The scent of crisp leaves floated across the bar room, carried by the autumn breeze through the open doorway. For a moment, the room fell silent as the patrons paused their conversations and looked towards the figure standing framed by moonlight in the doorway. As the figure stepped into the interior, his haggard and weary face illuminated by the torchlight, the room lost interest and returned to their own business.
The man scanned the room for familiar faces and, finding none, headed over to settle in at the end of the bar. The bartender grabbed a fresh mug from the under bar shelf, sauntered over to the old man, and asked “what will you have?” while placing the mug in front of him.
The old man glanced up from the light coat he had just placed on the stool beside him and looked first at the empty mug before him and then at the figure behind it.
His eyes widened as they traced upwards along the massive figure that towered over him. Arms like carved marble and as thick as tree branches crossed absently over the bartender’s chest. Their head cocked to the side, dislodging a stray ringlet of auburn hair tucked behind their ear as their bun brushed against the ceiling, and a sudden flash of impatience darkened the hazel eyes that shone out from their handsome face.
“Well?”, they asked, fixing their hair, then added a conciliatory “or do you need a few minutes to get your bearings?” The old man simply nodded and looked downward awkwardly.
“Fair enough,” the bartender said. “When you’re ready, just give me a shout.” They grabbed the mug and returned to the other end of the bar, stooping on their haunches to carefully stash the mug back in its place on the shelf. As they rose to their feet, the crystal blue gaze of a young woman seated a few stools down caught the bartender’s eye. The woman smiled gently and tilted her head and looked past them, gesturing towards the other end of the bar.
The bartender, following the woman’s gaze, turned around just in time to see the old man dash to the door, fling it open and rush back out into the night beyond.
“That was awkward”, the woman said with a soft laugh that filled the space between them with more disappointment than mirth.
The bartender shrugged. “It’s fine,” they said, grabbing a bottle from the shelf and topping off the woman’s drink. “You get used to it after a while, you know?”
The woman nodded and lifted her glass to her lips, taking a small sip of the dark liquid within and winced slightly as the drink all but evaporated in her mouth before hitting the back of her throat.
“You shouldn’t have to, though,” she said. “People should be used to you by now.”
Pouring themselves a drink as well, the bartender lifted the tumbler to their mouth and threw the drink back, basking in the smoky effervescence the liquor left behind.
“Fuck yeah they should be,” they said. “There’s more bresians around here now than there’s been in decades. You’d think that would make it easier to blend in.”
They shrugged. “No such luck, I guess.”
The woman smiled again. “Someone as exquisite as you would have more luck trying to blend into the sunset.”
The bartender laughed. “Wow. That’s a new record for you, Amara…cut off after two drinks. You’re really starting to work up a tolerance for the hard stuff, aren’t you?”
The old man stood trembling in an alley beneath a torn awning and stared across the ramshackle street at the front doorway of The Golden Satyr. His eyes burned beneath his bushy white brows. His teeth grit and ground together, filling the darkness around him with sandy squeaking that carried further than it should. He gripped the soot covered beam that held the awning aloft and squeezed, splintering the rotted wood.
As the roadway and sidewalks began to fill with workers leaving their shifts at Ebonriver’s ironworks, the old man sank deeper within the confines of the alley. He released a deep sigh and walked deeper into the maze of alleyways of the South Ebonriver ghetto, whisps of glamour dripping away into the shadows as his disguise fell away, abandoned just as his recruitment mission had been. He removed the enchanted wooden mask from his scarred face and stuffed it into the satchel that hung opposite the hilt of his sword.
Guntyr Skangual, the captain of the Nine Devils Army, wasn’t sure if this evenings discovery was a gift or a curse. He would have to cross this establishment off of his list of sources of bodies for the meat grinder, but at least he had found the monster responsible for nearly killing him three months ago.
He was already playing a dangerous game with the Sons of Osman by not leaving after the Founder’s Day massacre. But the men and women ultimately behind that disaster of social engineering thought too small. There was much more to be done to reveal the truth behind the lies the Ordis Librum sold the masses, and it would take more than pageantry and theatre to wake them to it.
The overzealousness of the bresian and her friends proved to be a useful – if unexpected – tool during the summer. There was no reason for them, he reasoned, not to take the blame for the next part of his plan as well.
And if he wrangled a bit of revenge out of their involvement?....well, that would suit him just fine…
As the main room of The Golden Satyr began to fill, and its cozy silence began to give way to the raucous camaraderie of the overworked, Amara Paganus excused herself from her perch and headed to the room she and Ailbhe shared above the establishment’s kitchen.
It was small and cramped – especially for her towering companion – but set far enough away from the bar room itself to be relatively quiet and, above all else, affordable. The lodgings were a far cry from the comforts she enjoyed at her family home on the outskirts of Hemanria, or even in her dorm room on the grounds of the seminary within the walls of Ebonriver, but it was a functional space to lay her head and free of their implied obligations and unspoken judgements.
Three months since her resurrection, Amara had still not spoken to her family. Nor, she was saddened to admit, had she any intention of doing so. It had taken her weeks to acclimate fully to the circumstances of her rebirth, and in that time she imagined that her parents and siblings had come to terms with their loss. It didn’t seem fair to them to have had to process all of that for no reason.
In all honesty, she was no longer the same person she was. At least, she was no longer the person she had pretended to be. Frankly, she wasn’t quite sure who she was anymore, but she was certain it wasn’t the perfectly pious sister and daughter they would remember her as. Everything she had kept hidden from them and suppressed within herself – all the anger and doubt and desire – seemed to her to be “Amara’s” truest self.
So that was who she would learn to become.
She glanced out the window into the alleyway below her window, almost as an afterthought, some remnant of modesty lingering from her upbringing, and – seeing no one – drew the rough cloth of the makeshift curtain closed and undressed. Naked, she knelt to the floor and raised her arms towards the sky, her head tilted back and her eyes closed in silent meditation. Goose pimples rose from her bare skin as her body was replenished by the caress of divine energy. It’s cool, earthen dampness, like freshly dug soil soaked in morning dew, covered her, filling her with an indescribable tranquility.
Her soul was washed in eternal stillness. The experience was the complete opposite of the rituals of communion she practiced before dying. Where once she felt like a tiny speck in a burning white sea of endless creation, now her connection was infinitely more intimate, like an elysian embrace so tight that not even light could escape. In these moments of submission, the borders and boundaries between her and everything fell away, making everything as important or unimportant as the moment allowed.
Refreshed and renewed, Amara rose and pulled her robe – the same one she was resurrected in – from her chest at the foot of the bed, covered herself, and lay down.
Her intention to wait for Ailbhe to come up for the night, so that they could discuss their plans for tomorrow, gave way to the softness of the mattress, the chill of the thin fabric of her robes, and the stillness within her. Within moments, Amara was asleep.
The disembodied spirit in borrowed, muck encrusted flesh lay defeated of the floor of the strange temple, but in truth it was in far better shape than the people that surrounded it.
One spoke, naming it, and in so doing, bound it to its purloined rotted flesh.
The spirit thing, Phaedra, made a sound that was either weeping or laughter or perhaps both. The namer continued to speak, giving a eulogy of sorts. Or a benediction. One of the two, the dreamer wasn’t sure which. The details slid; clashing, merging, drifting apart to congeal into some amalgamated nonlinearity of truth.
He experienced the memory of a broken, childlike doll thing cradled in his arms, its emerald eyes slowly flitting awake within the face, and felt a relief that welled behind the persistent urge to strangle it. He instead awkwardly set it to the ground and watched as it limped off to stand with the others.
In the center of the circle, a golden-haired, cloven-hoofed beast disgorged the bale fetch from its long straight spiraling horns. He watched it kick the body once for good measure.
The dreamer’s mind slid forward. It’s eye attempted to linger as it passed the silhouette of a marble statute, it’s once perfect face now cracked and blackened by ash and soot, and drifted towards a rent in the rock wall.
The rift behind the rock shimmered and pulsed with a negative light just a hair’s width past the visible spectrum. The rock wall began to ripple and sway, like curtains blowing in the breeze.
An owl screamed.
Startled, Dario bolted awake, tumbling off the narrow cot on which he had slept, onto the cold stone floor. A sliver of sunlight slipped through the barred window near the ceiling, stabbing his eyes just as it had pierced the darkness that had moments ago cradled him in his sleep.
He lay there, unmoving, finding within himself no real reason to rise, until a faint tink-tink of soft metal rapping against iron shredded the silence of the morning.
Dario shifted his head almost imperceptibly towards the source of the sound, hoping to not give away that he was awake. Standing at the bars of his cell, idly tapping his ring against the bars, an impeccably dressed man, all of three feet tall, waved, a disquieting almost predatory smile stretched across his face.
“Shit, son. You’re a hard man to find, ain’t you?”, the man mocked. Dario rolled over slowly, twisting to push himself upright. He immediately noticed that even seated he dwarfed the tiny figure that gazed at him. He watched as the man absently examined the bars, running his hands slowly up and down the cold iron as he stared. His smile widen, barely fitting his wizened face, as faint blue arcs of light cascaded across his fingers.
“Managed to get yourself locked up real good, didn’t you?”, the little man said. “That’s a damn shame, clever fella like you, cut off from the one thing that makes him special.”
Dario scoffed. “Clever fellows like me tend to have more than one trick up their sleeves. It’s what makes life interesting. Who are you?”
The little man split the stillness with a deep bellowing laugh which seemed to emerge from a chest far larger than his own.
“’Who’! That’s pretty funny!”
The little man closed his eyes with a sigh as the smile disappeared from his face. He turned unceremoniously and walked away from the cell, clinking his ring against the bars as he passed.
“The big man ain’t to thrilled with you playing both sides against the middle, kid,” he called back. His voice seemed to come from a distance farther than he tiny legs could have possibly carried him.
“Time to stop pussyfooting in here and start paying your dues.”
The cell filled with daylight, as if a cloud had stretched and rose from its bed to start its day. Dario’s shadow spread across the floor, seeping through the iron bars, and settled itself on the wall across the hall. For a moment it seemed to flicker, as if dancing to a song only it could hear. It stopped the moment he stood, taking its proper place back on the floor.
Dario smiled.
George L. Stewart © 2026