Imagined Realities

​Lamplight caught the obsidian carriage window. ​Arthur leered at his own reflection, a tremor in his fingers betraying the perfect composure of his face. With a practiced, steady hand, he adjusted the collar of his coat. ​A single, treasonous tear slipped from the corner of his eye. ​He didn't wipe it away. Not yet. It burned a path down his cheek to his lips, and he tasted brine and sorrow. ​His eyes hardened into a cold resolve as he tore the white silken bow from his throat and let it fall to the dirt. In one graceful, calculated motion, he pivoted in his velvet sabatons and mounted the grand marble staircase. Lightning tore through the night sky, and in that brilliant flash, it betrayed bewildered hazel eyes on the other side. ​The flash vanished, and in the sudden dark, a man who saw nothing but himself continued a solitary ascent.

The Goliath's strength waned, his will a smouldering wick. A pillar of granite that once stood defiant now trembled, as he sank to his knees in the icy mud. And wept. Lashings of rain washed hot tears into the earth. A tiny ember ignited deep within his chest. Ex Nihilo. A will not his own, but altogether lovely and familiar warmed a heart of stone. A conquest, benign.

The table was a gnarled, monstrous thing. A girthy burgundy oaken titan, hacked from the base of an ancient Hearthwood. There was something strange and morose about celebrating life on something so dead, but this thought never occurred to Rootwarden Dwarves. The banquet was set. 11 courses prepared by each of the three dwarven families across the realm. Bristle-boar jerky, ale-braised oxtail, smoked troll tongue, iron-plate steak, pickled cave-moss, molten honey cake, ruby-beet stew, iron-skin potatoes, miners mash, cinder-squash pottage, and bloodberry chowder. This was served with pints, and pints, and pints, and pints of molten-stout and gravel grog, frothy strong ales that never stopped flowing. A few of the more seasoned drinkers favoured a potent homebrew called Mithril Moonshine, which as Borin Rockbrow, the village elixirist often said, "kicked like a mirth-ox on heat." The air was thick with the scent of smoked meats and fermenting ale, a heady aroma that clung to...

The dagger was the weapon of choice for the coward and the madman. The coward lurked clandestinely in the shadows, waiting patiently for his victim's weakest moment: sleep. When slumber took her, this craven fiend would unleash a flurry of strikes to the heart and head. If they favoured haste, a quick thrust to the jugular would suffice. It was bloodier, messier. But in the blackness of night it was all the same. Then he would slip away comfortably into the refuge of darkness. But the madman's methods were strange to the coward. He was a different beast. Danger was the madman's greatest ally. Safety his fiercest foe. There was no exploitation. No secrecy. No tricks. The madman didn't wait for the gloaming. He didn't tarry until nightfall so he could assassinate a hapless victim. His combatants weren't faceless, slumbering avatars. Nay, the madman thrived when the sun shone brightest. He knew that his opponents had souls, and he pined for naked encounters on th...