For The Late Evening Crowd (UK Edition)

For the late evening crowd (UK edition)

My eBook - Crow Eater - Chapter One: Little Lynchpin - is available for download on ISSUU.com now!

Its here, its free, and its rather damn, sexy if i’m being honest. 

It feels so fulfilling to finally have this see the light of day after all of these hours of pampering and stressing over details. All feedback and comments are welcome, as  I want this project to be a success, and for my readers to receive my best work. 

So, if you like reading fantasy, or about strange worlds of malice and wilderness or merely just like my writing and want to see more of it, then please do check out the eBook here. It is free, it will always be free, and it is available for download on ISSUU.com.

And most importantly, enjoy

Pixie x

Last week I went to a new city for a competition over the weekend. On the second day, a homeless man approached my friends and I to try and sell us this large, mustard-yellow Buddha statue and some packets of flower seeds. We refused the offer, but I can’t help feeling like we were some level 1 adventurers and just stupidly ignored the DMs side quest and sick magic items.

Sunday Respite - Unconventional and Magical Weapons for an Unconventional and Magical World

A warrior is a warrior, no matter for what weapon they work with.

Warriors of steel, of blades, of words, of law, of faith, of bow and string, judgement and patience, shield and hammer - all fulfill their duties within the ranks. For when time peace comes to pass and power swells, war will come. When it does, you will not grow petty over the fashion of the equipment brought to bare against the onslaught. You will hide and pray that whatever warriors there are, will fight well and true to protect all that is good in your world.

That said, some people just can’t be normal and have to put together their own strange contraptions to spill blood and crush bone. These warriors are a fearsome creed, for their unpredictability squanders the tacticians and sends untamed forces into disarray. Often, a successful first attack will be all it takes to win a war, and what better element to success than that of surprise?

So, go forth, my wild lovelies, and take whatever scatter-brained scatter-shot or brain-dead brain-beater you can get your hands on. It may not work, and it certainly won’t be perfect, but on that rare occasion that it does, kingdoms will fall.

Cashier’s Penny-Slot Rifle

To the majority of sane people, this mechanism is surely nothing more than a cube of wood with a crooked tube of tin protruding from its front. The box has a circular hole cut into its top and a crutch-like stock worked into the frame. Into the hole are fed stacks of coins, whereupon they are chewed up by some growling mechanism of gears and pistons. Once a small trigger on the stock is squeezed, the weapon launches forth a wicked barrage of twisted coins and silver shrapnel to chew through flesh and bite into bone. The weapon barks like a bag full of lead cans when it fires and rattles like one too. The motion of it all could easily dislocate a shoulder. Luckily, its the unfortunate buggar on the receiving end that has the more costly interaction of the evening, regardless for the currency dispensed.

Never-Ending Arrow

Only one of the Never-Ending Arrows remains unnotched and undrawn, safely tucked within glass casing, pillowed by lavender linen, hidden beneath lock and key. This is for good reason. Once upon a day gone past, there were dozens of these nefarious little devils, brought to being by some astrologically-influenced fletcher-turned-madman, caught under a pale star’s shine. The Never-Ending Arrow, once fired, cannot be stopped. It cuts through the world like a darting eel would knife through water. Brick, stone, flesh, wood, sea, whatever; there are no exceptions. The saving grace is that, depending upon the geological geometry of your home world, it will either shoot off into space, detaching from the earth’s curvature and becoming the horizon’s problem, or it will find the edge of the great, flat plain, and wire off into the abyss to cause mayhem thereon.

The Great, Man-Eating Cog-Hammer

A heavilly runed warhammer head purrs with a coursing battery kept somewhere within, smoke pluming out of the exhaust on the cap. The haft upon which it is beset carries the humming mechanism like a bull astride a pole-vault, barely sticking upright and swaying with a troubling violence. Set into a cavity upon the business end of the warhammer-head’s face are a pair of broad, toothy gears. They roll into eachother; a hungry, growling maw of iron and coal. When the warhammer is brought to bear upon the world around, the gears are set off to play. They chew into their contact point, pulling skin, steel, silk, and sanity up and away into the rolling, industrial basilisk, ripping and tearing with a dreadfully messy and blunt attrition, spitting the refuse out of a chute at the rear.

Carrion Crow’s Screaming Shield

Beaming brass, shaped into that of a snake’s open mouth - fangs, forked-tongue, and all. Strong, stoic, and utterly perfect in its manufacture: the shield is enough to cover a crouched man from top to toe. This, however, seems to not be enough to entertain the emblazoned, viperous visage it houses. The snake spins upon the shield face as if stuck within an open barrel, cast downhill. Upon command (a word known only to the possessor), the snake’s head will telescopically lunge forward, grasp at a target, snap with toxic teeth, and hoist the victim back with the force of an elephant’s charge, for more personal interactions.

Sword?

Sword? refuses to be named as anything else. Sword? cannot be renamed. Any attempt to re-identify the weapon results in the wordsmith, sculptor, poet, or playwright fumbling at her literature. She turns to the item’s owner, winced expression wearing heavy upon her face, and shrugs, surrendering to call the thing ‘Sword?’ just as all the others did before. This item is a sword, surprisingly. It has a twisted grip of wound leather strips, red over blue, a clean, white blade of a grassleaf’s curvature, and the trappings and tribulations of a well-decorated weapon. However, Sword? is notoriously uncooperative with new users. When first held, and for weeks after - even months and beyond - Sword? will droop in the hand as if it had died. It will fall loose and limp like a severed limb, refusing to turn turgid despite all interactions, pleas, and promises offered. Once Sword? trusts its new friend, it will begin to twist and turn under their command, worming as a dancer’s fabric would. The sword can fit as keys would into locks, activate latches through doorframe-cracks, and even slither down into their throat and return, unbloodied. It is supremely agile. The sword can grow deeply friendly and personal with their new friend, and may go on to follow their command without delay, forever until death.

Enjoy 

Pixie x

Sunday Respite - An Amassing of Aggressive And Absolutely Anti-Ostentatious Assassins

In war, knowing is only half the battle. You can position your pieces all you wish, control the field down to the finest of grass blades, and have your little, black book brimming with a bevy of secrets held beyond human knowledge. However, the opposing face of this coin of conflict is resided over by one, solitary king, and he carries a keen blade in an iron fist.

The assassins of yore are painted with the romances of times gone by. Flawless grace. Effortless precision. The blessed foresight of a god and all her wisdom. A mere man looking upon the shadows she casts and the wounds she carves would swear upon his oaths that dread itself stalks the hallways, knife in hand. He cannot comprehend the machinations behind such brutality, for the trials of its efficacy are all too alien for him to even dare approach.

When one conjoins perfect knowledge with equaling execution, worlds will fall.

Fear the assassins.

Phantom Doppelgänger

Behind the late mayor’s daughter’s eyes shines a fear far truer than the wildman had ever witnessed amongst the outerlands between towns. She smiles with a weakness, every gesture as distant as her speech is hollow. She even walks as if pursued from table to cupboard by her own shadow. It is something the wildman saw only once before, a fleeting glimmer in his brother’s eyes as he bled out upon the turf of a slain hydra’s nest. His bounty-hunter friend has not yet seen it. Instead he downs his third glass of cranberry, each one he poured himself. Every body that he had seen was a clean kill, dead before it hit the ground. He would not be able to recognise a walking corpse if it was not rushing for his neck, rotten down to the gizzards. No. This woman is dead. A dead end? A dead lead? Whatever she is, this chain of witnesses, each last to see the former alive, ends with her, one way or another. The barbarian draws his finger through the dust upon the table as the young woman feigns business across the room, watching over her shoulder. Noone has lived in this house for days. He pads his companion’s thigh and slyly reaches for the hand axe beneath the table.

Thousand Legs

How, pray tell, could you convince another to act on your behalf? What if this ‘act’ is a spot of cruel and bloody work. The Thousand Legs took to this question ages ago, and their answer has not staled under nuanced approach just yet. In the dead of night, under dusty moonlight, the Thousand Legs centipede worms down a sleeper’s throat and goes to work. The parasite replaces half of the poor fellow’s spine and proceeds to pilot him about like a puppet, tendons and nerves instead of string and twine. The Thousand Legs often take these hosts as their payment once their jobs are done, walking their disguises about until their usefulness reaches an end. For a Thousand Legs never leaves just one corpse. There is always a second, treading about, seemingly blissfully unaware of what creature is coiled up beneath their skin.

The Hoods

Draped in thick, black cloaks upon their grey, boneless forms, are roving packs of killers for hire. The care not for comfort, and eat whatever crawls their way through the wilderness or catacombs. They are patient, ever-present, and are quicker than a loose rumour about the city streets. One arm is a hulking, heavy limb that slams and whips just as a hooked squid would at underwater prey. The other ends in a pincer of sorts, barbed upon the inner curve, shaped like an open manacle upon a far longer and thinner length of pulpish flesh. With this arm it can not only choke the life from a victim, but pull the dead back upon their limbs and walk them ahead in front of them. If you ever see a man, lumbering out upon heavy boots, a cloak of ink shouldered upon his back and over his face, leading a mangy dog down lonely streets on a grey leash, promise me nothing other than you will turn and run.

Mimicker

The Mimicker is a master craftsman. He sells chairs and rugs of olive and gold, burgundy and oak, gold and copper. His shop is quiet, save for the chiseling and tinkering he does behind the counter. No customers. No apprentices. Nothing but work. But when a customer does come by, they come alone, through the dead of an early morning’s haze, and carry enough coin to last a carpenter two years. The Mimicker sells them his chairs, each one loaded with a venomous needle within the seat, laced with enough toxin to turn blood to acid within the veins. He offers his rugs, fixed with an adamantine web throughout the thread that coil and crush bone down to papershreds when triggered by a wayward step. Doors are his most popular craft. So many opportunities for a man to put the art of death to work within something so naturally ominous as an opening portal. He has his standards though; his blood-soaked lines in the sand. One jealous and heart-broken nobleman once commissioned a boy’s rocking horse for his nephew - revenge for some family money that would never head his way otherwise. That rocking horse nor its owner never made it out of the city. It exploded into shearing splinters, halfway down the cobble road outside the shop in the nobleman’s hands before he could even think of his inheritance.

Crowd of Knives

Is there a performer whom you hate beyond words? A bard, perhaps? Maybe a preacher or poet? Is she getting too big for her boots? Does she need cutting down to size? Imagine the look upon her hopeless face the day she practices her craft before more people than ever before. Hundreds of cheering, smiling faces. Families out walking their dogs, a young couple enjoying a day free from work, a spinster selling roses now affixed with the beauty of what she sees and hears. All in awe of the wonders of the art before them. She would too be beyond words, wouldn’t you agree? Happy beyond hope and gleeful without fear, all until the hundreds of onlookers swarm about her feet, encircling her from all sides, their smiles turning to wicked glares, baskets of roses and dog leashes dropped for straight razors, kitchen knives, and switchblades. They then disperse, running off towards the guards, shouting high and haughty about the murderer that just fled the gory scene. They each offer wildly inaccurate and conflicting tales about the event without a single shared detail between two before each quietly leaving town within the week, never to be seen in the region again.

Enjoy.

Pixie x

The Six Most Powerful Forces in Any Game of D&D

Luck

Gods

Magic

Spite

Sass

Sarcasm

Sunday Respite - Cavernous, Ravenous Taverns of World-Wide Renown

‘Light the hearth, straighten the benches, and tap the kegs; we have a night to remember on the horizon, just threatening to be forgotten! We fist-hearted patrons of these merry houses should hold a pride at our chests for every cask and tankard emptied under this roof, and every other alike it.

So, adventurers, nomads, way-walkers and wanderers alike - to all the lost and found that my carrying voice can meet - know that tonight our doors are open wide; our tables soaped; our bards well-paid. We welcome all that can hear the call for celebration and come to meet our kin with strong, dark drinks and rancorous cheers.

May the darkness beyond the walls know of our noise - the songs of our familial might! For, until the sun rises, and even perhaps beyond that, we shall sing so loud that the sky may break and all the stars may descend to join in our harvest and feast.’

Here are three taverns from across the land, no shared soil between a single pair. They are worlds apart, yet share a common faith - maybe even a certain spirit, or two.

South Coast Bathhouse

Low set amongst the heights of the marble and granite metropolis around and above lies a single-storied structure. Its face is lined with dozens upon dozens of pillars holding up the flattened roof, and rows of squared windows of inch-thick, lead-lined glass that warp and wave perceptions, each shining with candlelight. From beneath the front doorway crack and every opening left upon its latch pours a sweet smelling tide of milk-white steam. It collects in pools against the walls, waterfalling down the approaching steps like cream from an ill-poured flask. Swaying above the door is a painted sign denoting a squat, smiling lady with rosy cheeks in a brass tub, one foot raised in laughter. Inside, where would otherwise sit tables and stools, are dozens of stonewalled baths with coasters floating atop the brothing waters, enchanted to never spill their hold. The smell of floral incense fills the heavy air. Patrons and guests walk about with towels around their waists and chests, smelling of roses and lavender. Trays of small liquor bottles rattle in their hands as they tread the slate floor and bristled carpets with bare feet toward their cheering friends.

All-the-Eyes-of-the-River

This tavern is open air; a wooden, crescent bar build upon the shallow stones of the city’s river basin. Revelers enjoy the cool waters running across their feet and the late-night swallow song as birds hunt and lash at the mayflies darting across the calm, placid surface. Spiced and honeyed drinks are heated in brass cauldrons above a cobblebrick furnace in the centre of the tables and benches. They are served in tall, crystal glasses of angular patterns by a pair of shaven-headed brothers dressed in the loose, light garments of afar priests and travelling holy men, yet they whistle and sing like the local sailors. Play fights are common in the waters. Boisterous challengers often wrestle about in the wet grasses of the river bank until one backs down and surrenders into buying the next round of golden, peppered ales for the gathered crowd.

The Maze

A peculiar, local legend - The Maze lies dead centre of the town, only a few steps downhill from the market square. It is built into a heap of exposed stone, and its front facing entrance is decorated with ever smoldering torch sconces and piles of false skeletons like the dungeons of folklore. Costumed guests in garish colours and hidden beneath hand-crafted masks swarm the doorway, holding painted glasses and luminescent necklace charms, printed with The Maze logo. A muscular titan of a minotaur holds the velvet rope shut to all but paying customers. The foyer is a wide, stone floor with a well-stocked bar opposite the entrance, manned by a jet-black Minotaur, twice as large as the doorwoman. To the left and right are dozens of narrow passages which sink away into the dark, all busy with dancing, happy people, pressed close against eachother. Every passage is flashing with dancing blooms of overhead light show displays, the walls echo with wild, heart-aching music and melodies. It is not uncommon for guests to get lost in the worming corridors and secret rooms that make The Maze such a tantalising conclusion to a midnight sprawl across town. Thankfully, the hosts know this place like the back of their bar cloths, and find all of the passed out patrons safely tucked away into warm, quiet corners for a restful sleep before they lock the place for the morning. Some regulars even have grown to learn some of the bar’s layout and can find their favourite hidey holes through memory alone. The hosts have even adorned these little cubbies with pillows and blankets for them if they like them.

Enjoy

Pixie x