The faeries of the forest were invisible to men, but were as plain as the sun to small creatures and growing things. They helped maintain order in myriad ways — by gently reminding the lilies to bloom, by mediating disputes between the mushrooms and beetles, by...
Thanos the Immortal was King Nimoth XII’s favorite captain, as he had been for his father and his father’s father. Thanos was renowned for his loyalty, his leadership, his skill with an axe, and above all his very great age. Leading several generations of...
When Asatchaq held her daughter for the first time, she saw in the infant’s blue eyes a calm and endless sea, brimming with life. She named her Sedna, after the old woman of the sea, and told her sisters that the child would one day become the tribe’s...
If ever a place existed where the birth of a half-god might go unnoticed, it was among the aeries of the Thelara. Amorous liasons were commonplace among the frolicsome air-nymphs — if a child should ever wonder about the identity of her father (which never...
Among his fellow Night Walkers, Erebus was called “the Insatiable One.” To his servants, he was known as “Erebus the Decadent.” His victims called him “Monster,” which, though accurate, seemed to him to lack a certain flair. To Lord...
In the Winter realm of the Vinlings, Hrundel Lightbearer was born to Queen Frythia Fair Frost. Messengers brought word of the birth to King Hungarling, who had been away from his hearth for seven years, adventuring with his army beyond the Northern Frontier. Returning...
It was after a sandstorm, while the survivors of the caravan searched the dunes for signs of their camp, that Saam-el Harra came upon a strange book in the sand. Nothing was written upon its black cover, and when he knelt to pick it up, it felt many times heavier than...
Three generations of open war between the Vlemish in the south and the Plenor in the north had wrecked the once-fertile hills of Belrond. Battle-lines waxed and waned like sea-waves, wiping clean the landscape and driving its inhabitants to seek furtive shelter in...
