for home. For throwing off the yoke of Hell!”

The fiend pulled itself free of the rift, landing hard enough to crack paving stones. It stood its full height, almost level with the rooftops. It threw its head back and let loose an ear-splitting challenge that shattered nearby windows and sent shivers down Shimali’s spine.

She surveyed the beleaguered revolutionaries picking their way over colonialist corpses. They were already taking up position, surrounding the infernal monstrosity. Esidries was beside her—just like always—weaving sigils in the air, a Magaambyan winter-song chiming its way off her tongue.

She charged.

---

“You know, I tell people that story and they don’t believe me. ‘You can’t take down a bone devil with pitchforks and adrenaline,’ they tell me. ‘Tall as a house and made of hate, there’s no way!’” Esidries snorted in mock exasperation. “But if Shimali Manux, hero of the revolution, tells it, well. You’d think my record would—”

The Sunburst Shackle lurched to one side so hard that it took them a few moments to realize they were sprawled on the floor. Shimali swatted the map off her face, cursing the pen, the ink, and the person responsible for the miserable thing. She hauled herself to her feet then helped Esidries to hers. The cabin was a wreck, but at least her sword and gun were still hanging on the wall. They exchanged a knowing look, grabbed their weapons, and rushed abovedecks.

We’re still leagues from Laekastel—how did they find us? Worse, how did they get the drop on us?

The answer came as soon as she surfaced beneath the night sky. Panic crackled across the deck. A sailor, clothes completely dry, coughed a staggering amount of murky seawater at her feet.

Sarglagons.

And there they were. The sea between the ships churned with piscine horrors. Iridescent magenta fins, writhing hands, and the razored maws of Hell’s darkest depths—drowning devils. A handful were attempting to capsize the Sunburst Shackle. Shimali could hear the chattering of others attacking the rest of the fleet.

It had been years since Vidrian’s birth in fire, and Shimali had grown into her role as commander. She straightened, spread her arms wide, and strode resolutely toward the deck.

“Salt Breakers! House Thrune wants to strangle the cry for freedom, bind the world in iron and fear! Drown us in blood!” The power in her voice cut through the din of battle. She clapped the retching sailor on the shoulder, stopped long enough to acknowledge the determination in their eyes. “But there’s Gozreh’s gift in our veins! Iron in our spines! Phoenix flames in our hearts!”

She could feel the energy shifting as the crew rallied. She just needed to get to the wind-singer, start fighting fire with magical fire. If Shattering Howl starts the song, we—

The air above the deck split and screamed. Bone-white claws gouged a hole between worlds, and she could see flashes of black wings and a scorpion’s fleshless tail.

Then a second rift opened. Followed by another, and another. Shimali’s skin crawled as the heat and stench of Hell poured over the deck.

“The best tales…” Esidries stepped up beside her, hands already crafting a spell.

“...tackle tall odds,” Shimali finished. She grinned at her first mate. “And what self-respecting Firebrand settles for less than the best?”

About The Author

Andrew Mullen has been freelancing for Paizo and other publishers since 2017. He brings a keen interest in language and the interplay of geography and culture to his work, as seen in the Magaambya section of Lost Omens Character Guide, the xulgaths in the Extinction Curse Adventure Path, and numerous other monsters over the years. As a full-time parent, his daughter is his most important monster.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

The crowd in front of the vast chasm surrounding the Starstone Cathedral was slightly larger today than most days. Visitors from all over Golarion stopped by the great pit every day to marvel at the ancient edifice at its center, to dream of the stone hidden away behind its massive walls, lethal traps, and immortal guardians. It was said that the Starstone granted immeasurable power to any who could touch its crystalline surface and pass the final test of spirit. Those who succeeded became gods. Most simply fell to their deaths in the chasm outside and the rare few who made it in the cathedral were usually never heard from again.

Normally, an attempt by one of the “hopeful” would draw a huge crowd of locals and visitors alike, all interested to see if the would-be god could even make it across the chasm. The celebration was usually all in good fun, if you could call someone risking their life for immortality fun, but it could turn unruly in an instant, the mob demanding the poor soul fling themselves into danger. In either case, it was good business for those of us who ran shops in the Ascendant Court, selling sweet treats and chilled wine.

But not today.

Today was the fourth supposedly prophesized moment of ascension for Dyrani, and business was terrible.

Her first attempt was almost a year ago. The Osiriani woman had only been on the Avenue of the Hopeful for a few weeks at that time, and although she didn’t have a large throng of supporters, she still drew a good crowd to hear her tale and see her make the attempt. For over an hour she spoke of her accomplishments, from the moment of her birth under an auspicious sign, to the tremendous thunderstorm that bore down upon her parent’s small home giving her a connection to the rains and floods, the crops, and the land. The people listened to her claims of connection to the harvest and how she could be counted on to bring rain to struggling farmers and ensure a season of plenty for all upon her ascension. They even saw her plant a simple seed into the ground and encourage it to grow, yet when it came time for her to leap, something changed. She looked out at the chasm and declared that it was not the right time.

“The seed was not yet ready to sprout,” she said, adding that once the plant has matured, she would take the test.

Suffice to say, there were more than a few jeers and cries. But for all the disappointment, Dyrani benefitted quite a bit from the show. For the next few months farmers, gardeners, and food merchants began to stop by her rustic stall on the Avenue and pay their respects to her and the growing plant. They say it never hurts to get in early with new gods. Even if only one in a thousand passed the test, those who do are sure to remember any who believed in them from the start. For my part, I sold a lot of harvest breads and orange tea to her faithful.

Illustration by Mirco Paganessi from Absalom, City of Lost Omens

Dyrani even gathered a few devotees to aid in her preparations. She anointed each in a grand ceremony, dubbing them the High Priest of Rains, the High Priestess of Sowing, and the High Priest of Harvest, respectively. They were mostly harmless, wearing ridiculous hats and making pronouncements about the weather. Most would-be-gods attracted a few desperate fools, even when they had nothing to give other than vague promises about the future. The feeling of importance, of belonging was often enough. The avenue was usually cluttered with these supplicants, shouting edicts and making the case for their still-mortal deity. It wasn’t bad for business, really. Most visitors came just to see this spectacle, even if there was no attempt that day. Some of my best days selling sweet pastries have been after a good brawl between the high priests of various would-be faiths. No one wins... except us.

The second attempt was scheduled for later that summer. By this time, Dyrani had amassed a vast crowd of followers, and there was a festival happening in the Grand Bazaar, so the city was swollen with visitors. The Avenue and the Court were packed with people, many of whom began drinking and chanting for Dyrani just after dawn. Her High Priests were there of course, collecting tithes in vast cornucopias made from straw. From the moment I saw them, I knew it was not going to be the day. These hopeful never go through with the test when the coin is flowing freely. There’s still too much to be gained. Later that day, the High Priestess of Sowing pronounced that Dyrani had read the tea leaves (from my stall no less!) and decided that the most auspicious time to take the test would be at the end of the harvest, so that she could prove her worth to all the other gods and make this year a harvest like no other. Fortunately for the harvest deity, another hopeful made the attempt later that afternoon, screaming as he plummeted into the void. I think he wanted to be the god of fish or some such nonsense.

Over the next few months, Dyrani’s appearance changed significantly. Gone were her woolen dresses—now she wore elegant silk embroidered with golden wheat. Her simple grapevine crown was replaced with a wreath of bejeweled golden leaves, and now she carried a massive silver scythe, so that all might know that the goddess of the harvest was near. It had been a good few months for her and her faithful, as the donations came flooding in from visitors and locals alike. But as the end of the harvest drew close, there were signs of stress.

The High Priest of Rains quit one afternoon after a heated debate about the upcoming attempt. I think I saw him making poses at the end of the avenue, worshipping another perpetual hopeful. The High Priestess of Sowing stopped working the street for donations after a local gang stole her cornucopia. Only the High Priest of Harvest remained loyal, doing whatever was asked, but he was a zealot, having lost his entire family to famine some years back. I wouldn’t be surprised if he leapt into the pit after Dyrani on her day.

When harvest finally came, the crowd was sizable, but it was clear most didn’t think Dyrani would actually go through with it. All were disappointed when the sacred plant was revealed. It was withered and brown. Defeated, Dyrani called off the attempt, claiming she had been sabotaged by agents of Urgathoa, who wouldn’t dare let such a powerful deity ascend. The boos were some of the loudest I’ve ever heard. Nearly all her supplicants quit in the following days, stealing her finery and looting her treasury.

It was a hard winter for the would-be goddess. By the spring, it was just her and the High Priest of the Harvest. Their clothes were stained, and the silver scythe had been tarnished.

And that brings us to today. My shop is toward the end of the Avenue, right across from the vast chasm surrounding the Cathedral. The spectacle is all but gone. Dyrani has drawn right up to the edge. There’s no cheering, no chants, just silence and the sound of the wind. As the clouds break, a shaft of sunlight illuminates the young woman. She looks exhausted, as most do after their long journey down the Avenue, but as she looks up into the sun, its warmth shining upon her, she steps out, over nothing…

About The Author

Jason Bulmahn is the Director of Game Design at Paizo. He spends most of his time staring at schedules and math problems, hoping to find a way to ensure that Paizo creates the most fun, engaging games possible. When not working with the design team on the next Pathfinder hard cover, he is at home, working on even more Pathfinder material to share with folks through his personal imprint, Minotaur Games, or streaming video games on twitch.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction and including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

“You stand defeated, Voradni Voon!” Melika shouted, brandishing her tin sword at Elophos. The older actor bellowed, throwing his hands up in a defiant gesture meant to cover a quick tightening of the straps holding on his minotaur horns, which had begun to slide dangerously sideways.

“Never!” Elophos cried, trotting back a few showy steps as he finished steadying his headgear. Horns secured, he charged forward again, thrusting his sword at Melika. “So long as he stands, Voradni Voon is not defeated!”

“The earth has swallowed your army. Your centaurs are dead, your harpies scattered like frightened pigeons. Surrender!” Melika jabbed at Elophos’s midsection. The thrust was absurdly slow and clumsy—old Halvorash would have boxed her ears for signaling the lunge with her eyes and feet so long before she struck—but the flaws that would have doomed her in an alley fight were virtues on the stage. An audience wasn’t a footpad with a shank; you were supposed to help them see what was coming.

“Voradni Voon will devour your heart and claim your godhood, puny human!” Elophos roared, swinging his stubby sword in broad arcs. Both actors’ weapons were shortened, letting them maximize the number of swings they could make before reaching each other onstage. Melika was impressed that Elophos managed to fit six full arcs in before he closed on her. He must have tweaked his pacing; he’d only ever managed five before.

She dropped to one knee, exaggerating the height difference between them, and thrust upward, gripping her abbreviated sword’s hilt with both hands like a spear. Another absurdity for the stage, but it roused an anticipatory cheer from the audience, and then an expectant hush.

Elophos didn’t disappoint them. Menacingly he stalked forward, having backed away in mock apprehension as Melika crouched. He charged straight onto the up-thrust point, then staggered back with a thunderous gasp, his sword arm pinwheeling in feigned death agonies. “Nooo!”

“You would not stand defeated, Voradni Voon, so you must fall,” Melika intoned, striking a heroic pose, as Elophos crumpled slowly to the stage boards, clutching the blade “impaled” into his chest to keep it from falling.

Illustration by Mirco Paganessi from Pathfinder Lost Omens Absalom, City of Lost Omens

The audience burst into cheers. Elophos skipped back to his feet, handed Melika her sword, and shared a bow as the curtains came down. No sooner had the gold-fringed cloth dropped over them than they hopped down the back stairs, moving aside so the stage crew could clear their painted scenery and set up the next troupe’s props.

Already, the painted wooden harpies and centaurs from The Defeat of Voradni Voon were being loaded onto wagons to be carted away for storage. They’d performed the act six times today, moving from stage to stage across Absalom, and now they were done. The sun was sinking westward, and night was soon to drop a final curtain on Foundation Day.

It had been glorious—but now, already, Melika felt the warmth of the crowds and her own joy stealing away from her as swiftly as the fading light.

Melika sighed. She pulled off the papier-mache crown and false mustache she’d worn as Aroden, unhooked the gaudy, gold-lined cape that she’d swirled through six victories over Voradni Voon, and folded them up, along with her dreams, inside the box that Elophos’s troupe would soon pack away.

She wasn’t an actor, not really, not like the rest of them. Melika was just a serving girl. That morning, she’d been carrying a pitcher of wash water through the commons, just as the visiting troupe learned that their original Aroden was chained to her chamber pot following an encounter with a bad eel pie.

As the actors were absorbing the bad news, one of the inn’s cats ran under Melika’s feet. She’d jumped, side-stepped, and recovered without spilling a drop. This impromptu demonstration led Elophos to conclude that she was strong and nimble enough to handle the fight choreography, about the right size to fit into Aroden’s costume, and therefore an adequate substitute for the show that they were contractually obligated to put onstage in two hours.

“You’ll have ten lines,” he’d told her as he buckled the green-gold cape around her shoulders and pasted the horsehair mustache onto her face. “You can do it. Ten lines, and it doesn’t even matter if you get them wrong.”

She hadn’t gotten them wrong. Six times she’d performed, each better than the last, as she learned to draw out the crowd and channel its energy into joy.

And now it was over. Playing at the actor’s life had been fun, but Melika had siblings to feed and a sickly mother to tend. That painted crown wasn’t real gold, and it wouldn’t keep her family clothed.

Heroism seemed so simple on stage. Maybe that was what people really liked to cheer, more than Aroden: the uncomplicated surety of right and wrong. The odds were stacked, the lines were scripted, and the heroes of legend never had anyone but themselves to think about. Their families were always conveniently faraway or dead—or at the very least, dependent on the same dramatic acts that the hero was already poised to commit.

Heroes on a stage didn’t have to be quietly reliable for those they loved. Their bravado was just like their fighting: showy and false, with none of the dirt or desperation that grimed real struggle.

Melika sighed. Though false, the dream was tempting. It surely was a pretty crown. And she’d probably never again touch cloth as fine as that cloak’s, stained and threadbare though it was.

“You alright?” Elophos asked, vigorously toweling his sweat-matted hair. Six mock fights under the heavy, horned pelt of Voradni Voon had left him soaked.

“I need to get back to work,” Melika told him.

He counted out the money, then paused. “It’s Foundation Day. You don’t have the day off to celebrate?”

“Someone has to work for other people to celebrate,” Melika pointed out, dryly, but only after she’d pocketed the coin. You didn’t talk back before you got their money. “You didn’t think all those mugs of beer poured or washed themselves, did you?” It occurred to her that maybe he did think that. Nobody had ever said that actors were overburdened with good sense.

Elophos just shrugged. “But it’s Foundation Day.”

“It is. So I should get back. They’ll need me.”

“You could stay with us. Be an actor. You’re a natural on stage.”

“For less than what I earn now?” Melika snorted. She’d worked hard for that inn job. Decent pay, extra food, sometimes clothes or even boots that drunk patrons left behind. If Elophos had ever been half as cold and hungry as she’d been before the inn, he would know what it meant to give that up.

“It might not be less. Not for long.” His speculative look was greedy enough that she almost believed him. “You’ve got talent.”

“Talent and a houseful of hungry siblings. Guess which one yells louder.”

“Well, think about it.” Elophos tossed the towel over his shoulder. “A lot of us will be headed to the Wounded Wisp after sundown, if you think you can get away from washing those beer mugs for a bit. Talk to some people. Make some friends. Perhaps you’ll see that the stage pays well enough to keep a houseful of hungry siblings fed.”

“Maybe.” Melika walked away, through the thronging crowds of revelers, other people’s joy and laughter scattered around her like flower petals. She didn’t begrudge their happiness. It meant good tips.

And as she walked, she turned Elophos’s suggestion around and around, like a coin in her pocket she was debating how to spend. Maybe she did have talent. Maybe she could feed her family that way. Maybe it wasn’t stupid to spend an hour finding out.

The Wounded Wisp...

About The Author

Liane Merciel is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novels Nightglass, Nightblade, and Hellknight, and a contributor to other books including Nidal: Land of Shadows, Faiths of Golarion, and the Lost Omens World Guide. She has also written for Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, and Bioware’s Dragon Age franchise. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, two dogs, and a small child who is extremely into baking projects.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction and including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

“A new game?” Kesara asked, her old Vudrani hands already sweeping the drouge pieces off the embroidered cloth, milk-pale jade and black onyx figurines vanishing like magician’s coins between her bony fingers.

Guan Kai shrugged, smiling, and uncapped his flask of blackdream liqueur. He waved it at Kesara, chuckling when she wrinkled her nose in disgust at the offer, as she always did. Unoffended, Guan Kai sipped the murky, anise-scented drink. “What choice do I have? You’ve cleared the board. Just when I was winning, too.”

“There was no winning that game.” Kesara dealt new pieces onto the cloth with the swift flourishes of a professional gambler, which Guan Kai supposed she was, after a fashion. “This one will be better. New pieces, new board. Very friendly.” With a motion, Kesara substituted the black jackals from the original set with a pair of lions from her near-inexhaustible supply of alternate pieces. Playfully, she set two pennies carefully on the lions’ heads like little copper crowns, then spun them with a flick of her fingertips. The metal disks twirled momentarily atop the figures before clattering dully onto the cloth.

So, Guan Kai thought, she wants to bargain a secret about some instability in Taldor.

“Speaking of friends,” Kesara asked casually, “do you still have yours in the Chrysanthemum Court?”

Guan Kai took another pull from his flask. “Naturally. A man as old as I either has no friends, or too many to count. One’s habits add up to the sum of one’s life, as the sages say.”

Illustration by Mirco Paganessi from Pathfinder Lost Omens Absalom, City of Lost Omens.

“Do they? I wouldn’t know. I’m a dewy spring blossom, myself.” Kesara’s eyes vanished into her wrinkles when she laughed. She plucked the white jade elephants from the board and made a show of hesitating before she replaced them. “Now which of my little pieces would best serve your side? I presume, after a lifetime’s likeability, you could name 16 close friends in the Court?”

She was feeling him out, trying to see which of the Successor States of Lung Wa might offer the best price for her information. Guan Kai pretended to ignore the bait. It was ridiculous for him to offer anything; Kesara hadn’t even hinted what secret she was trying to sell. How could he know who wanted it? “I’m an easy man to like. Even in Shenmen, I might find a few friends.”

“Oh, no, not Shenmen. Just the name of that haunted place gives me chills.”

“No need to worry. It’s very far from here.” Information about the Imperial Court of Taldor was unlikely to be of value to the Successor States, he meant.

“The Court isn’t far at all.” Kesara lifted her chin, nodding to the high white tower of the Starstone Cathedral behind them. “Just on the other side of that great gaudy sundial.”

Ah, so her secret wasn’t being dangled for the Successor States themselves, but for their envoys. The Chrysanthemum Court was the unofficial embassy for dignitaries from all the many kingdoms of Tian Xia. Business that was too risky or sordid to pass through diplomatic channels often wound up there.

This game had suddenly become more interesting. Guan Kai took another sip from his flask, then capped it with a flourish and set it aside. His blood was warm enough without the liquor. “I can hardly choose a piece without seeing the sample available for selection.”

“I suppose that’s fair.” Rather than offering him a choice of white pieces, however, Kesara plucked an onyx boar from her case and set it between the lions. It was an ugly, pugnacious thing, its glittering tusks thrust out in belligerent menace.

Baronet Ghazolain. His family crest carried a boar against crossed spears, and he’d recently arrived in Absalom as part of the Taldan diplomatic delegation. Scarcely a month had passed since the baronet arrived in the City at the Center of the World, yet already foul rumors followed him. Tales abounded of stained altars covered in clandestine artifacts, inhuman chants and cries from his quarters at night, and grim-faced servants who nursed unexplained wounds and then disappeared altogether.

Or so people said. Guan Kai had learned to dismiss most such rumors—they were true only rarely, and useful even less. But now, it made sense why Kesara was angling for a buyer from the Successor States: the baronet was also said to be urgently litigating some kind of family claim in Amanadar, a former Taldan colony now counted among the 16 Successor States of Lung Wa.

“Interesting,” Guan Kai said. “I would have thought the boar should go on my side.”

“I assure you, the boar is opposed to any piece you might choose,” Kesara said. Her rheumy eyes were sharp and intense beneath their clouds of age as she split her fingers into a triangle around the boar’s head. An old sign, from when they’d first played at spycraft, as children.

Danger. Danger that would seize your throat and twist your head off without trying.

Guan Kai smiled. “Really? Fascinating. Then I shall choose a devil, for a beast so fearsome deserves an equally formidable foe.” He’d kept his answer malleable on purpose. The devil could certainly represent Chu Ye, ruled by oni, but it could just as easily mean Cheliax. The Western devil-binders were always willing to pay for dangerous secrets, even those that didn’t concern them.

Kesara shook her head. Her gaze lingered on a pair of dogs pulling a wagon in the street. The animals greeted one another cheerfully, interrupting their own work to wag tails and exchange sniffs. “Look there, behind you. Some creatures understand the value of loyalty. Some people, too. I said this should be a friendly game—you’d be well advised to keep only true friends on your board, and fiends are never that. But, of course, you’re free to choose the pieces that suit your strategy. I can only make suggestions.”

Ah, so. Guan Kai felt peculiarly warmed by Kesara’s warning. Seventy years they’d played the game together, though she owed him no favors. They’d been rivals as often as allies, and each had betrayed the other far too many times for any attempt at tallying to be worthwhile.

Still, in this, she warned him. This information was too explosive to be entrusted to treacherous hands.

And now he understood. Kesara didn’t want to sell her secret after all. She wanted help. Baronet Ghazolain was involved in something so terrible that the 10,000 whisperers of Jalmeray were reaching out to Guan Kai, and his friends, for aid. And they were sending that request as secretly as they knew how, lest the baronet’s spies catch a whisper of their plea.

“Very well,” Guan Kai said. “I choose the dragon and the rat.”

Kesara nodded. A tiny knot of tension softened in her shoulders. She must be terrified, Guan Kai thought, if her worry shows so plainly.

But Kesara had spent 70 years learning to control such fear, and her voice was calm as aloe. “Let our game begin.”

About The Author

Liane Merciel is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novels Nightglass, Nightblade, and Hellknight, and a contributor to other books including Nidal: Land of Shadows, Faiths of Golarion, and the Lost Omens World Guide. She has also written for Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, and Bioware’s Dragon Age franchise. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, two dogs, and a small child who is extremely into baking projects.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction and including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

Do you remember sleep?

It is one of the few clear memories I have from before the transplant. Falling into bed after a day of dedicated study. Waking, many hours later, to Sarenrae’s gentle wingbeats stirring the sky into morning splendor. That curious gulf between night and dawn and, after its crossing, how the voyage leaves one with only faint impressions of the journey. The remnants of dreams. Not fragments, exactly, but tiles without a mosaic.

I remember sleep. But when I try to assemble those memories into a feeling, I cannot. I lack some essential component. Like forgetting the melody of your wedding song or straining to see through heat shimmer. There are ancient moments that I can feel, of course. The blood of the Pharaoh’s oathsworn on my muzzle. The uncertainty of moving on four limbs for the first time. The strange sensation of an arcane core—my core—thrumming where once a heart beat, and the dried blossom sorrow of seeing myself still and quiet in the sling of an artificer’s lattice. Caressing that castoff self’s face with newly forged digits.

I have seen so many castoffs in this place; surely one of them was you. And maybe it is you who brought me here. As I picked my way through the dusty brass halls, past conduits thrumming with arcane vitality, it all felt so familiar. Not merely because of the similarity to my own second birthplace, but because the faint reflections of this creche have haunted me all these thousands of years.

We do not sleep, you and I, but we do something like it. And so many times, upon exiting that pale facsimile of slumber, I would grasp at shards of foreign dreams. Visions like snowflakes—have you seen snow?—melting even as I touch them. Muted cataracts plummeting through crystalline bends, thaumaturgic rivers rushing toward unseen reservoirs. Rivulets of sand falling through a vault of brass and mithral and stone, down into a craftwork cathedral whose catacombs the dream fragments would not touch.

I know that the Automaton Council left their names within our cores. Perhaps the masters somehow carved others’ memories inside my being. Gadflies in the mind, grit in a mouthful of water—and there! Drink, another thing remembered but not felt.

One grows bored over the millennia. What does a soldier do when they find themself without a war? With need for neither sword nor plowshares? I was not built for peace. So I sought conflict. A wasted century spent stalking our first enemies from the east. Many years more chasing the thrill of the hunt, following the moonlit metal gleam of pack leaders. I clawed crimson paths up the heaving flanks of rough beasts. I even sunk my fangs into one of the architects of Jistka’s downfall; he thought himself safe in his sarcophagus. But the empire is no more, and even when I can find others like myself, those brief reunions cannot fully replace the pride of belonging to a thing. Of serving something greater and knowing that that service matters.

Can you turn your head? Yes, the racks there—the weapons of an ancient an irrelevant war. And ourselves, of course.

…I am sorry, truly, that you must emerge into this world. Ah, and for my rambling. I’ve been lonely, of late.

In any case. Yes, the visions. All around me there is evidence that those visions were indeed more than spheresong footprints. After seven thousand years, I finally ceased grasping at snowflakes and simply let them fall, observing the pattern. In the shallow waterways of my dormant periods, I sieved stranger’s gold from dreamsand, reassembling the path to this place. Across tundra and lake, through the dead god’s favored city and banished gods’ ports, and into the deserts of my two births. Over the peaks—were these peaks not taller, once?—and up to the ragged edges of a basin.

There are peculiarities to our artificed bodies; perhaps I can show you the trick of venting life force from your limbs. Trailing arcana, I descended toward the basin floor, a vulture circling the past, the heat shimmer below a mirror held up to my aimless aeons. When I touched the sands, they were familiar. Soft and quiet as a burial shroud.

Illustration by Kiki Moch Rizky from Guns & Gears.

That shroud stirred. Ghosts rose around me. A convergence of minds and memories, as something in my core resonated with the emotions permeating this subterranean complex. It must be the hopes and sorrows of all those who set aside their flesh that fixed those visions to this place. I saw dozens of figures pull themselves from the sands, amber grit sloughing off gleaming brass shoulders. I padded through the arcade of long-gone servants as they set their phantasmal eyegems on the east. Plodded toward dissolution.

Tail trailing in sorrow, I reached the basin’s center. Something glinted beneath the sand; a garnet eye set into a dais. Carved script radiating from the gem bore the Conclave’s ancient words:

We leap from flesh to crafted hope
To safeguard nation, family, friend
We shuck ourselves and start again
We rise anew and know no end

“Know no end”—foolish and prideful! One cannot live from Age to Age without experiencing endings beyond comprehension. No, the Imperium merely filled the deathless millennia with a thousand lesser endings.

Those fools’ words, the ghosts of my fellows. I admit, I was overcome, crushed by reminders of long-mourned purpose. I sat on my haunches and wept.

Did they give you the ocular fire? I barely notice it, now, but that is another half-remembered echo of my second dawn, that first fulminant beam scorching its way out of my head. Like screaming until your throat is raw, but strangely distant, and channeled so tightly through your sight. Channel your conviction and burn away the Imperium’s enemies. Crumpled in the basin, I had no conviction, and my fire merely trickled out as molten tears.

They splashed against the gem, and the earth also wept and moaned. Sand hissed through widening cracks and, just as your eye did, this place irised open for the first time in ages. Below was the towering vault and crystal-banked streams of liquid arcana from those fragmented memory-dreams. Vindication and wonder soothed my soul. Stairs spiraled down from the dais, and I descended.

Down to the sanctum. No signs of battle, as might be expected given the dreaming ghosts above. An entry hall, and a pristine mosaic of the Conclave breathing life into the first core. I loped through halls of the not-dead, their superfluous forms stacked in memorial niches while their spirits slumber here in the lattices. Slowed to peer into glowing cisterns of swirling arcane energy, still ready to quicken the remnants of the Imperium’s crowning achievement. Followed the burnished ribbon of names that marked the path to this creche.

Why did they abandon this place? No matter—we are here now, together. Memories, both mine and others, lead me to you, and to your dormant siblings. We must wake them.

…I am afraid. Of aimlessness. Of what I bartered with my death.

Of rejection.

I am no Conclave. I am no pack leader. I am merely one lost child of Jistka, one aimless wanderer who followed ancient memories to an ancient vault. But I am here, surrounded by an entire tapestry of lattices, and the joy of dozens of siblings opening bejeweled eyes.

I remember sleep, but I do not remember how it felt. Perhaps you can tell me? And perhaps I, in turn can help you—us—forge a new purpose. One divorced from a Conclave that dissolved before they could lead you out of the space between sleep and death.

The Song of the Spheres fades. The Dawnflower blooms. She reaches even here, below the earth, in this cradle tomb. And for a moment, in her light preserves glimmering dreams, perfect and within our grasp.

Take my hand.

About The Author

Andrew Mullen has been freelancing for Paizo and other publishers since 2017. He brings a keen interest in language and the interplay of geography and culture to his work, as seen in the Magaambya section of Lost Omens Character Guide, the xulgaths in the Extinction Curse Adventure Path, and numerous other monsters over the years; as a full-time parent, his daughter is his most important monster.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction and including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

“I don’t like the look of that sloop,” said Daker, punctuating the last word with his ever-present sneer.

Callum extended his spyglass and directed it at the little vessel, a little less than two hundred feet to port. Its crew scurried about their duties as the sun reached for the golden edge of the western horizon.

“A fisherman,” said Callum, still scanning the deck of the other vessel, “returning home. Not everyone’s a pirate, Gaius.”

“We’re in the Shackles, Orrin,” answered Daker, still sneering at the smaller ship. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re all pirates, ‘til they prove otherwise.”

They had the poopdeck of the Madam Diabola to themselves, a sleek Chelish warship armed with the latest in cannon technology, each devil-mouthed barrel etched with a magic sigil which promised every shot they fired would fly deadly and true. The Madam was given the honor of watching this insignificant settlement’s harbor while Admiral Lecarnas and the rest of the punitive fleet sailed off to lay siege to Drenchport that very morning. Callum didn’t even know the town’s name, but he also didn’t care.

“I grant you, she’s a bold one,” Callum answered, watching as the sloop slowly moved in their direction. “Must’ve sailed out early morning, before we sealed the harbor. We could just warn her off with a hazard flag.”

Gaius Daker was too bloodthirsty in Callum’s opinion, even if he was his oldest friend from his Fort Gorthoklek days. Too enthusiastic with the sap when leading a press gang, too ready to—

“Fire a bit of iron across her bow with that pretty new swivel gun,” said Daker, eyeing the polished little cannon mounted on the port rail. “And beat to quarters. Lads and ladies need a bit of exercise, to keep ‘em on their toes.”

Madam Diabola was one of three vessels in the fleet outfitted with the new weapons, swivel guns similar to smaller versions of the black iron cannons on the decks below, tended by scurrying halfling prisoners the crew had taken to calling “powder rats.” Gaius Daker wanted to hear the cannon roar. Callum thought such impulse foolish. Would the captain approve of such actions?

“Gaius,” began Callum, but swallowed the rest of his words when he caught Daker’s glare. He knew that look well. Daker was senior midshipman of the watch, and his words were no mere suggestion. That dark look made it an order.

“Beat to quarters!” Callum shouted, turning to the swivel gun.

Sailors across the vessel leapt into action and the sound of martial drums filled the air. Callum couldn’t help but admire the artistry of the little bronze cannon, mounted on the gunwale, its mouth fashioned like a dragon’s maw, fangs bent outward. He checked the breech, pleased to find it properly loaded and ready. Captain Hecata was fond of the lash, and her newly trained gun crews knew this better than most. They tended Madam’s newfangled weapons of war well, out of fear if not pride.

The sloop was much closer now, turning to port so that it showed Madam her broad side. Callum, ready at the gunwale, turned to look at Gaius Daker, who he caught tugging at his officer’s jacket to sharpen the lines of his uniform.

“They’re giving us a fat target, Gaius,” Callum said, a bit of pleading in his voice. “Maybe a signal flag’ll do the trick.”

“A signal flag, Mister Callum?” came the lilting alto of Captain Hecata as she climbed up onto the poopdeck. “Perhaps I should prepare tea for these Shackles scum while you wave silk at them? What have we here, Mister Daker?”

Gaius, eyes alight with bloodlust and just plan lust, grinned at the captain and saluted.

“Suspicious vessel off the port, Captain! I ordered Midshipman Callum to fire a warning shot across her bow!”

Callum grimaced. Just like Gaius to throw him overboard if it made him shine a bit brighter in Hecata’s emerald eyes. Daker offered the captain his spyglass and she took it, rewarding him with one of her unreadable smiles that could as easily portend divine preferment as utter doom. She looked through Daker’s brass device and within a heartbeat repeated the midshipman’s order.

“Mister Callum, fire that shot. And I wouldn’t be cross with you if that shot puts a crimson part in someone’s hair.”

Callum nodded and turned the swivel gun in the direction the sloop’s starboard bow. He angled the shot as low as he dared—Hecata might not care if he took off some poor bastard’s head, but he did. He asked a blessing from Abadar and fired the cannon. The shot ripped a hole low in the sloop’s staysail and a cry of fear washed across the space between the vessels, announcing the sloop crew’s shock.

A woman in a long coat came to the starboard rail of the sloop, waving both arms frantically.

“Ahoy, Chelish warship!” the woman cried, long brown locks freed as she added her hat to her call for mercy. “We’re honest fishermen, bringing a bellyful to our little island! See how low we ride?”

Callum noted the ship was indeed running awfully low in the water.

“You feed pirates then?” shouted Captain Hecata with a contemptuous air, hands on her hips.

“Nay! Settlers, eking out a life in these hard islands! Shelly is a free port, and we give no allegiance to any pirate lord!”

“Our intelligence says otherwise,” said the captain, and Callum saw she wore that same smile she had given to Gaius. Those fishermen had best say their prayers. It was clear now where this encounter was headed.

Callum joined the naval academy in Hinji when it became clear his mercurial father would favor his younger brother when the inheritance was doled out. He had been fed tales of high adventure on the open seas, contending with the elements and wild creatures, bloodthirsty pirates and rebels intent on bringing Cheliax to its knees. Instead, he found himself part of an instrument of intimidation. Well-armed nautical bullies.

“There are a dozen innocent souls on this ship, captain!” the brown-haired mariner in the sloop called out across the water. “We bring back the bounty of the sea to feed hungry bellies. Men, women, and children. No more, no less. I beg you let us pass!”

The woman’s last words were made with hands clasped together, as if offering up a prayer.

“Prepare to be boarded,” sang Captain Hecata, drawing her cutlass and nodding to Midshipman Daker, who wore a giddy grin on his face.

Callum looked back at the sloop, the long-haired fisherwoman, hands still clasped like a supplicant…and then his eyes caught a shimmer, as though he looked at a painting behind glass, tilted to catch the sun’s rays. A warning tingled at the base of his spine. He turned to share his misgivings with the captain, when the unmistakable sound of a cannon report, several in fact, sent him instinctively to the deck, prostrate with his arms cradling his head. The first ball struck the portside railing on the quarterdeck below, obliterating wood and sending deadly splinters in all directions. The second tore through Gaius Daker, reducing him to an ugly spray of red.

In the next moment Callum was helping the captain up from the deck, one side of her smart Chelish uniform painted with Daker’s blood.

“Return fire!” she roared, shaking off Callum’s assistance. “By all the tines in Hell, that’s no bloody fisherman!”

Callum glanced to his left—the sloop was gone. In its place was a black-sailed brigantine, the iron mouths of cannon protruding from open gun ports, its main deck alive with surly-looking sailors brandishing weapons.

Illustration by Pixoloid Studios from Pathfinder Guns & Gears

Pirates! he thought as Madam Diabola’s new guns answered the brigantine’s attack. But it was as if the wind took the iron hurled at their enemy away like fallen leaves. Of its sixteen guns, only a single cannonball connected with their chameleon foe. What sorcery did these brigands have at their disposal? Illusion to disguise a warship? Elemental servants to carry away iron shot?

It was then that Callum caught sight of the brown-haired woman again. He could swear she was smiling at him directly, and as if to confirm it, she gave him a jovial wave and held her hands up to her mouth to trumpet her words across the now-smoky distance.

“Welcome to the Shackles!” she cried.

About The Author

Mike Shel is the author of the Iconoclasts trilogy of fantasy novels and over a dozen Pathfinder RPG titles including The Dragon’s Demand, Isles of the Shackles, Tomb of the Iron Medusa, and Valley of the Brain Collectors. A Michigan native, Mike now lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he practices as a psychotherapist. Find more about his fiction and RPG works at mikeshel.com.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction and including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

They all agreed that it was Ak’s fault. Poog, Reta Bigbad, Mogmurch, Chuffy Lickwound, even Mogmurch’s toad Amfibier agreed—in a gravelly voice that sounded nothing at all like Mogmurch muttering through closed lips. Ak had been the first to climb into the back of the wagon, and so the other four goblins had no choice but to follow him, only to become trapped when the longshanks and his two terrible horses had arrived, forcing them to cower under a tarpaulin as the wagon rolled into... a human village? The sounds and smells were inconclusive.

“Didn’t want to,” Ak said mournfully. “Reta said she would bash me if didn’t.”

Reta smacked the other goblin hard across the back of the head. “Was a test!” she snapped. “You coward enough to go just because I tell you? Weak, Ak. We all very disappointed.”

The other three goblins, and Amfibier, all muttered in agreement. It was not the first time Ak had disappointed them all, and it would surely not be the last. After a few moments, the muttering trailed off into awkward silence.

“What do we do now?” Mogmurch said in a harsh whisper. “Longshanks gone. Don’t hear horses. Maybe it’s safe outside, maybe good time to flee.”

“Yes, maybe,” said Reta. “Ak. You go outside, check and see if it’s safe to come out.”

Ak looked warily into his companion’s faces, his eyes narrowed. “This also a test? If I go outside, I fail again, Reta hit me?”

“No,” Chuffy responded. He pulled a jagged, filthy blade from a sheath at his belt that looked like it was held together with tar, leather straps, and spite. “You stay in here, I stabs you. Go check now. If anything kills you, make lots of noise, so we know not safe to come out yet.”

Ak’s head cautiously emerged from under one corner of the canvas drop cloth, almost immediately followed by the rest of his body as someone behind him delivered a swift kick to his backside. The goblin landed in a heap, glancing furtively around as he took in his surroundings. They were in what appeared to be a dimly lit barn. No longshanks (or worse, horses) were in sight, but there were two more wagons, one to either side. Someone had pulled back the canvas covering the nearest wagon, revealing a rack of colorful kites and an opened crate. The crate was packed with straw to protect its contents, but Ak could see enough to immediately recognize what it contained.

The goblin’s beady red eyes went wide. He clambered up and into the wagon, thrust his hand into the crate, and pulled out a decorated red paper tube about the length of his arm, attached to a long stick and trailing a short length of fuse. Fireworks! The best kind of fire! And fire was already the best kind of almost anything. A slow smile spread across Ak’s face, taking several seconds to traverse the distance from one ear to the other. This was going to change everything. Once they saw what he’d found, his companions were sure to be so grateful that...

“Stupid!” someone yelled from the other wagon. “You dead yet? Or it safe to come out?”

Ak looked down at the rocket in his hand, his toothy grin somehow growing even wider. “Just moment,” he said “Found something! You wait there, I show you!” His other hand went to the pouch at his belt, which contained a cache of special ingredients belonging to Mogmurch—ingredients so volatile and dangerous that his alchemist companion had insisted that only Ak could be trusted to carry them—and drew out a single tindertwig. He struck the twig against the rough surface of the canvas, lit the fuse, waited for a tense moment, grew tired of waiting, and jammed the burning twig into the back of the rocket. There was a blinding flash, a deafening report, and Ak was knocked flat on his back. Somewhere nearby, he could dimly make out the unmistakable sound of goblins suffering painful burns, followed by muffled cursing and scrabbling as his companions vacated their hiding place, which quickly gave way to shouts of excitement as they spotted Ak’s discovery.

His senses were still clearing when Reta grabbed him by the throat and hauled him to his feet. “Ak,” she said through gritted teeth, staring into his eyes as they struggled to focus. “You try to kill us. With firework.” She motioned to the gently smoldering wagon behind them, then to the other goblins greedily rifling through the opened crate. “But. You also find us many, many firework. You are forgiven, Ak. Today... today you are one of us.”

A single tear of pure joy ran down Ak’s cheek. “R-really?” he whispered.

Reta smiled, her mouth bristling with needle-sharp teeth. “No,” she said. “Not really.” She gave him a hard push, and Ak topped backwards over the edge of the wagon. Before he could hit the ground, the rocket that Chuffy had stuffed down the back of his leather jerkin went off, propelling him across the warehouse and into the darkness of the hayloft overhead with a strangled yelp and a gout of colorful flame.

Goblins and fireworks. What could possibly go wrong?
Illustration by Kiki Moch Rizky fromGoblin Firework Fight

Behind Reta, Poog and Mogmurch were busily pulling more fireworks out of the crate. “Smoke bomb,” Mogmurch said, lighting the fuse of a wrapped paper bundle and tossing it aside with an exasperated sigh. “Not explode. Not start fire. No point.” Poog nodded in agreement, holding the end of another lit tindertwig to the fuse of a bright purple rocket, then deftly spinning the rocket around to use its fuse to light another, even larger, green rocket. He was still clutching both when the door flew open at the other end of the barn.

“Who’s in here?” bellowed a tall figure, silhouetted against the light streaming in from outside the barn. The goblins froze. A second shadow, four-legged, growled deep in its throat and stalked ahead of its master into the barn.

Poog panicked. Immediately. “DOG!” he shrieked, lowering the green rocket so that it pointed at the oncoming animal a split second before it went off. The rocket missed the dog by more than a goblin’s full height and shot directly out the open entryway, where it struck the inner wall of a stable next door and ricocheted wildly from stall to stall, trailing a shower of sparks. A moment later, the purple rocket in Poog’s other hand went off, striking Mogmurch squarely in the face. The other goblin’s skull-faced helmet flew off as he toppled backward into the crate, followed by the sparking purple rocket. The straw cushioned his impact for a brief moment before bursting into flames.

“GOBLINS!” the longshanks in the doorway yelled, taking a step back as the dog, followed by two others, charged snarling into the barn. Poog shrieked in terror and leaped from the wagon, scampering across the cluttered floor and clambering up the assortment of riding tack that hung on one wall of the barn, with Reta right on his heels. There was a tremendous crack, and a blast of heat and smoke washed over them as the wagon below erupted in a massive storm of shrieking multicolored fireballs. One of the fireballs, shrieking slightly louder than the others, darted across the floor and up a rickety ladder toward the hayloft.

“That way!” Reta snarled at Poog, gesturing toward the loft as she began to swing, hand over hand, across the wall of saddles and wagon wheels. Below, the dogs barked in rage and confusion as something else caught fire with a satisfying whoosh. There were more longshanks outside now; she could hear them. More dogs, too.

In the loft they found Mogmurch, still smoking but no longer actually aflame, peering out a small window that opened out over the street. A moment later, Chuffy hauled himself up and over the ledge, blade clenched between his teeth. He scowled down at Ak, whose unconscious body was still sprawled face down on the floor where he had landed at the end of his brief flight. “Stupid Ak,” he said, delivering a scornful kick that elicited a weak moan. “Mess everything up for us. Again. Now we stuck up here, probably die.”

“Yeah, not look good,” Mogmurch said. “Longshanks busy trying to put out stable fire. Way too many dogs outside, though. Maybe we throw Ak down, run away while they eat him?”

There was a moment of silent contemplation as each goblin briefly considered who they might be able to bully into dragging Ak to the window. Outside, a panicked human voice screamed, “It’s spreading! Dawnflower’s grace, stop it before it reaches the alchemist!”

Poog broke the silence, chuckling knowingly as he put his arms around his companions’ shoulders.

“Friends, friends,” Poog said, closing his eyes and shaking his head softly from side to side. “You really think Poog not have brilliant escape plan for just this moment? You forget why we call Poog the smart one?” Sliding one hand into his belt pouch, he withdrew the item inside with a flourish, grinning widely as he looked around for approval.

Reta was not impressed. “Yes,” she said. “We all have fingers, Poog. Finger not what we need right now, Poog.”

Poog glanced down at the mummified digit in his hand, scowling, and tossed it away before quickly withdrawing a second item, which he dutifully examined before displaying it to the others. “Not that. Have lots of things in here.” He took the rough wooden whistle in his hand and put it to his lips, then blew silently.

A tense moment passed.

“It broken?” Chuffy started to ask. He was interrupted as a grand commotion erupted somewhere outside. Something large skidded across the cobblestone street and crashed into something else with a dull thud. A chorus of canine yips broke out, only to be drowned out by a furious bellow that trailed off into a high-pitched squeal of rage. The five goblins crowded to the window.

“SQUEALY NORD!”

A huge pig was charging haphazardly through the crowd, scattering longshanks and dogs alike. As the last of the dogs turned tail and fled, the pig positioned itself in the street directly below the window, looking up at them expectantly. They jumped as one, pouring out of the window just as the hayloft went up in flames behind them. Poog wrapped his arms around Squealy Nord’s neck and prodded him gently on one flank. “Run, Squealy Nord!” he shouted. “Run like wind!”

They met with little resistance as Squealy Nord raced up the road leading out of town, bellowing, snorting, and squealing in equal measure; the dogs had scattered, and the longshanks, easily distracted, were busy attempting to extinguish the flames. About a quarter mile outside the village walls, the great swine slowed to a trot, and the goblins allowed themselves a moment to cautiously look back. Sure enough, no one had followed them. Also, Poog was missing.

“Reta,” Mogmurch said. “Poog fall off. We go back, get him?”

Even at that distance, they all felt the shockwave from the massive blast that came next. There was a deep, shuddering boom, and a colorful cloud in the shape of a flower bloomed over the village, mingling with the thick cloud of black smoke already spreading over the countryside. On the wind, they could hear the distant sound of screams.

“Nah,” Reta said. She slid a dried truffle from her pocket into Squealy Nord’s mouth and patted the massive pig’s shoulder. “Poog fine, he find way back. I hungry. Let’s go get food.”

About The Author

Andrew White (he/him) is the lead front-end developer on paizo.com and an occasional Pathfinder and Starfinder freelance contributor. His first published credit was a gigantic fey scallop that loves rap battling and puppet shows, and his most recent is a one-shot adventure about a silver-tongued swarm of insects, a misanthropic spider robot, a jaded cowboy squid, and a magical hacker who is also a telepathic bear teaming up to rob a space train together. He has a Twitter where he mostly just retweets his more eloquent colleagues at @plaguecontrol.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction and including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

“Typically, when a patrol is sent out to escort a diplomat, they can handle themselves!”

Amircia winced, took a moment to reload her pistol, and took aim at the—eyes? hands?—eye-hands of the blood painter closest to her. “Typically, our patrols don’t get surrounded by aberrations.” A clean shot straight through the appendage, and she was already moving in with her machete to sever the wounded limb.

Rahaksenwe snorted, adjusting her hold on her spider gun. She took a breath in time with the gun’s pulsing and fired, covering another blood painter in webbing. Taking advantage of the shrieking creature’s immobilization, she moved closer, stomping on its torso, and fired the poison shot right into its face. “It’s just interesting to me that you didn’t need an escort into Port Valen, but you felt I needed an escort into Jolizpan. On your left!”

“And clearly I was correct!” Amircia turned in time to catch the blasted aberration’s teeth around her blade instead of her shoulder. A muttered prayer under her breath as she positioned her pistol alongside the machete, eliminating another blood painter with a shot before it could attempt to make art out of her. She spun around, aiming at another one of the creatures before it could reach Rahaksenwe and swearing when she heard the audible click of her pistol jamming. “Another one!”

“Got it!” Rahaksenwe took a half-step back, adjusting the spider gun once more to fire webbing at the blood painter’s feet, causing it to trip and stumble across the tree roots.

Amircia took advantage of the creature’s clumsiness, finishing it off with her machete before taking a moment to catch her breath and look around. “Is this... all of them?”

“Seems like it, though I have been wrong before.” Rahaksenwe leaned against a tree and slid into a sitting position. She let out a breath and returned her spider gun to its proper place on her back. “You did well, thank you,” she said softly, feeling her connection to the creature she’d made the weapon from.

Illustration by Will O’Brien from Pathfinder Guns & Gears

“Are you hurt?” Amircia looked the other woman over, concerned about her well-being and wanting to be on the move as quickly as possible.

Rahaksenwe shook her head, getting to her feet. “No, thank Desna. They caught your patrol by surprise, but by the time they’d revealed themselves I was already armed and ready. How far until the city?”

“A little less than a day. Strange that they would attack so close to the city and not come after you when you were alone.” Amircia nudged one of the bags of the blood painters and frowned, shaking her head. “Strange that they’re here at all, really.”

“Perhaps the beauty of the skyline drew them here.” Rahaksenwe gestured to a small, clear space in the trees. “Through here you can see the city outline against the mountains. It took my breath away. Maybe they wanted to make it theirs, too.”

Amircia followed her to the clearing and smiled a bit, looking at the outline of Jolizpan. “Maybe.” She glanced back at the scene they had left behind and grew somber. “We should be on the move. I don’t want to attract any other creatures and I’ll need to organize a larger, better trained patrol to come back for our soldiers.”

Rahaksenwe nodded solemnly, adjusting her pack and gesturing for Amircia to lead the way. “Remember, I am not as sure-footed as you. Let an old woman keep up.” She chuckled softly at Amircia’s snort and followed her lead.

“Your gun.” Amircia commented after they’d walked for some time. “It’s a beast gun.” She glanced sideways at Rahaksenwe, her statement just as much a question as it was a declaration.

“Correct. I inherited this one from my grandmother.” Rahaksenwe unholstered her spider gun, feeling it grow warm to her touch as the magic activated. “She was there to see me off on my hunt to find the ogre spider and she was there to welcome me back with herbs and soup when I returned with the components needed.” She smiled a bit at the memory before holstering the gun once more.

“So, she was also one to scope the battlefield before firing a single shot?” Amircia asked, adjusting her headdress after ducking beneath a swinging branch.

Rahaksenwe nodded, wiping sweat from her forehead. “She was. She taught me to look and listen before firing and to make sure that I kept myself at advantage. Not like my nephew, who spends all year with his screech shooter that he built from a snowy owlbear. He rolls into town like he’s never seen an angry auntie before!”

“Did your grandmother oversee his ritual, too?” Amircia asked curiously, using her machete to clear the path before them. The sun was starting to dip below the horizon, and she didn’t like the odd silence that had fallen over the jungle along with the storm clouds overhead. It felt like the creatures in the jungle, usually so chatty and busy before a storm, were preparing for something big.

“No.” Rahaksenwe sighed, shaking her head. “She’d already left us by the time he was old enough to hunt on his own. I oversaw his ritual. I’m proud of him, even if he is too cocky for his own good. Makes sense his gun chose him.”

Amircia chuckled before pausing and tilting her head. She held an arm out, stopping Rahaksenwe in her tracks. “Do you hear that?”

“The thunder?”

Amircia shook her head, earrings clinking softly. “The screaming. Sounds like a drake of some kind.”

Rahaksenwe took a second to listen before frowning and taking out her spider gun. “Do you have more bullets?”

“I always have more bullets. Do you have more energy?”

Rahaksenwe cracked a smile, dropping her pack and squaring up alongside Amircia as the sound of crashing foliage and thundering footsteps drew close. “I always have more energy for a good hunt. Lead the way, old friend.”

About The Author

Shay Snow is an agender Native American (Caddo and Swampy Cree) tabletop freelance author and editor. They’ve contributed to Pathfinder, Starfinder, and Coyote & Crow as an author, editor, playtester, and all-around yeller at dice. When they’re not playing or writing tabletop games, they can be found playing video games or talking about Indigenous issues on social media. They currently live on unceded Caddo and Wichita land in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex with their Lakota spouse, two dogs, and terrible, horrible cat. You can find them on Twitter @spellsinsugar and keep up with their upcoming projects through their website, https://shayjay.carrd.co/.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction and including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

Arvin Utner knew his next words would save him or doom him. His head started to perspire beneath his powdered wig. A rivulet of sweat ran down behind his left ear, leaving a small white smear from the wig’s powder.

“Well?” the blonde elf demanded, her features becoming even sharper as her mouth angled downward into a frown. “Was a hood among his belongings, or not?”

Arvin looked nervously around his office, knowing nothing there would help him. He’d had this office less than a year, taking over as notary when his hardworking employer retired quite suddenly. The old solicitor had cited the drier climate of Taldor as more conducive to his failing health than that of Galt. Arvin wasn’t surprised at anyone leaving Galt—he was thinking very, very hard about it himself right now—but he’d been surprised that his employer would leave such a prosperous enterprise behind. The senior advocate had ascended to manage the business, her junior advocate had taken her position, and so on, with employees inching up through the ranks. Arvin had gone from junior scrivener all the way to notary, earning a tidy raise and this office. He’d thought it was quite a coup for his career. He heartily regretted it now.

The rotund man sitting in the plush chair next to the elf frowned. “Master Utner, it’s a deceptively simple question. But answering on behalf of the deceased could be…unwise.” The man, a pompous aristocrat named Entienne Quibnel, leaned over to examine the papers on Arvin’s desk. Arvin resisted the temptation to throw himself bodily across his desk to block Lord Quibnel’s view. It wouldn’t have helped. He felt his trail of sweat turn into a small river. It was now past sundown, with a light rain falling in the city of Litran. His sweat couldn’t be passed off as anything but nerves.

The elf, Zintaya Calbieste, sighed. “Perhaps we cut this meat from a different angle.”

Arvin found the metaphor gruesome. He was already thinking much too much of the final blades, the magical guillotines used across Galt to behead criminals and those who threatened Galt’s national security.

The elf kept speaking in a folksy drawl that Arvin guessed was an affectation. Secretary Calbieste was the head of Galt’s farming cooperative, a union of ranchers and farmers. The political power that came from controlling food was immense, and Zintaya talked like the dirt-diggers she represented to earn their trust and to bait rivals into underestimating her. Arvin wasn’t falling for it.

“The dead fellow, he farmed kohlrabi, I recall.”

“Yes, some of the most delicious kohlrabi in Litran,” Lord Quibnel agreed, nodding his jowly head.

The elf ignored him. “And the Gray Gardeners—the ones who name wrongdoers, arrest them, and execute them—could be anyone, right? They wear masks while on duty. But other times, they go about as anyone else, digging out traitors and revolutionaries and criminals like they were rabbits in your radish patch. Who’s a Gray Gardener? Maybe a beggar, maybe a wainwright, maybe a noble.”

“And maybe a notary,” added Lord Quibnel with a chuckle, “though certainly not Arvin, here.”

Arvin hated being referred to in the third person when he was present, but he didn’t hate it enough to protest. Certainly, a Gray Gardener could be anyone—such as a plump aristocrat or an elven union manager. He was certain that Gray Gardener business had brought one of these two visitors into his office this evening.

Secretary Calbieste continued, “But Gray Gardeners zealously protect their secrets. And when this kohlrabi farmer was pulped into grease under the wheels of a runaway grain wagon…”

Both Arvin and Lord Quibnel grimaced at the graphic description, but the elf seemed unbothered.

“…his property was boxed up and shipped here to the city, to a relative who’d died of the pox. So the property came to your firm, Master Utner, and you catalogued it. So, I repeat the question: Was a hood among his belongings, or not?”

“As a point of legal clarification,” insisted Lord Quibnel, practically preening, “the deceased was a freeholder indebted to me, so his possessions default to me. This means his secrets do so, as well. Master Utner, don’t answer her question.”

“As a counterpoint, Lord Quiverjowl Quibble, as he was a member of the farming cooperative, his affairs are my business. And outing one of the Gray Gardeners is a very serious business.”

Arvin closed his eyes, thinking hard. His father had been one of the finest and quickest tailors in the city, with a keen eye for style. He’d been taken away by the Gray Gardeners when Arvin was a boy for “promoting unpatriotic fashion,” whatever that meant, and joined those slain beneath a final blade. But his father never had to thread such a fine needle as Arvin did now. One of these two visitors was a Gray Gardener, Arvin was sure of it. Was it Lord Quibnel, as good as ordering Arvin to keep the dead man’s secret? Or was it Secretary Calbieste, wanting to find out whether Arvin knew about the gray silk hood jumbled among farm clothes?

Arvin opened his eyes and spoke slowly.

“Farmers have need for rough daily clothing. Fancy things don’t suit them, except for an occasional trip into Litran for a wedding, a mandatory National Day celebration, or a significant execution.” He was stating the obvious, he knew, and his visitors both listened very carefully. He pictured a very fine thread advancing toward the eye of a very small needle.

“And while a farmer might have need for a nice cloak or fine hat, he wouldn’t need a hood, no. Not at all.” He started sweating again. His visitors were becoming impatient. The thread in his mental image shook.

“And if there had been a gray silk hood among this man’s possessions, and I’m not confirming or denying that there was, only a notarized probate inventory could prove it. And as I’ve not yet concluded the notarization, there might be—officially speaking—no mention in any formal inventory, ever. Regardless of the hood’s existence.”

The office was silent. There was an instant after threading a needle when you made a slight tug, just to see whether you’d hit the eye and the thread held or missed it and the thread came free. Arvin thought about that tug.

Secretary Calbieste smiled. “A gray silk hood, you say?”

Lord Quibnel grinned as well. “Not yet notarized in the inventory, eh?”

The doors to the office flew open. Two large figures in rain-soaked capes and wide hats barged into the room. The facemasks they wore obscured their features and their gloved hands reached for Arvin.

In his mind, the thread flew free.

Illustration by Raymond Sebastien from Pathfinder Adventure: Night of the Gray Death

About The Author

Ron Lundeen lives in the rural hinterlands outside of Seattle, Washington, where he finds the climate a pleasant change from his native Illinois. After a career as a corporate attorney, Ron took a full-time position with Paizo, Inc. as a developer, working with freelancers to create fabulous worlds and monstrous threats for the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games. He now serves as development manager overseeing the Pathfinder development team. He also designs games in his free time, creating a dizzying variety of perils, plots, and legends. Ron’s favorite RPG design work is adventure writing, to help others share exciting stories with their friends. Although his first game design credit came back in 1993, Ron has recently written for Paizo, Wizards of the Coast, Ulisses Spiele, and many others. Ron also runs a gaming company and RPG writer advice blog, which you can visit at www.runamokgames.com.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction and including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

“No no no no nononoooo!”

Trying frantically to keep his load of boxes and bushels more or less balanced, Hanish kicked at the grinning dog that was… well, that was dogging his path through the crowded Grand Bazaar. The big white mutt wagged its tail happily at the game, dodged his foot effortlessly, and darted back in for another try at the sausages spilling from an overstuffed hamper on Hanish’s hip.

Hanish swore, but he couldn’t pause to fix the hamper or shoo the dog away. He was running late, and his customers were never patient. A double-humped camel, bent under its own mountain of chests and caskets, met his gaze with a long-lashed eye, and Hanish felt a profound understanding pass between them. Two beasts of burden, vital to the lifeblood of the city, but forever unappreciated.

All around them, merchants and buyers haggled under a dizzying array of flags, banners, wicker arbors, and sun-bleached, dusty tents. Dried fruits and ribbed purple seedpods from the forests of Kyonin dangled from poles next to tables displaying thick white pelts from the halls of the Linnorm Kings, Qadiran brass pots that shone like gold, and spiked Nidalese shadowglass sculptures. Ink-painted scrolls advertised family businesses that had held the same market stalls for centuries, while a steel-feathered parrot perched on a passing woman’s shoulder screeched “Scales and teeth! Scales and teeth! Metal skymetal scales and teeth! From star-dead wastes of Numeria to you! Two days only! Scales and teeth!”

Off to the right, a troupe of puppeteers was putting on a bedraggled but enthusiastic performance of “Iomedae’s Griffon” for an audience of enraptured youngsters and heckling drunks. Just as Hanish hustled by, the puppet-stage’s curtains blew open around a bellowing, steam-snorting contraption that was probably supposed to be Segruchen the Iron Gargoyle. The troupe’s musician banged her drums, the puppeteers shouted in rehearsed dismay, and a nearby packhorse reared and shrieked in panic, terrified by the clanking menace and its clamor.

Hanish ducked around the animal’s flying hooves, congratulated himself for the quick save, and then promptly tripped over a boy wearing a gaudy sandwich board touting Gerig’s Liquid Courage, the drink of (mostly deceased) champions.

“No no no no nononoooo!”

Scarves and grapes and apples flying in his wake, Hanish windmilled his arms in a panicked jig under the swinging balance of his load. Finally he stumbled to a stop, panting and sweating but basically upright. A nearby street beggar applauded briefly. Hanish sketched a bow, or as much of one as he dared, and hurried onward. That dog was, somehow, still at his heels.

Illustration by Mirco Paganessi from Absalom, City of Lost Omens.

Hanish spotted a break in the crowds and hurried through to a storefront festooned with bits of punched metal hung from silken strings. The chimes sparkled and sang against his load of packages as he knocked on the glass-gemmed door.

“You’re late,” snapped the rotund half-orc who opened the door for him. Her tusks were painted with fanciful Osiriani hieroglyphs, and a jade Tien ornament hung from her earlobe, but her accent was as all Absalom. “I’ll wager you’ve stained and wrinkled my wares, too.”

Hanish tapped the glowing bauble on his wrist. The bobbing crystal still shone blue: he’d made the delivery window. “Not late, and your scarves are pristine, Mistress Verity.” Unlike poor Ghemel’s lunch, he almost added, but then decided not to badmouth his own services. It was hard enough prying tips out of Mistress Verity already.

The half-orc grunted, taking the heavy brown chest from Hanish’s aching arm and unlatching it with two quick flips. She ruffled through the fine embroidered silks and gossamer scarves, holding this one or that up to the light until she was satisfied that, indeed, Hanish had delivered the full load safely.

She hauled the chest inside and tossed Hanish a pair of copper pennies. “Commemorative,” she said, and slammed her door.

Hanish looked at the pitiful coins in his palm. They were commemorative, all right, but one celebrated the elevation of a new trademaster and the other was about some giant fish getting hauled out of the harbor, so neither was worth more than the copper it was stamped on. Mistress Verity’s generosity had struck again.

The bauble on his wrist was starting to pulse violet. Hanish grimaced, rebalanced his remaining packages, and ran.

He dropped the fruit and sausages at Ghemel’s — there was a decent tip, even though half the apples were bruised and the dog had managed to steal two sausages — and went on, faster now that the heaviest packages were gone. At Chivvi’s Apothecary, he dropped off a box of stonestalk eggs; the stiff-armored, distinctively shaped caterpillars had developed a predictable reputation as aphrodisiacs. At the Wandlin steam baths, he delivered frost teas and ice wines harvested from the Crown of the World and prized by heat-bathers in need of quick cooling.

The last stop on his route was the best: Felifer’s Bibliovary, where priceless texts were framed like gems on bronze and silver shelves, and the air carried a deep, calming perfume of ancient wood and yellowing paper. Walking into Felifer’s was like stepping into a timeless, never-hurried world of learning, and it always made Hanish wistful for the life he’d never lead. Maybe if his parents had been richer, if they’d been able to afford more schooling… well, it was no use dreaming about all that.

But for a few precious minutes, whenever he had a delivery at Felifer’s, he could breathe in that sepia-scented tranquility and pretend.

The door was already ajar when Hanish arrived. “Hello?”

There was no answer. Hanish stepped inside and set down his delivery box. The dog came with him, even though he’d already dropped off the sausages. The smell of blood was retch-thick in the shop, and the dog whined softly, lashing its tail.

“Hello?”

Nothing. Gulping, Hanish picked his way through the glowing bookshelves to Felifer’s back office. Shadows bobbed and spun away from him across the gleaming metal, teasing his eyes with premonitions of doom. The dog came with him, and though Hanish couldn’t help worrying that the old bookseller would scold him for bringing an animal into the shop, he was glad for its company. He didn’t want to be alone here.

The back office was empty. Quiet. Nothing out of place except a paper-wrapped parcel on Felifer’s desk, a note written in the bookseller’s crabbed blue pen, and the sigil-stamped luminous tag that meant Hanish was meant to take it for delivery.

Hanish bent closer to read the note. “To Pathfinder Agent Berovic, Skywatch. All speed.” That meant a breakneck run to deliver the parcel at any hour of the day or night, and triple pay if he made it within the hour. Right now, with the lull between Absalom’s daytime commerce and when the nightlife really lit up, the target should be easy to hit. Good money.

But maybe dangerous. The last two words of the message were shaky and dribbled downward, as if Felifer were losing the strength to write. Bloody fingerprints marred the paper wrapping, which bulged and sagged in its strings with uncharacteristic sloppiness.

The dog whined again. Hanish patted its head, then reached for the parcel. It was light and fragile-feeling, as though whatever was in there were dried, or hollow. Something rattled softly inside.

Already the luminous tag was starting to lose its pearly pallor. If Hanish made to Skywatch while the light was still blue, he’d get triple pay.

If he didn’t, he might land in something worse than he’d ever imagined.

Well, it wouldn’t be the first time his job had careened him into trouble, and if Desna smiled on him, it wouldn’t be the last. The City at the Center of the World never slept, never stopped, and held uncountable adventures. Hanish had taken this job because he wanted to grab his share of those adventures, and so far, he’d gotten all that he could handle.

Hanish tucked the parcel into his satchel, snapped its tag onto his bracelet, and ran.

One more delivery today.

About The Author

Liane Merciel is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novels Nightglass, Nightblade, and Hellknight, and a contributor to other books including Nidal: Land of Shadows, Faiths of Golarion, and the Lost Omens World Guide. She has also written for Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, and Bioware’s Dragon Age franchise. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, two dogs, and a small child who is extremely into baking projects.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction and including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

Dust settled, leaving two figures behind in the carnage. One a looming mass of hulking muscle and teeth. The other a gnome, small, but—against all odds—still up.

Torrick Wilderbark grasped the lever of his wheelchair in a white-knuckle grip, jaw set hard. His breaths came laboured, tongue caked with a layer of grit and grime. The warehouse lay shattered around them. Broken boards and timbers cracked further under the weight of his wheels. Behind him, the steam engine that powered his aid thrummed, vibrating against the seat in a steady rhythm.

The troll had been pushed back, pulling itself out from under a pile of broken stone and cracked roof tiles. It mumbled a growl as it staggered upright, wobbly at first, but centering itself with every passing second. Dark blood oozed from its stunted snout. Torrick fumbled for the sword strapped behind the right wheel.

His hand closed around air.

An ice-cold wave of dread crashed over him. His sword. Pathetically trying to tamp down the rising panic in his throat, Torrick turned in the seat, twisting as far as he could as the safety belts bit into his thighs. Not only the sword but the scabbard was gone, too. The belt securing his gear must have snapped during the collapse, and, rattled by the all-consuming barrage of fractured stone and wood, he had failed to notice.

Mere feet away, the troll whined in pain.

Letting go of the lever, Torrick gripped the arms of the chair, straining further to look around him. The beast may be stunned for now, but it was rapidly regaining focus. Hard leather straps dug further into his legs, and he winced against it, taking in his surroundings.

Nothing much was left of the warehouse. What little remained jutted out of the ground at odd angles, still crumbling. Splintered wood protruded like snapped bones, pinned by blasted chunks of stone and shattered glass. The alchemical bomb he’d tossed had certainly done the job. Torrick was lucky to be alive.

But severely unluckily, the troll was, too.

As his gaze scoured the rubble, a glint caught his eye—a flash of steel. A mere few feet away, snagged tight around a listing beam, was the remains of his gear, the belt pierced through by a nail and tangled about the shaft of the scabbard. And there, by some great mercy from the gods, hung his sword.

He had no time to think, no plan. Every moment wasted was one in the monster’s favor. Torrick fell back down into his seat and clutched at the lever once more. The bubbling panic in his throat was not yet sated. He needed to get his sword. Now. Steam hissing, the engine roared up as the chair heeded his command, veering right and toward the dangling weapon. Debris clattered and cracked loudly under the wheels, but he couldn’t care less about the racket he was making. He was close, so close. The weapon hung before him, taunting. Torrick reached out, free arm straining as though he could somehow will it into his hand.

Come on, he thought, pleaded. To any deity that cared to listen. The chair stopped, his fingers barely made contact, ghosting over the handle of the blade. He needed to get just a little higher, reach a little further, then he could—

A thunderous roar shook the very ground.

Torrick spat a curse.

Heavy footfalls, blackened claws scraping. It lumbered closer, with a loping gait that swiftly ate away at the distance between them. Torrick’s pulse pounded in his ears as he fumbled. Another roar, a deep bellowing sound that vibrated in his chest and sent him frantic, straining to reach higher, shoulder burning in its socket, hips protesting at the bruising line of the security belt.

Almost there. Just a little further. Come on. Please—

The troll fell upon him in a flurry of limbs and gnashing tusks. Torrick immediately dropped back into the seat, tucking in as small as he could as the pressing weight of the angered beast threatened to consume him. In its rage, it had overshot its mark, instead grappling the frame of the wheelchair and barely missing Torrick’s body; the tips of razor-sharp claws snagging on his armor.

And yet hope. Clutched in his hand, cool against sweaty fingers, was the sword. Held in a white-knuckle grip.

Lunging again for the lever, Torrick twisted awkwardly to avoid the troll knocking the weapon out of his hand. He pulled hard enough that the metal screeched and the engine almost backfired, revving so loudly it almost drowned out the sound of heavy-set limbs pawing at the wheels. Lurching abruptly backward, the chair shunted its way out from under the troll’s crushing form, the creature’s claws scrabbling at the frame.

With the chair now pulled out from under it, the monster stumbled to adjust and pitched forward, grunting in confusion, its brow furrowed deep and hard. Torrick wasted no time, taking no chances as he let go of the shaft and slipped a vial from a pouch at his belt, smashing it against the flat of his blade as the wheelchair continued to roll back on its own.

The vial shattered easily, oil inside bleeding down the groove before reacting with the air. The effect was immediate: a tongue of fire that blazed brightly. With a victorious bark of laughter, Torrick kicked the lever forward once more with his foot, using both arms to drive all the strength he had into a wide swing.

Illustration by Firat Solhan from Pathfinder Guns & Gears. Find more accessibility devices to use in your campaigns in Pathfinder Lost Omens Grand Bazaar.

Green flesh parted easily, black ichor slicking his hands, but not enough to douse the alchemical flames that burned crimson on cold steel. The troll screeched, reeling back and away as it was almost gutted in one fell blow. Barrelling past a few feet, Torrick pulled the wheelchair around in a wide arc, throwing up dust and debris in a trail.

Wild with fury, the beast turned on him, yellow eyes wide and tusks bared. Fiery sword still in one hand, Torrick grinned and gripped the lever once more. Now the real fight would begin.

About The Author

Sara Thompson is a disabled freelance writer and game designer for tabletop roleplaying games. They have worked on Pathfinder, Starfinder, Hellboy: The Roleplaying Game, Bardsung, and more. Currently, they are working on The Witcher Pen & Paper by R. Talsorian Games as well as their own personal projects creating disability and accessibility items for TTRPGs. They are also the creator of the Combat Wheelchair—a homebrew ruleset for 5e Dungeons & Dragons which has appeared on shows such as Critical Role and Rivals of Waterdeep as well as in licensed video game Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms through character Talin Uran.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction and including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

Marcus was miserable.

Sign up for border forces, his father said. See the world. Lend your strength and inner fire to Cheliax. Your brother and sisters could use a role model. Your mother could use any surplus income.

Clearly dad had never served.

The journey past the Menador Mountains was challenging; Marcus had never left the Chelaxian border before, and the transition the landscape made as they neared the Uskwood was unsettling. The sun seemed to shine brighter back home; the colors were brilliant, the daylight sparkled, and even the nighttime was made merrier by the vivid oranges and reds of torchlight and campfire.

Everything here was muted. Smothered. Silent. As though even the crickets were afraid to call, the birds too cautious to sing. The trees here were different, too; gnarled, angular things whose branches inexplicably still bore fresh leaves. He’d never seen new foliage look so drab, like it was painful to even grow.

This entire place was shadow and silence; even the campfire they’d made struggled against the oncoming darkness, and the crackle of burning wood shouted their presence. Marcus huddled closer and gave his companion a long-suffering look over the flames.

If Calerio was bothered by the strange solitude of Nidal’s environs, he didn’t show it. The man’s face was calm, his hand steady as it stoked the fire to further life. He took another look around the small campsite, his dark eyes studying every nearby tree and bush before settling again on his companion. Only then did the man’s eyes soften a little, and the wisp of a smile tug at his mouth.

“We won’t be here long,” Calerio reassured him. In the silence, even his soft baritone seemed to boom.

“Good,” Marcus grumbled. “I’d much prefer mountain-diving to this.”

His companion chuckled, and all too soon, the uncomfortable silence pressed in. It needed to be chased off; grasping for a topic, Marcus asked, “So, uh, you been here before?”

Calerio chuckled softly. “A long time ago. Years. And never this close to the Uskwood. Even back in my old caravan days, we never went through the Uskwood. The locals don’t like to be disturbed.”

“Yet here we are,” Marcus sighed.

“Here we are,” Calerio agreed. “But these are the orders.”

The younger of the two sighed and returned his eyes to the fire. Behind him, the sun’s last rays finally sank below the horizon line, and night settled in, as though it always belonged there. Nighttime should not feel so heavy, and yet it threatened to smother the Chelish soldier. Marcus’s hand kept close to his scimitar, his stomach tightening in anticipation. By now, the small campfire bellowed in the deadened silence, angry and intrusive.

“Won’t be long now,” breathed Calerio.

And it wasn’t.

“Blasphemers!” The voice boomed, setting both men instantly to their feet. “You shall pay the price for your intrusion!”

Illustration by Ian Perks from Pathfinder Secrets of Magic

The attack came from nowhere. The shadow of the closest tree grew longer for but a heartbeat, and then two figures leapt from the dark canopy – one black as night, the other shiningly pale in comparison. Marcus barely had time to raise his shield before the dark creature was upon him; the sudden weight threatened to take his feet out from under him. He braced himself against it, shoved and was rewarded with the scrape of tooth on metal and wood. His sword arm burned, though, from the swipe of a horrid claw.

“Wait!” he heard Calerio call. “We mean no harm!” A quick glance to the side showed his companion facing off with a slender elf dressed in leather armor. Wisps of shadow curled in stark contrast to the elf’s albino skin as he clutched a horrible-looking effigy made of bark, blood, and bone.

The call came too late; as Marcus watched, the shadows stretched up and over the pale elf’s hand, convalescing at his fingers and shooting forward. The darkness screamed as it barreled into them, a horrible, high-pitched monstrosity of sound that ripped through both men. For a moment, Marcus couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, and was barely aware of the hot, fresh blood that gushed from his nose, tickled over his chin, and dripped from his beard.

He shook his head to clear it, noting in his peripheral vision that Calerio had been affected by the Shadow Blast as well, but was already recovering and leveling his shield and trident at the elf. Marcus refocused on his adversary, and a momentary panic gripped him as he realized he’d lost sight of the beast.

Then, there it was again, glowing green eyes across the fire, snarling at man and flame as though both were equal enemies. The fire brought definition to the strange, smoky animal. It moved like a hound, snarled like one, and had the bulk and weight of any trained dog, but its very being seemed to waver and meld with the shadows around it.

If it wasn’t about to lunge again, Marcus might have wanted to ask questions. As it was, his arm was ready; he would meet this next lunge with a slice the creature would not soon forget.

Fortunately, it never came. With a cry, Calerio rammed into the elf, yelling “In the name of our Master Zon-Kuthon, I bid you hold!”

Wait… “our?”

At the very least, it gave Calerio the moment he’d wanted. The albino elf twitched a finger, and the strange shadow-hound backed away from Marcus, though kept its otherworldly eyes set on the man. Wide-eyed and keeping his shield raised, the younger human kept alert, breathing rapidly and spitting away the coppery-tasting blood that trailed over his mouth. He took a step toward his companion.

“You cannot claim to venerate our Midnight Lord and still violate our earth with that filth,” the elf spat, casting a revolted look towards the campfire.

Calerio considered his words a moment before speaking quietly. “Marcus, extinguish the fire.”

Marcus wanted nothing more than to question that order, but knew better, especially here and now. He carefully set about the task – tricky, when he wanted to keep his eyes on the adversaries. As he worked, he heard Calerio continue. “It was the fastest way we knew to summon one of the Shadowed faith, and our need is great.”

“Your needs are unimportant to us, little shadeling,” sneered the elf. “There is a price to pay for calling on us.”

“It is a price I agree to pay,” intoned Calerio, sheathing his sword. “Cheliax and Nidal have been allies for years. Our flames rise and give you taller shadows. And now, Cheliax needs the expertise of your sect.”

“Why should the druids of Uskwood care about what is happening in the bright lands?” scoffed the elf. Another twitch of his fingers, and the shadow-hound approached, obediently sitting at the elf’s feet.

The last, bright wisp of fire died, leaving only wood smoke and darkness behind. The green glow of the shadow hound’s eyes seemed all the brighter without the intrusive campfire. Even now, the pale skin of the elf was easily seen; he made no attempt to hide himself, and why should he?

“Because there are mysteries there whose unraveling might be of utmost interest to the Midnight Lord – and both of our courts,” Calerio answered softly.

The elf sighed. “Continue.”

Marcus breathed. Calerio’s orders had seemed crazy, but they worked.

“Recently we discovered a hollowed-out section of rock in the Menador Mountains. We thought it was just an unfortunate experiment gone wrong, or perhaps an old, weakened series of tunnels finally giving in to time, but once the debris was cleared, we discovered a strange item. A huge, porous stone, different from the stone of the mountain, twisting up into a point, like a giant stalagmite. It should have been crushed with all the other debris, but it looked…almost fresh. And it seemed to be…weeping.”

The druid stayed silent, arching pale eyebrows as he considered Calerio’s words.

“There was no place where the stone would have allowed water flow, and there’s no water source nearby, but we have seen it with our own eyes, and I swear it is weeping. Your sect specializes in the shadows and understand the natural order of things far more than we could. This thing seems to thrive in the shadows of what used to be sturdy rock. What’s more, if this weeping is magical or spiritual in nature, then none know more about suffering than the Uskwood druids.” Calerio paused, swallowed thickly, and then finished, “This discovery could be a godsend to both your masters and mine. I will pay any price you or your sect decree, in honor of our Midnight Lord. Will you help us?”

Marcus watched as the albino’s head canted to one side, as though listening to the shadows themselves. After a long stretch of silence, he nodded once. Calerio seemed relieved and seemed to breathe a little easier. “Thank you.”

“Do not thank me just yet,” came the elf’s scornful voice. “We may be traveling companions for now, but Zon-Kuthon will get his due, and you will be made to pay for each slight against him.” The elf’s long, white hair shone, waterlike, as he nodded towards the extinguished fire. His pink eyes lifted and rested on Marcus, then. “You both will.” The shadow-hound licked his chops at Marcus.

Marcus felt his stomach sink. Suddenly, he wasn’t so relieved for the mission’s success. He’d have many questions for Calerio, once they were alone – if they ever would be, again.

They wouldn’t.

About The Author

Rachael Cruz is an award-winning writer / game designer. Her TRPG work can be found in numerous properties, including but not limited to Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed-Of, Corvus Belli’s Infinity RPG, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, Fantasy Age, RuneQuest, and Star Trek Adventures. She has been helping people play pretend before it was cool. She also believes in you. Yes, you. Follow her on Twitter at @Witchwater!

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction and including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

Nkayah yawned from her post in the tall tree. The job of scouting and protecting wanderers was always more exciting on the move. On the move, she had to stay on her toes, taking silent cover behind trees or climbing into the jungle canopy to maintain line of sight with the strangers and visitors who passed through Ekujae lands. She lived for the silent chase as she assessed outsiders’ motivations. For over a century and a half, Nkayah had ensured non-Mwangi travelers posed no threat to the Ekujae, and that they didn’t release any of the myriad evils trapped within the heart of the jungle—intentionally or not.

It was an important job that Nkayah took with the seriousness it deserved, but it could also be incredibly boring. Like right now, as she strained to keep from nodding off while watching two foreigners talk about, well, something. It didn’t help that the dwarf and half-orc interlopers spoke a language completely foreign to her. It sounded similar to the Avistani language the Aspis Consortium agents from Bloodcove spoke when they needed to hide their awful deeds, but she had no linguistic training to confirm it. Despite not knowing what they were saying, the experience she’d earned over decades of training made her confident that their intent wasn’t malicious. But they were stumbling—loudly—through a very ancient Serpentfolk ruin, and that meant that they still posed a threat.

She strained her jaw as she stifled a yawn and adjusted her position to ensure she didn’t get too comfortable. A wilderness nap could wait until the pair of foreigners moved beyond her territory and became someone else’s responsibility. Whatever they sought, the longer they spent out in the open like this, the longer they were in danger of needing more than just surveillance. Sometimes it helped to remember that even these boring parts of the job ultimately kept the innocent and defenseless wanderers of their lands safe, as well as protecting her people and the world at large.

The dwarf and her half-orc companion let out a series of surprised shouts, snapping Nkayah’s attention back to the moment. Doubtless, she wasn’t the only one in the area reminded of the visitors’ presence by their arguing. They seemed at odds about what to make of one particular section of the ruin, a strange stone that Nkayah had never noticed here before. Perhaps the situation wasn’t quite as boring as she’d thought!

She scurried from branch to bough, until she found herself balanced on a long, lonely limb directly over the foreigners. She was close to them, no more than ten feet above the half-orc’s head, so they could easily see her if they looked up, but they were too engrossed in the strange stone formation. As long as she didn’t draw their gaze, they wouldn’t be looking up any tiem soon.

The formation was a cone of rough stone, nearly seven feet from base to point, that rose like an incisor from the ground. It wasn’t worked stone like the rest of the Serpentfolk ruin, and it lacked the ophidian motifs and iconography that denoted the ancient Ydersian structures for what they were. This looked both organic and completely at odds with the natural order, and it was no wonder it had so grasped the visitors’ attention. The dwarf held her hand a few inches from the stalactite’s surface, but didn’t touch it, as though sensing for an aura of evil.

No, she wasn’t feeling an aura, but rather a steady stream of frigid air blowing from the stone’s otherwise smooth surface. Now that she recognized it, Nkayah could feel the steady airflow herself, and even at this distance. The chill made the skin on her arms prickle with gooseflesh. This certainly warranted more investigation, but she had to focus on her charges—the dwarf and the half-orc, not the ruin, which she’d be able to come back to once the pair no longer presented a threat. And the louder they got, the greater that threat grew.

Doubtless, her counterparts from nearby were already on their way to see what the fuss was about. Nhayah shook her head and loosened the harness holding her weapons to her body. This was going to get worse before it got better.

Her instincts proved accurate when the sound of arrows in flight drew her attention away from the outsiders and toward the edge of the ruins. She wasn’t the only Ekujae in the area anymore.

The dwarf and half-orc were still loudly arguing about the cold stone tooth. They hadn’t noticed the arrival of Nkayah’s kin, and she knew they wouldn’t hear her either as she skittered effortlessly away, mere feet above their heads. Without losing sight of the foreign travelers, Nhayah darted in towards the site of the arrows’ impact.

It didn’t take long to find one, embedded into the trunk of a gnarled tree: a darkwood arrow with dull gray fletching, clearly Ekujae-made. If she were on the ground, it would be at eye-level, meaning whatever they were shooting at was not terribly large. As she dropped down and pulled the arrow out to inspect it, her teeth clenched instinctively. Nkayah glanced at her surroundings to locate the arrow’s source, but knew her compatriots were as good at remaining unseen as she was. She’d see them when they wanted to be seen, just as they likely didn’t know she was there until she revealed herself.

The arrowhead was tipped with cold iron, finely sharpened, and faintly tingling with magical energy that pulsed lightly into her fingertips. Though the spell was no longer active, she knew what its presence meant.

“Demons” she hissed, still too soft for her charges to hear, even if they weren’t now yards away and engrossed in their investigation. She wished she could scream at them. Leave it alone, you fools. Leave our lands and stop meddling in things you don’t understand!

She pulled her bow from her back and swung back up into the branches with her free arm. She moved swiftly back to her spot where she’d previously kept watch and aimed her bow across the clearing in the direction she knew this threat would come from. She hadn’t yet determined whether the demon was somehow tied to the cold-air stone or simply drawn to the site by the outsiders, but regardless, the pair didn’t deserve to die at the claws of a vicious demon just because they were loud.

The underbrush rustled as the threat approached, and she notched a cold iron arrow of her own. A hulking form, only partially visible through the jungle’s dense foliage, emerged. She fired. The arrow flew true, and the dark form hissed as its iron head burned across its demonic body. The dwarf and her companion, suddenly aware that they weren’t alone in the ruins, stared, paralyzed with fear, and barely mustered the strength to look up and see Nkayah above them, fearless, with another arrow at the ready. She released the bowstring; the arrow flew and then… darkness.

She cursed as she dropped from the tree, racing for where her charges once stood, but could not find them in the darkness. The cool, constant airflow from the stone tooth let her know where it stood, where the dwarf and half-orc had been a moment before. She listened for their voices, but they were either too scared to scream or already lost. Then, her ears caught other voices, two of them, in her own tongue.

“Hunters!” she called back in kind. “Speak again so that I may find you. I am a scout. I can navigate to you in this darkness.”

The elves obeyed and signaled to her in hushed tones, somewhere off to her left. She made her way to them, slowly, not wanting to injure herself on a bit of the ruin she could not see. It took some time but finally, she connected with another form. The other thankfully stood firmly despite the collision.

“I am Nkayah of the Bat Clan. My mother was of the Hawk Clan. You’re demon hunters?”

The erratic sound of the others’ steps told her they were fumbling in the dark. “I am Kayoye,” the voice to her right began, “of the Velociraptor Clan. My mother is of the Gecko clan, and we hunt all forms of evil in this jungle. Today’s prey just happened to be a demon.”

“And I am Dafiyi, also of the Velociraptor Clan. My mother is of the Python clan. The darkness should wear off shortly. This is not its first attempt to escape us today.”

Nkayah sighed. Waiting without being able to see anything at all was incredibly frustrating, but she stood alert, with a firm grasp on her bow and an arrow at the ready. Soon, the demon’s magical cloak of darkness disappeared as swiftly as it had descended, and the dim, green-tinted light of the sun through jungle canopy flooded her sight. Finally able to see, the elves clustered together, back-to-back, and notched arrows, centuries of experience between them allowing the trio to work seamlessly as a defensive unit despite just meeting moments earlier. They rotated clockwise, six sharp eyes and six keen ears scanning the jungle from leaf-strewn floor to branch-woven canopy for any threat. The demon was gone, and no trace of the dwarf and the half-orc remained.

Nkayah cursed and kicked a piece of rubble. She rolled the events of the past few minutes over in her head: the serpentfolk ruins, the new-yet-ancient otherworldly stalactite, the demon, and the demon hunters now flanking her.

It was a coincidence. The cold-blowing stone and the demon were unrelated. That made things more interesting, perhaps, but also more complicated.

Dafiyi stared at the ground in concentration and muttered an incantation to himself, then pointed to the east. “Kayoye and I still have a demon to kill. We found it before, and we’ll find it again. And you?”

Nkayah surveyed the trees around her, searching for an answer. It came to her in the form of two familiar voices yelling in distress. The dwarf and half-orc were still alive!

She nodded to her kin and smirked, “Sounds like I still have two charges that need my protection, and what do you know? They seem to be in the same direction! I’ll have to return to check on that later.” She tilted her head toward the mysterious stone amid the ruins.

Swiftly and silently, she made her way through the dense jungle toward the frantic voices to the east. Dafiyi and Kayoye fell into step just behind her. This was more like it, she thought to herself. The job of protecting wanderers was always more exciting on the move.

About The Author

Isis Wozniakowska is a budding TTRPG writer, though she has been writing fantasy short stories since third grade. Her previous work includes Starfinder Society Scenario #3-21: Frozen Ambitions: Renewal’s Blight and contributions to Pathfinder Secrets of Magic. You can find her on Twitter at @wozenstein, provided you don’t mind seeing a lot of retweets from her favorite video game series.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction and including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

“…and from the village of Mua’bri, I bear an earthenware cauldron, banded in lightning and dusted with gold, that the potters of the village bequeath to your majesty so that their work might be remembered forever...”

Kwibha listened to the First Speaker of the Dragon Wardens with one ear, his attention more focused on keeping warm. By tradition, these yearly negotiations were hold on this flat mountaintop just across the valley from the city of Cloudspire, the air so cold that Kwibha’s breath misted forth with every heartbeat. His late sister Jhirabi, who’d been training to be a Dragon Warden, said the location actually had been chosen because there were few other places where one could treat with a half-dozen dragons, but Kwibha would never be so crass as to say so out loud.

“…my rain-child’s third daughter is ready to leave the nest. It is time for her to have a territory of her own, a hoard and home atop a good tree. Do they still have that lightning-struck tree outside of Mua’bri…?”

For a moment, Kwibha envisioned a group of stout dwarven farmers, dour-faced and heavily armed, accompanied by a whimsical fledgling dragon the size of a sheep. The farmers would likely be more dangerous. Still, one had to start somewhere, and it was upon these formalized exchanges of gifts, territories, and protection that the partnership of dwarf and cloud dragon had been built.

Illustration by Maichol Quinto from Pathfinder Lost Omens The Mwangi Expanse

Another hour passed, then a second and third, and Kwibha felt the frost harden on the white scarf around his neck. Snow crunched underfoot as he shifted his weight, and still the dragons and the First Speaker of the Dragon Wardens continued their talks. Kwibha cast a sidelong glance at the First Speaker—Jhirabi had said they were chosen for endurance as well as diplomacy.

And then it was time.

“Noble kings,” the First Speaker said, for all dragons are accorded the title of kings, “I present to you Second Speaker Kwibha of the Bloodmarked.”

That was Kwibha’s cue. The dwarf strode forward, marshalling every scrap of dignity he possessed. To any other dwarf, Kwibha was a person of note, with his gold-embroidered kaftan of cashmere, amber-hilted sword, and the scarlet ribbon tied about his brow. The dragons, Kwibha fervently hoped, would be equally impressed.

“Noble kings of sky and cloud, revered ancestors of the storm, you whose wrath is lightning and whose mercy is the rain after a long drought,” Kwibha’s voice echoed off the mountaintops, finely pitched to carry to the great beings clustered before him, “I come bearing an offer from King Thabsing of K’Lereng, called the Blood-Eye.”

“And what is this offer, Second Speaker?” one of the dragons whispered with a voice like the mist, soft yet inescapable. “We have heard his plans of war before and have little interest in them.”

“Today, he proposes not war, but justice, not battle, but execution,” Kwibha said smoothly. He held out a single hand in the traditional orator’s pose. “Know this, noble kings. On the last day of the dry season, in the pirate city of Bloodcove where they celebrate the Tempest Day, there will be a great auction of treasures taken from the drowned land of Lirgen. Most of the Pirate Council of the Shackles plans to attend, and we’ve heard that the Hurricane Queen herself, Tessa Fairwind, shall be present.”

“And how do you know this thing will happen, Second Speaker?” another cloud dragon asked in a voice that thundered across the mountaintop, causing drifts of snow to become tiny avalanches.

Kwibha hoped they would ask him this. With a great flourish, he swept his arm out and bowed genteelly to the assembled wyrms. “I know this, noble kings, for I shall conduct the auction myself.”

This caught the dragons’ attention—and the attention of the Dragon Wardens, for that matter. Kwibha allowed himself a small smile. It had taken nearly two years to make the proper introductions, to pass himself from one pirate to the next in that stinking city. King Thabsing had provided the Lirgeni artifacts, from where it was not entirely clear, but it was Kwibha’s work that had brought this day about. Bloodcove was a very different place from the orderly, harmonious citadel of Cloudspire, a place of violence, greed, and broken oaths, but dwarves lived there as well. Buyers, mostly, to purchase the pirates’ stolen goods and send them back to the Mbe’ke, but a few disgraced sellers as well, who would trade with the Mbe’ke’s enemies. Kwibha had pretended to be one such, and he didn’t know if he’d ever feel properly clean again.

“The Free Captains are no fools, and they will expect treachery,” Kwibha continued in the ensuing silence. “But they will expect it from each other or myself. Their ships will be moored at harbor, their sailors carousing, their lieutenants and weather-wizards accompanying their captains for protection. The vessels will be virtually defenseless in the face of a sudden storm, honored lords of lightning,” Kwibha paused, before adding the final bait, “and they will be heavily laden with loot from a season’s successful piracy.”

“Your words intrigue, Second Speaker,” said the senior-most dragon in a voice crackling with frost. “We will weigh them and give an answer in three day’s time.”

“A question, Emissary of the Bloodmarked,” a younger dragon said, leaning forward such that Kwibha could see the new scars on their horn, “Your king’s plan will destroy the ships, but what of the pirates themselves?”

“A pirate without a ship, honored king, is like a turtle without a shell,” said Kwibha, his smile colder than the snow of the mountain. “With the Pirate Council trapped in Bloodcove, it will be a simple matter for King Thabsing to march his armies down from the mountains and take the city. And then we will try them, and we will sentence them, and we will hang these corsairs from every tree and doorpost.”

And then, Jhirabi, you will finally be avenged.

About The Author

Mikhail Rekun is a Russian-American historian, educator, and author. Previous works include Lost Omens Mwangi Expanse, Lost Omens Legends, Pathfinder Society Scenario 1–15: Blooming Catastrophe, Pathfinder Society Scenario 2–8: Frosty Mug, and How Russia Lost Bulgaria, 1878-1886: Empire Unguided. One of these things is not like the others. He is also the creative director of the Luminant Age project, a Weird Fantasy Swashbuckler campaign setting for PF2, with vampire anteater dogs and invisible owl-tigers. You can learn more about at https://twitter.com/LuminantA, and keep an eye out for our next Kickstarter.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

Jiella, don’t run! It’s me, your sister! Come, listen. I’ve only an ounce of time.

First of all, why are you out here in the streets? Is it not time for your lessons? Taking after me, now, are we? Never mind!

Don’t cover your ears, sister. The aftermath of a revolution is a wonderfully loud thing. Look! That was Prince Haliad’s statue crashing to the ground. I think I see Bapa with those farmers dragging its ugly stone head to that catapult we stole. I hope they fling it at that stubborn pirate schooner that hasn’t taken the hint to leave port. There’s no way Anthusis will let them land on its shores.

Illustration by Maichol Quinto from Pathfinder Lost Omens The Mwangi Expanse

What are you doing out here alone? Don’t get me wrong—I’m excited to see you amidst all this! Seeing that old statue fall in front of the embassy is a splendid reason to skip your studies. This is history in the making, sister! Let it fill your senses; a book won’t give you the same gift as these liberated streets. But how did you slip past Mielle? I know she’s gotten older, but with each year her senses have only sharpened—the old panther. Tell me how you escaped, and don’t say you learned it from me! I could never slip her gaze, and I’ve the welts to prove it.

Do you like my outfit? In truth it’s a bit Chelish for my taste, but it moves much better than what I left home with. When I have time, I’ll make use of Mielle’s needlepoint lessons and fashion something more reminiscent of home.

I don’t look like a Free Captain’s cohort, Jiella! Only a Firebrand would wear colors this loud, and this city could take more than a few cues from our fashion sense! I’d bet Bapa’s skiff that you’ve never even seen those privateers up close. I’ve had to cut through two of them in the past month.

Where did I get the sword? Promise you won’t tell—else I’ll never be able to come home! It belonged to Mama. I don’t know why she had it; all those diplomacies to nowhere she conducted in our living room could have been cut much shorter with this. It felt heavy at first, but after a couple months fighting on these shackled seas, my arm feels incomplete without it. That stain on my sleeve? It’s just a bit of wine. I may need a wash it—don’t give me that look, Jie!

Were Mama and Bapa home when you slipped out? There are some articles I’ve meant to procure from my room now that things have started to settle.

Mielle has been preparing full meals every night since the Hurricane Queen faffed off to the other side of Desperation Bay? I’ll have to stop home and grab a bottle of her kremas to share with my ship. It’s requisite for a Firebrand to know how to share—and the old panther owes me more than one drink for her rigor. Let’s get you home so I can collect my libationary toll.

You wear these clothes much better than I did. Most outfits suit me better after they’ve been thoroughly sea-bitten. I see that you’ve been eating well—as Mama and Bapa told you to, no doubt. I assume they give my share to you now that I’ve been gone a season. It seems like you’ve grown a half-foot! I bet you’ll be taller than me by year’s end.

I don’t mean to make them worry, you know. I just never fit what they needed. It’s embarrassing how much better you are with words than I was at your age. I think they can see that you fit them better, too. I hope they miss me. I miss them. I’ve been thinking of them a lot—and you, of course. I see you snuck out of your window to see what the crash was! You’re more like me than I thought. I’m a bad influence on you, Jiella! Let me boost you back up. I’ll be right behind you. Once we’re inside, give me for a moment to track down Mielle’s kremas stock—if she’s made multiple batches, she won’t be too upset if one of them goes missing.

May I fashion your hair like we used to do together? I’ve been working on a new style for the times; twelve braids fashioned like a crown: one for each month from now to keep Vidrian autonomous. If Mama asks who did your hair, just deflect with that. I’m sure she’ll appreciate the idea. I have a message for her and Bapa, too. They can’t trust the ‘Independent’ Banks of Vidrian, even if they can trust Mandla Dube. Please pass this onto them and say it came from the Vane—they’ll take it more seriously than from me.

I must go now, sister, but take this turquoise comb for your new crown. With it, you’ll look almost as dashing as me! In a few years, Mama and Bapa will want you with them in the Vidric Council—and you should join them when that time comes. Don’t forget about the streets, though! Look around, there’s so much to rebuild and replace. New homes to be made, new stores to spread the wealth, new dishes to define the taste of Vidrian as its own. No idols are going to show our nation the way forward, whether they’re deities or nobles, but our community can figure it out together. When the council dissolves into noise, go somewhere else to cut through it. Don’t fight, but be like a sword. Leave the sharp stuff to me as you rebuild this place. I’ll be in step with you—but first, I’m off to Smuggler’s Shiv to procure a donation to our new nation. Crying isn’t going to keep me from leaving! I’ll be back again before you know it. And not as one of that isle’s specters.

I love you, Jiella—Mama and Bapa, too. They’ll approve of my course in due time—and they’ll let you set yours. For now, you should listen to them. Eventually, they’ll see how much the future needs my blade and your words.
So don’t cry too long. I’m not dead yet.

About The Author

Jabari Weathers is an illustrator, writer, and tabletop role-playing game designer. They might also be a fey creature from beyond the veil, doing freelance work in this mortal realm to keep up the glamour hiding them from their pursuers. You, too, can help them continue this evasion by checking out their work in the Lost Omens Mwangi Expanse sourcebook, Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, and other assorted works containing their words. Additionally, you may glean their illustration work at Goblinprincete.com, or on Instagram at Jmwillustration. Finally, if you want to confirm that they are, in fact, real, follow them on Twitter @goblinprincete. With patience, you will have your proof.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

“Are you lost, child?”

Hioba stared up at the golden leaves and the large golden trunk of one of Forest Agoyben’s famed Crackling Trees. The voice startled her, and she spun to face it. A small but powerful woman whose face she could not fully see in the shadows leaned against a tree a dozen paces away.

“I’m... uh, no. Actually, I was here to study these trees. You see, I am a student at the Magaambya and—”

“And you thought you’d learn something about these trees that might just explode out of nowhere?”

“Yes.” Hioba again marveled at the tree before her. The trunk had the same luster as actual gold and felt almost metallic when she touched it. She’d heard about it in school, but it seemed impossible to imagine such a hearty tree would simply... break.

The woman nodded. “Knowledge is good, but experience is truth. You know how the trees came to develop their ailment, yes? They taught you that at school?” The woman came closer but still hid most of her features in the forest’s shadows, where the light failed to penetrate fully. Hioba opened her mouth but stopped when the woman raised her hand.

“What they don’t teach you is this: Agohbindi the Splintering Child emerged from under the Vanji River twice as tall as that tree you’ve been staring at for the last hour.” Hioba leaned back, hands on hips, trying to envision the scale of the monster.

“It rose from the river and grasped its way to the sky. It had a beetle’s iridescent carapace but the hungering face and maw of a fiend. Its pincers could crush several blocks of Nantambu’s splendid buildings. It sought a meal and Nantambu was the closest, tastiest dish it was likely to find.

“Rovagug’s murderous progeny crashed through the forest. The Tempest-Sun Mages almost learned of the threat too late. Lucky for them a Magaambya student just like yourself tended to his herbal studies and witnessed the beginning of Agohbindi’s rampage. He sent a message to companions nearer to the city who relayed to the Tempest-Sun Mages what occurred.”

The woman paused. “Are you taking notes, my child? You are receiving quite the education here.” Hioba snatched a quill and her scroll from her pack and started writing. The woman chuckled and continued.

“Fewer than a dozen Tempest-Sun Mages responded, confident in their abilities, just as Azure Leopard had taught them to be. At first their confidence seemed well placed! Their first battle ritual created a storm, pulling the lightning out of the clouds and hurling it at Agohbindi. The gigantic bolt of electricity cleaved the Spawn of Rovagug cleanly in half.

“The mages congratulated each other for the quick victory, but their celebration was cut short, for the two halves of the beast’s foul body instantly formed into two smaller but identical versions of Agohbindi. The mages hurled bolt after bolt from their battle circle. Each bolt split its target in slightly smaller versions of the original spawn until they could get no smaller, at which point they simply continued to multiply.

“The last act that group performed was sending a magical message to Azure Leopard and Old-Mage Jatembe, a plea for help. Then the teeth and magic of a thousand Agohbindis overwhelmed them.”

The woman paused and murmured something that sounded to Hioba like a prayer.

“Azure Leopard and Old-Mage Jatembe answered the call and arrived with nearly one hundred Tempest-Sun Mages. They all thought they were ready for the threat, but they were so incredibly wrong!

“Your books and your teachers will tell you they fought Agohbindi, but what they tell you is insufficient. Yes, they fought, but it wasn’t a mere battle—it was a grueling war. They fought with the Rough Beast’s monstrous child for days on end. The Tempest-Sun Mages fought at first from within the forest, but soon the forest contained as many Agohbindis as the plains hold blades of grass. So the mages took to the sky, harnessing the storm and the wind and the rain to at least slow the advancement of the ceaseless monstrosities. They used fire magic to melt the spawn, but the spawn simply reformed moments later.

“Azure Leopard and Jatembe spent most of their energy coordinating the Tempest-Sun Mages’ defenses, erecting powerful barriers that would take the creatures many hours to penetrate so that the group could search for solutions. Trying to protect the warriors in their care left them precious little time for strategy, but their dedication to protection prevented any other warrior mages from dying. Even then, many suffered severe wounds and none were the same.”

Hioba cleared her throat and looked up from her notes. “When did Jatembe trap Agohbindi? What do you know about that?”

The woman chuckled again.

“By accident! After several days of fighting and containment, the mages ran headlong into that fact we all now know: magic is infinite, but our capacity to wield it... is not. The Tempest-Sun Mages had tapped into their reserves and beyond. As they grew more exhausted, they became sloppy. Old-Mage Jatembe and his pupil found it progressively more taxing to protect the weary mages. In hours, Agohbindi in his multitude would have overwhelmed the amassed mages and moved onward to consume the Song-Wind City... and likely the entirety of Mwangi Expanse!

“Jatembe and Leopard were in the middle of conjuring a barrier of elemental ice for a group of mages retreating from the Agohbindi splinters in the forest. Out of exasperation, over the noise and rage of combat, Azure Leopard shouted to Jatembe: ‘Fighting Agohbindi is not like fighting an opponent, Old-Mage! It is like fighting a tide, like fighting water!’

“Just then, the teacher and pupil paused and looked at each other, each knowing what the other would say next. Child, what do they teach you about water at Magaambya?”

“You... don’t fight it?” Hioba answered nervously.

“Exactly! You don’t fight water. You help it flow, and then you let it flow into a container where you hold it. Leopard and Jatembe had been so busy fighting and defending that they had missed this obvious point. Jatembe let out such a loud and hysterical laugh that everyone who could hear it became anxious for him.

“‘My own teachings, remembered in the last hour, amazing!’ He laughed some more while weaving the spell he knew he needed to cast. People would have been surprised by his humor, except it was Old-Mage Jatembe. He was always a little unpredictable.” The woman shrugged.

“After a moment, Azure Leopard saw her teacher’s intent, and joined in with no prompting. Together their magic augmented the roots of the forest’s trees, which burst free from the soil. The pair sent out magical messages to the Tempest-Sun Mages to direct their energies into these roots. The magic roots stretched out of the soil, wrapping around each of the thousands of Agohbindi shards, holding them in place. Jatembe directed all the other warriors except Azure Leopard into the sky as he prepared the next stage.”

Hioba had stopped writing, absorbed in the mysterious woman’s story.

“Jatembe stretched his arms like a yawn, letting the earth’s energy flow into his body. He inhaled a breath bigger than Balumbdar, building up the energy in his hands and his staff. The other mages worked on a battle ritual to summon the largest bolt of lightning ever seen… before or since.

“When Jatembe finally exhaled, he sent magical fire into and through the roots. At that moment the Tempest-Sun Mages and Azure Leopard released their lightning, which snaked over and through the spawned multitudes. Before they could grow again, the fire melted the spawn fragments into ooze as they screeched in fury. The ooze seeped into the soil, where the web of roots covering the entire forest drank it up.

"When the screeching abated, Jatembe stopped the fire. He and the other mages drew the roots back into the earth. Agohbindi, which could not be destroyed, which flooded the forest like water, was absorbed, like water, into the soil.” The woman pointed at the tree Hioba had been studying.

“Into that tree, and the others like it.”

Hioba turned around to look at the tree again. “Is there something about the evil trapped within that makes the tree gold?”

“Ha, no. Jatembe just thought it might make Agohbindi furious to be trapped in something so beautiful.”

“Also... wait... how do you know so much about this? How do you know this story?” Hioba turned back to face the woman, who was donning an ornate leopard mask. Once the mask was on, she stepped out of the shadows and into the light.

“Aaaaah, and here I was, holding out high hopes for your powers of observation, child. I’ve given you the start; now keep with your studies. Agohbindi will surely need to be contained once more, someday.”

Hioba tried to speak, but Azure Leopard was gone.

About The Author

Quinn Murphy has designed and written for many game systems during more than a decade of freelancing. Since the age of 11, he's dreamed up imaginary worlds with friends, and he has no plans to stop. He writes adventures and fiction for Pathfinder and Starfinder and can be found talking about those games and RPG design in general on his Twitter, @qh_murphy.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

I’m sorry, but that painting isn’t for sale. This particular item I’m keeping for myself.

Why, you ask? Well, there’s certainly worse ways to spend a rainy afternoon than in sharing a story with friends like you, so if you’ve got the time to listen, I can tell you a little bit about Crookcove, the Xarwins, and the house in that painting.

I’ve got my own reasons to be interested in the place. There, you see? At the top of the manor? A dome. A rotunda. An observatory. I’ve had dreams of converting that manor’s observatory into a temple, a place where anyone can come to observe the wonders of the Cosmic Caravan. But there’s a problem. The manor itself is located at the remote southwestern corner of Ravounel, and its ownership is kind of a tangled mess, one made worse by Ravounel’s secession from Cheliax. No one seems to know who rightfully owns the place. There was a sort of incident long ago, back when it was part of Cheliax, and the Chelish practice of redactions did a number on the legal documents that hold the building’s fate.

Doesn’t help that Crookcove’s so far off the beaten path, or that the government’s still got its hands full with more important things involving keeping their independence, or that the closest point of civilization is so many miles away.

Oh, and it certainly doesn’t help that they place is haunted.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The town itself wasn’t called Crookcove at first. It was founded by hellknights—the Order of the Gate, to be precise—as a staging ground for the initial construction of Citadel Enferac, way back in 4599. They called it “Crooked Cove,” on account of the shape of the cove itself. Hellknights aren’t the most creative folks. In any event, Enferac’s construction isn’t the story I’m telling.

The hellknights abandoned their presence in Crooked Cove a few years after it was founded, and for a handful of decades, the town was left to its own devices. The locals made a fair living for themselves continuing to tend the mines and lumber operations the hellknights started, but it wasn’t until the Thrunies took over the nation that Crooked Cove attracted outside attention once again.

In the days following the end of the Chelish Civil War, House Thrune began appointing minions into positions of power throughout the nation. Most saw Ravounel as something of a backwater, but not so a certain minor nobleman named Ioseff Xarwin. Details on how he managed to secure the title of paracount are unclear, but what remains a matter of record (in the few records you can find that aren’t redacted to the point of illegibility) is that he was granted Crooked Cove as his seat of power.

Crooked Cove had been largely untouched by the war, and according to my research, the locals were initially wary of this new paracount and of the sprawling mansion he’d started constructing on a bluff just outside town, but it wasn’t long before their opinions changed. The people of Crooked Cove soon came to value the influx of protection and support having a paracount provided, especially since Ioseff allowed the townsfolk to largely retain their traditions and independence. He saw to the construction of a church of Asmodeus, a tavern, a set of piers built around a town hall that doubled as a shipyard, and a smelting house to support the town’s trade, and in the span of a decade, Crooked Cove grew into a modestly successful mining concern, and as long as the iron, lead, and copper in the hills north of town continued to flow, Ioseff Xarwin left the townsfolk to their own designs. In return, the flow of tax money and exports to Cheliax’s heartland continued to guarantee Xarwin’s privacy.

Illustration by Darko Stojanovic.

As a result of this pursuit for privacy, further details were tough to track down, but I was able to determine that Xarwin hadn’t chosen the site of his home idly. In one fragmentary letter I regrettably wasn’t able to make copies of (and that was one of countless documents lost in a fire a few months later), Xarwin himself hints that his “dreams were instrumental in selecting the site, for the views of the night skies above seem particularly inspiring.” He also mentioned in his letter that his “observatory’s construction has surpassed all expectations.”

I did a bit more digging and learned that Ioseff had a family as well—a wife and twin children. His wife, Asethanna, was something of a well-known sculptor and painter, and by all accounts the family lived their first many years in Crooked Cove in peace. But that didn’t last. Something happened a decade and a half later. Again, details are hard to come by, but from what little I’ve been able to piece together, the marriage crumbled from within. Ioseff became more and more obsessed with his astronomical observations, while Asethanna’s art started to grow darker and more sinister in theme.

It all came to a sudden end in 4657. Story goes that Asethanna fled the manor one night with the twins, and that Xarwin grew increasingly hostile and deranged. He let none visit his manor, and forbade the house servants from setting foot off the manor grounds—at least, according to the account of one such servant who claimed to have escaped from the manor. This unnamed servant apparently begged for the local authorities to intervene, but they had no time to act on his claims. The weather turned violent, with storms and floods devastating the town. And it didn’t stop with violent weather. The people themselves turned violent as well. Nightmares plagued the townsfolk when they slept, and when they woke the nightmares pursued them in the form of brutality, cruelty, and suicide. It wasn’t long before the townsfolk pulled up stakes and abandoned the place. Some say it was the storm that damaged the town’s sign, others claim it was the last citizen to flee who vandalized it, but to this day, those rare few who visit the place are greeted by a sign welcoming them to “Crookcove.”

That’s about it, I’m afraid. Other than stories of bad dreams by those rare few who stayed the night in the region over the past several years, and some likely apocryphal tales of people vanishing entirely after daring to enter Xarwin Manor itself, there’s little more to learn about the place. There’s apparently no surviving heirs to the Xarwin estate, and with Ravounel’s secession from Cheliax, the building’s been in government escrow, pending whatever steps they need to take to unravel its legal status. The manor itself is the only structure still standing in the region, with little more than hollow shells of structures hinting at what was once a bustling mining town down the hill below.

And all that brings us back to the painting.

I started having my own dreams about Crookcove and Xarwin Manor a few weeks after I picked up this painting, in any case. I’ve learned to trust my dreams—they’re not always accurate in what they foretell, but they’re always worth paying attention to, and there’s something in these dreams in particular that compel me. Are they perhaps related to the same source of compulsive dreams that first inspired Xarwin himself to build his home there? I can’t say other than that the manor itself feels to me to be a place of power. A place of importance. A place that should be restored and watched over. I’ve been saving up since then, and one day soon I hope to be able to make the trip out to Ravounel, secure ownership of the manor myself, and restore it. To rebuild it into a shrine to the Cosmic Caravan. To find out what happened there.

I assume that you’ve deduced by now what this painting depicts. Yes, here we see Xarwin Manor, in all its ruined glory. I’ve had the fortune to interview no fewer than four people who visited the ruins of Crookcove. None of them dared set foot in the manor proper, but they all agree that the painting is spot-on in its accuracy in capturing the gloom and menace the manor exudes today.

The part that bothers me about it isn’t the brooding stance of the birds who seem to stand guard at the edge of the frame, or the eerie glow that rises from beyond the central dome, or the twisted reaches of the dead trees in the yard, or even the mysterious light in the upstairs window.

The part that bothers me the most is the signature and date on the painting’s reverse. The signature of Asethanna Xarwin, dated 4653 AR, four years before whatever doom came to Xarwin Manor and left it abandoned over the ruins of a forgotten town.

—Wrin Sivinxi, owner of Wrin’s Wonders in Otari

About the Author

James Jacobs is the Creative Director for Pathfinder. He's been helping to shape and create the world of Golarion and the Pathfinder RPG from the very start, with his adventure, "Burnt Offerings," introducing gamers around the world to the joys of goblin songs, the lurking menace of the runelords, and the dangers of drinking hagfish water. James maintains an ongoing AMA thread on the paizo.com forums which currently contains more than 75,000 posts.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

Sixteen point five two eight… move the seven… Taihei tried to hold the quantities in his head, but they jittered and danced. No matter, he could manage. He dipped a brush into his inkstone and found a patch on the back of his right wrist where a cluster of silver dots raised in precise intervals against his golden skin, counted off ten dots, drew lines on either side, and covered seven dots with ink. Leaving three. Now… what was the trajectory coefficient again… he felt for a second like the answer was close, before the chirping of bell crickets pierced the tearoom-turned-study.

The remainders and decimals and factors scattered immediately. Taihei groaned, crumpled his sheet of paper, and threw it to join its fellows in the corner. As a distant chime rang, he retrieved a heavily notched metal rod from his writing case and made a small cut in it to mark the time before going to wash off in a basin by the door. Another hour, another year.

The entrance examination for the College of Celestial Study would come in a few months with the snows, and Taihei couldn’t come back empty-handed again—he’d failed six times already, and this was getting embarrassing. You wouldn’t even use half these formulas in the field, we have counting boards and number familiars for that. Taihei just wanted to peer within a star, to chart the comets as they flowed through the sky, but he’d be earthbound forever if he couldn’t get into the program first.

Taihei allowed himself a moment to find his favorite constellations before getting back to study, but he couldn’t see a thing through the neighbor’s persimmon trees, which seemed to almost be mocking him—they’d shot up sometime when he wasn’t looking, sealing off the courtyard in a riot of red leaves and orange fruit. It made for a picturesque sight at least: persimmons, courtyard, and harvest moon, even a small fox in frame near the koi pond. “Must be nice, to just be a fox. You don’t have to worry about trajectories or tests, do you?”

“I’ll have you know I have two degrees from the College myself, so I find I rarely have to worry anymore” the fox stated matter-of-factly.

He bowed to Taihei before striding forward on four legs, though only two remained by the time he reached the door as his form blurred and shifted to that of a wavy-haired elf man in a professor's robes and pleated trousers. “And once I’m done with you, you won’t have to either.”

“Taihei, remember to clean up before your new tutor arrives!” Taihei’s mother called from the house, unfortunately a hair too late to save him the embarrassment. Sheepishly, the student slid open the door and placed a cushion on the floor, but the man strode right past him, taking a seat on the edge of the table instead

“So, out with it, why can’t you seem to pass the exam? Shouldn’t you be able to just…” the professor appraised Taihei, noting a golden mote flickering off his arm,” I don’t know, aphorite this?”

Taihei seethed at the assumption that being born under the sign of Axis somehow granted immediate knowledge of trigonometry and calculus, though he remembered his manners and prevented the emotion from reaching his face. “I’m afraid that numbers are my weakest subject. I’m not sure how to understand what they all mean in the real world.”

“In that case,” the fox in elf shape coughed into a fist, and when he withdrew his hand, a curious crystal ball sat in it, glowing soft and blue, “we should simply hammer all possible test questions into you so thoroughly that you’ll pass the test even if you don’t understand.” He tapped the orb, which floated across the room to hover in front of Taihei. “Write down your answers to the following questions. Beginning immediately.” Before Taihei could voice his confusion at this novel teaching strategy, the orb began reciting:

• “List the seventeen most common alchemical components of an extraplanar being in reverse alphabetical order of closest-affinity celestial body, beginning from Aucturn”
• “Compute trajectory of this model of a transiting comet with a fey toroid structure and…”
• “What is the average density of a sixth-order star, assuming Positive Energy gateways have mass according to Gyoen’s Third Theorem of…”

Taihei was overwhelmed swiftly and ruthlessly. He began trying his best to answer the questions, but no sooner had he begun writing than his teacher cleared his throat. “Keep in mind that the exam is 258 questions, so you’ll need to average one question every 90 seconds.”

“Y-yes... of course, Professor.” Taihei desperately tried to rejoin his train of thought. The orb carried on:

• “Solve for X to yield the minimum possible amount of teleportation inaccuracy given a conjurer using …”
• “If ten human ganzi assistants and one brilliant kitsune professor are each holding a planar tuning fork, then…”

Wait, wha—

“You know,” the professor interrupted again, “What if you just found a way to visualize the problems? Or like a feeling or something. Why, I used to be terrible at changing forms, but look at me now!” The professor waggled his long elven ears as they shifted back into those of a fox. “I just think of a sensation I connect with being a kitsune, like the feeling of grass under paw, and it comes to me.”

“That…” Taihei struggled to find a polite way to tell his teacher to please shut up, missing a question about two ships leaving Sakakabe (one at noon, the other at midnight) in the process, “That’s very helpful.”

• “The aforementioned brilliant kitsune professor is planning a three-day planar expedition. How much fried tofu should his students gift him to ensure his rations are…”

Illustration by Vladislav Orlowski, from Pathfinder Lost Omens Ancestry Guide.

“Oh, this one’s very important!” the professor noted most unhelpfully, and Taihei looked up to see he had fully resumed fox form and was now pacing across the desk, stepping in Taihei’s inkstone each time.

“Professor, you’re tracking paw prints on my practice tests,” Taihei pleaded, on his very last nerve.

• “Solve for X, where X is the number of years an aphorite who can’t perform basic calculations without scribbling on his arms will attempt the entrance exam before…”

“Okay, that does it!” Taihei snatched the orb from the air and ran to the door. Looking out into the courtyard, he spied a nest under the eave of the neighbors’ estate, recently abandoned by migrating swallows. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to throw the orb into the nest, but those blasted trees were in the way and he didn’t have a clear shot.

No matter. He could manage.

Taihei’s eyes darted around the courtyard, taking in angles and forces. He felt his mind… not expand, exactly—the opposite. Connect. Point to point. Intention joined result. He flung the orb, feeling its complete trajectory even before it had left his hand. It skipped twice off the surface of the pond. It spun as it struck the tiles of the courtyard wall and flew high into the sky. And it danced in the autumn night as a breeze adjusted its path ever so slightly to the left, before it fell perfectly between the branches of the trees to land in the abandoned nest.

No sooner had it touched down than something strange happened. The trees that Taihei had tried so hard to avoid shimmered in the night air, dissolving into ghostly blue flames, and when Taihei had finished rubbing his eyes, they were gone and the sky was visible once more. Rather than the blue sphere, a roasted chestnut sat perfectly in the swallows’ nest.

Huh. “The coefficient was zero point nine two,” Taihei said to himself, perfectly recalling the problem he had been working on earlier, every page in his textbook, and where he had forgotten one of his sandals that morning. The strange clarity left him as subtly as it arrived, but in its wake, he felt like he understood just a little bit more of the test than he had in years.

“Oh, very nice! It looks like you’re one of those students that learns better by doing. That’ll make the rest of this so much more fun.”

Taihei looked back at the desk to once more see an elf, eating from a bag of chestnuts. The professor flicked a wrist and the glowing orb reappeared in his hand, and as he absentmindedly tossed it into the air, nothing came back down. As he strode to the door and waved one of his tails from beneath his robes, illusory equations and vectors sprung into glowing existence around the courtyard, illuminating each phase of Taihei’s throw in precise and clear mathematical detail.

“I think,” Taihei said slowly, “you’re probably the worst teacher I’ve had.”

“You know, for some reason, I get that a lot,” the fox said in mock offense. He tossed a chestnut to Taihei before popping seven more in his mouth. “Now, do that again, and this time, let's go through the calculations, step by step.”

About the Author

James Case is a designer at Paizo, where he helps to create the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. In addition to his work writing and developing RPG products, James has also edited manuscripts for scientific researchers, translated songs for music labels, and blown bubbles for at least one birthday party. You can find him, and his thoughts on game design (and comma usage), on The Twitter at @toriariaria.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

The creature ripped out the man’s throat with its claws, blood spraying across the leaf-littered forest floor. Its furry bulk pinned the body to the ground. Lips pulled back from razor-sharp teeth as a low, ripsaw growl rumbled deep in the thing’s throat.

Leaning close, the lupine head sniffed at its victim’s pulsing neck. Then the beast threw back its head, spine arching. Its shrill howl split the chill, nighttime air.

“AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

“Archie? Archie, stop! Archibol Frigasson the Third!”

The creature’s howl stopped abruptly. It blinked, looking around in confusion.

“Goria... what?”

“Stop. There could be more bandits, you little twit. Calm down.”

Archie cleared his throat. “Ah. Of course. My apologies. I quite got carried away.”

Archibol rose carefully to his feet. He was not particularly tall, but his broad shoulders and thick arms gave him a hulking quality. His gray fur shone almost white in the light of the full moon. For a moment, he looked down on his blood-soaked hands with wonder, then blinked. He crouched and pulled at the dead man’s cloak, gathering enough fabric to start meticulously cleaning his claws and fur.

“Archie? We good?” Goria asked, her voice like gravel rolling around in a dry bucket. The blades of her daggers flashed as she twirled and pushed them into scabbards at her hips. Although the woman was both preternaturally quick and strong, she looked neither. Long, stitched scars zig-zagged everywhere across her flabby skin. It was as if someone had patched Goria together from dozens of long-dead, mismatched bodies.

Which, of course, is precisely what Archibol’s mad father had done, years before he had turned to polymorph experiments upon his only son. The two oddities had clung to each other ever since their escape.

“Of course, big sister, of course. Heh. Nothing to fear. Merely lost in the moment.”

Goria watched him with a milky, unblinking stare. An awkward moment of silence passed.

The wolf-man cleared his throat again. “Right. Everyone accounted for, then? Where’s our lovely oracle?”

“I’m here, Archibol!”

He could smell her before she emerged from the shadows, the scent of an open grave. Normally, Ashka Midnighter was a young, doe-eyed kayal—a shadow person—her pale skin and white hair seeming as if all color had drained from her and giving her an exotic beauty. Now, however, her cheeks were sunken, her perfect smooth skin marred by rot. She still moved gracefully, though, skipping gleefully through branches and leaves and hardly making a sound.

“Ah, splendid. I say, Ashka. Do these oracular powers of yours hurt you when they desiccate your body so?”

Her cracked lips split into a wide grin. “Of course not! Oh, I feel a bit tired, but I’m fine. Ready for more adventure!” She hopped on one foot and thrust a fist into the air.

“Hrmph. As my new ward, my dear, I must insist we do some investigation to determine any long-term negative effects from putting your body through such an ordeal.”

Ashka looked down at her exposed, decaying arms with glowing, white eyes. “It’s just the mystery of the bones, Archibol. I get glimpses into death, and death reaches back out to me. But it’s temporary, silly. Don’t worry.”

“Still, data is knowledge, eh? I would be comforted with some empiricism behind your changes. For now, though,” he grunted as he stood, hands cleaned. “We appear to have more pressing concerns.”

The three of them looked around the clearing, dappled by moonlight.

A dozen bodies lay scattered.

“What a simply preposterous disaster,” Archibol grunted. “Alright, let us begin with the facts.”

“Blast it, Archie...” Goria growled.

“How long have you known me? We must always begin with the facts.”

She rolled her patchwork eyes but did not argue.

“Now,” he began reciting, as if giving a university lecture, one clawed finger raised. “Nobleman Cammack Guthor’s caravan left Caliphas at dusk this evening, headed to a remote holiday estate. The nobleman traveled with,” Archibol’s eyes roamed the clearing. “Two servants, one carriage driver, and... let’s see, one, no, two armed guards. The carriage was led off the road to this clearing, where Guthor and his entire party were slain. Their rather impressive store of valuables has been gathered in sacks.”

Archibol began moving, stepping gingerly between corpses.

“When we arrived, we found four men and two women dressed in matching cloaks and leather armor, all armed, picking through the sacks. Each wore a red mask painted with the visage of...” he leaned down and fingered one of the wooden masks. Its bulbous nose and leering smile might have been comical in a different setting.

Ashka appeared silently at his shoulder. “Ooo! I know! Devil masks!” she clapped enthusiastically. “Like from a carnival.”

Archibol nodded once. “Devils, yes. Some fanciful conceit in pursuit of notoriety, I suppose. And calling themselves the Tricksters! As if they were some famous band of villains instead of a two-copper band of thugs.”

Goria nudged one of the bandits disdainfully with a boot. “Trying to sneak wearing red in a forest. Idiots.”

Archibol grunted. “Indeed. Alright, we have six dead victims, including our Ustalavic nobleman. However, thanks to us, we also have six dead Tricksters.” He scratched at his chin, lost for a moment in thought. “I say! How long do you suppose it would take to waylay the carriage, lead it here, kill everyone, and pick through their belongings?”

Goria shrugged one shoulder. “Hour?”

Archibol looked up to the full moon. “And yet it’s before midnight. Blast! The scroll we intercepted correctly identified Guthor as the target of the ambush, but why did the Tricksters strike early? We should have left one of the bandits alive for questioning.”

“Yes,” Goria frowned, the stitches on one cheek going taut. She looked at him pointedly. “We definitely should have.”

Archibol avoided her gaze. “Well, then. I propose we begin examining how the Tricksters arrived at the ambush point. Perhaps we can track them back to—”

Someone nearby groaned.

No sooner had Archibol’s wolf-like ears flicked at the sound, than he was bounding across the clearing to a low bush. Goria followed protectively close behind.

Both pairs of eyes looked down on an older, pale-skinned human man in an ornate breastplate, his legs tangled in the bush and the rest sprawled out of sight of the clearing. A dented helm lay nearby.

Illustration by Victor Manuel Leza Moreno from Pathfinder Lost Omens Ancestry Guide.

“Ho ho!” Archibol exclaimed. “We have ourselves a thirteenth! One of Guthor’s guardsmen, it seems. My dear fellow, it looks as if you’ve taken quite a blow to the head. Please allow me to help you up. We have a number of questions as we pursue those who waylaid you.”

The man groaned again and rolled onto his back. He blinked once, twice.

“Yeaargh!” the man squealed. “Werewolf!”

“Ah,” Archibol chuckled. “Honest mistake. Actually, you see, I am—”

The guard’s wild eyes swiveled to Goria. “M-monster!”

“Now listen here, good fellow. That’s hardly fair,” Archibol frowned. “I believe you’ve got the wrong—”

Ashka’s grave smell washed over them as she approached. The man yelped, “Zombie!” before fainting dead away.

“Bother,” Archibol sighed. “Not again.”

About the Author

Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar was a founding columnist for Magic: the Gathering’s official website, which he wrote weekly for five years (along with various other gaming columns). During that time, he also penned several Kamigawa block web stories for Wizards of the Coast. He is a lifelong tabletop roleplaying gamer, frequent GM, and loves Pathfinder 2nd Edition. He lives, games, and writes in Oakland, CA.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

Flowers. Puh.

Teph grumbled as he trudged over the uneven ground. The tended dirt path was long gone by now, and his boots felt every bump of root and pinch of pebble. In the distance, well past the canopy and out of sight, thunder growled. The boy pulled his jacket tighter, hoping the storm would miss them tonight; he still had one more task before he could return home.

Gathering splitheart flowers.

The spiky, red flowers were a favorite of Mom’s, and they had just started to burst, revealing their perfect, crimson seeds. The seeds fight off mosquitos. The leaves you boil for fevers.

Also, Teph noted, Mom liked to turn the petals into a paste to deepen the shade of her lips. He’d even tried it once himself, but found it altogether unpleasant; it smelled funny and he didn’t like how dark it made his mouth. He liked his lips just fine the way they were, thank you. Why did girls even like lip-color?

He arrived at the patch of splitheart and drew out his gathering pouch. Selecting only the ripest of the prickly flowers, he gathered each with a pinch of his fingers and a quiet word of thanks to the earth.

He arrived at the patch of splitheart and drew out his gathering pouch. Selecting only the ripest of the prickly flowers, he gathered each with a pinch of his fingers and a quiet word of thanks to the earth.

Flower picking. Teph rolled his eyes. This was not what heroes did.

The thought lingered as Teph wound his way back home. Real heroes got to solve mysteries, fight evil creatures, and save the day. Some day, he’d be a hero, like the ones in his favorite book, The Grand Adventures of the Golden Wayfarers. He’d be fast like Celadir Wind-Blown, dancing from rooftop to rooftop, his arrows always finding their mark. He’d be strong like Ukhul the Just, defending the helpless with a swing of his mighty sword. And he’d be wise and magical, like Zuridani Sunborn, summoning the elements themselves to help him win the day.

Teph painted his fingernails silver so they glittered when he moved his hands—just like Zuridani’s hands sparkled when he cast his spells. He even knew what his familiar would be: a fae dragon with one of its insectile wings blue and the other green—just like its eyes would be. Just like Teph’s were.

With his heroic heart and brave soul, he’d solve the world’s mysteries and save the day, and everyone would finally welcome him in the city instead of stare, distrusting. He wouldn’t have to keep a low profile or avoid the city at all; instead, they’d build him a tower of his own right in the middle of town, and his dad would never have to leave home again!

He’d make them welcome his mom, too, and make everyone apologize to them—for everything. For the ugly names they called him. For the horrible accusations they leveled at her.

The air grew colder, as did the boy’s mood; Teph knew in his stomach that the storm would arrive before dawn. Best not to dawdle. He skipped his usual extra stop at the eldest annon tree, and instead retraced his steps to the dirt path that led home.

The cottage just within the woods’ edge had been carefully built between the trees, with wild grasses and long stalks of cultivated herbs bending lazily in the chilling wind. The area was thick with the smell of herbs, intermingled with the sharp, stinging scent of the coming rains. It was usually a comfort. Usually a feeling of safety.

Right now, though, it was...off.

The heavy front door was halfway open, and no light could be seen from within. The decorative wreath and spiraling horn they kept on the door had been knocked off and lay, unloved, in the dirt. The comfort of being home disappeared, sinking heavily into his stomach with the weight of fear. What happened? Where was Mom? Did she need help?

The butterflies in his stomach warred with the excitement pounding in his chest. This was his moment. The first of many. He could be a hero, if he could just push back his fear.

Steeling himself, Teph crouched low, like Celadir might. Moving slowly, carefully, he approached the cracked door, senses alert for anything off.

One step. Another. And then he was at his door.

What would Celadir do? Right. Check for traps. Trip-wires. Sounds of monsters past the doors.

…There was nothing.

Silence lay in wait just beyond, a stillness that made him hold his breath to quiet his own heartbeat. Fear was okay. Even Dad had said so. Fear was okay as long as it didn’t stop you completely.

He reached for the spiraling horn, the only potential weapon nearby, and his fingertips winked silver at him. His “magic,” there with him. It seemed to settle his heart and bring additional resolve; he knew this place inside and out. He would be okay. He would find whatever had broken into his home and bring it to justice.

One day I will save everyone. Let it start with this.

His fingers tightened around the curled horn, and with a mighty roar to make Ukhul the Just proud, Teph knocked the door completely open and charged inside, ready to fight.

The burst of sound startled the large figure shadowed in the corner, and it jumped to attention. Drawing itself to its full, massive height and towering over the boy, the shadows rolled off of a bent, pockmarked hide. The wrinkled, gnarled face loomed large, glowing, green eyes placed low on the face and emphasizing a hunched back and strong muscles. Magic gathered at two gnarled, meaty fists, and mighty Teph…screamed a high-pitch scream.

So did the figure.

The book the figure held flared as an illumination spell revealed the craggy, lined face of the green hag made plain. Teph barked out a surprised yelp and launched himself at it, dropping the curved horn and winding his arms tight around her.

The hag’s arms matched the boy’s, wrapping him up tightly. With the shock melting from her face, she squeezed him. “Sprout! You scared me.”

“Mom,” gasped Teph. “I saw the door and it wasn’t closed right and the wreath and knocker were on the ground and—”

Mom chuckled softly at the stream of words flowing from Teph’s mouth. “There, there, Sprout. All is well; I was just resting a bit. Catch probably just knocked the wreath loose trying to get in.” She looked around, her vivid, emerald eyes landing on her familiar. The spindly monkey drew the edge of the tablecloth around himself and chittered guiltily.

“See, there you go,” Mom said. “Did you bring the splitheart? Your father’s sure to be home soon.”

Teph nodded, handing over his collecting pouch and immediately starting for the bookshelf. He was safe, Mom was safe, and The Grand Adventures of the Golden Wayfarers called to him.

“Ah-ah,” Mom croaked, re-lighting the room’s mirrored lantern and letting her illumination spell fade. “Bath first. Story time later.”

“Mooooom,” whined Teph, giving up the path to the bookshelf even as he complained.

Several scrubbings later, after a change into fresh clothes, Father was home and the family basked in the glow of an over-full dinner table and a warm fire in the hearth.

Mom always made fantastic dinners, but they especially shone when Dad came home. The flatbreads were rolled tight and sliced extra-thin. She’d roasted peppers and tomatoes, skewering them between perfect, tender squares of meat. Roast honey-squash sweetened the air and lent a mouth-watering contrast to the sharp spice of the peppered rice. And for dessert? Hot cassava cakes with cold custard.

It almost made it worth the icky stuff.

Teph knew he should be happy; not everyone had parents who loved each other so much. Not everyone even had parents. And especially someone like him, a callow may with a human father and a hag mother; the relationship that birthed the changeling was something special. Something genuine.

Illustration by Rashad Pozdnyakovfrom Pathfinder Lost Omens Ancestry Guide.

That didn’t stop him from being grossed out every time Dad came home, all lovey-dovey kissy-sissy. Tonight, it had been flowers and a poem.

“From seven bright meadows I gathered you flowers,
From seven great trees I gathered the dew,
And long have I been gone, just counting the hours
And following my heart’s Call here, home to you.”

Eww.

After clearing the food from the table, Teph grabbed The Grand Adventures of the Golden Wayfarers and high-tailed it into the garden. The rain hadn’t started yet; he could still get a few stories in before they called him for bedtime. He lit his lantern and settled onto the cracked stone bench near the weeper tree.

Partway through the second story, the trees groaned suddenly, snapping the boy’s attention as something at the edge of the garden erupted from the ground. Twisting, sharp, and half-hidden by the shadows, the thing creaked and crackled, sinews twisting in the dim light of the boy’s lantern.

And then it was silent again. Still. And not for the first time today, Teph’s heart raced as he faced down a potential danger. Hiding in the weeper tree’s folds, he carefully aimed his lantern in the direction of the thing, and paused as he tried to understand the sight.

It was…a tree, but not. Spiraling grains of branches twisted about themselves over and over, like a strange series of veins making one large, tall structure. The wood looked old and petrified, as though it hadn’t just been born from nothing.

Was it….a tooth? It couldn’t be; it was definitely wood. He knew that much at first glance. A giant, petrified wooden tooth, swirling and vein-like.

No, something in his mind insisted. Not just a tooth. Something far better! A mystery!

Real heroes solve mysteries, fight evil, and save the day. Let it start with this.

Eyes wide, heart pounding excitedly, Teph stepped toward the tree.

About the Author

Rachael Cruz is an award-winning writer / game designer. Her TRPG work can be found in numerous properties, including but not limited to Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed-Of, Corvus Belli’s Infinity RPG, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, Fantasy Age, RuneQuest, and Star Trek Adventures. She has been helping people play pretend before it was cool. She also believes in you. Yes, you. Follow her on Twitter at @Witchwater!

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

At least this time, Newt knew the firestorm he was heading toward.

It was Johenn’s fault. It was always Johenn’s fault. What was worse, Newt owed him a favor. So when the longshank had discovered him in the middle of some research at Forae Logos, the largest library in Absalom, the uncharacteristically erudite monkey goblin found himself recruited.

Within the hour, they returned to the safety of the Grand Lodge and made their way into the lowest level of the gardens. Still a few too many longshanks to make Newt comfortable, but at least there were fewer stares, fewer glares. Here, at least, he knew he belonged, and he had the wayfinder to prove it.

The first to spot Johenn was a young woman in a fancy, blue and white dress, her light brown hair tied in a playful braid at the back of her head. Her eyes brightened as she recognized the young man and perked in excitement. She did a quick double-take upon seeing Newt, but her attention was fast to return to the young man, and her voice rose to greet him.

“Please tell me you found it.”

Johenn flashed her a playful grin as he hopped the last stair, answer in itself. With his usual flair for the dramatic, the dark-haired man reached into his long overcoat and revealed a large, leather-bound book. He pranced over to where the young woman sat, sweeping the journal in an arc to rest before her.

“Tonight’s selection for the lady,” he crooned as she accepted it. “Hadagaskar’s Recollections on the Lost Kingdoms. Might I suggest a pairing of some blackberry wine or perhaps a dessert plate?” Not waiting for an answer, he turned his attention to another nearby companion. This elder human held himself proudly, his copper-and-white beard carefully braided and ringed.

Reaching into another pocket of his longcoat, Johenn withdrew a scroll case, twirling it expertly in one hand before presenting it with a flourish. “And for the distinguished gentleman, a light palate cleanser: From [Horn] to [Chair-with-Raised-Staff]: a Refresher on Pre-Giant Logograms. Volume 3.”

The man nodded, taking the scroll case, gently releasing its protective latch and sliding the contents into his eager, gnarled hand.

“And, my friends, please allow me to introduce to you the sharpest mind I know.” Johenn motioned towards the dark blue monkey-goblin. “My old friend and adventuring companion, Newt. Newt, might I present to you Lady Zaya—“

“Just Zaya,” she corrected.

“—just Zaya, and her beloved hound, Alouicious.” The gray mutt looked up upon hearing his name, took quick account of the surroundings, and laid his head back down.

“Ranger,” Newt said with a nod, and was met with a delighted smile.

“Well spotted,” Johenn grinned. “Our dear lady is with the Horizon Hunters, and a forward scout for her team when she is not taking her leisure among us.”

Newt was amused to find Zaya rolling her eyes – something which he himself had done at Johenn’s dramatics many times.

“And our be-robed gentleman is Cromberly,” Johenn continued. The elder’s age-clouded eyes were already darting eagerly over the scroll; he raised a gnarled hand, distractedly waving a greeting.

“Cromberly here has a heart for adventure to put shame to us all,” Johenn smiled. “And an impressive knack for survival, I hear.“

“Fine to meet you both,” Newt acknowledged, “but let’s get right to the import of it. Johenn’s only started telling me about your mystery, and I’m keen to help. Catch me up.”

llustration by Victor Manuel Leza Moreno from Pathfinder Lost Omens: Pathfinder Society Guide

Zaya considered where to begin. “We discovered Five Eyes by accident; my team was originally sent to the Impossible Lands, off the coast of Jalmeray.”

“Following up on Padiskar?” guessed Newt.

Zaya chuckled. “That’s what Cromberly guessed too. But no, Padiskar’s old news.”

Without looking up, Cromberly entoned, “Padiskar was built around the ruins there, with strict laws and lots of borders to make sure no one intrudes on the creature down there. It was even reviewed by the Vigilant Seal and is considered safe for now.”

Zaya agreed. “Padiskar’s in the north, and we were off Jalmeray’s southern coast. We were there to investigate an environmental phenomenon: the sudden appearance of odd-shaped trees, fully formed and emerging straight from under the water.”

Newt nearly interrupted with a question, but then stopped himself. Impossible Lands indeed.

“Their sudden arrival attracted a number of pilgrims, who claim the appearance of these trees was the dying wish of their old, benevolent god, Five Eyes. The trees themselves seem harmless, and the pilgrims have been peaceful. We’re keeping an eye out. Since I’m here, I’ve been taking the opportunity to look more into Five Eyes.” Zaya lifted the tome Johenn just gave her.

Newt nodded thoughtfully, his golden eyes shifting to Johenn as the dark-haired man continued the story. “I’d really just meant to assist our beautiful ranger in her research” – another eyeroll from Zaya – “but, through fate or folly, my own recent adventures seemed tied to hers.”

He paused for a moment, allowing the silence to stretch. And stretch.

“Johenn,” Newt said distastefully, waving his hand. “Performance later. Details now.”

Johenn grinned sheepishly, caught in his old habit. “Of course, of course. Forgive me. My most recent assignment was in the Menador Mountains, in Old Cheliax. We were sent there to investigate some newly-discovered caves in the area. Imagine my surprise when we discovered our old friend there.”

This time, Newt did understand the meaningful pause. He hissed a quiet name. “Alden.”

Johenn nodded somberly. “Apparently, the Aspis Consortium also heard of this potential find. It got….tricky. It became less of a careful expedition and more of a race to find and catalogue everything we could before Alden and his team got a hold of it or destroyed it.”

Newt grumbled, and Johenn nodded empathetically. “We’d discovered a series of old cave paintings, sculptures, and inscriptions… Newt, it was amazing.”

The goblin asked the more pressing question: “Was anyone hurt?” Again.

Johenn shook his head, and Newt released the breath he didn’t remember holding.

“It was close,” Johenn admitted. “But we got out safely. The fool demolished the cave to get at something beyond the wall. We held the area as long as we could, while I combined all of our bookthief brew. We copied everything we could, but there was so much. It was nearly impossible to figure out which paintings were the most important. With a fight incoming, we had to make a lot of guesses. I’d been taking tracings of some of the inscriptions, but there wasn’t time to complete them.”

“You did well,” the goblin rumbled. “Agents first.”

Johenn nodded, though Newt could tell that the loss of the information hurt the archivist keenly. “We got out with what we could. I made copies of what we were able to save with the brew…seems to be a series of writings on an enormous creature…”

“…with five eyes,” Newt finished the sentence, guessing. Johenn arched his brows in ascent.

“Zaya and I have been pooling our resources since then. Some of my saved pages caught complete phrases, so we’ve been able to translate those. With the rest, well…that’s where Cromberly comes in. He’s got a knack for languages.”

“Got it,” Newt nodded. “So what do you have so far?”

“It’s patchy,” admitted Zaya. “Johenn’s team did a fantastic job saving what they could. But that still leaves us with only snips of information and a lot of guesswork.”

Johenn offered his journal to Newt. The goblin accepted it and sat down a few paces from Zaya. The monkey-goblin grunted as he paged through the scribed, translated pages. “Five Eyes Awakened…mm-hmm…old wrongs set right…unbound, unfettered, unrestricted…the dying wish…”

“There were a lot of those symbols repeated on the lost cave wall,” Johenn offered, reading over the goblin’s shoulder. “Especially mentions of Five Eyes, and a lot of repetition about his dying wish.”

“Hm. What’s this part here, about ‘no dragon remains, only bones’? And here, where it’s paired with the dying wish.” Newt squinted at one of the pages critically, tucking a pinky into the book to save his spot while he looked back a few pages. A grunt of annoyance passed his lips as he found another passage; his tail snaked around to help him hold the extra page.

“Hm. Here.” His tail pointed to one page. “It’s talking about Five Eyes ending the age of dragonkind. And here, again. Is that part of this ‘dying wish?’ Or was that maybe how he himself died…?”

“I’m not sure,” Zaya admitted.

“It all reads like a prophecy,” grunted Newt, the last word dripping, poisonous.

“Well. At least that would be nothing to worry about,” chuckled Johenn with a sardonic smile. “Prophecies are reliably unreliable these days.”

“True,” acknowledged Cromberly, finally looking up from his scrolls. “But it’d be folly to ignore what we found, even if it’s a legend we’re researching. The sudden trees in Jalmeray means something’s happening. Best if we went in prepared.”

Newt nodded and continued paging through Johenn’s sketches. Something nagged at him. “Tell me more about the trees you discovered, Zaya.”

The woman nodded, reaching into her satchel and drawing out her own field notebook. “The trees were petrified. Each had its own root system extending below the water, with tendrils lost in the ocean floor.” She turned a page. “All these trees had a spiraling grain along the wood, but each spiral was grown over itself. It looked like veins, really.”

Zaya turned another page and flipped the book around to show Newt a rough sketch. “None of the trees had any growth or sign of life. Just…a copse of petrified, swirling trees.”

Newt blinked a few times. “I don’t know if you meant to do so, but your sketch certainly makes those trees look like pointed teeth to me.”

Root System. Veins. Teeth.

And that was what he needed to remember. He snapped his fingers. “Several months ago, I was part of an investigative crew in the thick of the Mwangi Expanse. We were looking into the theft of relics from a local museum. The thieves completely bypassed some of the more obvious and lucrative targets, instead opting to take the petrified remains of an ancient, mostly unknown creature.”

“What did you learn about it?” prompted Cromberly.

“There were more questions than answers. The display was of several petrified teeth the length of a human arm, and a few, sharp-ended scales that belonged to a creature only called Ko’kquali, so named for the formation of its teeth. There wasn’t much more to learn about it – it’s largely a mystery – but professors believed the creature to be the apex predator of its time, feasting on dragons as easily as today’s dragons feast on sheep.”

“Oh, my.” Cromberly had grown pale

“I see your friend speaks the dialect,” the goblin ventured.

Nodding, Cromberly spoke up. “Ko’kquali. Five points. Not eyes.”

“So…” Johenn swallowed. “So hear me out here. It seems like Zaya here discovered a newly-formed place, set for worship by pilgrims for Five Eyes. A place that looks like petrified, stony teeth.”

Zaya nodded.

“Some ancient remnants of an old creature that ate dragons for a teatime snack have been stolen. And that creature was named Five Points.”

Newt nodded.

“…and my team just found a whole bunch of cave paintings – literally writing on the wall! – about Five Eyes, how the age of dragonkind will come to an end, and how there’s some dying wish.”

A long silence hung over the agents. Johenn reached for his journal, and Newt handed it back wordlessly.

Johenn lifted the book and asked one last, quiet question. “What if this isn’t a legend, isn’t a prophecy… What if these are instructions?”

Newt cleared his dry throat. “Then I’d say that we have a long journey ahead of us, Johenn. Let’s get the word out, and then we have a lot of answers to find. And quickly. Before we find out what the Dying Wish can do to Golarion.”

About the Author

Rachael Cruz is an award-winning writer / game designer. Her TRPG work can be found in numerous properties, including but not limited to Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed-Of, Corvus Belli’s Infinity RPG, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, Fantasy Age, RuneQuest, and Star Trek Adventures. She has been helping people play pretend before it was cool. She also believes in you. Yes, you. Follow her on Twitter at @Witchwater!

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

“We can do it.”

The words reverberated through the cramped but well-furnished captain’s cabin of the Glorious Payoff. Eando Kline, leader of the Pathfinder Society’s Vigilant Seal, spoke excitedly and with conviction. “With the Seal deployed to prevent any fey forces from moving up from the south, the rest of the factions should be able to overwhelm the forces nearest to the portal. We can open the door, claim or seal whatever’s inside, and then beat an orderly retreat while they’re still reeling from the first assault!”

As the famed Pathfinder slapped a hand down on the table to emphasize his point, Fola Barun—a tall Ekujae elf skimming through the pile of scrolls at the far end of the table—raised a doubtful eyebrow and cleared her throat, the quiet noise and simple gesture readily commanding the attention of her peers.

“And what if it doesn’t go as smoothly as you say? Shall we trust that fate and fey magic shall both play out as we expect and gamble with the lives of those who have put their faith in us? I am not interested in a plan that involves the loss of scores of Pathfinder lives as one of its potential outcomes.”

Fola’s eyes drifted back to the scrolls in front of her, though the other Pathfinder strategists knew she was still acutely aware of the ongoing conversation.

“That’s where we come in," interjected the tightly-muscled half-orc woman perched on the table’s edge, former pirate and current leader of the Horizon Hunters, Calisro Benarry. “I’ve got a few of my hunters scouting the eastern ridgeline here, where the trees thin out; they’ll signal us if it looks like anything is about to go awry.”

As she leaned over the table, her keen eyes darted across the map, double-checking the markers and flags that indicated the positions of the various Pathfinder forces, as well as the locations of the myriad pockets of fey monsters infesting the area. She raised her glance to the last of her companions. “Anything to add, Gorm?”

“Oh, I suspect that we’ve got it well in hand.” The metal clasps in the dwarf’s braids jingled as he tilted his head, quietly assessing the map. “I’ve got the best bards, wizards, and clerics the Grand Archive has in its ranks spread throughout our deployed teams. If things get ugly, they’ll make sure to provide the magical support we need for a clean escape, and they’ve gone over every record we have of the area. Hopefully that will keep surprises to a minimum, and if we don’t see something coming, they’ll have the best chance we can hope for to make the right decisions and adapt.”

Eando looked around the room again, meeting the eyes of each of his fellow Pathfinders in turn. “We’re agreed then? It’s time to march?”

One by one, the others nodded their heads. Without further discussion, each left to take command of the Society agents assigned to their teams.

Illustration by Victor Manuel Leza Moreno from Pathfinder Lost Omens: Pathfinder Society Guide

Eando emerged from the cabin first, leaping onto the back of a waiting hippogriff that would ferry him to shore before it and its rider resumed their aerial scouting duties. Gorm muttered a few quick words and flicked his fingers in a rhythmic motion, his body slowly fading away in a cloud of glimmering lights. Fola left captain’s quarters turned perpendicular to the ship’s rail, striding toward the edge as though she were unaware the deck ended only feet in front of her. Casually, she stepped over the ship’s railing as a calm ocean wave crested to meet her foot, bearing her weight as sturdily as the deck had, and whisked her away to the nearby shoreline.

Calisro knew her place was aboard her ship, and she had no intention of abandoning her as the others had. Donning her tricorn hat, she left the briefing room, quietly shutting and locking the door behind her before she climbed to the deck to stand beside the helmsman.

“Hard to starboard!” Calisro cried, her powerful voice cutting over the ocean waves and silencing the chatter of her crew. “Ready the catapults! We’re going to start this thing off by doing what we do best! And what is that?”

With her final question, the sailors scurrying about the deck paused just long enough to yell, “blow something up,” before resuming their tasks. As the ship came about, its port armaments lined up to the shore, Calisro raised a small whistle to her lips and blew. Though no audible sound emerged, Calisro knew that her compatriots on land would receive the signal.

She needed wait only a moment before her expectation was proven accurate. On the nearby shore, a team of Pathfinders burst from behind a veil of magical invisibility, hurling jars of alchemical fire at what looked like a clump of old and gnarled baobab trees. A mere second later, the trees burst to terrifying life, uprooting themselves and charging toward the attacking Pathfinders.

“FIRE!” At Calisro’s scream, her bombardiers unleashed their deadly barrage, sending whistling orbs of magically augmented metal arcing first through the ocean breeze, and then the wooden bodies of the singed arboreal guardians. The captain took in the destruction, and the efficiency with which the Glorious Payoff’s crew had brought it upon the Society’s enemies. A slow smirk curled the her lips as she turned to issue more orders. “So far, so good!”

---

Deep in the coastal jungle, Eando fought a desperate battle against a pair of redcaps. The twisted little fey looked like caricatures of muscular gnomes, each wielding a scythe with a three-and-a-half-foot long blade. As the first swing came at his left flank, Eando quickly tossed his sword from his right hand to his left to deflect the blow high.

The second redcap stepped in and swung low from the right, hoping to separate the Pathfinder from his legs while he was distracted. No novice to battle, Eando used the momentum from his initial block to his advantage, letting the force of the first redcap’s blow carry him into a twisting somersault over the second attacker’s whistling blade. Turning his body nearly parallel to the ground, Eando flipped his sword back to his right hand, catching the hilt midway through a forward thrust. The blade parted the second redcap’s filthy beard and emerged an instant later from the back of its neck, silencing the murderous fey’s cackle with a staccato gurgle.

Completing his somersault and landing in a three-point stance, Eando kept his left hand on the ground for balance as his right swept back around in a second attack. Even as the remaining redcap raised its scythe to block, Eando switched sword hands once more, springing forward from his crouched position as he caught the blade in a left-handed grip.

The redcap’s eyes, still looking where the blade had been just a second before, widened in surprise before turning down to see Eando already withdrawing the length of the blade from the fey’s chest.

Without a hint of hesitation or fatigue, Eando flicked the blood clear of his blade and dashed further into the woods, yelling to draw an angry dryad’s attention away from a beleaguered group of Pathfinders wrapped in clinging vines.

---

Mere yards from the site of Eando’s incredible feat of swordsmanship and agility, Gorm stood ready under the shroud of invisibility. He chuckled in quiet amazement, dropping his hands and dismissing the magical energy he had been holding to blast a redcap with darts of magical force had Kline needed aid. The dwarf moved deeper into the jungle, following the sounds of battle.

It didn’t take long for Gorm to find Fola Barun, the shaman’s hands raised in the air, magically commanding the jungle’s fauna. A bramble of thorny vines whipped through ranks of surprisingly fearsome pixies while ancient ferns raised their wide fronds to deflect bursts of magical water launched by naiads away from the Pathfinder forces.

Gorm quickly unslung his harp and began playing a tune he’d written himself some years back, a lullaby he thought to call Sleep of the Petal Maidens. Hearing the ensorcelled notes through the din of combat, the pixies and naiads began to nod and blink drowsily; the distraction wasn’t enough to lull the fey to sleep, but it did slow them just long enough for Fola to shred the nearest of them with her magically controlled vines and send the others scurrying into the forest.

“Well done!” Gorm cried, dismissing his invisibility and stepping up beside Fola. A moment later, Eando emerged from the nearby trees, smiling roguishly and brushing what looked like sawdust off his sleeve. Other parties of Pathfinders joined them, and soon the small expeditionary army was almost completely assembled.

“Now the hard part,” Eando said gazing into the jungle depths ahead. “A long march through trackless jungle toward an enemy who knows we’re coming, armies of fey hidden in every valley and copse of trees between us and our destination, and then we just need to open a magical door no one’s ever opened and hope whatever’s inside doesn’t kill us all.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Gorm replied. “I do so love being a Pathfinder!”

About the Author

Michael Sayre is the former Pathfinder Society developer and newest member of the design team at Paizo. He’s also a prolific freelancer, having contributed to numerous Paizo books and publications from other publishers, such as Lost Spheres Publishing, Rogue Genius Games, and many other companies, in support of the Pathfinder RPG and other table-top game systems. You can find more of Michael's short fiction in our Organized Play blogs and in the introduction for the iconic alchemist, Fumbus.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

“This may be it,” Aliyama stated carefully, consulting her wayfinder.

The jungle was oppressively hot and humid, yet the elf showed no signs of it. She wore a purple, quilted doublet over silk sleeves, her cerulean cloak held by a golden pendant. Her hair, immaculately braided, was pulled back from her angular face revealing pointed ears adorned with yet more gold. She looked as fresh as if she were off to a meeting at the Grand Lodge.

“’May?’” Reynold sputtered. In stark contrast, his brown hair was plastered with sweat, his Taldan finery wrinkled and stained. “’May!?’ There is no ‘may’ about it! Fola said the lost Pathfinder would be in a serpentfolk ruin in the middle of the bloody Mwangi Expanse. Sigvard sent us here to find the ruin. What do you bloody think this is?!”

Aliyama looked up, arching an eyebrow. Her human compatriot was gesturing insistently with outstretched hands to the towering stone archway in front of them. It was flanked by enormous statues of hooded cobras, and the stonework was mas-terful, full of whirling, intertwined lines ornately framing an entrance into the overgrown hillside. If doors had once stood in the archway, they were long gone. Only a darkened rectangle of shadows stood between them and the interior.

“Much as I hate to admit it, I agree wit’ Reynold here. This has gotta be the place,” Thri said, planting fists on hips. The fresh-faced dwarf’s topknot barely came to her companions’ ribs. “Let’s get in and find our missin’ Pathfinder, yeah?”

“Quite right,” Reynold nodded. “In we go! Then back to Sigvard and her endless chores. And then, blessedly, a ship back to glorious, civilized Absalom.”

Aliyama held up a hand. “Abadar says that the world is filled with two kinds of people: the impulsive and the wealthy,” she said calmly. “We must examine the facts and think.”

“I think,” Reynold pointed, rolling his eyes. “That the big overgrown temple with snakes outside is a serpentfolk ruin.”

Thri snorted.

The elf sighed. “Perhaps. But consider: the serpentfolk were one of the oldest civilizations in Golarion. They preceded even the Azlanti. Yet do these carvings appear worn away by the ages? Do they look as if they survived Earthfall?”

Reynold opened his mouth, then snapped it shut, frowning.

“Recall that I grew up in the Mwangi,” she continued. “Left unattended, the jungle claims everything. Everything. Were this truly an ancient serpentfolk temple, it would be nothing but vines. The Pathfinder agent that Sigvard originally sent here was a serpentfolk scholar and would have known this. No, surely this is not the place.”

“So what’re ya sayin’?” Thri asked, cheeks flushing with anger. “What’s this, then?”

Aliyama turned to face her. “Most likely the remnants of a misguided dragon cult of Dahak. Kobolds, charau-ka, boggards, or somesuch. These cults are common here, spawning and dying off constantly. Nasty business. But most certainly not some-thing actually created by the serpentfolk.”

Thri exhaled, disappointment flooding her voice. “So we haven’t found it yet. No chargin’ in to rescue a lost Pathfinder.”

Aliyama lay a gloved hand on the dwarf’s broad shoulder. “Do not worry, young one. I know this is your first excursion with the Pathfinder Society and you wish to make your mark. Yet take heart! This is the life of an adventurer. We explore, thoughtfully and with consideration. Abadar himself is a traveler, yes? Yet he is not hasty. He is slow and relentless, as the gears of civilization are slow and relentless. So too must we step carefully, always moving forward. We will find our missing Pathfinder agent, Thri Redbarrel. With patience, and by Abadar’s hand.”

Thri accepted the lecture with a short nod, then shrugged. “Let’s keep lookin’. I hope we fight somethin’ soon, though. This heat is makin’ me cranky.”

Aliyama smiled. “Battle too is an inevitable part of adventuring. Though this structure is not our destination, we are close. Let me consult my wayfinder again.” The elf flipped open the circular lid and began peering down at its face.

A full minute passed, the elf consulting her wayfinder and muttering. The dwarf watched her, then scanned the surround-ings. All around them the jungle hooted and sang with life.

“Uh... Ali?”

“One more moment, please Thri.”

“It’s just—”

“Thri, please. Patience.”

“Okay. It’s just that Reynold’s gone.”

“I see. Well... What!?” Aliyama looked up, startled. “Where is he?”

“I, uh. I’m thinkin’ maybe he went in.”

They both stared at the ten-foot, darkened doorway.

“Ridiculous, infuriating, impulsive, sneaky, dandy of a human,” the elf muttered. “He is always—”

A cry echoed from deep within the hillside.

“Yep, that’s him.” Thri pulled the double-bladed battle axe from her back.

“Just hold a moment. We must—”

Reynold burst from the shadows, wide-eyed. In one hand he held his shortsword. In the other, a coiling, golden figurine of a snake.

Illustration by Iana Vengerova from Lost Omens: Pathfinder Society Guide

“This is it! Bloody help!” he cried.

“What did you do?” Aliyama demanded.

“No time! Help!”

Three tall, scaled humanoid figures in green robes spilled from the dark opening. At first Aliyama thought they might be iruxi. But instead of lizard-like heads, these figures bore the heads of hooded cobras. Long, whip-like tails thrashed as the figures moved sinuously into fighting formation. One of the creatures hissed and drew a curved blade the length of its forearm.

“Impossible,” Aliyama breathed.

As Reynold scampered past one of the large, hooded statues, a sound of grinding stone filled the clearing. The mossy, guardian cobra turned its head, following the fleeing thief.

“Look out!”

Reynold dove to one side and rolled. The cobra’s head snapped its jaws together with a sharp CRACK! where his head had been. Reynold continued his roll smoothly and was back on his feet in an instant.

“There are no more serpentfolk in the Mwangi,” Aliyama stated numbly. “They are in the Darklands, not on the surface. Kline’s report was thorough…”

With an enthusiastic cry, Thri stepped forward and met the lead creature. Battleaxe and curved dagger clashed.

“Our scholar is in there,” Reynold said, panting. “Pinned to the wall in the entry like some sort of warning. These figurines are in the nooks in the walls. I only snagged one before those things noticed me.”

Aliyama glared at him. “Why are you grinning, thief?”

“It just occurred to me that when this is over, you get to tell me I was right and you were wrong,” he winked. With a whoop, he dashed to flank the serpentfolk battling Thri.

Shaking her head, Aliyama snapped her wayfinder shut and raised her arms, beginning a prayer to Abadar, Master of the First Vault.

A single bead of sweat trickled down her forehead.

About the Author

Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar was a founding columnist for Magic: the Gathering’s official website, which he wrote weekly for five years (along with various other gaming columns). During that time, he also penned several Kamigawa block web stories for Wizards of the Coast. He is a lifelong tabletop roleplaying gamer, frequent GM, and currently part of a fiction-writer’s group in Oakland, CA. This story is his first for Pathfinder or Paizo.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

Toulon flipped through the pages of the report, keeping one eye on the woman. She looked pale with illness and the constant clearing of her throat did nothing to disprove the notion. She gave him a weak smile, more grimace than grin. He continued leafing through the report.

Art by Sarunas Macijauskas

“And you say they’re all connected, Miss…”

“Ah, it’s Mrs. Kavint. Roverrint may be gone, gods bless him, but he lives on in my heart and in my mind and I remain a faithful woman.” Another grimace. “Yes, I’ve done the work to prove everything that I can to show that—”

“You understand that you’re accusing Queen Abrogail of high treason,” Toulon interrupted, “and that such accusations don’t come lightly, right?”

“Y-yes, very much sir, but it’s all there! The Queen sent her foolish cousin to incite the rebellion in Kintargo while secretly supplying the rebels with weapons and supplies. It was her idea to destroy the Menador Keep! Do you think the rebels had the means to do that on their own? Of course not! And then I heard that one of those other Hellknights used it as a cover to fake her death. Trust me. I’ve found the connections and I can see…”

“Mrs. Kavint, that’s quite enough. I believe you. This evidence isn’t airtight, but there’s a lot here we can work with.” Toulon stood from his desk and walked to the door. “I greatly appreciate you bringing this to our attention, and I promise to put our resources toward investigating this further. I’ll have one of my knights escort you out.”

Mrs. Kavint sprung to her feet with a speed in stark contrast to her age but then immediately returned to the same hobbled walk she used to enter the office. Toulon made sure to not let on that he noticed the irregularity.

“Thank you so much, Lictor. You won’t regret this. Cheliax will learn the truth and you’ll be a hero. The people need to know.” She reached out for his hand. “Thank you, thank you!”

“Yes, of course, Mrs. Kavint.” He pulled his hand back from the woman’s tight, sweaty grip. “You have a good day.”

Toulon returned to his desk and opened the report once again. There’s definitely something here, he thought to himself, attempting to shake the woman’s sweat from his hand. His flicks of the wrist did nothing, and as he reached for a handkerchief he noticed it wasn’t sweat at all, but some kind of thick mucus, probably due to her illness. Disgusting.

---

“Presenting, Lord Roverrint of Belde!” announced the guard.

An old man hobbled into the throne room. Abrogail watched as he continued his pathetic entry and she soon grew tired of waiting. “Paraduke Thurivan claims you have important information for me,” she yelled out as he continued his approach. “Know that I bestow you a great honor in just allowing you entrance in my palace. Now, what have you brought for me?”

Art by Sarunas Macijauskas

Lord Roverrint removed his hat and gave a slight bow to Abrogail. “My queen, I wish to thank you for your generosity. My family and the people of Belde believe you to be a just queen and—”

“Out with it, Lord Roverrint,” spat Abrogail.

“Yes, my queen. I believe that the Order of the Scourge is plotting against you. I believe that they mean to depose you with claims that you’ve committed treason against Cheliax.”

“Lord Roverrint, if I had to accept audience for every rumor of action against my throne, I would never leave this room,” Abrogail replied with contempt. “What evidence do you have of these claims?”

“I have acquired a copy of the material that they plan to use as evidence against you, my queen.” The old man produced a folio from within his robes, brimming with papers and scrolls.

“Bring it here, Lord Roverrint.”

“Of course, my queen.” Just as he began to step forward, he entered a coughing fit that echoed throughout the throne room. Abrogial watched on in disgust for a moment before sending Gorthoklek to fetch the folio. The pit fiend’s steps reverberated like massive boulders colliding against the ground, each step wreathed in the crackle of flames. He plucked the folio from Roverrint’s trembling hands and returned to his place beside the throne. Gorthoklek leafed through the pages in an instant and then produced an audible huff before closing the folio.

“Gorthoklek tells me that some of this evidence is flimsy. In fact,” she smiled, “he believes that attempting to use some of this will actively hurt their case and put them in an incriminating position. Well done, Lord Roverrint.”

Recovering from his fit, Roverrint replied in a strained voice. “Thank you, my queen. I wish only what is best for you and Cheliax. Now, is there a possibility of a reward?”

“Yes, of course.” Abrogail waved over a guard. “See to it that Lord Reverrint receives a handsome reward for his loyalty to Cheliax and his queen. That will be all.”

Abrogail stared off in the distance as the guards escorted Roverrint out of the throne room. Damned Touloc. He definitely has something here, she thought to herself as the throne-room doors closed.

---

A wild cackling echoed through the abandoned home. “Yes, it is all done, Chemurr.” Mrs. Kavint threw herself to the ground beside Lord Reverrint. “The Great Master’s will is done.”

Chemurr gave a pleased smile. “Very well. Kavint, Roverrint, you have earned a few minutes to speak with the master.” Chemurr extended her hand and several thick, slimy phlegm worms crawled out from her sleeve. The worms crawled forward, up toward Kavint’s and Roverrint’s ears. The two let out a terrible wail, one part agony and one part pleasure, as they collapsed in a writhing pile, calling out for the Great Master.

“The knights and her queen shall begin to play, and soon will we see who has the will to stay.” A phlegm worm writhed about between Chemurr’s fingers. “All while the Great Master watches and laughs.”

Art by Giorgio Falconi

Interested in seeing how the clash between Abrogail Thrune and Lictor Toulon Vidoc is progressing? Check out Lost Omens Legends, available now!

About the Author

Luis Loza is a developer at Paizo, working primarily on the Pathfinder Lost Omens product line. He’s also written for dozens of Pathfinder and Starfinder products with notable works including Borne by the Sun’s Grace for the Tyrant’s Grasp Adventure Path and Broken Promises for the Age of Ashes Adventure Path. You can follow him on Twitter at @donatoclassic.

About the Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

The fire in the forest clearing flickered merrily without wood or any sounds of crackling. Four fish sizzled on a blue-bronze pan, placed to the side to cool enough to safely eat. Candles and incense sticks were set in the earth, smoke rising from the smoldering tips to curl upward into the night. The occupant of the tidy campsite was absolutely stunning, her outfit rival to the leading lady of any royal court, her hair glowing like flame in the light. Yet the most notable thing, the thing that should have given Qiu's partners a bit of a clue, was the elaborate green mansion that loomed behind her, a home fit for nobles in the middle of a forest.

Art by Vladislav Orlowsk

You would have to be an idiot to go near her. That's a fox woman if I ever saw one, Qiu thought to themself. So of course, Qiu's ox-brained partners had decided to rob the woman, and nothing the bandit had said could dissuade the rest of their party. Qiu had finally given up and left them to their fates, promising to be at their backs. And stay at their backs, far out of sight.

Qiu shouldn't have even been that close. Maybe they felt they should at least stay and see what happened—that they at least owed their companions that much for the victories and spoils that the others had shared with them over the years. Maybe it was the woman. It had been so long since Qiu had seen another fox hiding behind a human face, another person who Qiu knew was truly like them.

Qiu watched their companions approach. Yahui was being dramatic, as usual, trying to scare the woman with his friendly-traveler-turned-threatening-robber act, as if anyone believed he was ever friendly. Qiu instinctively ducked behind a tree as the woman stood up. Best not to be in the splash zone if any bits of giblets came flying their way. Even so, they couldn't help but lean an eye out to peek. The woman's hair seemed to lose its gravity as she conjured magic power around her...

...and then burst into flame, as her form morphed into that of a gargantuan bird of fire.

Phoenix, Qiu thought, their jaw dropping open in absolute stupor.

Yahui and the others weren't any more dignified, dropping their swords, falling to the ground, trying desperately to crawl backward away from the searing beast. They were bullies, not trained warriors. As they scrambled to their feet to escape, the phoenix gestured with a wing, causing a wall of fire to encircle the clearing. The magic blaze engulfed the trees, and yet the leaves and boughs did not blacken or burn. Yahui noticed, the same as Qui did, and decided to try his luck by leaping through the inferno. He was rewarded by his hair and clothes bursting into flames, and he shrieked in panic as he rolled against the ground to put himself out.

It was too much for Qiu to take, the shock causing them to lose their grip on their form. Qiu felt a muzzle and white fur popping out from their human guise, and rode the transformation a little further, shifting all the way past a tailed humanoid into a small, four-legged forest creature. If they were lucky, they could pretend to be a common fox—oh, but it had been a mistake, a terrible mistake; the heat was unbearable in this shape, and Qiu found themself blindly darting out into the clearing to get away from those terrible embers and the pain of singed fur and whiskers.

The woman looked human again by the time Qiu finished rubbing their paws on their snout. No chance she hadn't noticed them now, a snow-white fox in the middle of her clearing, icy breath fogging in the warm air. Qiu gulped and looked around at their fellow bandits, though they knew their companions would be no help. At least Yahui looked like he would survive, though he'd likely be burned and missing his eyebrows for a while.

“Banditry is punished by execution, in these lands,” their captor said. “Or at least, so it was. The law may have changed, for I have been absent a long age.”

It hadn't, but Qiu didn't feel it necessary to say that. The other bandits gibbered something unintelligible.

“But what I do now is also unlawful. So are all tragedies—to be caught between honor and humanity,” the woman mused, apparently deciding that responses were optional. She gestured to Qiu, then lowered her hand to the ground in a clear summons to approach. “You are a huli jing? Let us speak.”

Qiu didn't bother trying to act dumb. It would be futile. This woman was ancient—it showed in her speech, and her power, and her eyes.

“That's not a name I've heard used in a long time,” Qiu said, slipping back into their true shape, a fox-faced humanoid with two tails, so that they could more easily speak. Already they could hear the more common names for their kind whispered among their bandit colleagues. Fox-demon. Liver-eater. Qiu would never be able to work with them again after this. They surprised themself by feeling a sense of mourning at that.

“I am Qiu. What can this humble huli jing do for you?” Qiu asked, giving a sitting bow. They did their best to speak formally, out of respect, but Qiu felt more like they had managed to land on pretentious instead.

“I am Hao Jin,” the woman introduced politely, and Qiu at last understood, and believed it.

The Ruby Phoenix. The most powerful sorcerer of a nation and of an age. Perhaps of all ages. There were plenty of children named in her honor, but Qiu doubted any possessed the raw magic they had just witnessed.

She continued, graciously ignoring their expression, “I am looking for a dead-people.”

“A dead-people?” Qiu echoed. It wasn't a phrase they were familiar with, and the literal words didn't quite make sense. There were corpses a plenty in this forest, and likely some undead as well, but they didn't feel like what Hao Jin was asking for.

“This is no longer the word that is used?” Hao Jin asked, after a moment of hesitation. “A people that the empire of Lung Wa declared dead. Their houses are to be destroyed, their records of lineage burned. Their language must never be spoken. Their name will become a myth. They are erased. They are no longer real.”

Qiu chewed their gums at the weight of those words. Dead-people. “I do not know how anyone could find such a group. Even Lung Wa is something of a myth, these days.”

“I remembered their name, in defiance. They were the Xijae people. They lived here once,” Hao Jin said, standing up to walk inside her ornate green mansion and gesturing for Qiu to follow. When they entered, they found a museum room graced with armfuls of jewelry, books, and scrolls in a mysterious writing. Costumes and headdresses, every thread and color vibrant and pristine. Qiu reached out before they could stop themself, eyes open in awe as they examined the embroidery and delicately worked metal. They'd never seen patterns like these before, never seen this artistic style. It had been erased. Erased before Qiu had been born, stolen without them ever knowing—but wait a moment...

“I've seen these before,” Qiu said after a long thought, rolling a jade and silver bead between their fingers. “There was an old man who made them in a village forty li to the south.”

We robbed his shipment blind, Qiu did not say. They were starting to feel very bad about that. “I don't know if he's still alive, but...”

“Show me the way,” Hao Jin commanded, before Qiu could think of how to finish that sentence. She stepped back outdoors to set her pans and plates back in her house, ushering Qiu outside as well. Qiu watched in awe as the building shrunk down to the size of a child's wooden toy in her hands. She glanced at the other bandits, seeming to weigh their fate in her hands before she evidently decided they weren't worth the distraction. With a wave of the sorceress' arms, the wall of fire surrounding the camp vanished. Qiu thought they heard her trying to say 'Go forth and do no evil' or something else with suitable gravitas, but the bandits were running and screaming before she could get that far.

“Come,” Hao Jin said, with a sigh at the robbers' antics. A gust of wind blew out her campfire; another lifted the two of them into the air. They shot up above the earth, to a height that sent Qiu's head spinning—or maybe it was the speed, or the thin air. They barely managed to keep consciousness to point out the tiny speck below with one shaking claw. The descent was no slower or easier, leaving Qiu gasping for breath as Hao Jin approached the village on foot, having been kind enough to the nerves of the residents not to land in the middle of their town.

Now is the time to run, Qiu thought.

But just the memory of the phrase dead-people sent them staggering into the town on the heels of the sorceress. Qiu could see that she had taken out the strand of beads Qiu had picked out, holding them up to a tiny crowd of four people, as another man hurried out from inside his small house with a woman following behind him. By the time Qiu reached the scene, the man was holding out his own hand, a trio of similar jade beads presented in his palm for Hao Jin to see.

“I was given these for safekeeping a long time ago,” Hao Jin said, pulling some of her ancient books from seemingly nowhere. She offered them to the man with a humble bow. “It has been long past the age when I should have returned them. Please, forgive me.”

Qiu could see the emotions run rampant across the man's face as he carefully took the book and opened it. Confusion, morphing into recognition, then disbelief. Then a profound and deep-cutting sadness, one that ran back generations, one that could never be healed, but perhaps now could be soothed.

“My grandfather spoke this,” the village man said, sharply turning his face away so that the ancient book's precious, forgotten language could not be smeared and ruined by his tears.

The former bandit watched the villagers crowd around Hao Jin, their voices blending in questions and exclamations. A breeze rustled through Qiu’s fur, and they suddenly felt a cold loneliness buried within their chest.

To learn more about Hao Jin and her relics of the past, check out Lost Omens Legends when it releases on July 30th!

About the Author

Eleanor Ferron is a developer at Paizo, working primarily on the Pathfinder Lost Omens product line.

About the Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

Patross, the staff lead, was sneering again, and Ivy knew that would soon cause trouble for her. The waitress didn't even need to look to know what had offended the surly man. The two guests that sat by the dock-side windows—prime seats of the establishment, Patross would protest!—stood out enough from the regular crowd. It was an open question on what about them offended the most. The woman's clothing was too shabby, the man's clothing was too foreign. The woman was vicious and unpleasant. Truthfully, Ivy thought that Patross was most upset that the pair were both old, and the woman incredibly ugly.

He couldn't say anything about that, it would upset Taldan decorum. So Patross sneered and settled on, “Setting that filthy chicken on the table. As if she thought this place was a barn!”

As if other guests didn't bring their dogs into the tavern all the time, throwing their grimy leftover bones on the floor for the pets to chew on. Ivy would have rolled her eyes, if she didn't know what was coming next for her. She kept her gaze down on the floor and clutched her serving plate to her chest, willing herself to become invisible. If she could just slip under the man's notice, maybe he'd just complain and then leave it alone—

“Ivy!” Patross barked, and the poor waitress felt a cold shudder roll up her shoulders despite the fact she'd been expecting it. “Tell that woman to either take that louse-ridden bird out, or take herself out instead!”

Coward, Ivy thought.

She moved as slowly as possible, dragging each step with a sense of building dread, but with Patross' eyes on her she couldn't draw her walk out forever. The more that Ivy could see of the old woman, the more terrified Ivy became. Maybe it was simply because the old hag was so hideous—Ivy didn't like to think she was so shallow, but what else was there? She'd dealt with far less pleasant drunks nearly every shift. The woman's teeth glinted like iron, but Ivy had seen gaudier dentures before, some made of far less pleasant materials. The woman was glaring at Ivy long before the girl reached the table, sniffing as if she could suck the waitress in through her nose. The price of dragging it out as she had; that always made things worse!

“Well?” the old woman snapped, and Ivy fought down another deep shudder. “What is it, child? Did you burn your tongue off? Spit out what you want or leave me to my tea!”

Ivy swallowed deeply, glad that her serving plate could hide the sweat on her palms. “Madam...” she said, mind racing on what to say, before she settled on something potentially inoffensive. “Would you like me to care for your chicken, while you are here?”

The woman sniffed heavily again, this time thoughtfully. “Careful with your words, are you? Yes, take care of my chicken. If you're a good girl and treat it well, I'll give you a gift and let you go free.”

“Stop tormenting the young woman,” the elderly man chastised. Ivy had nearly forgotten he was there, too focused on his horrible companion. He had dark skin, not too unusual in Taldor—plenty of families from Mwangi had come to Taldor with the returning Armies of Exploration—but none of those people wore clothing like his. He continued, “Pay your grandmother no mind, Ivy. Nor your staff lead, for that matter.”

Art by Firat Solhan

He must have overheard my name, Ivy thought, because she didn't like to think of any alternatives. She wasn't sure what to say now, so she said nothing.

“A shy little bit like that must be pushed, or she'll never amount to anything,” the 'grandmother' complained. “Look at her, shoved around by quarrelsome women and grubby men. She'd be better off as a ham on a plate.”

“Isn't that right?” she said, suddenly snapping her attention back to Ivy. “You'd leap at any chance to get out of here, wouldn't you, child? Even one as horrible as I?”

Ivy wanted to. Ivy wanted to escape this miserable, harassment-filled drudgery more than anything. But Ivy had been raised on old tales of careless fools, and had learned well in Taldor to be cautious of windfalls, and so she took a step back and gave a short shake of her head.

“Plenty of 'shy young bits' grow up without you to threaten them,” the man scoffed at his companion. “Or do you think you're so important?”

“Of course I'm important,” 'grandmother' cackled.

“Oh? Care to wager?” the man asked.

The pair glanced at Ivy again, something unspoken passing between them. The old woman shook her head, picking up her chicken under one arm. “A waste,” she grumbled, with no further explanation, and hustled out of the tavern door. Both Ivy and the old man watched her go.

“You're wise to avoid suspicious gifts, and wiser still not to look toward someone else to save you,” the man said, after a moment. “But will you be able to live with the curiosity of what would have happened, if you had said yes?”

“Well, I'll have to, sir,” Ivy said, slipping easily back into her pleasant server persona now that the woman was gone. “Thank you for your patronage.”

The old man nodded, or perhaps it was a small bow, before he picked up his leopard-headed staff, paid the bill, and left. Ivy blew out a sign of relief, glad the situation had resolved itself without a confrontation. Patross couldn't yell at her for failing now... at least, not much. The waitress moved to clean up the dishes on the table, noting the silver and glass tea mugs weren't anything she'd seen used at the Dancing Dolphin before. Moving one of the cups onto her tray, she noticed a brilliant red and gold egg sitting behind it. It looked the size of a regular hen's egg, but it glittered with real gold, and something strange and powerful hummed beneath Ivy's fingertips when she touched it.

This is not safe, Ivy thought to herself, for she was no fool. She looked out the window, but could see no sign of the old hag or her friend. Was this some kind of test? The smartest thing to do was leave the egg there, or perhaps give it to Patross and see what happened. But she thought back to the old man's words... will you be able to live with the curiosity of what would have happened, if you leave it be?

Ivy picked up the Fabergé egg, slipping it into the pocket of her waitress' apron...

To learn more about these mysterious patrons and just what kind of gifts they can offer, check out Lost Omens Legends when it releases on July 30th!

About the Author

Eleanor Ferron is a developer at Paizo, working primarily on the Pathfinder Lost Omens product line.

About the Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

Legends say only a single man survived the doom that befell Fog Peak Hold. The Pathfinder sages will tell you that’s wrong: five made it out alive, though only three were still sane. The little matter of the collapse of the eastern pass had made the hold irrelevant by that point, and I guess the Taldans have been busy with other matters for the last few hundred years, so the place was never reoccupied.

That didn’t mean no one was interested in it, though, even knowing the last master of the hold had taken up strange habits. Venture-captain Kerivik Stormhand had been eager to get his hands–maybe I should say eyes–on a cache of old maps housed in the hold’s library and a few others, like me, had grown curious about the last master’s reputed interest in golden figurines. Ilvana, well, she was Kerivik’s favorite blade woman. She pretty much went wherever he did, even if that was halfway up a forbidding peak in the Taldan wilderness.

A switchback staircase led part of the way, and then a rockslide had taken out everything but the three stairs short of the old brass gate. Still, Kerivik was an old hand with mountains and got the three of us up safely. That’s when I took over. I won’t bore you with the harrowing details of disarming the trapped entry–I’m certain you’re well aware of my splendid facility with locks. Pretty soon the three of us were making our way down the main hall.

The wind can get pretty wicked up there in the Fog Peaks, and it made free play through the hold, owing to the way the old wooden shutters had rotted off the high windows. I could hear it moaning a lot more clearly than I could hear Kerivik’s grumbling to be careful. Every now and then it gusted so violently it rattled the suits of armor standing along the hall. A couple of them had succumbed to gravity over the years, but most stood as they’d been left long years before, ready for their long-vanished owners to don and wade into battle.

Kerivik stopped to inspect a sealed portal. Me, I headed on toward a distinctive warm gleam I spotted shining on a pedestal just a few paces away. Gold, as sure as the scars on my face. It was a kneeling figurine of a slim horned man with a snarl, draped in spiderwebs. I’d heard the old master had an interest in demonic lore, and this would likely be quite the boon for the Society’s Grand Archive—if not Eando Kline and the Vigilant Seal.

As I reached for the thing the wind picked up once more and I heard a heavy whoosh from our rear, a shout of surprise from Ilvana, and a rattle of armor from the nearest suit.

Turning toward the commotion while keeping an eye on the likely evil relic, my notoriously keen senses and Cayden’s own luck alerted me that the armor had rattled a little too loudly to be from the wind. Sure enough, the suit over my shoulder had lifted a long sword over its helm in preparation to lop off my head. Kerivik shouted something from behind as I leapt back, the blade missing me by a handspan.

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

Busy as I was dodging head blows, caught my first glimpse of what my partners were up to. Blades had started swinging down from either side of the hall, one of them so razor sharp it had sliced a few feet of deep green fabric off her cloak. Seeing our means of escape quickly cut off by the swinging scythes, Kerivik redoubled his efforts to pry the stone doorway open. I didn’t have the time to really assess the situation, though, with the idol’s defender still upon me.

The armor stepped forward, pivoted with military precision, and swung for me again. I’ve been a Pathfinder long enough to know that only magic or a spirit was likely to be making that thing move, and the odds of me hurting either with my blade, fine as it was, were slim to none. But there are other ways to stop a rampaging suit of plate mail, and I slid left of its next strike then threw myself forward. It’s counterintuitive, I know, but rather brave, as you probably noticed.

I caught the armor about its waist, smashing my chin into its waist chain, and sent it off balance. It reeled backward, slammed into the pedestal, and fell in pieces. I dropped with it and rolled. The figurine fell too, of course, and plummeted right past my face. I’d forgotten I was holding my sword and it rattled off along the ancient stones.

It’s a good thing I was already low, because damned if the big scythes didn’t choose that moment to start swinging down across my side of the hallway. I heard Kelivik shout that the weapons were getting lower and snagged the haft of my blade. That snarling figurine was just out of reach.

Not so one of the steel gauntlets from that vanquished suit of armor. I swear the fingers were pulling it back toward a steel arm right when a blade struck the wrist and dragged it along the floor with a deafening screech of wounded metal. If I’d been a moment later that would have been my own hand.

“Stop staring at the gold, Nerian!” Kelivik shouted at me. “Get back!”

Now I was perfectly capable of losing myself in contemplation of especially fine gold, but I swear at that instant I was still stunned a little by how close that blade had come, and I was watching in awe as sparks flew from the wriggling armored fingers as the gleaming scythe pulled it across the rough stone floor. Proving Kelivik’s assessment of my motivations wrong, I turned from the idol and scrambled back through the stone portal just as he and Irvana disappeared into the darkness beyond.

For once we lucked out. We stumbled right into the master map room, where tube after tube of old parchment lay under a thick layer of dust in their honeycomb shelves, including all sorts of old records Kelivik didn’t even knew he needed until he started looking around. True, there was also a golden statue identical to the one that had lured me nearly to my death guarding the stacks. It was twice the height of a man, but the rumors about how deadly it was are exaggerated–the thing was so slow Irvana and I managed to keep it distracted while Kelivik grabbed up his goodies.

The darned thing was so large it couldn’t even get through the portal, so we ended up with quite a head start before it had bashed its way out. By the time it reached us we had already started down the ropes. It surged out of the fortress doors, took three steps, and then ran out of stair and abruptly plunged about six hundred feet down the mountainside. We had ample time to observe that none of its component pieces were moving as we climbed down to safety. It was too heavy to haul the whole thing with us, especially with Kelivik’s trusty haversack full to overflowing, but we did manage to drag one of its arms back to the lodge. And that was pretty nice. I might go back to get more of it soon—as long as adventure doesn’t call me off in another direction, of course.

About the Author

Howard Andrew Jones lives in a wind-swept tower with a wicked and beautiful sorceress. When not spending time with her or their talented children he can be found hunched over his laptop, mumbling about flashing swords and doom-haunted towers. St. Martin’s published his newest novel, For the Killing of Kings, this February, and its sequel, Upon the Flight of the Queen, will be published in November. Paizo has published four of his Pathfinder novels—Plague of Shadows, Stalking the Beast, Beyond the Pool of Stars, and Through the Gate in the Sea—and St. Martin’s his critically acclaimed historical fantasy novels. He edits Tales from the Magician’s Skull. He knows karate and wrote this in the third person while eating stale popcorn.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

“Come on, Couvo!” Seliette tugged at his sleeve, breaking his concentration and causing his complex mental translation to collapse into gibberish. He blinked up at his fellow student, confused by her voluminous waterproof cloak. The last time he’d gone outside onto the grounds of the Magaambya, the sky had been blue and cloudless. He hadn’t been sequestered in this reading nook that long, had he? Maybe Seliette was off on another of her field trips. He could hardly keep track of all the to-ing and fro-ing she did with her assorted mentors. “Come on where?”

She twirled, cloak spinning out around her. “Come and join the dance!”

He grunted. “Pass.” The tome before him, chronicling a supposed journey through the Doorway of the Red Star, hadn’t been written by Old-Mage Jatembe himself, of course—the true history of the founder of this school (though it was strange to call a place with no real classes or schedules a school!) was shrouded in myth. This book was written by a scholar whose grandmother had heard the tale as a child from a descendent of one of the Ten Magic Warriors, and that was as close to a primary resource as Couvo was likely to get. “This is too important. I can dance once I’ve ascended to Conversant.” Couvo had recently finished his term as an Initiate, after spending a year sorting a room full of scrolls and tomes recovered on an expedition a decade prior and never properly catalogued. Since being promoted to Attendant he’d been assisting the arcanist Thanda (some called her Thanda the Wanderer; others Thanda the Plunderer) with translating some of her finds from prior expeditions. Couvo had come to the Magaambya after a period of study at the College of Mysteries in his native Absalom because he’d heard there were works of great antiquity hidden away in the Mwangi Expanse. Though he’d found the Magaambya bewildering in many respects, it hadn’t disappointed in terms of treasures to translate.

Seliette plopped down across from him and pulled the book out of his hands. He sighed, knowing better to protest. Seliette was a native of Nantambu whose parents were associated with the academy, and she’d grown up in the towers, vaults, halls, and fields of the Magaambya. She was an Attendant too, and for reasons of her own, she’d decided to take Couvo under her wing, a position he found more pleasant than annoying as a whole. Without her guidance, he'd still be wondering where all the lecture halls and laboratory exercises were instead of successfully navigating the looser, stranger approach to the magical arts the faculty took here. “Did I say dance?” she said. “Forgive me. I meant to say, 'Come see a high-level collaboration between primal and arcane adepts in a rare demonstration of the power of halcyon syncretism’.”

“Oh.” Couvo closed the book. “Why didn’t you say so?”

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

“This looks exactly like dancing.” Couvo stood off to the side of a line of drummers who pounded their instruments with a beat so compelling it threatened to co-opt the rhythm of his own heart. A leaf fell on his head, and long grass tickled his ankles beneath his robe. Couvo hated being outside. Hadn't he seen the sky enough for a lifetime on his journey to the Mwangi Expanse?

“Some of the spellcasting I’ve seen you do looks like extremely complicated waving,” Seliette said. “Or as if you’re fending off a swarm of bees. This dance is both an ecstatic celebration of life, and one component of a spell blending natural and arcane magic.”

“What are they trying to do?” Couvo looked around the gathering in the clearing beneath the trees, trying to figure out who was taking part in the ritual and who was a spectator like him. The woman with the elaborate spiral paint was surely involved, but what about the catfolk, and—was that a Nidalese man? It was amazing who ended up here. There were a few people wearing Magaambyan masks, too—antelope, lion, even lizard—who were probably taking part. As an Attendant Couvo had the right to create such a mask, which would allow him to access his spiritual self more directly, and would gradually take on a life as its own and serve as a sort of familiar... but he found the notion of such a second face disconcerting, and since the masks weren’t compulsory, he’d avoided the issue.

Seliette spread her arms. “They’re going to make it rain.”

Couvo glanced at her, wondering why she looked so excited. There were clouds gathering, and controlling the weather was advanced magic, certainly, but several of Couvo’s teachers back in Absalom could have called thunderstorms or even tornados, if the season was right, and they wouldn’t have needed a drum line and a crowd of collaborators to manage it. “That’s it? Rain?”

She laughed. “Making it rain here, I admit, is not so impressive. But the Aspis Consortium has caused a terrible drought in one of those barbarous nations you have up there.” She gestured vaguely northward. “A group of us plan to travel there and bring the rain back.”

“So... this isn’t a ritual to summon a shower for a few hours?” That was the extent of the weather control he knew about.

“Oh, no. The arcane methods of weather manipulation get things started, but the primal magic connects more deeply to the land and the air, restoring balance to the area, in a sustainable, ongoing way: healing the climate rather than just changing the weather.”

“So the arcanists provide the spark, and the primal magicians create the fuel that keeps the fire going,” Couvo said. He could feel the change in the air now, the drop in pressure, the scent of rain.

“A fire metaphor isn't particularly apt," Seliette said, "but more or less. It's not just arcane here and primal there, though. The powers collaborate, and some adepts use both forms of magic at once—that's halcyon magic, the blending of traditions to create something new and marvelous.” She put her arm around him. “Isn’t that why you’re here, Couvo? Or did you just come to read old things? Books are wonderful, but to serve the Magaambya is to live in the material world and change it for the better. You could come with us and lend your own strength to our dance.”

He hunched. “I’ve got so much work to do, Seliette—”

“If you want to stay in your reading hole, Thanda will continue to take advantage of your talents, I'm sure… but she’ll keep you as an Attendant forever. If you hope to become a Conversant, and direct your own studies, you have to go out.” She cocked her head. “Tell me, Couvo. What are you doing all this studying for? What’s the purpose?”

It was a question he’d considered before, and always pushed back to think about later... but maybe later was now. There was a certain appeal to staying where it was warm and dry, translating the things Thanda brought back from her expeditions, working firmly within the limits of his competence, but he knew Seliette was right—that was beginner’s work, not substantively different than what he’d done as an Initiate… or even what he’d done back in Absalom. He’d always believed in the value of knowledge for its own sake, but could there be new satisfaction in using that knowledge for a purpose? He'd just translated a scroll reputedly copied from a Shory manuscript about manipulating weather patterns to benefit their legendary flying cities, and perhaps, with the proper blend of primal magic, it could be useful here…

Rain began to fall, just a few drops at first, and Seliette spread out her arms and spun in a circle, dancing to the drums and laughing her bell-ring of a laugh. After a moment, Couvo reached for her hand and spun with her, as the heavens opened and delivered their bounty.

About the Author

Tim Pratt is the author of more than 20 novels, most recently the Axiom space opera series, including Philip K. Dick Award finalist The Wrong Stars, The Dreaming Stars, and forthcoming third volume The Forbidden Stars. Tim’s five Pathfinder Tales novels—City of the Fallen Sky, Reign of Stars, Liar’s Blade, Liar’s Bargain, and Liar’s Island—are available now. He's a Hugo Award winner for short fiction, and has been a finalist for Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Mythopoeic, Stoker, and other awards. His collection Miracles & Marvels is coming this fall. He tweets incessantly (@timpratt) and publishes a new story every month for patrons at www.patreon.com/timpratt.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

The horns were blowing in her dreams again.

In her dreams, they all sounded together: the alarm and the battle march and the frenzied call to retreat. The calls overlapped into chaos, yet Veldrienne heard them all distinctly, and she understood with the perfect, crazed, crystal logic of dreams that of course the battle march was wild with panic, and of course the first call to alarm was a dolorous cry played over the bloody field of a lost battle, and of course it all began and ended with a weak, wounded note that broke on the thrust of a dead man’s spear.

Because this was Lastwall, where the knights of her order had trained for nearly a thousand years to meet the Whispering Tyrant’s threat, and where the Tyrant had destroyed them effortlessly. Every battle worthy of the name had been lost before the Watcher-Lord’s armies had mustered. They’d been defeated before they’d begun.

That hurt the worst of all. All their pride, all their valor, and they’d never had a chance.

And so Veldrienne dreamed, again and again, of a call to arms that was a call to mourning, and of battlefields she would never see.

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

She kicked off the blanket covering her legs. Watery gray sunlight, the only light that shone on the Gravelands anymore, filtered through the burned rafters of the farmhouse they’d sheltered in overnight.

Yeran held up a battered kettle. He’d been up for a while, long enough to have warmed water and made an attempt at shaving. “Porridge?”

“Thank you.” Veldrienne spooned the stale mush out of the kettle. They didn’t have any bowls left. “Save any of that wash water for me?”

Yeran nodded. He’d missed a few patches, shaving with just that dented kettle for a mirror. The stubble was white in the weak light. It made him look old, and almost as worn down as Veldrienne felt. “Plenty to go around, now that there are only two of us left.”

Two. Out of a full company. Veldrienne shook her head. They were the last two left, and yet they still pretended to uphold the niceties of their order. Yeran still tried to keep clean-shaven. Veldrienne still polished the pins of rank on the filthy rags of her uniform.

She wasn’t sure why they bothered. Habits died harder than people, evidently.

Veldrienne paused, the spoon halfway to her mouth. There was smoke on the wind. Wood smoke. The Tyrant’s rotting minions had no need to cook, and certainly never washed. They didn’t light campfires.

“People.”

Yeran was already buckling on his sword. He’d smelled it too. “East?”

“East.”

Together they walked through the weed-choked fields and abandoned hovels to the last intact farmhouse in town. It was where Veldrienne would have sheltered, if she’d had to shelter here. If she hadn’t known that ghouls, and worse, hunted these grounds.

She knocked at the door. “Veldrienne of Vigil and Yeran Dhoskan, Knights of Lastwall.” It almost didn’t hurt to say that last part anymore. “Is anyone living here? Can we aid you?”

Scurrying inside. Hushed voices, fear and hope warring between them. Then a woman’s voice: “Can you… can you get us somewhere safe?”

Veldrienne closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see Yeran’s look. “Yes. If you trust us.”

They came out. A man, a woman, six young children. Plainly the children were not all theirs by blood. Just as plainly, they were by necessity. Veldrienne’s determination hardened, looking at the family that the Tyrant’s menace had driven together. If these people had managed to protect their children this far, she wouldn’t see them fail now.

“We can get you to the camp at Kassen,” she told them, “and from there you can take a boat to Vellumis. The Tyrant’s creatures don’t hold the water as fiercely as they do the land.”

“Thank you,” the woman said.

The man hesitated, then drew out a pendant he’d hidden inside the seam of his coat sleeve. He offered it to Veldrienne, who shook her head. “I can’t take your money.”

“It isn’t money. It’s… I was a jeweler. Before all this.” He laughed bleakly. “I thought I’d use some of my pieces to bribe our way out of the Gravelands, but there’s no bribing the dead. I want you to have it, instead. I can’t buy safety. None of us can. But I can, at least, offer this. Please. Take it and tell me that—that you understand.”

Veldrienne took the pendant. It was an octagon of rose gold, holding a pressed flower under glass in a ring of white seed pearls. The flower was familiar. Star alyssum. It had bloomed around the Watcher-Lord’s palace and spilled from the window boxes of Vigil’s tidy whitewashed homes, perfuming the city in summer. If she closed her eyes, she could almost breathe its delicate, honeyed sweetness again.

“I made them for crusaders traveling up to the Worldwound,” the man explained. “For them to remember the homes and loved ones they left behind. I never thought that crusade would be won, or that I’d need to preserve the memory of Vigil on its own ground instead. But — look. The back.”

Veldrienne turned the pendant around. In the back, under a panel of rose gold inscribed “Vigil’s blessing,” was a compartment full of tiny black seeds.

Mendev and the Sarkoris Scar were dotted with battlefield graves where star alyssum bloomed. Veldrienne knew those marked the final rest of knights from Lastwall, but she had never considered who carried the seeds there, or what it meant for a knight to lie beneath a bier of flowers on ground so grimly sanctified.

Now, holding the pendant, she understood. “Thank you.”

The man started to say something else, but Veldrienne held up a hand. “Quiet.” She’d smelled something on the wind. Not the remembered fragrance of alyssum.

Ghouls. The stench was unmistakable. The Tyrant’s minions didn’t breathe, and thus had no sense of smell — that was why Veldrienne had scented the family’s woodsmoke first, and why the ghouls’ foulness didn’t incapacitate their fellow undead — but they could see well enough, and the weak sun in the Gravelands didn’t cow them. They must have seen the smoke rising from the chimney once the family was too distracted to fan it away.

“Get inside,” Veldrienne ordered, drawing her sword. She could see the ghouls coming now, loping feral and hideous through the crumbling town. Yeran fell in beside her, and she was glad to have him at her side. There was no better feeling than standing beside a fellow knight, true and trustworthy, against a clear-cut foe.

She’d been wrong earlier. There were still battles worth fighting in the Gravelands. The knights of Lastwall hadn’t been utterly defeated. They hadn’t lost everything yet.

Not yet.

About the Author

Liane Merciel is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novels Nightglass, Nightblade, and Hellknight, and a contributor to other books including Nidal: Land of Shadows, Faiths of Golarion, and the Lost Omens World Guide. She has also written for Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, and Bioware’s Dragon Age franchise. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, two dogs, and an adventure toddler who is extremely into Spider-Man.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

The trail led, of course, to a tavern.

Watching from a hidden perch across the street, Ulthor studied the place. It was a stinking, squalid wreck in Absalom’s Puddles district. Dead fish lay half-surfaced in the sucking mud around the entrance, their rotted heads poking up as if straining for one last breath. Inside, the air was thick with flayleaf and pesh smoke, spilled ale and unwashed bodies, and the pervasive, inescapable stench of the Puddles’ foul tides. Dingy gray cloth covered the grimy windows and hung from the rafters, turning the already-dim tavern into a warren of shadows.

The Rat of Gonevar had sunk low in the world since Ulthor had last had the trail. Still a weak man, prone to weak vices, but without the money or friends to indulge them extravagantly anymore.

That was good. It would make apprehension easier.

There. Ulthor spotted the Rat’s battered hat bobbing through an alley as the man picked his way across the muddy duckboards. The hat was different, and its jaunty feather too, but Ulthor recognized his quarry’s limp immediately. The Rat had lost half his left foot at their last meeting.

Beneath his grim iron helm, Ulthor permitted himself the barest semblance of a smile. No more than the slightest softening at the corners of his eyes and mouth, the most change he ever allowed in his habitually stony expression. It had been a long hunt.

“Prepare to move,” Ulthor told his fellow knights. He’d requisitioned three Hellknights of the Rack as support from the local chapter house. The Order of the Rack generally lacked the finesse he would have preferred, but its Hellknights were as terrifyingly fierce and incorruptible as the Chain’s. They’d do.

“Terms of apprehension?” one of the Rack knights asked.

Ulthor was briefly surprised. He hadn’t expected the Hellknights of the Rack to care. “The Rat of Gonevar must be taken. Preferably alive, but dead is acceptable. Minimize other casualties. Those who do not interfere should not be harmed.”

“And those who do?”

“Will be guilty of obstructing a lawful enforcement action.” Ulthor tacked the arrest warrant onto the face of his shield so that he could display it while keeping his hands free. Small chance that the patrons of the Puddles would respect the warrant’s authority, but a small chance was better than none. He preferred not to break skulls unnecessarily. “Further questions?”

There were none. Ulthor dispatched two Hellknights to watch the tavern’s rear and side exits. Once they were in place, he led the third to its front door. Mud-spattered urchins and drunk idlers, suddenly and nervously sober, melted away from the tavern as the Hellknights approached.

Ulthor ignored them. The tavern’s door was already open, but he kicked it anyway, shattering the weather-beaten wood against the wall to announce the Hellknights’ arrival.

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

“Dunryl of Gonevar!” Ulthor shouted into the shocked quiet. “You stand charged with desertion, murder, and trafficking in profane corruptions. Submit to the lawful authority of the Order of the Chain.”

“Don’t believe I will,” the Rat drawled. His tone was full of bravado, but even in the tavern’s poor light, Ulthor could see the Rat’s knotted jaw and shaking hands. Withdrawal, and fear. Mostly fear. “I’m a hero of Andoran, I am.”

“We’re free people here,” one of the other card players blustered. He squinted at Ulthor with hostile, ale-fogged eyes. “Free people. Unafraid.”

“You tell ‘im, Gammel,” the Rat encouraged, scooting his own chair back discreetly.

Gammel launched a clumsy fist at Ulthor. The Hellknight knocked his swipe away with a short punch of his own, driving a mailed fist into the drunkard’s face. Gammel’s nose crunched bloodily under the blow, but Ulthor held back his strength. The drunkard didn’t deserve to die over this.

The Rat was reaching under the table for a hidden weapon. Kicking Gammel and his chair aside, Ulthor brought his sword down on the table, smashing the wooden top, the cudgel that the Rat had been reaching for beneath it, and the Rat’s arm.

“You are a liar and a coward,” the Hellknight announced, his voice thundering over the Rat’s cry of outraged agony. “You murdered your superior officer and two comrades, stole a shipment of slaves, and sold all but the youngest and most impressionable. Those you released to spread false tales of your heroism. Then you began ‘rescuing’ slaves so that you could pin unholy texts and secret corruptions into their clothes and minds, using them as unwitting mules to carry foul contraband through Andoran. These are your crimes, Dunryl of Gonevar.”

Most of Ulthor’s recitation went unheard. At the sight of bare steel, the tavern erupted into chaos. Patrons threw mugs and half-full slop bowls at Ulthor, and then at the Rack Hellknights who charged in to support him. Others shouted and jeered, less interested in defending the Rat of Gonevar than in spitting on the nearest symbol of authority. The law wasn’t popular in the Puddles.

The Rack Hellknights moved to stop the brawling. They were efficient, methodical, and brutal. Bones cracked. Iron thudded into unprotected flesh. The taunts and jeers turned to panicked cries and bloody-mouthed moans.

Ulthor didn’t give them a glance. He reached over the splintered table, ignoring Gammel’s squeak of terror, and grabbed the Rat by his broken arm.

“You bastard!” the Rat shouted, hysterical with pain. “Five years it’s been, and you won’t leave me alone! You broke my arm!”

“Submit,” Ulthor said. His gauntleted fist flexed. Bones ground together in his grip.

The Rat swayed on the brink of blacking out. “Let me go. Let me go! I can tell you — things. All kinds of things. Schemes. Secrets. The — the moaners’ cults. The smugglers. The people who hired me. I can give them to you. Please!”

Ulthor relaxed his grip minutely. Behind them, the brawl had died down. Only the groans and whimpers of the injured could be heard now. The Rack Hellknights moved among the fallen, dealing out extra blows to those who refused to stay down.

“Please,” the Rat sobbed.

“I am a Hellknight of the Chain,” Ulthor told him. He stood, dragging the Rat to his feet by his broken arm. “It was my duty to apprehend you. But if what you say is true, it is not my duty to keep you. Unholy cults are not within my order’s remit.”

Somehow the Rat managed to swallow the shriek of pain that started up his throat. Despite it all, hope ignited in his eyes. “Then we’ve got a deal? You’ll let me go?”

“No,” Ulthor said. “I will send you to the Order of the Pyre.”

And then he smiled, really smiled, as the Rat of Gonevar screamed.

About the Author

Liane Merciel is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novels Nightglass, Nightblade, and Hellknight, and a contributor to other books including Nidal: Land of Shadows, Faiths of Golarion, and the Lost Omens World Guide. She has also written for Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, and Bioware’s Dragon Age franchise. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, two dogs, and an adventure toddler who is extremely into Spider-Man.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

Ketchi peered through the shrubbery at the overgrown monastery and grinned. "This must be the place!"

"You think?" Wik slipped an arrow from his quiver and nocked it. "What was your first clue, our friends languishing in cages, the Firebrand graffiti they painted on the wall, or the tribe of hyenafolk slavers who seem to have caught them in the act?"

Ketchi twitched his long moustache at Wik's sarcasm. "Since reports of those curs and other slavers setting up operations in the area have been so prevalent, and I can't really tell if that's Coriv's crew in the cage from here, I’ll go with the big blue crossed swords painted on the wall. Even if that’s not our friends, someone’s clearly in need of our help."

"Keep it down, both of you!" Layali's dark eyes shone like chips of obsidian above her face scarf. She wore the scarf to hide the scars she'd received while a slave for speaking disrespectfully to her master. If there was anything on Golarion she hated more than slavers, Ketchi didn't know what it was. "I count seven slavers. There may be more inside the ruins. We need to free Coriv's crew to even the odds."

"Think the one in the crow's cage is alive?" Wik asked.

"We'll find out later." Layali flexed her hand on the hilt of her sword. "First, we open the cage."

"Diversion?" Ketchi suggested. "I love diversions. They’re my specialty!"

"Crazy gnome," Wik hissed.

Ketchi winked at the half-elf. "You bet your pointy ears. Aren't we all?"

"Valid point," Wik admitted.

"Quiet!" Layali pointed to the left. "Draw them off that way, Ketchi. Wik, you cover him. I'll slip through the ruins and open the cage." She patted the heavy satchel full of weapons. "Tell Darik and Bosk they're our rear guard. When all hell breaks loose, they come in."

"Right." Ketchi slipped back through the underbrush as silent as a ferret to where the warriors were hiding. He tapped Darik on his armored shoulder and took some satisfaction in the big knight's surprise.

"Bloody gnome! Don't startle me like that!"

"Shhh!" Ketchi held a finger to his lips and whispered the plan. Bosk frowned through his thick Ulfen beard, but Darik nodded. "Just wait for the screaming to start, then come running."

"Screaming?" Bosk narrowed his eyes. "Hyena-men don't scream."

Ketchi twirled his moustache. "No, but I do." He slipped into the brush and worked his way around the camp, confident that the slavers wouldn't hear, see, or smell him. The crew had done this many times, and knew their jobs. In this instance, they were rescuing fellow Firebrands—a team of Bellflower tillers—instead of slaves or refugees, but it amounted to the same thing. How Coriv's crew had been captured in the first place did concern the gnome, but not overmuch. In his opinion, prisoners existed to be freed, regardless of who they were or how they got there.

Finally in place, Ketchi peered over a fallen log to assess the situation. The slavers crouched around a firepit, arguing and gnawing on haunches of meat. Hopefully that meat wasn't one of Coriv's people. Smoke wafted from one of the old monastery's chimneys, so there were probably more. No matter; once they freed Coriv's crew, the odds would be in their favor.

Ketchi unwound the long scarf from his belt, quietly cleared his throat, and meowed.

Fourteen furry ears swiveled as one toward the noise. Ketchi grinned and meowed again, louder. Their bloody muzzles rose from their meal, noses sniffing the air. Another meow, and the slavers snarled and spat back and forth in their barking, yipping language. Ketchi didn't need an interpreter. Come on you canine cretins, come and get the nice kitty. He meowed again, and three of the four slavers rose to investigate. The others watched them approach the edge of the camp.

Beyond them, Layali crept along the edge of the monastery toward the cage. Perfect! Ketchi cupped his hands around his mouth and summoned his quirky arcane talent. "Meeeeow!" The sound seemed to come from a clump of bushes some fifty feet beyond his hiding place.

The slavers snarled and strode forth, stepping over the log where Ketchi hid. They had their swords out now, and crouched low to inspect the bushes.

Showtime! Ketchi dashed forth and leaped to scramble up the nearest slaver's back, flinging his scarf up and around his stunned target's eyes.

"Yeeehaw! Ride that dog!" Ketchi dug his heels into the thrashing slaver's neck and belted out a bawdy rhyme. "Oh, I'm a dog rider, a dog rider is me, tra-la-la, tra-la-la-lee."

The slaver thrashed and howled. His two companions brandished their weapons, but couldn't slash at Ketchi without risking taking off their friend's head. The others lurched up from the campfire and charged. Beyond them, Layali worked on the cage lock. Wik stood from his hiding place and sent an arrow into the rearmost of the charging slavers. Darik and Bosk charged from hiding, weapons drawn, but so far, all attention remained fixed upon Ketchi.

As it should be, he thought, belting out another verse, struggling to keep hold of his scarf among his blindfolded mount’s thrashing.

Then everything went sideways.

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

A cloaked figure appeared in the window of the monastery, her voice crying out an arcane phrase accented by growls and clacking teeth. The slaver Ketchi was riding, and all the rest of them for that matter, suddenly grew in stature to ogre-height. Ketchi hung on and belted out another verse, but drew a dagger with his free hand, just in case. Wik felled one of the enlarged slavers with a lightning-fast volley, but another of the beast-men threw a spear and caught Bosk in the stomach. The warrior folded over like a sawdust doll. Darik bellowed a battle cry and shattered his enemy's shield with a sword stroke.

Ketchi drove his dagger into the slaver's neck and continued his ballad, shifting the theme from one of distraction to encouragement. He sprinkled helpful hints to his allies among his lyrics while dodging the slaver's clumsy attempts to drag him off.

Layali had the cage open, and handed out swords to Coriv's crew as they poured out. Several of them dashed into the monastery, and more shouts rang out as they clashed with the robed spellcaster and any other slavers in the ruin.

Ketchi stabbed again, and Wik felled yet another slaver with two shots to the chest. Then another slaver lashed out with a long whip. The leather wrapped around Ketchi's neck and jerked hard enough to cut his song short and unseat him. He held his grip on the scarf, however, unbalancing the slaver as he fell.

Ketchi landed hard enough to knock the wind out of his lungs, but he got a hand around the whip to keep it from throttling him. The slaver he'd stabbed had dropped his sword, but lunged at the fallen gnome, jaws wide. Ketchi jerked the whip hard and rolled. Slavering jaws snapped closed an inch from his shoulder. The whip wielder brought his shield down hard, and the edge caught the gnome on the knee.

Ketchi howled in pain, "Ayeee, I'll never dance again!"

The shield came up for another blow, but two arrows thunked into the slaver's throat. He looked suddenly surprised and fell backward. The other, however, landed on Ketchi like a fallen tree, clawed hands grasping and jaws wide.

"Bad dog! No biting the nice gnome!" Ketchi drew another dagger and thrust deep into that maw. The teeth closed on his arm and he howled in pain again, but the slaver went limp as it bit down on the gnome’s upturned blade.

Quiet...

The fight was over. Coriv's crew waved from the monastery window and reached out to pull the crow's cage in. The shape inside moved, alive at least. Darik knelt to Bosk, pressing a bottle to the old warrior's lips.

Ketchi tried to pry the slaver’s jaws open, but they seemed to be locked closed. "A little help, please!" He tried again, but failed to pry the teeth from his arm. "I seem to have a dog attached to my arm!"

"Need a hand?" Wik reached down with a knife to carefully slice the seized jaw muscles.

"I nearly lost a hand." He winced as the bite relaxed and the teeth came free. "Thanks! Nice shooting, by the way." Ketchi unwound the whip from his neck and cleared his throat. His knee throbbed, his voice rasped, and his arm was bleeding.

"Nice performance." Wik drew a potion bottle from his satchel and handed it down. "And nice riding."

"I'm thinking of taking the act on the road." Ketchi downed the sweet elixir and sighed in bliss as the pain faded. He lurched up to his feet and tested his knee, then his voice. "La-la-la! What do you think; Ketchi the dog-riding gnome and his canine companions?"

"I think you need to keep the day job." Wik chuckled and clapped his friend on the shoulder.

"Yeah, probably right." Ketchi toed the dead slaver and grinned. "Firebrand's pretty much a full-time gig."

About the Author

As a sailor and gamer, nautical and RPG tie-in fantasy came naturally for Chris A. Jackson. His Scimitar Seas novels won three gold medals from Foreword Reviews, and his Pathfinder Tales novels, Pirate’s Honor, Pirate’s Promise, and Pirate’s Prophecy have received high praise. His magical assassin Weapon of Flesh series hit the Kindle bestseller list. He’s also published urban SF—Dragon Dreams—for Falstaff Books, and horror—The Deep Gate—for Fantasy Flight Games's Arkham Horror line. He's also written tie-in fiction for Shadowrun, Legendary Games, Iron Kingdoms, and Traveller. Visit jaxbooks.com for a look.

About Tales of Lost Omens

The Tales of Lost Omens series of web-based flash fiction provides an exciting glimpse into Pathfinder’s Age of Lost Omens setting. Written by some of the most celebrated authors in tie-in gaming fiction, including Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales line of novels and short fiction, the Tales of Lost Omens series promises to explore the characters, deities, history, locations, and organizations of the Pathfinder setting with engaging stories to inspire Game Masters and players alike.

They were talking about the dragon.

Uguro flattened himself against the rocky outcropping and bellied closer, using his elbows to scoot along the rough ground. The rocks bit into his bruises, but he pushed back the pain and kept quiet.

“— but there are no dragons in Taldor! There haven’t been for centuries! Why, the Dragon Plague was well over two thousand years ago, and since then our glorious dragonslayers —” The voice was older, male, full of affronted privilege. A noble, Uguro decided, and one unaccustomed to taking bad news.

The other speaker was determined to make him swallow it. This voice was female, younger, and glossed with a foreign accent that did nothing to disguise its sharp exasperation. “Eovras, when did the Dragon Plague end?”

“3672 Absalom Reckoning, my lady.” That was a new speaker. Younger still, and male.

Uguro eased forward, daring to poke his head around the nearest outcropping. Now he could see them. All three wore armor, but they could hardly have looked more different.

The gray-haired noble had been squeezed into a gilded suit of ornate, old-fashioned plate that had obviously been made for someone broader in the shoulder and trimmer at the waist. He faced off against a brown-haired woman in battered but well-maintained plate and a clean-cut younger man who appeared to be an… apprentice knight. Squire?

The woman shook her head. “It appears the good baron’s recollection was off by a bit. Would you consider the events of ‘well over two thousand years ago’ sufficient to deter a dragon from trespassing into the barony within the past few days?”

The young knight—Eovras—bowed his head. “I could not say, my lady.”

“I can.” Uguro’s interjection startled even himself. He flinched, almost losing his grip on the outcropping, as their eyes flew up to him. The apprentice knight and the baron startled visibly. Only the woman seemed unsurprised. Had she known he was there?

Swallowing, Uguro climbed down the steep rock and stood before them. He straightened his tunic uselessly, all too aware that the rough cloth was scorched and full of holes, and that he himself was a barefoot, grubby miner’s cast-off. But he had to tell them.

“It was a dragon. My lords. My lady. It was—it was a dragon.” Suddenly Uguro’s eyes were full of tears, hot and glassy. His chest ached, and it was as hard to breathe as it had been when the dragon had raked the stony earth with fire, sucking all the air from his lungs. It was as if speaking the beast’s name had brought those terrible moments back.

“It was a dragon,” he managed to say again, and then he broke into shuddering sobs. He couldn’t stop them. He was thirteen.

“Show us,” said the woman.

---

Streaks of fire had plumed across the miner’s camp, driving down with such fury that the hard earth was furrowed at the center of each blast. Gravel-pocked glass cracked under Uguro’s steps as he led the woman and her companions into the ruins. They’d given him boots to protect his bare feet, but he could still feel the echoes of fire through the thin-worn soles.

The ferocious heat had cracked rocks and melted iron tools into rippled puddles, but it had passed so quickly that the camp garden’s turnips, sheathed by damp soil, were perfectly sound under their crisped black tops. The woman, Cirra, pulled one up to examine it, then carefully replanted it. As if someone might someday want to harvest that turnip, and she wouldn’t be responsible for its waste.

Such strange people. Caring for turnips, when…

“They died here.” Uguro pointed, unnecessarily. The dining hall, once the camp’s largest building, was a smoking ruin. Outside its blackened doorframe, the miners’ boots were still lined up in a neat, untouched row. The dragon had made them take off their shoes before it had herded them inside. Its idea of a joke, demanding that the miners show proper respect to a graveyard.

A detritus of personal letters and charred keepsakes fluttered around the boots like fallen leaves. The dragon had taken those, too. Had read the letters aloud, one by one, mocking the misspellings and the triteness of the sentiments before it torched mementoes and owners alike. Uguro had watched from afar, hidden, struck breathless by the creature’s cruelty as much as by its grandeur.

He didn’t tell the strangers this. But he saw the woman stoop to pick up a letter, and saw her mouth harden as she studied it, and he knew that she knew what the dragon had done.

She folded the letter up and tucked it respectfully into an empty boot.

Such strange people.

“What do you think?” Eovras asked the woman.

“I don’t know,” Cirra admitted. “The intensity of the firestrikes, the size of the claw prints… I’m not saying this is Daralathyxl’s work, but —”

Eovras’s eyes widened. “You really think —”

“No, but only because I don’t think the Sixth King of the Mountains would bother with a mining camp in some Taldan backwater.” Cirra caught Uguro looking at them and shrugged apologetically. “No insult meant.”

Uguro couldn’t imagine why he should be insulted. The mining camp was a backwater. And he didn’t understand the attack either. “Why would a dragon come to us?”

“I don’t —” Cirra began, but a cry from the baron’s tents interrupted her answer.

“Dragon!”

A moment later, it came again, carried by new voices. Then the screams became higher and more frantic, and then they were eclipsed by the sound of Uguro’s nightmares.

First the vast, crackling hiss of the exhalation, then the hollow, unreal roar of the flames igniting with such fury that the air itself seemed to writhe and burn, and then —

— then everything else. The screams of horses and knights afire, the desperate shouts of surviving commanders trying to restore order, the chorus of smaller fires spun off by the initial conflagration.

Leaving the others behind, Cirra ran toward the noise. The baron and the apprentice knight hurried after her, and after a frantic, frozen hesitation, Uguro ran after them too. The only thing he feared more than the dragon was the idea of facing it alone.

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

Fire, smoke, and confusion had seized the baron’s outriders. The lingering panic of the dragon’s presence poisoned the air. It prickled the small hairs along Uguro’s neck and stung his nose like acrid smoke.

Then he felt a lurching surge of terror and knew even before he looked up that the dragon was wheeling around again.

It was immense. Redder than rubies, redder than blood, and then abruptly black as its wings swallowed the sun. The sight turned Uguro’s bowels to water. He didn’t understand how the knights could spur themselves toward it, but somehow they did.

Cirra had found a horse somewhere. She was waving a sword and shouting something, but Uguro couldn’t make out the words. Then he saw the dragon dive toward her, its jaws unhinged to loose another blast of doom.

Rocks took the flames. Somehow Cirra had dodged behind an outcropping. And now Uguro saw what she’d done, distracting the beast so that the cooks and cobblers and other camp civilians could take cover. They’d been directly in the dragon’s original path and would surely have gone up in flame if she hadn’t drawn it away.

Cirra came out from around the rock, calling another challenge, but this time the dragon didn’t take her bait. The baron had come charging at the beast, his retinue behind him, and the dragon turned to meet them instead.

For a moment, the baron was resplendent in his bravery. Sunlight sparked off his ornate gilt armor. The knights’ thundering charge looked like a storybook illustration, all plumes and banners and white horses.

Then the dragon exhaled.

The baron’s breastplate, glowing with magic, withstood the inferno. Nothing else did. The knights’ armor melted like candlewax. Their horses screamed. Their plumes and banners disappeared into ashes, and chaos swallowed their line. And what fell from the baron’s smoking breastplate, headless and legless, was grisly indeed.

Lazily the dragon snaked through the rubble and plucked the baron’s breastplate from the ground. Snarling its triumph to the smoke-stained sky, it slit the leather straps with a twist, as if it were shucking an oyster. Then it held the broken armor high over its mouth, opened its jaws wide, and swallowed the half-cooked morsel with a loud snap of relish.

Hidden behind a rock, Uguro doubled over, his eyes wide in horror and the heavy wash of dragonfear. He clapped his hands over his mouth, trying not to retch. It was a losing battle.

Then reassurance flowed through him, strong and certain, easing his terror. Cirra’s hand was on his shoulder. She motioned for him to stay down as she crouched beside him, watching the dragon feast on its kills.

“What—why,” Uguro stammered. “Why did this happen?”

Cirra answered in a rough whisper. Her eyes were still tracking the dragon. “I don’t know. That isn’t Daralathyxl. It’s big enough, but… it doesn’t have the scars. That isn’t any great red I know.”

“What will you do now?”

“We will retreat. Our first duty is to lead the survivors to safety. Then we’ll find out who this dragon is, and why it came. When we’re properly prepared, and armed with more than just courage, we’ll act.”

“You will?” The idea of standing against that thing…

“We will.” Cirra glanced at him with a hint of a smile, despite their circumstances. “If you want. If you’re ready. But for now, our duty is to the survivors. So we’ll go. Quietly. Carefully. You know the trails here, don’t you? Help us find our way out.”

“Yes.” Uguro nodded. His throat was still dry, but he was glad to help. It made him feel braver. Brave enough to imagine doing more, someday. “Yes. This way.” He swallowed. “For now.”

Liane Merciel
Contributing Author

The cards were going mad.

Irhina felt their agitation thrumming through her tiny sea cabin. It was a sharp, jangled vibration, like a dozen out-of-tune instruments all bleating different songs. Something was coming, some great weight that sat on destiny’s weaving and bent all the skeins of fate toward itself.

Shivering, Irhina went to the porthole. All was dark through the bleary glass, save for the rough shapes of heaving waves barely illumined by a cloudy and uncertain moon. Distant lightning flashed through the heavy-bellied clouds. The storm was nearly upon them.

The Sea Falcon bucked and dipped as another wave slammed into it. Irhina's Harrow deck tumbled from the table. Nine cards spilled across the cabin's well-worn rug.

Irhina's skin prickled. There were no accidents in a Harrow deck. No coincidences, no mistakes. Only amateurs could indulge such comfortable fantasies, and it had been many, many years since Irhina had believed them.

Not since she'd been claimed by this very deck, in fact.

Irhina shivered again. That had been a bad night. Fire, screams, confusion. The Harrow deck's folded-paper box, sodden with her uncle's warm blood, crumbling and spilling the lacquered cards into her hands. The stinging thrill of magic against her skin, unwanted but impossible to refuse.

Then—a heavy duty, and a hard life. Years of loneliness with little laughter. Those memories would swallow her easily, if she let them.

She didn't. Here and now, she had a storm to survive.

The cards had spilled into a rough square on the cabin floor. In a traditional reading, they would have been dealt into three neat rows of three: past, present, and future, with the pattern centered on a role card. Tonight, however, they'd formed a different pattern on the shabby red rug. The cards had fallen into a sequence of three by three, but the rows were interleaved, with no clean breaks between past, present, or future. Some of the cards were not only reversed, but thrown sideways, one image interrupting or obscuring another.

The Midwife. The Big Sky. The Brass Dwarf askew: invulnerability under threat. The Carnival and The Demon's Lantern bridged by The Tangled Briar: trickery and illusion on one side, malicious deception on another, and a bloody history that gripped them together—but whether that meant their shared history was the key to unlocking their deceit, or merely signified that some great lie had continued unbroken for ages, was impossible for Irhina to read.

Ordinarily, a role card would have guided her through the conflicting interpretations. The role card, like a story's protagonist, created clarity from a jumble of conflicting elements by providing perspective and narrative structure. Even in a spontaneous reading, there should have been a role card set out to anchor the other symbols in its orbit.

But here there was none. No central figure, no guide toward meaning. Irhina's fingers danced lightly over the cards, signaling her question. The vibration she received in response was unmistakable: the deck did not hold that answer.

There was only the chaos of future-past-present, all knotted together and writhing senselessly. She could as easily have tried to read the future from a bed of snakes.

She swept the Harrow cards back into their box, ignoring the protest that prickled across her palms, and left her cramped cabin. Storm or no storm, she needed air.

Above decks, the storm hadn't broken. A strange yellow pall suffused the clouds' dark bellies, shocking erratically brighter as lightning spidered across the sky. The great golden dome of Crystilan glittered in the distance, reflecting the same eerie stormlight from its perch above the coast's wave-lashed cliffs.

No, Irhina realized. Crystilan wasn't reflecting the light. It was the source of that eerie, dazzling glow. And the glow was intensifying, moment by moment, spilling ribbons of yellow light across the sea and tinting the waves' white froth toward saffron. Luminous ripples raced across the dome's immense interior, fracturing into runic shapes that strained to create whirling diagrams before they shattered apart.

Illustration by Federico Musetti

She wasn't the only one mesmerized by the sight. Other passengers had come up to watch it with her: a Tian woman, a Keleshite man, an Ustalavic nobleman in a fine cuffed shirt whose shaggy, bestial features made her wonder if his line was cursed with lycanthropy. It wouldn't have surprised her. The Sea Falcon charged exorbitant rates, but it carried anyone who could afford them, and it ran swiftly to destinations that other ships avoided.

She wondered if one of those passengers had paid for the Sea Falcon to pass this close to Crystilan. The Thassilonian ruin had mystified scholars for millennia. Within the great crystal dome, an entire empty city stood perfectly preserved, untouched by time and impossible to reach. Most assumed that the city and its people had fallen victim to some ancient archmage's curse, and superstitious sailors tended to swing wide around it, afraid of being snared.

Irhina had always thought that a foolish fancy, but now she wasn't so sure. The city under crystal had always been eerie, but now it felt different, aware and more intensely menacing, in a way she'd never sensed before. It was as if some power within the dome was awakening, and was beginning to look upon its surroundings with envious and hungry eyes. A malevolent power, she was sure, though she couldn't say why.

Beneath the Sea Falcon, the sea was lit up from within, so that it seemed they sailed on a lake of molten gold. Lightning flashed from cloud to cloud, faster with each stroke, always strangely soundless—

—until a stroke of thunder cracked overhead with such ferocity that Irhina quailed.

Another sounded, and another, and Irhina realized that it wasn't thunder at all. Crystilan itself was breaking. Massive fissures cracked the gleaming dome. Shivering slabs of crystal tumbled into the sea, throwing up geysers of saltwater and splintered stone that shook the Sea Falcon from afar.

And inside the long-vacant city beneath Crystilan, Irhina could see the tiny, impossible figures of… of people. Some were human-sized, tiny at this distance. Others towered above them, so huge that they must surely be giants. She could make out no details of language or dress, but the sight of them filled her with unreasoning fear.

“What is it?” the maybe-werewolf nobleman muttered beside her. His thick dark nails dug into the railing's salt-spattered wood. He looked half a monster, but in that moment Irhina felt a sudden sense of solidarity with him. If he was a monster, he was at least a monster she knew.

“Upheaval,” Irhina said. “The future tangled into the past, and the past into the future. The cards gave me a reading, and now it begins to come clear. The old will clash with the new, and the new with the old.”

“But what does it mean?” The nobleman's eyes glowed yellow as he turned toward Irhina.

“The cards are but cards,” she told him. “They do not know who the role card in this tale will be. So, in this, they can tell us no meaning. That is for us to find.”

“Or whoever's in there,” the nobleman said, looking back at the tiny figures in the dome.

“Yes.” Irhina clasped her arms against a renewed chill of apprehension. “Or whoever's in there.”

Liane Merciel
Contributing Author

“There. Yes. Those two.” Excitement, wet and thick, curdled Chemurr’s voice. She coughed and swallowed noisily, but she was too agitated to keep the phlegm worms from crawling back up. Her swollen fingers clenched around Gaiter’s arm. “Come, boy.”

Gaiter pulled back. He knew it was stupid, dangerous. You didn’t annoy Chemurr ever, but especially not when she got like this. He hated the phlegm worms, though. Hated them too much to be smart, sometimes.

“How—how do you know?” He made the question tremulous, fearful, hoping Chemurr would be satisfied enough with his terror that she wouldn’t demand more. It wasn’t a stretch. Gaiter really was frightened half out of his mind. “Did the Great Master tell you so?”

“The Great Master doesn’t have to tell me that, boy.” Chemurr’s grip tightened with her scorn. Her fingers squelched against Gaiter’s bones. “I can smell it on them. The stink of delusion. Thinking that what they do matters.” Her nostrils flared, sniffing, and a phlegm worm dropped out.

Gaiter flinched. He couldn’t help it. Nor could he help looking at the thing that squirmed across the cobblestones, fat and segmented and slimy, its skin whorled with runes that shimmered with greasy, unreal colors and made his eyes ache. He tore his gaze away, hastily, his eyes burning with tears.

If the light had been better, he knew, he’d have been able to see a pink tinge on his fingers as he dashed those tears away. Blood. His eyes were filmed with it, just from a glimpse of a phlegm worm. A longer look, and he might have gone blind. Mad. Worse.

It didn’t bear thinking about. Trying to ignore the grub, Gaiter studied the figures Chemurr had pointed out. There were two, cloaked and hooded despite the warmth of Egorian’s summer night. They moved quickly, but with a burdened caution that suggested they were carrying some fragile or heavy contraband beneath those cloaks.

He couldn’t smell anything from them, but that wasn’t a surprise. The hooded figures were fifty feet away, and Chemurr and Gaiter were crowded into the recesses of a stinking, unlit alley, hidden by shadows and the Great Master’s magic. All he could smell was stale urine, rotting fish, and Chemurr’s thick breath, fouler than the rest.

The hooded figures had stopped. The street around them was momentarily empty. Quickly, they tossed back their cloaks and drew out… a covered bucket and… paintbrushes? Gaiter squinted and leaned forward.

One of them pulled a collapsible ladder from under his cloak, shimmying to the top and balancing with impressive dexterity as he painted a pair of silvery-blue crossed swords over a banner displaying the red-circled cross of Infernal Cheliax. The other held the paint bucket and dipped the brushes, handing them up to her partner.

“Why, they’re rebels,” Gaiter blurted, too astonished to keep the thought to himself. He didn’t recognize the mark, but no one else would dare deface Imperial insignia. Rebels. In Egorian! Perhaps the devilers’ control wasn’t as absolute as he’d believed.

“Rebels and devils, devils and rebels,” Chemurr crooned, as if she could read Gaiter’s thoughts. She gurgled a wet laugh, audibly swallowing another phlegm worm in the middle of it. “Yes. That’s all anyone thinks about here. They chase each other round and round, and everyone forgets about us. Just as the Great Master wants it. Oh—here come the devils now.”

A Hellknight patrol had spotted the painters. They shouted a warning, made unnecessary by the clatter of their heavy spiked armor. As good as alarm bells, that armor. The rebels tossed their brushes aside, leaving a final swipe of blue across the defaced banner, jumped down from the ladder, and ran.

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

The Hellknights hadn’t a prayer of catching the light-footed vandals. Gaiter was astonished that they could run at all in that massive, spiked plate, let alone so quickly, but even so they were falling behind by the second.

They knew it too. One of the Hellknights blew a carved bone whistle. The whistle was soundless, but the bone-prickling baying of hellhounds rang out in response. Three of the infernal beasts came rushing to join their armored masters, their fire-wreathed bodies swift and bright in Egorian’s dark night. They pursued the fleeing rebels relentlessly, gaining ground as quickly as the Hellknights had lost it.

“Now,” Chemurr hissed as soon as the Hellknights were past their alley.

“Now?” Gaiter balked again. Twice in the same night. He really was tempting fate, pushing back on Chemurr like this.

But the Hellknights were still in sight—they’d only have to turn around to spot him—and he’d seen what the Chelaxians did to the Great Master’s servants. Despite everything else Gaiter had seen, everything else he’d done, those screams stayed with him. There was a reason they’d stayed out of Thrune lands so long. The devilers could be as cruel as the Great Master himself, and their questions were as sharp as their knives.

“Now.” Chemurr’s fingers tightened so hard on Gaiter’s arm that one of them burst, soaking his sleeve with wriggling slime. “While the rebels and the devils are distracted with each other. Or do you not wish to accomplish our Great Master’s work?”

Gaiter swallowed, nodded, and ran.

Darting up the ladder that the rebels had left behind, Gaiter swept one of the discarded brushes across the blue swords, working the changes he’d seen in his dreams. Subtle alterations made more so by the Great Master’s will. A curl here, a swish in the brush texture that suggested an almost-word there, a fold between the overlapping red and blue that suggested some other color, an un-combination, an unraveling of the others that allowed a tiny, tantalizing glimpse beyond their mundane reality.

He climbed down. Sweat soaked his shirt. That was bloody too, just as his tears had been before. He could smell the meat-and-iron taint of it. The Great Master’s presence was too terrible for his poor mortal servants to withstand.

“Good.” Chemurr stood at the base of the ladder, looking up with satisfaction. Her hood had fallen back a bit, showing a bit of her face.

Gaiter swallowed again, shuddering. The Great Master’s presence was terrible indeed.

“Will it… catch the Hellknights?” He wasn’t sure whether to dread or hope for that. The snare he’d woven felt too fragile to catch a will like theirs.

“No.” Chemurr’s snort was choked by another worm. “Those mighty knights don’t scrub vandals’ paint themselves. They’ll send slaves. Halflings. The resentful, the powerless. Fertile soil for the Great Master’s secrets to seed. But…” She trailed off. The silence stretched into squirming discomfort.

Suddenly Chemurr’s hand shot out. Her fingers squelched around Gaiter’s face, muffling his screams even as they pried his jaw open. The swollen pustules in her palm split open, filling his mouth with the wet slurry of her dissolving humanity and with phlegm worms.

They poured into him. Writhing, biting, burning, melting. Gaiter felt his throat corrode into red melt, and then he was swallowing that too, desperately, trying to keep from drowning in his own dying flesh. His legs swelled together and burst, puddling into slurry as the worms coursed through the liquefaction and smeared it like ink across the ground.

And then he couldn’t feel anything. He could still hear and could see the banners that his eyes had fixed upon before they’d stopped moving or blinking, but he felt nothing. Only dread, and a last distant knot of pain somewhere in his chest, aching as it faded. His heart, maybe. His soul, before the phlegm worms ate it.

Chemurr laughed. She was licking her palm to seal it up again. A sound he knew too well. “Traitor boy. Did you think the Great Master couldn’t sniff out your delusions, too? That you would escape. That you would repent. No matter. Even the disloyal are useful. The Hellknights don’t come to study vandals’ banners. But they’ll come for you. And the snare you are—well, you might catch one.

“Rebels and devils, devils and rebels. Playing their little games while the Great Master laughs.” Chemurr crooned, softly, as the last of Gaiter’s sight and hearing melted into roaring black and whirling, poisoned stars. Not death. Not peace. An infinity of rushing madness, a fall that never ended. And Chemurr’s voice, and the phlegm worms, forever. “While the Great Master laughs.”

Liane Merciel
Contributing Author

Hadizah stood stiffly between two other students—one a degenerate lizardfolk and the other a savage Ekujae elf—as their frail teacher Mawunyo gestured with a staff at the vine-covered towers, graceful arches, and broad towers of the Magaambya, greatest magical academy in all of the Mwangi Expanse, if not the world.

"You embark now on a life of study and service." Mawunyo's voice was rich and resonant despite his slender frame and reminded Hadizah uncomfortably of the ringing tones of the priests of the Deathless Child back home. "You have been chosen because we see great promise within you, passion and will, spirit and intellect, strength and judgment... and perhaps a few seeds of wisdom that might sprout and blossom if tended." The teacher's assistant Kweku chuckled, and Hadizah risked a glance at her. She'd been with Mawunyo for years, apparently, traveling with him to the far ends of the world (and even, some rumors said, beyond). Her robe's hem was spattered with mud and her hair was a thousand messy braids and an hour after meeting her Hadizah was more than halfway in love. Inconvenient.

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

Mawunyo went on. "You come from different places, but you are all children of the Expanse, as am I. We are the successors and inheritors of Old-Mage Jatembe, who taught that those who use great magic bear great responsibility, and that we must use our knowledge to better the world. I do this by teaching such as you."

"And by beating demons to death with sticks," Kweku said.

Mawunyo shrugged his bony shoulders. "When I am abroad. As needed. With sticks made especially for the purpose." He thumped his staff, which hadn't previously struck Hadizah as particularly threatening, but now did. "We need no such weapons here. Nantambu the Song-Wind City is the safest place I have ever lived."

"So safe we leave sometimes just to feel the thrill of danger," Kweku said.

Mawuonyo took no notice. "Those who mean this city harm soon discover the folly of attacking a place hundreds of mages call home. No invader has needed to learn that lesson recently. This safety gives us the freedom to learn in peace. I am here to help discover how your talents might best serve the world." He leaned on his staff and gazed at each student in turn. The instructor's eyes seemed to penetrate Hadizah's soul. Hadizah hoped they couldn't.

The old man spoke. "Tell me: once you have attained the power of which you dream, what goals do you wish to achieve?"

The lizardfolk spoke slowly, with many words in a tongue Hadizah didn't know, but the gist seemed to be something about improving prospects for the females of its species. Perhaps it was female? Hadizah had no idea how to tell. Such creatures were not common back in Mzali. Then the elf spoke, something abstract about combining arcane and druidic arts to make an alloyed magic stronger and more flexible than either alone. Mawunyo and Kweku nodded along thoughtfully during these speeches, then turned their gazes to Hadizah.

He straightened his spine and said, "I come from Mzali, home of the Deathless Child, who rules my people with fire and fear. Do you know the place?"

"I have been there," Mawunyo said. "When it was a place of fading glory, before the child mummy Walkena woke and seized control. Not since."

"Citizens are... not encouraged to leave," Hadizah said. "Walkena demands obedience and sacrifice, and his rule is cruel if you do not have his favor. There is a group, the Bright Lions, who seek to overthrow Walkena's rule and return control of the city to the living. The Lions discovered my interest in the arcane arts and offered to help me come here. They did this purely out of kindness... but I wish to return that kindness, and to turn whatever power I gain toward their cause. If left unchecked, Walkena will achieve his goal of uniting the whole of the Expanse under his burning banner. He would put even this place to the flame. I wish to prevent that."

Mawunyo and Kweku nodded at that, just as they had at the ambitious proclamations of the other students, and deep in his hidden heart Hadizah relaxed.

"Take the afternoon to familiarize yourself with your living quarters," Mawunyo said, "and at least the immediate areas of the academy nearby. I will ponder what I know of your goals and resources, and tomorrow we will meet again to discuss the first steps of your studies." He turned and walked away, using the staff more as a prop than an aid to walking, it seemed to Hadizah. Perhaps he was less frail than he seemed.

The group broke up, and Hazidah headed for his dormitory, wondering where he might find a place of privacy to record the day's events. Kweku fell into step beside him. "Mzali," she said. "You still have people there?"

"I... not really, not anymore." He thought, briefly, of fire, and ashes, and stains on stones, but pushed those images away. Actions had consequences. He would make wiser choices than his parents and siblings had. "In a way, all the people in Mzali are my people, and deserve liberation." That sounded like something a friend of the Lions would say.

"I'm sorry to hear that." She spun and started walking backwards so she could face him while she talked, effortlessly going up a set of stairs in reverse. "This place must be quite a change. Not just the change in architectural style, but all the different sorts of people, the music in the air, the absence of a pervasive atmosphere of terror...."

"It is a... most refreshing change."

Kweku nodded and preceded him through a wide and empty plaza. "I wanted to mention, there's a small but dedicated group here studying the problem of your Deathless Child Walkena. I know some people on it—there's even a Tempest-Sun Mage among them. Maybe you'd like to be introduced?"

Hazidah hesitated. He didn't know if he'd been sent to this place on orders directly from the child-god Walkena himself, as the priest who'd recruited him claimed, or if he was part of that priest's own pet project, but either way, his mission was both simple and dauntingly complex: find out the weaknesses of the academy, and discover how the mages here would deal with an invasion from Mzali, so the Deathless Child might better counter their plans. Being part of a group specifically addressing the threat of Walkena would be perfect for gathering such information, but it might also expose him to greater scrutiny, and his mission was meant to be slow, cautious, and years-long. "I am not sure I have much to offer to such a group."

"Oh, I don't know." Kweku grinned. "Having a double agent who's trusted by the Deathless Child's priests could be very advantageous for us."

Hazidah froze. His hand crept toward the interior of his robe, but Kweku snorted. "You'd lose a fight with me anyway but look up before you even try."

He quickly flicked his gaze upward, and saw something in the air above him, like a flash of sunlight on bright metal. The stories said the Tempest-Sun Mages flew high above the academy, watching for approaching threats... and they were capable of dealing with more dangerous foes than Hazidah. He lowered his hand and gazed levelly at Kweku. "I suppose I should have feigned confusion."

"Many spies would have, but this saves time. We've known about you since you first applied. The spellcraft hiding your lies is good, but we did a deeper delve into your story and found some loose threads that unraveled when we pulled on them." She stepped close to him, and he tensed, expecting an attack, but instead she looped her arm through his. "Walk with me."

"Are you taking me to be executed? Or to break my mind and make me your servant?"

"Life under the Deathless Child has not been good for you, Hazidah. You see enemies everywhere. I'm not your enemy. I'm your teacher. And what I'm going to teach you is that you're on the wrong side."

Hazidah shook his head. Loyalty was all—the foundation of every temple, the ground beneath every step, and to transgress against Walkena was to face the Punishment of Seven Angry Suns. The priest who'd recruited him had made provisions to ensure Hazidah's loyalty even if his faith faltered, though. "Even if I were swayed by your lies, my obedience is compelled by powers far beyond my will."

"Oh, yes, I know," Kweku said. "Your bindings have bindings. Those will have to be removed if we hope to make any progress." She patted him on the arm. He tried to remember the last time he'd been touched in such a friendly way. "It's a good thing we're in the greatest magical academy the world has ever known, surrounded by experts in magic, isn't it?"

His heart stirred at her touch. He'd never met anyone like her at home—she was intelligent and powerful, but she was messy, and impulsive, and outspoken. Everything he should hate: a native of the Expanse who'd been corrupted and weakened by the outside world, and who sought to bring that poison back home. And it was poison. He could pretend to play along, let them think they'd won him over to their cause while he gathered intelligence to use against them... surely there were such things as triple agents—

She stumbled on a loose stone and put her hand on his arm to steady herself... then left her hand there as they walked.

"Will you be... working with me closely?" He stared down at her fingers, curled over his forearm.

"That's the idea. I'll be your handler, Haz. We'll do great things."

Haz. His heart stirred again, and he thought: what if she corrupts me? Would it be better to fight back now, and die, still pure? Or had he pledged his allegiance to the wrong flame—the flame of his master's power, rather than the flame inside himself?

She stepped away to lead him through an archway at the base of a dark tower, and when her back was turned, he reached out to her.

Even he didn't know, in that moment, if he was reaching out to strangle or embrace.

Tim Pratt
Contributing Author

Ishaani walked through the bustling market in the shadow of her efreeti guardian, Shadqadir. "I don't like this. It's dangerous, dealing with... these matters... out in the open." She clutched the scroll case close to her chest, though it was already secured across her body on a leather strap and further sealed with magic.

Shadqadir rumbled his volcanic laugh. "You feel unsafe in my company, little Ishi? Have I not protected your family against every harm for six generations?"

The crowded lanes were rather less crowded for them than they were for everyone else, as people gave Shadqadir a wide berth. Genies of all sorts were common enough here in Niswan, but Shadqadir was no aloof marid or benevolent djinn. Efreet were made of fire and fury, and he radiated heat and malice. Though Shadqadir had been a constant presence in her life since infancy, Ishaani still found his burning eyes, razored horns, and knowing grin disturbing at times.

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

She would never show him fear, though. "I am no longer a child," she snapped. "I'm capable of taking care of myself. I've studied at the—"

"Yes, yes, a House of Perfection." The efreeti yawned, smoke rising from his mouth. "We're all very impressed. You probably thought attending the Monastery of the Unblinking Flame would flatter my fiery nature and stop me from eating your young when the time comes."

"My choice was not influenced by you at all. I chose that House because the study of occult philosophy interests me more than strength of arms."

"Why would you worry about martial skills when you have my powers to command? At least until you spawn."

Ishaani's ancestor had bound Shadqadir to service centuries before, with direct control of his considerable powers passed to the firstborn of his previous owner... but the binding was flawed, and Shadqadir would go free upon the birth of the seventh generation. He made no secret of his plans to take revenge on Ishaani's entire family for his time of servitude once she had a child.

Ishaani had therefore decided to be the last of her line. If she died without a child, he would also go free, but she was young, and had time to work on that problem. If her legacy could not continue in the form of children, she needed to make her mark on the world in other ways. This scroll, found behind a false wall in a forgotten store room deep in her family's estate, presented the greatest opportunity to do that. "Just be watchful, Shad. I am less concerned with assault or theft than with someone overhearing our discussion. We should have found someone to authenticate the scroll who would come to us." The scholar they were going to see had actually offered to come to the estate... in six weeks, when his schedule opened up.

"You made no mention of convenience, Ishi. You asked for the best, and the most discreet. As always, I followed your instructions to the letter."

And not one syllable beyond, she thought. "The best is an Avistani man? I still find that hard to believe."

"Sometimes the perspective of an outlander offers clarity. For instance, as a human, you find Jalmeray to be an isle of wonders and Niswan a city of splendor. You marvel at its golden temples, its graceful pagodas, its perfumed streets, its shining palaces, its bridges and towers wrought of magic and metal together, at all these myriad mortal glories." He gestured widely, sending the people nearby scurrying away. "While I, unblinded by sentiment, hailing from a more rarefied plane, see this place for what it truly is."

"Which is?"

Shadqadir sniffed. "Kindling."

They reached a book-filled stall draped in colorful cloth, the largest in a lane full of booksellers, scribes, and calligraphers. A dapper man, paler than Ishaani and elaborately bearded and mustachioed, approached them. "You must be the young lady who wanted to see me. And your companion." He nodded respectfully to the efreeti. "How may I be of service?"

"You are Zotikos the Wise?" Ishaani said.

"Some flatter me so."

She glanced around, then leaned close. "I am told there is no greater expert in the antiquities of Jalmeray dating from the reign of the Arclords."

"This I can confirm."

"I have a scroll that purports to be from that era. I wish to determine its authenticity."

Zotikos nodded. "The world is awash in false treasure maps and forgeries."

"It is a matter of some discretion—"

Zotikos touched a jewel at his throat and the bustling noise of the market vanished, some spell to exclude sound and prevent eavesdropping. "We have complete privacy now."

Ishaani opened the scroll case, carefully removed the document within, and unrolled its delicate length.

Zotikos leaned close, scanned the document, then looked into Ishaani's face. "This purports to be a letter detailing the hiding place of the legendary artifact known as the Scepter of the Arclords, written by a leader of that order before they fled the island."

"Oh good, he's literate," Shadquidar said. "We know what it says. Is it real?"

"Mmm. Probably not. There was a rumor the Scepter had been found recently by an Andoren fool, but that wasn't true, either. May I?"

Ishaani handed over the scroll. Zotikos pinched the document between his fingers, put it close to his eyes, and even sniffed it. She was afraid he might taste the ink. He instead took a round lens from his pocket and gazed through it. After a moment he handed the scroll back. "I don't know if the contents are true, but the document comes from the right period. The quality of the ink, the level of fading, the composition of the paper—it's all consistent with the last years of Arclord dominion over Jalmeray. Even if it's accurate, the Scepter is doubtless long gone, looted or moved—"

"We don't need that kind of advice." The efreeti opened his hand, and gold coins dropped onto the table. Zotikos went to scoop them up and hissed, dropping them, and making the efreeti chuckle. "Those may be a bit warm."

Ishaani glared at the effreeti and said, "Thank you for your help, Zotikos. I can count on your discretion?"

"Of course."

"If not, it can be compelled," Shadqadir growled, and the man looked appropriately worried.

The two of them stepped out of the bubble of privacy, and the sound of the market returned. They walked for a couple of minutes, Ishaani in silent thought as she considered her next moves, and then the efreeti spoke again.

"The terms of my service require me to tell you that man was not actually Zotikos, the Avastani scholar, but an imposter. I suspect he was a rakshasa cloaked in illusion."

Ishaani wanted to stop and look back, but she kept walking as naturally as possible. "How do you know?"

The efreeti chuckled. "I met Zotikos once before, years ago, on an errand for your mother. He initially proved reluctant to turn over a volume she desired, so I persuaded him, and left a small mark on his wrist to remember me by—a brand in the shape of my fingertip. Even if Zotikos somehow forgot me, his flesh would remember our meeting, but the skin was unmarred. I only noticed when his sleeve slid back as he handed over the scroll or I would have alerted you earlier."

"A rakshasa," she murmured. "We can't trust his appraisal, then. The letter may be false."

"Or it's real, and now one of the devil-born knows your quest. Perhaps the fiend even replaced Zotikos in order to meet with us. We arranged this meeting two days ago, after all. Plenty of time for an interested party curious about the scroll to make their own plans."

"How could anyone even know about the scroll?"

Shadqadir shrugged. "Treacherous servants, spies, magical surveillance... your parents are known to dabble in powerful matters, and it wouldn't surprise me if your estate is watched. The point is, we can no longer count on security through obscurity. We now face potential opposition in your quest for greatness." Shadqadir's smile was like a forge fire.

She scowled. "You don't need to look so happy about it."

"Oh, but I am. I'm pledged to protect your life and well-being to the fullness of my abilities... but if sufficiently powerful enemies rise against you, my best might not be good enough. In that case, you could die, and I would be free to eat your family." He sighed contentedly.

She'd heard this sort of thing from him before... but she'd never worried about it until now. "Efreet don't need to eat anything at all," she grumbled. "Let alone my relatives."

He shrugged. "I don't expect to enjoy the process, but a promise is a promise. So. Shall we go out and seize your destiny, Ishi?"

Tim Pratt
Contributing Author

"Got us between Hell and high water again, Captain!" Giant ducked spray and shot a glare to her captain. She didn't have to duck much; even standing on a box step, the halfling was barely tall enough to see over the ship's wheel.

Devrin Arlos just laughed and eyed the six Chelish warships closing in on them. They'd chased Nightwave all the way from the Arch of Aroden, along the coast of Rahadoum, and through the treacherous Jagged Reach. They weren't likely to give up now. Ahead loomed the Eye of Abendego.

Illustration by Yasen Stoilov

"Wouldn't have it any other way. Don't worry! Nightwave can take it!"

She struggled with the wheel. "Maybe time to put a reef in the forecourse?"

"Long past time, but I was hoping—" A crack louder than a ballista shot pierced the howl of the wind, drawing his attention back to their nearest pursuer. "Hoping for that."

The foremost Corentine frigate's foretopmast shattered, falling with yards of shredded canvas and a mile of tangled cordage. Sailors scrambled to hack the wreckage away, but the ship slewed off course, and jibed her mizzen boom, ripping yet more canvas.

"Payback's a bitch!" Vulmia Manux, Devrin's navigator and general fix-it go-to, shook an ebony fist at the struggling ship. The Mwangi half-elf was still sore that Nightwave had been damaged by the Corentines’ hell-spawned minions. The Corentines were out of devils now, and clearly intended to overpower the Firebrand ship with brute force.

"Reef the forecourse and tops'ls." Devrin squinted forward. "Take her a point to starboard, Giant. Batten down and rig lifelines! We're going in!"

The crew responded without question. The outer wall of the perpetual storm towered in a burgeoning barrier of torrential rain and wind, mountainous seas, and deadly currents. A glance back confirmed that their pursuers were also shortening sail, but hadn't broken off the chase.

"Come and get me, you bastards!" Devrin shouted.

"You taking this personal, Captain?" Nightwave's bosun, Gaspiya, dropped down from the mizzen shrouds, eyeing him with concern, her lip curled back from her short tusks.

"No, but somebody's got to teach them that they don't own the whole damned sea!" He clapped Vulmia on her shoulder and grinned. "Don't worry. We've got them right where we want them."

"Sorry, sir." Vulmia nodded and squinted into the screaming wind. "I just think we might have bit off more than we can chew. Six to one?"

"I said, don't worry! That's my job, right?" Devrin flashed a rakish smile and pointed to the impending wall of the storm. "Give Giant a hand at the helm and hold fast! We're in for a trouncing!"

The storm hit them like a charging bull, with rain so thick he could barely see their nearest pursuer slashing hard enough to sting exposed skin. The seas mounted to vertical walls higher than Nightwave's topsails, their plunging tops threatening to overwhelm them. Nightwave staggered as a wave broke over the ship’s stern, and Devrin struggled to stay put in the waist-deep deluge. Lightning lit the sky in sheets, but the captain howled and laughed into the teeth of the storm.

"Captain!" Devrin's cabin boy, a stout young man from Katapesh, pointed abeam. "They're trying to cut us off!"

Devrin shielded his eyes and squinted at the Corentine frigate, Helldawn, plunging down a towering wave. "How in bloody blue blazes did they—" Then he spotted the tornado of animate water at the ship's bow, pulling on two thick ropes like a massive draft horse. "They've summoned an elemental!"

A webbed hand closed on Devrin's shoulder. "It's time, Captain."

He turned to look into the blue-on-blue features of Ris, an undine and recent addition to his crew. It had been Ris who had told him about the Chelish plan to dump tons of toxic mine tailings onto a submarine merfolk city in the Hellmouth Gulf. At his behest, she had delved the depths to warn the merfolk. With no way to forestall the Chelish, the merfolk had evacuated their city, saving tens of thousands of lives. Now was the time for retribution.

"You're sure, Ris? The seas—"

Another wave buried Nightwave's quarterdeck, but while the rest of them struggled to stay upright, Ris reveled in the torrent, her lips curving from pearly teeth in glee. The deluge flowed off her blue skin and sharkskin leathers, lending strength to her slim frame.

"I'm sure, my captain." Ris lifted a willowy arm to point to a towering swell, a hundred feet of sheer water. Lightning lit the sky behind the wave, illuminating thousands of sinuous shapes within.

Devrin's mouth dropped open at the sight. A vast school of merfolk, tridents in hand, their marine minions swimming along with them, shapes enormous and terrible, yet beautiful.

"Sing them a song, Ris!"

"I will, my captain." She pulled the lyre from her back, an enchanted instrument crafted from shell, narwhal horn, and mother of pearl. A wave crested to break against the ship's quarter, and Ris dove straight into the tortuous sea.

"Hope she hurries up!" Vulmia shouted over the roar of wind and water. "They're getting close!"

Indeed, Helldawn was closing fast. At the peak of a swell, the ship yawed, and ballistae cracked. The deadly bolts flew at Nightwave with unerring accuracy, holing sails, smashing into the hull, and impaling flesh. Devrin bellowed for the ship's cleric, Rikkan, to see to the injured, even as the holed sails tore to shreds in the hurricane winds. Vulma, Gaspiya, and the top-crews clambered up the ratlines like spiders to cut away the torn canvas, but the damage was done. Nightwave slewed with the uneven strain and nearly broached on a towering wave.

"Captain!" Giant screamed, fighting the wheel with all her strength. "She'll roll on the next one if we don't get some sail aloft!"

Devrin fought his way to the binnacle and flung open the hatch beneath the compass. There, in a golden frame, sat an apple-sized emerald glowing with an inner light, Nightwave's heart.

The captain placed a hand on the gem and spoke low. "Spirits of the deep, hear my call. Claim your places at my side! Make sail!"

The spirits of a hundred and one sailors lost at sea surged from the gem in a translucent torrent, racing aloft, untouched by the hurricane winds. Ethereal canvas billowed on ghostly winds to pull Nightwave upright. Her bow pointed down the next towering swell, and they raced forth. The ghostly sails faded away quickly, but they had saved the ship.

The burst of speed had taken them out of range of Helldawn's ballistae, but for how long? The peak of a wave blocked their view of Helldawn, but then both ships rose, and Devrin saw their salvation surging from the depths.

"She rises!" he bellowed, as the behemoth surged from the sea, an orca of such massive size that it dwarfed the leviathans of the deep.

The monstrous whale breeched to the height of Helldawn's main crosstrees, and came down amidships. Timbers snapped like kindling, planks exploding with the horrific impact. The ship's keel snapped with a report that Devrin felt through the soles of his boots. The ship foundered, broken in half, two hundred sailors, gone in one moment of vengeance.

"Payback!" Vulmia screamed from aloft, and the captain and crew of Nightwave cheered.

In a moment of eerie clarity, the torrential rains ceased. The remaining Corentine ships stood there, stark against the raging storm.

Then, from the sea, vengeance rose like a plague of demons from the abyss.

Tentacles ensnared one ship, tearing at wood and flesh, while the jaws of a megalodon ripped at the hull of another. Thousands of merfolk surged up the sides of a third, their tridents crackling with electricity, torrents of water blasting Chelish sailors and marines off the deck. A fourth ship surged upward as a vast shape thrust up from beneath. The dragon turtle's spiked shell smashed through the deck of the ship, and the beast thrashed, splintering wood and crushing sailors. The last ship in the armada tried to flee, but the sea behind them frothed with the fury of the merfolk. In their haste, the Corentine captain must have forgotten about the storm. A breaking sea took them on the beam, and the ship capsized, masts snapping like felled trees. When the wave rolled past, there was nothing left but flotsam.

Devrin stared in silent shock for a long moment. Six ships, twelve hundred sailors...gone.

"Captain." Ris touched her captain's shoulder, and he turned to see the undine's sorrow. "I'm sorry. I sang the song of vengeance to them. They needed no such encouragement."

"I wish we could have let that last ship go, just to take the message back to Cheliax." He scanned the sea, but it was clear that there would be no survivors. "Maybe it would have prevented another incident like this."

"Perhaps." Ris shook her head. "But the sea is a harsh mistress, and even Hell lacks the wrath to thwart her will."

Chris A. Jackson
Contributing Author

Invisible and as silent as a church fart, Twilp Farfan slipped through the sparse midday crowds of Sothis's Malhitu Bazaar. Skulking in broad daylight always freaked the halfling out, but if he didn't stir up too much dust or bump into anyone, his passage would go unnoticed. Sothans tended to close up shop and nap in the blazing heat of the day, so there weren't many people about.

All good for me. He paused in the shade of an awning and wiped his face. All except the heat.

Twilp studied the blue-domed cupolas across the square and found the right building. Two burly guards stood beside the beaded doorway of Kepeshka's Antiquities Emporium. Sweat glistened on their ebony skin, their eyelids sagging, but each rested a hand on a khopesh at his belt.

Nobody trusts anyone these days. Of course, that included Twilp. He didn't care who he stole for or from, as long as the gold was yellow. In Sothis, gold was all that mattered, and after the fall of the pyramids, there had been a glut of expensive antiquities on the market, ripe for the picking. The halfling's gaze drifted up to Sothis's looming Black Dome and the recently fallen pyramid beyond. The instant it hit the ground, grave robbers had swarmed like ants over a fallen elephant. The very trinket he was being paid to steal had come from that megalithic monstrosity. Twilp didn't know what was so important about this particular bauble anyway; a dagger was a dagger as far as he was concerned. But gold...

The ground-floor windows were girded with ornate iron latticework, and the sheer walls defied even the deftest climber. Twilp edged around the square and up to the bead-curtained doorway. The guards blinked lazily, half asleep. The burglar eased down to the ground and squirmed quietly beneath the curtain.

Good thing I'm skinny. He rose up inside and scanned the showroom. A woman sat behind a counter, idly polishing a lamp. Twilp grinned. Now for the prize.

Illustration by Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

Upstairs, he found the merchant's bedroom. Two more guards stood at the door, which gaped to allow the breeze to circulate. They didn't even twitch when he slipped past them. Gauzy curtains billowed, the Black Dome and pyramid looming beyond. Some said everything from the inside of the fallen pyramid was cursed, but Twilp didn't believe it. Gold was the only thing he believed in.

Twilp tore his eyes away from the view, and skulked over to the merchant's bed. Big enough for six, it currently accommodated only three: the merchant, Lorisi Kepeshka, and two comely men, husbands or toys. Sweat glistened on their skin like the luster of precious metal. Like gold... The dagger hung from the headboard above Kepeshka's tousled black hair, worth enough to keep Twilp happy for months.

The halfling examined the serpent hilt and pommel, its fanged head and ruby eyes. Gaudy. As his fingers curled around the scaled hilt, however, the dagger's eyes came alight.

"Hello, little thief."

Twilp jerked his hand away, unsure for a moment if he'd heard the voice with his ears or in his head. His client, Lady Nikiri, hadn't told him it was haunted. Doesn't matter. As he reached again, a bead of sweat fell from his brow and plopped down right between Lorisi Kepeshka's eyes.

Twilp froze.

She stirred, one hand reaching up to wipe the drop away, her eyes blinking open. She stared right through the invisible burglar for a moment, then looked up to the dagger. She sighed, smiled, and reached for it.

Oh, no you don't! Twilp grabbed for it, and their hands touched the scabbarded weapon at the same instant.

"Well, this should be interesting," the voice said in his mind.

Lorisi Kepeshka's eyes flung wide. "Thief!"

Crap! Twilp jerked the dagger out of her grasp, and the weapon became invisible.

"The dagger! Thief!" Kepeshka's bedmates lurched up, and the door guards burst in, swords drawn.

"Kill her!" the voice said in Twilp's head. "Use me!"

Bugger off! Twilp backed away.

"Someone took the dagger!" Kepeshka vaulted out of bed. "They're invisible! Block the door and sweep the room!"

"Is that any way to talk to someone who can make you a god?" the voice of the dagger asked.

You can hear my thoughts?

"Yes, and read your greedy little soul, Twilp Farfan."

Great. Now shut up; I'm busy! He clipped the dagger to his belt and dashed for the window.

"Wait! Aren't you going to kill her? You really should, you know."

I'm a burglar, not an assassin. Twilp leapt and tore through the gauzy curtains.

"Oh, but her life force can be yours! I can give it to you!"

I don't want it. The burglar hit a canvas awning and slid. Anyone heavier would have torn right through, but Twilp didn't. "But it'll make you powerful, invulnerable, immortal!"

Don't particularly want those either. He flipped off the awning into the street, bowling down a man carrying a basket of flatbread.

"What kind of mortal are you?" The dagger sounded incredulous.

The kind who likes his life the way it is. Now shut up.

"Thief!" Kepeshka screeched from the window, pointing right at him. "Guards! After that thief!"

The two ground-floor guards drew their swords and advanced.

Twilp now understood why Lady Nikiri wanted the dagger. Denied the political power of her elder siblings, married to a lesser house, and now aging and bitter, the lure of power and immortality would be irresistible to her.

I'll settle for gold. Twilp dashed up the street.

"Coward," the dagger chided.

Twilp ignored it and ran.

"There!" one of the guards bellowed.

Twilp glanced back and saw the puffs of dust where his feet touched the street. They'd spotted him.

The burglar dodged under awnings, over, around, and under displays of goods, but they were hot on his heels, their longer legs doubling his best speed.

"Kill them! I'll make you a god!"

And deal with all that religion crap? No thanks! Twilp sprinted past the auction houses and into the Rose Quarter, trying to keep the dust of his passage down, but to no avail.

"There!" The guards were right on him.

Desperate, Twilp dodged into Wimiri's Bathhouse.

"Look! Footprints!"

Twilp glanced back at his dusty tracks on the otherwise spotless tile floor. Damn!

"Kill them!" the dagger screamed.

Shut up! The halfling dodged through a doorway and skidded to a stop inches before falling into a sunken bath crowded with chatting women sipping cool drinks. The guard chasing him wasn't so dexterous.

The man slammed into Twilp's back, and they both plunged into the bath. Twilp's head cracked the bottom of the shallow pool hard enough to stun him. He thrashed to the surface, women screaming, and a meaty fist closed on the neck of his jerkin.

"Got you, little thief!" The guard lifted him, raising his khopesh.

"Kill him!" the dagger bellowed in his mind. "Use me! It's your only chance!"

For once, Twilp agreed. He had to get free, and the blade hung at his belt. He drew it and stabbed the man's elbow.

"YES!"

Crimson light flooded the bath. The dagger's blade shone like a flaming ruby, pulsing with life as it pierced the guard's arm. The man drew a startled breath, eyes wide, not in pain, but in terror.

Flesh shriveled on the guard's bones, blood, life, and for all Twilp knew, his soul sucked away into the blade...and into Twilp. The dried husk of flesh crumbled, and the halfling hit the water.

The bathers erupted in panic, thrashing to get away from the spreading pall of ashes in the water.

"There, now." The dagger sounded satisfied. "Feel better?"

Twilp did feel better, his pain gone, his head clear, and he fairly bristled with energy. He felt like he could do anything, like he would live forever.

"And you can," the dagger assured him. "Every life you take with me will make you greater."

Twilp thought of it, immortality, power, riches, the helpless bathers fleeing around him, and almost puked. He thrashed out of the water and invoked the magic of his ring again, blinking into invisibility. Sheathing the dagger and snatching up a towel, he slipped out of the bathing room, avoiding the panicked patrons. The voice of the dagger rang in his head, urging him to sheath it in flesh, to drink their lives.

Quelling the temptation to become a god, Twilp crept into another wing of the establishment. Sheltered alcoves, each with a lidded commode, lined a wall beneath narrow windows.

Perfect! Twilp hopped up onto a bench and lifted the lid at his feet.

"What are you doing?"

He thought about what the dagger had promised him, and what someone like Lady Nikiri would do with it. The gold she had promised him suddenly seemed stained with blood.

Twilp drew the dagger.

"What are you doing?!"

"Saving my soul, you filthy piece of crap." Twilp held it over the dark pit.

"DON'T!"

Twilp released his grip and watched the blade's red glow vanish into the depths. With a wet plop, the crimson light winked out. Hundreds of patrons would bury the weapon deeper. Nobody would ever dig it up.

"Some treasures are better left buried." Twilp clambered up the wall to slip through the narrow window into the fresh air. "And some things are worth more than gold."

Chris A. Jackson
Contributing Author

I knew it would come for me. My thrice-cursed fate would not be denied: my blood, my birth, and my faith. I knew I would be chosen; my mother all but promised me.

"The year thirteen will fall on you, daughter. You cannot prevent it, but you can prepare."

Twenty-four black hooves, four iron-rimmed wheels, and fourteen glowing red eyes, the coach and six, the harbinger of my fate, my promise, my doom, glided down the cobbled street toward me without a whisper. The good citizens of Cesca scattered, scuttling into doorways, slamming shutters, scurrying into alleys like terrified rats. I stood and awaited my fate.

The ebony coach stopped before me, the driver's burning coal eyes transfixing me like needles pinning a moth in a display. Armor rustled like winter-dead leaves hammered from cold iron as one hand released the reins to delve the driver's cloak. A roll of ebony parchment bound with a blood-red ribbon issued forth, held out in that undying grasp for me.

"Your invitation, daughter of Arudora." The voice chilled me like the touch of an icy scalpel.

"Of course." I took the invitation in hand, pulled the ribbon, and unrolled the black parchment that sealed my doom. I read, "Marilisa Balcus Arudora," my name, the only words on the page.

The armored driver gestured, and the coach's door swung silently open. "Welcome."

The midnight coach swallowed me.

Illustration by Mariusz Gandzel

Black leather, satin drapes, and pale faces rimed with terror greeted me. I sat and adjusted my skirts. The seat was cold, and the faces colder, six of my kin doomed to the fate we all shared. I only recognized one, a cousin I'd met only once. His eyes took me in with subdued recognition, one hand gripping the head of his walking stick, a silver wolf, teeth bared in rage. The others, two peasants, a tradesman, a merchant, and a trollop, avoided my gaze, resigned to our common fate. A prospect worse than death lurked in their eyes.

The coach moved, but I'd not felt it and heard not a sound but the beating of my own heart and tremulous breath. The merchant rocked forward and back, his hands clutched white-knuckled. The trollop withdrew a silver flask from her ample bodice and drew a draught. She caught my eye and flashed a smile.

"Drop o' liquid courage, love?" She held out the flask, the scent of brandy heady in the air.

"No, thank you." I'd long ago consigned my courage to the flames.

"Suit yourself." She drank again and tucked the flask away.

"Can't do this...can't do this..." the fidgety merchant muttered.

"Oh, do shut up, man!" My gentleman cousin eyed him derisively.

"Bugger off and leave him be!" one of the peasants snapped, a lip curling back from tobacco-stained teeth.

"How dare you speak to—"

"Can't do this!" The hysterical merchant drew a stiletto.

"Don't!" The word escaped my lips before I could bite it off, but it did no good.

The merchant's trembling hand drew a ragged line of crimson across his throat. He cut deep, deep enough to paint the trollop seated across from him with the spray. She swore, fending off his lifeblood with a raised arm. The merchant choked and coughed, shuddering as the torrent slowed.

"Bloody fool," my gentleman cousin scoffed. "Death is no escape now."

True enough, for as the merchant's blood ceased to flow with the last fluttering beats of his dying heart, only surprise registered on his paling features. His eyes blinked, bloody lips gaping in shock as undeath took him. We could not escape our fate so easily.

The trollop withdrew her flask and drained its contents in one greedy draught, her cheeks pale under the cheap rouge and flecks of blood.

"Hells and demons," the surly peasant swore, making a sign to ward off evil.

"That won't save you either, ignorant fool." My gentleman cousin's nose wrinkled, perhaps at the stench of blood, perhaps in sheer disdain.

"Neither will that blade in your cane, sir, enchanted though it be." I don't know why I spoke, but I felt the need to put the pompous ass in his place. "No mortal-forged implement will save you."

His eyes narrowed at me. "You seem quite sure of yourself, Marilisa."

"I am." I adjusted my skirts again, my hand exploring the folds for my one hope of salvation. Cold metal caressed my palm. "I've known my fate my entire life, Lord Wolthaven. As have you."

"Oh, and I suppose you've some trick you hope will save you!" He glared at me, dredging courage from anger.

"No trick." I gripped my only hope and prayed silently.

"Look!" The tradesman pointed out the window at the passing scenery.

Ruined buildings, dilapidated cottages, and crumbled towers took on a ghostly radiance, blazing blue with shadows of their former grandeur as we passed through the dead village of Maiserene. I recognized it from my studies. I wondered if anyone outside the carriage could see the apparition or if it existed only for our doomed eyes. Ahead the spectral bridge to our destination coalesced over the dark water of Lake Laroba. Our conveyance paused not as we crossed, silent water roiling beneath us, perhaps hungering for the living or welcoming us to our fate.

We plunged through the toothed maw of Bastardhall's gate, the wail of cold iron hinges, gears, and chains a cacophonous greeting. One of the peasants began sobbing. The coach pulled into a vast courtyard and stopped before the grim foyer.

Three tall figures awaited our arrival: a woman of pale complexion with white-streaked hair, another woman bearing the sigil of Urgathoa upon her breast, and a hooded shape holding a swaddled bundle in his arms.

I knew they had long prepared for this meeting.

The carriage door opened and my destiny propelled me forth, my legs steady, teeth clenched against useless screams, and my hand gripping the spike of silver that no mortal hand had forged. The fire of a burning sun scorched my palm as I strode forth to my fate.

Chris A. Jackson
Contributing Author

Selik slouched along at the back of the party with Boret and the other archers. "Stupid crusader. Why is he even here? We don't need him. Our god has returned and reunited us with the rest of the clan."

Boret grunted. "Dolok Darkfur is a power, no doubt, and without his leadership, we'd still be hiding in the forest. Even so... Ramnos has more practical demon-fighting experience than the rest of us put together. You'll be glad we have his sword on our side when we storm that keep."

Their god—a massive, bear-like creature whose bright feathers and intelligent eyes made it impossible to mistake him for an ordinary animal—led the group, flanked by that irritating crusader and the clan's god-caller, Nelket.

Selik spat. "The other crusaders left Sarkoris when the Worldwound closed. I don't trust him. Why is he still here? Shouldn't he be riding to the soft southern lands with the rest of his people?"

Boret snorted. "The crusaders only turned south because the Whispering Tyrant stirs. Things aren't so soft there."

"But why—"

"By the Stag Mother's antlers, boy, go ask him yourself if you want to know his reasons! The crusader doesn't confide in me."

Selik glared toward the front of the group, his eyes widening when the crusader stopped walking until Selik reached him, then fell into step beside him. "I could not help but overhear your question." His accent was atrocious. "I remain because I took an oath to cleanse your ancestral lands of the Abyssal taint. Some think because the land no longer bleeds demons, our work is done, but I disagree." He paused. "Also, I am very good at killing demons."

"Braggart."

Ramnos laughed, a sound that irritated Selik to his marrow. "I prefer to think of it as clear-eyed self-regard. I know you are angry, Selik. I don't blame you. Your people have suffered as much as anyone. But I wish your anger wouldn't settle on me. Not all outsiders are invaders. I've developed great affection for your people."

"You mean for my aunt."

"Starting with your aunt, let us say," Ramnos agreed.

"You'll never be part of the Farheaven Clan," Selik muttered. There were precious few of his people left, but Selik bristled at the idea of outsiders traveling with them, or, gods forbid, marrying in.

"Perhaps not. But—"

"We're here," the god-caller said, her voice somehow seeming to whisper in Selik's ear. He stepped away from Ramnos, joining the others on a low rise that looked down on the grim expanse of Carlhon Keep, once home to men and women, now a stronghold of demons, with black clouds swirling unnaturally above its towers and walls.

Illustration by Mariusz Gandzel

Selik had grown up in the forests and fields with members of his clan and had spent barely any time under roofs of wood and stone. Carlhon Keep was vast beyond his imaginings. Could his people really live there, if they removed the demonic infestation? "The walls are glowing," Selik whispered.

"Demonic runes." Ramnos sighed. "Those walls may need to come down entirely. The taint runs deep into the stone. The lightning worries me more, though." Sick green flashes lit the dark clouds.

Dolok Darkfur rose, towering on his hind legs, and Selik could not deny the stirrings of awe within him. With their god at their head, how could they fail? "I fear no lightning," Darkfur said, his voice all rumble and strength.

"The rest of us must." Ramnos pointed with his sword to tiny specks moving among the dark clouds and green flashes of electricity. "Those are wrath demons. Vile things. They do a dance—"

"They dance?" Selik scoffed. He made a mocking little pirouette.

"Their dance brings ruin," Ramnos said. "Few who witness it survive. The demons dance not for pleasure, but as a ritual, to call down evil upon their enemies. That lightning... I fear the fiends know we are coming, and have begun to dance our deaths."

"They can't dance if someone bites their legs off," Darkfur growled, and then rushed forward on all fours toward the keep, Nelket and the clan's warriors hurrying after him, swords and hammers drawn.

Ramnos watched them run. "It's a good thing we discussed the plan in advance. Ready your bow, Selik."

"What?"

The crusader pointed again. The specks in the air were getting bigger, and a few swooped toward them. Selik gasped, fumbled with his bow, and nocked one of the blessed arrows. He was one of the best archers in the clan, famed for his ability to shoot birds on the wing, but the things coming for them weren't birds—they were a grotesque cross between men and vultures, trailing feathers and dust.

"Better if they do not come close," Ramnos said. "They spew a poisonous cloud."

Selik took a breath, sighted, and loosed. The arrow sailed true and caught the approaching demon in its right wing just as it dove toward Darkfur. The demon spun, its other wing clipping the ground, and went down in a sprawl of feathers. The god paused briefly over it to deliver a killing blow, and then loped on. "I got it!" Selik crowed. Other demons fell to the holy arrows loosed by Boret and the other archers, and the rest of the demons in the air retreated back toward the keep.

"They were focused on your god, and didn't consider the rest of you threats before," Ramnos said. "Now, they do. Come on!" He rushed forward, and Selik followed, blood singing with something like the thrill of the hunt, but even more potent.

The archers stopped within bowshot of the walls and loosed arrows at the twisted figures on the battlements, protecting the warriors in the vanguard. To Selik's annoyance, the crusader stayed by his side, acting as a spotter and calling out targets—he seemed to know which demons were the equivalent of officers, and once Selik had killed a few of those, the lowlier fiends broke and fled.

Darkfur reached the keep's gate and rose up, roaring, to slam against the barrier. The runes on the walls flared and burned brighter. The warriors joined their god, battering the gates with their weapons, but the god was a siege engine in his own right, and soon the dark wood began to splinter and crack.

"Here." The crusader offered Selik a knife—almost big enough to be a small sword—with a blade that reflected more light than it should have beneath those clouded skies. "Your bow will be less use inside."

Selik reached out, scowled, paused, then snatched up the weapon. It felt good in his hand, thrumming with power. "Why are you giving me this? Why are you sticking so close to me at all?"

"It is... possible... I told your aunt I would look out for you," Ramnos said, "while she and the other warriors stay close to your god."

Selik stomped his foot. "I am not a child in need of a nursemaid!"

Ramnos chuckled another infuriating chuckle. "That is fortunate, as I would make a poor nursemaid. I am, however, a capable fighter, and would be honored to stand by your side."

"I don't need your help," Selik said. "I can find glory on my own!"

"I do not doubt it, but she made me swear an oath." He shrugged. "An oath is an oath."

"I don't—"

The crusader suddenly shouted and shoved Selik aside as a vulture demon leapt down on them from the battlements. The crusader and the demon went down in a jumble of limbs and feathers, claws and blades, and Selik froze. Shooting arrows at distant shapes was one thing, but now the demon was here, at his feet, stinking and writhing and vile and terrifying. He froze for a long moment, then looked around for help, but the rest of the clan was disappearing into a crack in the gates.

Selik shook himself, raised his new blade, and waited for his moment. When he was sure he wouldn't hit Ramnos by mistake, he struck, plunging his blade into the back of the demon's birdlike head. It screamed, the wound smoking, and Ramnos rolled out from under and struggled to his feet. The crusader plunged his sword through the monster's back, ending its shrieks. He plucked a moldy feather from his hair and rubbed at a long scratch on his cheek, but smiled. "You see? You are the one looking after me."

Selik nodded. "That's right. You're... lucky I was here."

"I never could take care of myself alone. That is why I joined an order of knights in the first place." Ramnos nodded toward the cracked gates. "Shall we teach these demons to dance properly?"

"Dancing is soft," Selik muttered, but he followed Ramnos into the keep as lightning began to lance down from the clouds all around.

The crusader's answering laughter somehow annoyed him less this time.

Tim Pratt
Contributing Author

"Pardon..."

Over the din of the bustling street market the young boy's cry reached the passing nobleman. "Pardon me, my lord. Are you seeking the god rock? Do you need the courage to take the leap? The blessing of one who passed the test?"

The nobleman ignored him, but the young merchant persisted, obviously recognizing the robed figure's wealth from the quality of his clothes and the confidence in his step. "I have here the tears of Iomedae herself, shed when she learned of Aroden's death!" The boy pushed through the crowd, following the nobleman, waving a tiny vial that undoubtedly contained ordinary water. "My lord?"

The nobleman paid the boy no mind and walked through the throng seemingly oblivious to the solicitations of its eager vendors.

All along the Avenue of the Hopeful it was the same racket. Everyone had some divine relic to sell: a tabard supposedly worn by Iomedae in the Shining Crusade; a barroom dart thrown by a mortal Cayden Cailean; a blood-rusted dagger said to have been wielded by Norgorber himself. They were all fake, of course, but the visitors that streamed down this road every day to look at the Starstone Cathedral didn't know that—or pretended not to out of willful ignorance. Sometimes even the merchants believed the veracity of their claims, their fraud offset by their misplaced good intentions.

Illustration by Federico Musetti

Among themselves, the charlatans hocking these wares claim the cathedral is the straight man in their cons. Its very presence adds an air of mystery and divine authority to the propositions, no matter how obvious the counterfeit relics are. How could it not? Inside the towering ancient shrine, suspended in the center of an unfathomably deep pit, lay a chunk of rock that fell from the heavens millennia ago amid the untold devastation of Earthfall. Those who brave the cathedral, passing all of its cunning tests, defeating its deadly guardians, and surviving to touch the Starstone exit the cathedral as gods. Many have tried over the centuries since Aroden constructed the cathedral to protect the holy relic within, but only three have ever succeeded. Unsurprisingly, it is Absalom's most visited tourist spot—the epicenter of the City at the Center of the World.

"Just two silver weights!"

The nobleman was now so far from the desperate tear-merchant that the boy's last cries were all but lost to the sounds of the city. The kid was new to the street and if he didn't soon fall in with one of the many organized rings of counterfeiters and con artists who worked in tandem to move their merchandise, he'd undoubtedly end up like so many others in the Ascendant Court, picking pockets to turn a profit from even the most discerning of customers. Those with experience working the God's Market knew not to waste their time with this particular nobleman, either as a customer or a mark.

Lord Synarr arrived in the city only six months ago, and since then he has walked the avenue every morning to gaze upon the Starstone Cathedral. At first, he was swarmed by kids hawking sacred items and protective talismans, but over time, they learned not to bother. Lord Synarr never spared even a single copper for any of their wares, he never once inspected their goods. He only diverted his attention from the Starstone Cathedral at the end of the Avenue of Hopefuls for the hopefuls themselves—those adventurers, demagogues, and zealots ambitious (or foolhardy) enough to plan their own run on divinity.

In a bid to prove their worthiness, most set up in one of the God's Market's many empty stalls and proselytize to what small audience they can wrest away from their competition. Some preach a message that speaks to a particular listener, or are charismatic enough to enthrall the crowd with their pageantry, and convert real followers from among the masses. On any given day a half-dozen or more hopefuls line the avenue, preaching their new faith, offering indulgences for coin, or performing rituals to prepare themselves for their journey.

For his first few weeks in Absalom, Lord Synarr stopped at each one as he made his way down the avenue, listening to the articles of the hopefuls' soon-to-be faiths before stoically moving on. The enigmatic noble no longer tarries before such aspirants, but he listens carefully to their tirades as he walks past, sometimes even smiling smugly to himself when a hopeful exhibits particular skill at capturing the crowd's attention.

Today, Lord Synarr witnessed a Keleshite trade prince offering a golden scabbard to Golinarth, the hulking hopeful who always wears a wooden skeleton mask and claims to have come back from the dead to become the god of second chances—one more rube offering wealth for miracles that would never materialize. A few yards further down the avenue, Ryni the Jest, a prankster hoping to become a god of mirth, gave the stern noble an unreciprocated wink of acknowledgment before turning his attention back to the butt of his public ridicule. The lord had his suspicions that the clown never actually intended to attempt the Test of the Starstone, but was simply amassing followers to start his own cult of personality.

A half-orc woman with a lilting accent offered Lord Synarr a score of rings, pendants, and bracelets tied to a velvet pillow. "Welcome back, my lord. Taking the test today?"

The noble didn't flinch, continuing his leisurely stroll toward the cathedral without a second glance in the merchant's direction.

"I got a new one, I did. Lets you walk on air." Her arm shot toward the end of the avenue like an arrow loosed from a hunter's bow. "Fttt—straight over the pit!" Recognizing that her daily pitch to her regular "customer" would have the same results today as it had the last six months, she turned her attention seamlessly to a wide-eyed gnome wearing Mwangi fashion to Synarr's left. "How about you, chum?"

Lord Synarr doubted any of the woman's jewelry was even magical, much less powerful enough to help someone cross the yawning expanse that separated the Starstone Cathedral from the surrounding city. Some fool, he was sure, would slip the ring on and dive headfirst into the abyss, cursing the merchant the whole way down. His dark eyes twinkled at the thought. One more shrine for the cathedral of the Failed, if even that.

Finally arriving at the edge of the chasm, Lord Synarr stopped for a moment and looked at the ancient temple. He was not the only one to hesitate near the precipice, and he had noted other regulars with their own routines in his time performing this daily ritual. Very few of them had lasted longer than a month or two, either giving up on their hopes of godhood or having perished in the attempt. Lord Synarr would be neither distracted nor a failure; he had one shot, and he would only attempt it when the time was right.

The robed lord turned to the left and walked around the chasm, the same route he took every day.

As he walked, his gait embodying both purpose and tranquility, Lord Synarr's thoughts turned to the temples adorning the grand plaza surrounding the pit. Iomedae and Cayden Cailean, two of the four whose apotheosis occurred mere yards away, had monuments here, built by their faithful as testaments to their success. A bridge spanned the chasm between each temple and the Starstone Cathedral, a physical manifestation of the gods' connection to the Starstone through which they attained divinity. The ascended god Norgorber, second after Aroden to pass the test, was far too secretive to put his temple out in the open. Those, like Lord Synarr, who studied the Starstone Cathedral could guess in which direction Norgorber's temple lied from the alignment of the third bridge, which appeared to point toward nothing in particular.

Lord Synarr ended his circuit of the Ascendant Court each day before the ruined fourth bridge across the mighty chasm. The missing span once pointed to the city's great temple to Aroden, who had raised the Starstone from the ocean depths along with the entire Isle of Kortos and in so doing captured his own spark of divinity. Though the bridge and even Aroden himself are gone, the temple still stands, now serving as the Chelish embassy. Despite the addition of the infernal insignias of House Thrune, Lord Synarr could still make out symbol of Aroden's eye that was once emblazoned above the grand entry, a negative outline in old dirt and moss.

The noble ended his daily stroll here to remind himself of his own mortality. While Lord Synarr welcomed the dignity and experience the gray in his hair and the lines at the corners of his eyes indicated, he could too easily allow the comforts afforded by his vast wealth distract him from the unwelcome truth that unless he passed the Test of the Starstone, he too would die. Though Aroden, god of humanity, may have died, Lord Synarr would not, he told himself.

His gaze turned from the repurposed Arodenite temple toward the towering cathedral at the city's heart. From this vantage point, he didn't see the gulf separating him from the home of divinity, and the sights and sounds of the bustling metropolis fell away. With the focus of an owl trained on its unsuspecting prey, he was aware only of the Starstone Cathedral and the power within. And just like every other day, he said one word, quietly to himself, before turning and walking back to his stately manor and the day's extravagances.

"Soon."

Jason Bulmahn
Director of Game Design

Now that we've concluded our Iconic Evolutions video series, I'm sure all of our readers are eagerly awaiting news of what exciting content we'll be sharing on Tuesdays going forward. Have no fear, brave Pathfinders, for I've got you covered!

Starting next week, hot on the heels of what's sure to be the best PaizoCon yet, we'll be showing the first of the new regions of the Pathfinder setting as presented in the Lost Omens World Guide, coming out on August 1. These 10 meta-regions are geographically contiguous and thematically linked sections of the Inner Sea region, each intended to be a bit more accessible to new players and Game Masters than the previous 40+ nations presented in the Inner Sea World Guide.

Cartography by Rob McCaleb

In addition to new groupings of neighboring nations, we've also updated the "status quo" of the setting to incorporate the effects of the past 12 years of adventures. We'll share a few of these changes every Tuesday until August, giving you a glimpse of the state of the world in 4719 AR and beyond. Don't worry, though, we'll do our best not to spoil past APs for those still finishing up their First Edition campaigns, and we'll leave plenty of reveals for August when you can read the full book yourselves.

Illustration by David Alvarez

For fans of the Iconic Encounters series of flash fiction we've tied to the weekly Iconic Evolution videos, we'll be continuing that with a piece starring Fumbus on Thursday of this week, and then continuing the flash fiction trend with a new series beginning next week: Tales of Lost Omens. These pieces are slightly longer than James Sutter's Iconic Encounters, but are still closely tied (as best we could) to an epic piece of art from the forthcoming Lost Omens World Guide. Fans of past Pathfinder Tales novels will be happy to know that we've gotten some of our most prolific authors to return for this series, so stay tuned!

Let us know in the comments or at PaizoCon this weekend what you've thought of the Iconic Evolutions, Iconic Encounters, and other preview content we've featured over the last few months here on the blog. We've been really pleased with the level of engagement on both series so far, and hope that varying the format a bit will keep things fresh and exciting for the coming months.

I've got lots of PaizoCon preparation to get to, so I'll wrap this up, but I look forward to seeing everyone at the con and then showing off our first region next week. Until then, Pathfinders, may your wayfinders always point toward adventure!

Mark Moreland
Franchise Manager