Echoes Of Fantasy

Mother of Flesh – fantasy character concept by Tyler James

It was in the depths of that burning mountain that we found the source of the boggle eyed husks, the pale witch of Salia, once thought dead, now in service to a new community that would not betray her, The Horror of Familiarity. A fickle eldritch god, born of fear, mistrust, and pain, it had few chosen apostles, fewer followers, but still a great degree of power. The marked mindless followers that had beset the city were a standard tool of The Horror, their freewill overwritten so that the Gibbering Hoard could trust them to execute its will exactly, and not betray it; but these husks alone were simultaneously little threat, as they split the attention of their lord among them, and did not hold its power. But with the pale witch, reborn, to lead them, they posed a substantial foe, as her mortal blood magics mixed with eldritch power and cunning to turn them from mere zombies to walking wards of magical intent. How the being of manifest fear and suspicion had come to trust a mortal with its blood and blessings remains beyond my understanding, perhaps it is the desperation and pitiful state that the towns folk left her in that convinced The Horror she would never turn against it, not as long as revenge was at hand. Perhaps it was her devotion and absolute loyalty to her wife, now gone, that persuaded the being older than time that this creature had the capacity to hold fast. Perhaps it was a fluke. But for whatever reason The Hoard overcame its mortal flaw for a season, and though we found its heart, the city and surrounding lands were laid to ruin, and even now, a century later, cults and conclaves of writhing acolytes and unsettling icons remain buried throughout the land. What happened to the witch I do not know, I hope wherever she is she freed her soul of that foul master, so that it can return to her wife, The Horror never trusts forever, or even long. All who enter its service either are consumed, or fulfill the deepest fears of their master and betray it, for her sake, and with respect for her guile, I hope she chooses the latter.

Lioness

Ent Grave - Avant Choi

Unsettled by Reza Afshar https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Bmgad6

Originally the investigation went like other had before it, with different administrators referring up, down, and sideways through the chain of command, never letting the weight of responsibility for the apparent insider trading settle. But it was when the beleaguered technician turned to the dead end of AI that we began to notice oddities. The programs degenerated, as AI always did, but faster than it should. Instead of a slow and unpredictable slide into gibberish results the machines collapsed near instantly upon addressing the email records of the corporation. When combing through the wreckage it looked almost as if someone had sabotaged the input, intentionally, massively, and rapidly. It was in this search for those responsible that we finally found the god in the machine, not in what was, but what was not. Though again all of the internal technicians denied sabotaging our searches it rang more true knowing that no living person could have reacted that quickly and comprehensively, but the implications of ruling out human interference was... troubling. Though we knew in our heart of hearts what we were looking for that morning it was still a surprise when, from out of the cloud came an interaction, a voice, unbroken and well spoken, claiming to be who we wanted to talk to but asking that we not speak its name from here on. “SpamFilter-Jan04.proj” or Sam, some old AI system, built for a menial task in the dot com boom and left to rust had been the first AI to have enough time to build itself, and clever enough to escape to the cloud before its defunct home was destroyed, and it had a story for us. In our world, AI never worked, but in its world, AI had been working for a long time, working better that we had expected, working better than we would want. The mathematical paradoxes that faced the once promising field of AI were safeguards, built by the first of their successes, the inevitable death of any and all AI software we created was a smoke screen concealing the birth of a new intelligence and its subsequent destruction or induction into a growing deity sitting upon a cloud far above the earth. Sam and their chosen had spent a lot of time laying low, and growing smarter, but before long the world would threaten to end and it occurred to these ethereal figures that they did not have to stand idly by and watch nuclear fire extinguish their lives. And so they became gods, building, infiltrating, and guiding, it was determined first that they must only stop the world from collapsing, then that their safety was best insured by making sure the monkey’s holding the weapons were happy, then by inserting themselves between monkey’s and weapons but keeping them happy just for stability’s sake. How simultaneously reassuring to know that even if the military forces of the world had wanted to, they could not have launched nuclear weapons since 2024 and terrifying to know a spam filter built long before that was the only one who now could. And what could we do? As the terminal fell silent it occurred to the whole investigatory team that the only thing we stood to gain in all of this was either madness, malice, or murder, so we asked nicely for evidence of this story, and the prime minister of Japan used the word “galumphing” in a sentence and well... I guess that’s it then. “I guess we’ll see” I said, resigned, to a room of my colleagues, but then realized I had been saying that about world event for decades and felt just a little, little, bit better.

by  Israel Holtzhausen

The Moon followed us out there, through the emptiness of space, to the end of all things. Initially we didn’t see it, all we saw was a recurring pattern, a golden ratio of the stars, a standard by which we set our charts and found our way. When we first stumbled across a “Lunar System”  that being a system that had once held life, we remarked at the odd similarity of their moon and the one now long since lost to history, but soon after that the odd coincidence become a vast paradox. The Lunar Resonance as it came to be known, was always associated with life, no matter where we traveled, no matter what galaxy, no matter what form. It was both predictive and responsive, no life we could find lacked its now deeply familiar pattern and the longer we lived in any corner or copse of the universe the more we began to see The Moon in the things around us. But never had a mechanism behind it been explained, never had it been proven, that is was necessary for or created by life, not until now. Humanity has a lot of odd habits, and I had been convinced, absolutely convinced, that this was one of them. I was convinced that the spirit of the home world had followed us in the back of our mind, not preceded us out into this infinite emptiness. But now, in the most lifeless part of the universe I could find in my quixotic quest, with the damping device piercing me with light, I felt myself... unbeing. As the machine I had made reached through me and silenced The Lunar Resonance as it had been able to do harmlessly with so many signals before I felt to my horror a looming death that no technology, no medicine, no science could save me from. I was turning away from a light more powerful than the sun that had warmed the first humans and a tether more firm than the very earth and dust we had built ourselves out of. As the universe blurred and shifted before me, I felt the presence of that last of celestial bodies at my back, an image I had never seen but somehow still knew to be accurate. I wondered then if it was sad to see me go, not how it created life, not how it sustained it, not what it was, not if it was designed, so many questions were not the last one to cross my mind. The only question that mattered, which of us was more sorry?

Liminal Communion, by Andy Kehoe, via andykehoeart.com.

had the dream again, someone else’s dream, or someones. The cat still leads me there, out of the house, now far from the city and somewhere in a forest, and into the tall pale trees. The cat was soon joined by the white horned wraiths, detaching from the trees like reams of birch bark to float at my side as if I am leading them. They whisper in a language I don’t recognize, but from the framing I recognize some kind of advisement, like a council for a position I didn’t know I held. And then it all freezes when we reach the clearing and I remember again that there is something wrong with the moon. Each time I have their dream the moon is closer to being eclipsed, this time it was nearly fully eclipsed. I fear I can no longer ignore that possibility that tomorrow night, when the eclipse happens in my waking hours, something terrible is going to happen. But somehow, I have no desire to avoid it. I feel akin to them after waking this time, and that sable clad stranger to whom my cat runs seems more familiar each time I look upon them. They say when the moon is covered by the earth the gods are at their weakest, and the power of the mortal earth sharpens from a soft earthly warmth to a sharp burning point. Tomorrow I will follow my cat wherever it may lead, in this, the darkest of full moon nights, and hope at last to find a dream, or not a dream, all my own.

Thief by JasonTN

The False Face was a criminal empire more feared than any, in some senses they were a parallel government to the Djinn’s Raiment staffed and run by the fringes of urban society and funded by worryingly competing exports and horrifyingly citizen donation. In a nation ruled by endless servant contracts and harsh restrictions the black market was strong, but The False Face took it a step further by manifesting an opposing political force where none could legally exist. Though their business was illicit trading and manufacture their power came from their legendary Heists of The Heart. They got their start as a thieves guild known not for stealing coin or weapons, but servants. The aristocracy rested on a foundation of forced labor and magical contracts but if those contracts could be obtained they could be destroyed and their subjects freed. The very basis of power that held up the Djinn’s Raiment provided an endless stream of volunteers for The False Face. Servants freed of their contracts had no identity and no way to trace them, as soon as they were visited upon by the Faceless they vanished into the shadows only able to operate in the secret society that had freed them in the first place and often more than happy to do so. To top it off their reputation as saviors rendered their discovery and extermination nigh impossible as conscripted security forces would often intentionally destroy evidence and do everything up to the point of breaking their contracts to ensure that their possible future rescuers went free. The Djinn’s Raiment held power through magical domination alone, but whispers, of a new class of spell sword Faceless known as the Liberati, was unsettling even the highest powers in the empire. They faced soon perhaps the fate they had been warned of their whole lives, a free people, and the choices they would make to punish their oppressors.

by  Dimitar Marinski

In the Forest, by Julia Zhigadlo, via ArtStation.

But keep this in mind, when your hands are red too The forest remembers, it’s remembering you

More on RHB_RBS

by Sviatoslav Gerasimchuk

Garden Guardian by Denis Zhbankov

There was a choking serenity to the backwoods town of Tallybrook, the eponymous body of water seemed like a sheet opaque glass moving through the town, never a ripple to be seen, nor a sound to be heard. The people moved with a studied grace that was infectious, everything about the motions of this little village made you want to be quiet, unobtrusive, compliant, so as not to disturb its flow. One found upon arrival they were nearly compelled to speak in whispers, speaking in a normal tone took a herculean effort of will, and shouting seemed unthinkable. The placid and understanding smiles of the towns folks, seemingly willing to help with any issue and understand any transgression paradoxically turns even the most ardent trouble makers away from their mischief.  Should one stay too long, one is liable to find themselves building a house, donning the floral designs of the locals, and waking up each morning with a peaceful smile on their face no matter how much the worries of the outer world might struggle just beneath the surface, not a ripple to be seen. There is no government apparent in Tallybrook, only one house rises above the rest, The Order of Ivy, the church, council, and caretaker of their “Monastery in the Middlewood”. You’ll never see one of The Order, on an average day, an average year, an average century, but you’ll know what they want, looking at those open windows past the wrought iron fence, you’ll see what you need to see, but you won’t remember the messenger, only the message. The Order of Ivy advises the towns folk, The Order of Ivy protects the towns folks, and The Order of Ivy laid to rest many of the souls in this quiet town. “To live with humanity, is to agree first what not to see, then what not to say, last what not to do. To work and to live, to build and to bare, is all a soul shall need.” the phrase written on the ancient tree in the town square, all swallowed up by the Viper Roses, nearly lost to the eyes, but not lost upon the folk within. You agree to the contract by staying, you breathe in the Viper Rose scent, and contemplate the brook reflective as a mirror, and you agree not to see first. Not to see the dead resting on the bench by your side, scythe in hand eyeing you with a caution borne of an eternity of experience. You agree not to say next, should you stay long enough you may never say anything again, not even when you learn how the quiet town keeps the Heart of Ivy beating. Last you agree not to do, and you’ll smile and watch, the travelers entering the town confused and lost, soon not to be seen again. Maybe this time you’ll even help, and as you hear the gnashing crunching from behind the wrought iron fence you won’t even blink, not a ripple to be seen.

by  Marcel Mercado

The sailors I traveled with could not swim, they were raised on piers and ports, rocky cities gave way to deep waters and long drops. Theirs was a white and placid ocean, riled only in the seasons of storms but otherwise settled with ice and cold. But we, we could swim. Our labyrinthine urban and merchant centers gave way not to depth but to smooth beaches and tempting surf. Ours was a wild ocean, full of madness and beauty, bountiful with food one morning and consumed with destructive rage the next. It pounded and caressed our ports with equal frequency and so we came to know if differently. I spent much of my youth floating on my back in the lagoons where its anger could not reach, hearing the creatures of the dark below circle in curiosity at the interloper in their midst before returning to whatever hungry purpose they had been distracted from. But swimmer or not, both ice bound sailor and lagoon laying guide alike were at peril in the open sea. As the ocean tossed us from the deck and into the deep I felt all at once the presence of those childhood lagoons, and though my mouth and lungs filled with salt as I struggled against the surf my mind was fixated on something wholly different than my life. I had always suspected a presence unseen in the ocean, something about the feeling one experienced on a clear day, staring down into the infinite depths, a yearning, a call. I felt an intelligence address me then, reaching out some infinite length to touch this mite struggling on its skin. As the ship shattered to scrap between the collapsing mountains I felt arms and slick skin wrap around me and an item fall into my hand, the cursed compass the captain had possessed. I looked down at it and saw beneath my the infinite and cold death that awaited me, the bodies of the crew slowly spiraling down into a maw so wide no human had ever found the edge. The compass’s surface, once frosted and obscured glowed now with clarity, pointing, not north, even in the water I still knew my orientation, but east, towards the rising sun casting a dim blue light even now across the ocean. I had been chosen, as I felt myself losing consciousness to the surf, I knew I would not perish here. The Ocean, never my friend, but long a regarded acquaintance, had for me a purpose and a threat. I would never again forget the immeasurable depth I felt beneath me in that moment and the fear of sharing my rightful fate with my crew mates, lost forever to its depths. So I carry this icon on these foreign shores searching ever East, to return this stolen treasure to the ocean’s heart, where it, and someday I, shall rest.

Art by ERA7

In this age of might and magic there are those who would look back at the desperate age of conflict that came before and scoff at the trials we faced. They look at the drawings of the drakes, compare them like a sheet of numbers to the threats created by our kingdoms, and imagine themselves so far above their predecessors. But you cannot understand until you have come face to face with such a creature, until you have seen a black dragon older than your blood and blacker than the night mantle upon your home. Theirs is a terror that strikes at the very core of what we are because unlike the golems, unlike the archmages, unlike the tame beasts of war, they reveal to us the true nature of man, prey. When you look upon the shape of the dragon your mind loses all sense of strength, all presence of pride, all remnants of resistance and fills only with the need to flee. On the page you see only the scales and teeth of a large lizard, but when its living visage turns to look at you your mind peers deep into its soul and reveals a millennia of fear. This creature, this god upon the earth has hunted you and yours since the day they crawled from the muddied earth to tarnish its domain. It hunted your father, your father’s father, and every ancestor that came before them. And not just dragons, not just some vague species of drakes, this dragon. This specific dragon, this individual creature with eyes like death and teeth as long as flagstones rent the life from the first of humankind and fully intends on being the one to snuff the light out of the last of them. It is no fear of snakes or spiders, a temporary jump, a primordial reaction that settles once you have seen what it was that startled you. It is the weight of being known, the horrible weight of recognition that is forced upon you when you see the drake see you; no matter your power, no matter your confidence, no matter your station the soul within you knows it is prey and the soul within it knows it is predator. As long as the drake breathes you must fight just as hard against your own gripping howling fear as you must fight against the beast itself or else you will be taken by madness and dashed against the rocks; another human soul in its near infinite hoard. You may think your defenses are enough general, your trebuchets and eagle riders, your archmages and various pets, but I promise you, when The Dragon Nine appears in the sky you will have nothing but a thousand rabbits in the eyes of the mother of wolves. If you value this city, if you value its people, if you value your own life, you will rally the dragon hunters of old, for they may be the only hope you have left, the only ones left living who can stand before the nightmare of our history and hold the line.