A dark, fantastical tale that is intended to unfold a paragraph, or thereabouts, at a time.
14 May 2021 2 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
Furtively studying the reclining pair of recondite monarchs, Umin is disquietingly reminded of Otts’ great dramatic tragedy, the Under Sublime. Of the mercurial goddess Sho and her unceasingly rapacious husband Shiil, engaged in amicable philosophic...
26 Apr 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
Pettiwren leads them along until the tumultuous tide of the Court recedes at last to something above a dull whisper. They cross pungent galleries of atrous wood-panel and silver-leaf, interrupted by bare pillars of onyx, snaking and sensuous, smooth...
23 Apr 2021 2 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
The sentries take up a waiting stance at their appearance, with the guarded ease of blooded soldiers. Short knives and slim, ragged-bladed spears at rest. Pyna drifts forward and utters a word unheard by Umin, prompting the nearer sentry to produce a...
21 Apr 2021 2 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
The gate soon shut once more against the crypt of the Paper God and its unresting dead. Then up, up along a relentlessly steep stair redolent with chalk and the sour sweetness of unknowable antiquity. For the first long while of their ascent, the sta...
19 Apr 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
Come Come Where other Unspeakables walk, Here There We will to The Stair. Umin rises painfully from the powdery dunes of violently disheveled particulate, and draws in a few gasping breaths through the covering thickness of his scarf. The air is pon...
12 Apr 2021 3 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
There is a fleeting tooth-rasp of particulate as the panel slips at last, shut. A sift of tumbling dust. A precarious creak as weight settles against the straining frame of the ladder. Umin hangs from a mouldy rung. Like a blind spider against the i...
7 Apr 2021 3 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
The man, in profile to Umin, blinks and scratches at a scruff of unshaven morning-beard. Rubbing sleep glumly from his eyes. Senic stares flatley at Pyna for a breath before acquiescing with a bob of his thinning top-knot. He ushers the pair into a...
5 Apr 2021 1 minute read 3 comments Jay Lonnquist
Pyna bends and sniffs like a hunting-beast at the tenderly-painted receptacles, balanced reverently. She is careful not to touch the immaculate shrine-plate, though her finger drifts towards the creamy contents of the curving bowl. There to hang fo...
3 Apr 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
The pair move out of the constrictive alley. Two shades drifting from the well guarded square abutting the Inn that are then fast swallowed by the tangle of masonry and meander. The air here tastes of perpetual petrichor. Where the cool fog from the...
31 Mar 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist
Umin clears the board, leaving a clatter of soiled plates. He then bathes. The warm, lemon-sweet water blackening in the basin as he assiduously scrapes days of chalky filth from his skin. Moving on to rifle through a pungent red cedar wardrobe. Eme...
