Tag: fantasy

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Staff of the Red Sun

An illustration I did for my short story “Staff of the Red Sun”.

Egypt, 1942 AD

The limestone door ground over the gravelly earth as the diggers pushed it open. The grating noise would not have been the most pleasant for most men to hear, but for Friedrich von Essen, it was music to his ears. After untold weeks of watching these chattering Arabs gouge a pit out of the desert beneath the roasting sun, he had found it at last.

The thought of presenting this discovery to those fools back in Berlin made him smirk with glee. Even the Führer himself, eager as he was for any leverage in the war, had shown a bit of hesitance before sponsoring the expedition. Even if Friedrich ended up finding nothing inside this tomb, he had at least confirmed its very existence.

A faint yet acrid smell flowed out from the black depths beyond the doorway. The Arab diggers jumped back with startled shouts and whimpered among themselves, their normally bronze faces slightly blanched.

Underneath the howl of the wind, Friedrich thought he had heard a soft whisper. It must have been one of the dozens of men behind him, but it did make the back of his neck prickle.

“What do those inscriptions say, Professor von Essen?” Colonel Hermann Schmidt pointed to the string of hieroglyphs chiseled into the entrance’s lintel.

“Oh, those simply identify the tomb as belonging to Nefrusheri,” Friedrich said. “Why?”

The colonel’s tanned face had turned a shade paler as well. “I only wanted to make sure it wasn’t something like a curse.”

“Oh, don’t believe such sensationalist rubbish. Curses aren’t as common on Egyptian tombs as you think. You might find a few in tombs from the Old Kingdom, but that’s about it.”

“Fair enough, Professor. I would’ve expected a fearsome sorceress like your Nefrusheri would have something protecting her resting place.”

Friedrich glanced back at the darkness within the tomb. If the departed sorceress truly possessed the sort of power he sought, it would seem strange if she had not taken measures to defend it somehow. What those would be, he could not even guess.

On the other hand, he could not let fear and paranoia keep anyone away. Not when there was a war to win and a world to conquer.

“In case she does, bring your men over here,” Friedrich said. “We’ll go in together.”

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Blessing of the Moon

Faraji wiped the last speck of blood off his scimitar and held it up against the campfire’s light. Even after all the nicks and scratches it had collected over years of combat, it still shone with an almost heavenly brilliance. The inscriptions in its blade, written in cursive Aradyic, invoked the Moon’s blessing of strength towards whomever wielded the sword. Thus far it had never failed Faraji, and certainly not during his latest raid.

Around the fire, his warriors bantered, joked, and laughed with each other, as warriors across the world always did when resting at camp. They were all Kiswahans like himself, dark brown-skinned with off-white kanzu tunics and turbans over their black, tightly curled hair. In truth, their physical features differed little from the miserable heathens they had yoked and manacled to one another in the darkness at the camp’s edge.

But those sad-eyed idolaters, naked but for loincloths of woven bark and jewelry fashioned from cowrie shells and dinosaur teeth, were not lovely to look at. Even the nubile young women in their ranks had their skin blemished with hideous scarifications of pagan significance. They may have been kin to the Kiswahan race by blood, but the old superstitions they clung to made for a very different, barbaric culture.

A faint yet high-pitched cry, almost like some kind of flute, whistled from the black depths of the surrounding rainforest. Even with the nocturnal humidity and the campfire’s warmth, Faraji could not deny the chill prickling his skin from that eerie noise. He had made a whole career of penetrating these jungles from the east, braving an immense variety of beasts and heathens alike. But never in all his previous ventures had the Kishawan slaver heard such a sound.

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The Peril of Kush

For the first time in his life, Teriahi laid one foot upon the summit of Amun’s Mount. His leg wobbled under the burden of nervous shame the instant his leather sandal contacted the sandstone. Only royalty and priests could set a single step atop this ancient plateau, the first outcropping of land the Creator had drawn up from the floodwaters of primordial chaos. Any mortal commoner, even a captain of the armies like himself, would profane this hallowed ground with his mere presence. So had maintained generations upon generations of tradition.

Nonetheless, desperate times called for desperate measures. And seldom before had times been so desperate for the people of Kush. Amun, in all his divine wisdom, must have understood that. And indeed, despite Teriahi’s worst fears, the creator god had not dissolved his leg or inflicted any other punishment for his trespassing. He sighed in relief.

His soldiers marched behind him, some equipped with gleaming bronze spears and ox-hide shields, others with the bows and quivers of arrows that were the pride of the Kushite nation. The hides of lions and leopards, the ruling predators of the desert, fluttered in the wind over their linen loincloths. They would need all the bravery of those beasts, and then some more, for the battle that awaited them.

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The Perfect Shot

Rain pounded like drumbeats onto the thatched roof of the bamboo observation tower. It must have been the seventh or eighth rainfall Sid Francis had seen over the first two days of his safari. Supposedly, this was what passed for the middle of the dry season deep in the Musiyinti country. Small wonder they called it the rainforest.

Sid swatted away at a mosquito which whined dangerously close to his face. Already the little devils had marred his pasty Kanuck complexion with a bombardment of red bumps, each and every one of them an itching reminder of his lacking the foresight to bring bug repellent. Or maybe he had simply been too cheap. Sid had already spent a third of his living on a suitable new camera and another third on reaching here from halfway across the world. It was too easy to gloss over a variety of important little details in that kind of hassle.

“Are they here yet?” Sid muttered as he continued to defend himself against the insect’s harassment with his bare hand.

His guide, a lithe Bayinti named Masengu, looked up from her handheld GPS to give him a disappointed frown. Her ebony-dark skin, though decorated with lines of traditional scarifications, remained fragrant with repellant and thus enviably unblemished by the bugs. Not to mention, the brief strips of bark-cloth she wore over her bosom and waist would have made for more comfortable attire in this humidity than the heavy khaki getup Sid had to put on.

“Ah, fuck.” Sid would have gotten out his pack of joints to smoke away the boredom, except he had no idea whether the scent of burning cannabis would attract or scare off the local wildlife. All he could do was continue to stand here on aching feet, watching for anything bigger than a colobus monkey to show up in the mess of foliage, mist, and shadow that was the surrounding jungle. And maybe glance at his guide’s curves a few more times from the corner of his eye.

On second thought, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

“Ever thought of a modeling career on the side, Masengu?” Sid asked, tapping a finger on his camera.

She thrust at him a glare almost fiercer than the tranquilizer rifle she had slung over her back. “You mzungu men are all the same.”

Sid laughed, not the least offended even if she had almost said the local word for white people like a slur. “It’s a compliment, trust me. A good shot of you would fetch as much as any tyrannosaur. Of course, I’ll split some of the profits with you, 50/50. What do you say?”

Masengu rolled her eyes with a smirk. “As long as you don’t ask me to pose nude.”

A deep rumbling groan resounded from the jungle. Except for the pulsing of his heart, every muscle in Sid’s body turned stiff as a rock from the surprise.

“They’re coming after all.” Masengu was looking at her GPS again. “It’s a whole herd. Get ready, and stay quiet.”

Bending his legs down at the knees, Sid held his camera to his eyes and peered through the lens. In spite of the mist and falling sheets of rain obscuring his view, he could make out the shaking and waving of vegetation down in the jungle understory. Not even the raindrops’ pattering on leaves and the tower’s roof could suppress the crackling of branches, or the rumbling and bellowing calls which made Sid quiver with every note.

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