Author Archives: (Not actually a Lady) Ruthless

Elsdeth heard of the iron champion long before he arrived in the kingdom, his reputation a bard’s song on the wind. He had many names—the Black Giant, the Forged Knight, Scourge of Warriors, Wolf Lord–but the Armoured Death was what most folk called him, and as Elsdeth knew him thenceforth, until she learned of hisContinue reading “The Armoured Death and The Dragon Obsidian I: Parting As Friends”

There was a room in the convent of Saint Odilia that was never used, or so Sister Emily had been told. The door had been locked for years, the key mislaid by a novice, its innards—dust-clad, ridden with dun-legged spiders—long forgotten, as many such chambers were in the labyrinthine bowels of the nunnery. Emily mightContinue reading “Forgotten”

They would die together, the Preacher-King had said, and rise again as children of God, washed clean of the filth and sediment of human sin. But Ruth alone had risen, and the others were dead, still, their bodies strewn like flower clippings across the floor of the Chapel, and in the fields beyond where theContinue reading “Together”

I spread my daughter’s ashes on the wind, the grey of her a sand in the white of the sky, then she was gone again. There hadn’t been much of her to burn. My Ma had said it was a blessing, of a kind, when I had bent and bled and screamed for the loss.Continue reading “Strange Folk”

It was always wet in the Dark Place, although it hadn’t rained for a very long time. Victor only knew this because when it did the walls ran with foul water, which dropped down onto the gurney in a slow, sporadic rhythm, a gentle torture, ghosting his dreams with its patter. His eyes since theContinue reading “The One Who Kept Him There”

I’d gotten the splinter in church, of all places, pressing my hand against a pew. My mother had pressed me into joining the choir, and I hated every sanctimonious minute of it, shrilling the virtues of a God I didn’t believe in. I’d sit numbly in my seat, counting panes of glass as vibrant asContinue reading “A Stigmata”

Once upon a time there was a prince as ruthless as he was beautiful, whose callous acts forced his parents to lock him away in a chamber deep under the palace so that he may never assault those above. This decision was not made easily, for the Prince was so charming and fair of faceContinue reading “The Prince and Winter Rain- a fairy tale”

The sun ate the sky as if it had starved for a millennium, cutting the afternoon into slithers of topaz semi-darkness. “I will not kill a dragon,” said the Prince, to the elf-witch, as they approached the cavemouth by the sea. “If that is what lies here, then we will leave this quest to someContinue reading “The Brackish Lord”

The villagers had told the Prince that there was a tower, and indeed there was, a phallic spike of black stone cocooned in crimson thorns. It thrust up from the valley at the bottom of the great hill like a clenched fist, a silhouette in the rain. The Prince, whose name was Sy, put aContinue reading “The Prince And The Fortress”

The witch in the well would take your life for a coin, or so everyone in the village used to say. As a boy Jack hadn’t believed it, filing the story away with Bloody Mary and Jenny Greenteeth, and every other urban legend he could think of. But now he was twenty-eight years old andContinue reading “Lucky Penny”