Hireia freezes at the familiar voice behind her. She turns around slowly, pressing a palm to the wound running the length of her arm, revealed through the ragged rip in her bloodstained, dirt-mottled tunic.
"I'm fine." She tries for a reassuring tone, raisin her hands palms-forward as though warding off the concern of the woman speaking from her. "It's not my blood. Mostly....
Bees and blood, bees and cages, bees and honey, suffocating her, drowning her. The same woman, every time, facing away from her. Skira does not know her, does not know her name, but she knows she must get to her, she must. She touches the woman’s shoulder, and she turns. Her face is a cage, the bars adorned with strings of gore and honey and the last surviving th...
The National Art Museum had an entire exhibit dedicated to the paintings of Yvonne DeLac.
Three interconnected rooms bustling with visitors standing before tableaus of ruins and rivers, bloodied swords and rusted armor, rendition after rendition of human faces twisted with emotion. Soaring happiness, crushing grief, stony resignation and deepest desperation—Yvonne DeLac's paintings explored eve...
The people of Four Stands didn't like it when Elder Renka Alderan told war stories.
With others, it was an anticipated event. The whole community gathered around a flickering fire, leaning in close to the storyteller with shining eyes and smiling through his tales of epic charges and brave deeds and glorious victory.
But not Elder Renka.
With others, it was immersive in a way that brought sigh...
The ground was uneven beneath Theina’s feet, the product of both rocky terrain and rotting corpses. It was a strange combination, she thought, somewhere in the back of her mind, somehow corpses conjured images of smooth ground.
“What happened here?” she asked Garith beside her. He sighed, regarding the field and the bodies with hooded eyes.
“An epic battle was fought here, 300 years ago. This si...