Hearsay Horizons

It's unfair. It burns me right up. You spend all this time takin this circutous route, lookin behind you all the time, dousin your light, checking with your gangmen to see you aint followed, and all for not. You get to your desination and fine the cops waiting there with them orange collars right at hand. Then's  when you remember that they got a precog the day before. << First       < Previous      Next >

There’s always a moment of confusion when I wake up, after the dreams drip away and before I remember the who, what, and where of being me. Sometimes it’s stressful, not quite remembering. Sometimes it’s a relief; depends on just what I’ve been doing, and what bills are due this week. I opened my eyes and saw the ceiling. I shouldn’t have been able to do that, not from my four-poster bed. Then, too, even if I could have seen my ceiling from straight above my bed, it was white, with dollar-store glow-in-the-dark stars clinging desperately to the chipped horsehair plaster. The ceiling here was sky blue.                  The eternal scent of coffee from the clothes thrown in my work hamper was missing, too. Something nicer, something… in its place was some scent, incense, something, that was almost polite enough to ask before approaching the nostrils. Then, too, there was a less... intangible... smell. Sweat. Clean sweat, not the smell of my s...

A short summary of the focal nations at play. Anything not listed here is probably as it was in 800 AD, give or take some magic. (The game! It's happening! So excited). al-Andalus: A large chunk of Hispania recently conquered by Muslim forces chased out of Arabia. The calcified social strata enhances rebellions and infighting amongst the Arabic elite, Berber grunts, and Christian natives. Arabia: The heart of a new golden age. A caliphate of scientific progress, trade, and inclusion striving to make new ties at the risk of alienating old allies both mortal and magic. Eastern Roman Empire: A realm of veiled threats and power struggles; the loss of Egypt ten years ago, current invasions, and humiliating losses have only worsened the infighting and political games at court. Egypt: An ancient land dominated by foreign powers until ten years ago, when pyramids blazed with sudden power and obelisks crackled with lightning. Now the gods and the dead seek to recreat...

Heroes run toward chaos and screaming. Less expected was the screaming running toward us. Men and women stumbled up the street; buildings like cliffs to either side funneled these victims and their tormentor toward us. A tentacle whipped forward through the throng to grab one young woman. It hauled her backward, and we lost sight of her. Here at the café the road broadened to permit street parking. The crowd thinned, permitting us a view as Chymera fell upon her meal.              She was nominally human, but her ceaseless partial transformations overwhelmed her features: ram's horns sprouted and then fell away; tails grew, and then retracted; a wave of fur displaced a sheen of scales that grew hard like armor plates; claws swelled on hands that became paw-like too late to prevent her fingers from splitting open; fangs distorted her mouth as she ate. Her hyena teeth chewed through the woman's upper arm, tearing through the meat as Chymera shook her h...

Dagon moved through the green-glass gate, where he left the humid warmth of the greenhouse for the direct heat of the markets and traded loam-soft footsteps, birdsong, and—murmurs and gasps that weren’t always the fountains—for the many-voiced mob of buyers and sellers. Kiosks, opportunistic merchants, and their prey thronged the white-brick road. They all squeezed themselves wherever the glass-fronted buildings gave them room. Most of the business owners longed to someday have space in one of these tall, respectable buildings, with their name above the door. Most of the pedestrians wanted to get out. Dagon moved to take a step, and then he paused.                The loam. Dagon stopped here, within the gate’s shadow. A human boy loitering with his little cart beside the gate moved up to kneel at Dagon’s side. Dagon lifted his feet as the boy’s cloth and brush required. He saw the boy’s hands still over their work on the fine, fine leather. He ...