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    Fantasy Anthology: Book Nine
    Fantasy Anthology: Book Nine
    Fantasy Anthology: Book Nine
    Ebook88 pages1 hour

    Fantasy Anthology: Book Nine

    By Sophia Rice

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    About this ebook

    Our Winter 2016's quarterly fantasy anthology.

    Marcelo Dykeman
    Brent Wegener
    Sherman Parke
    Ned Bordner
    Shelton Tardiff
    Edmond Lafontant
    Raleigh Tanaka
    Jamaal Slemp
    Fermin Becker
    Rogelio Bradshaw

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSophia Rice
    Release dateDec 16, 2018
    ISBN9780463035160
    Fantasy Anthology: Book Nine

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      Book preview

      Fantasy Anthology - Sophia Rice

      1

      The Great Ellipsis

      The end came as the codices said it must. The Great Old One rose and brought with itself Madness. Its minions gathered to themselves their servants from every tribe, kindred, and nation to make war against the Creation and the very Firmament .

      The Bard, of course, had been the last of the Servants left alive when the counterstroke fell. The Creator stepped into the Real and dispatched every living being with the Unpronounceable Word. The Great Old One’s minions were unmade. The Great Old One itself driven back into the Slumber to wait once more.

      Now the Earth was formless and void and Darkness was on the face of the Deep.

      But the Bard was still there, lying still on something that was only slightly more solid than the morass in which it drifted. Sounds echoed from unknown distances, great groanings, constant collidings. The Bard could not see, and ìn Blindness it seemed that all of Creation, or what was left of it, echoed inside them.

      The Bard’s tail twitched, scales rasping across the semi solid ground. It was bifurcated now. A split ruin. The result of when Reghek the Rager hefted their axe and very nearly slew the Bard. It was all as the final Stanzas of the Codices said it would be. But the Codices had been unclear what would happen after the Ending Of All Things, only that the Bard would be there to witness it.

      And so, the Bard waited for an eternity that lasted but an instant, for Time too had passed away in the Ending. The Bard waited, and played music, and sang songs to the Creator and the Ever Unfolding Plan.

      LIGHT

      There was light. The Bard shielded their eyes against the brightness. It seemed not to come from a source but simply to Be. The Bard recognized it immediately.

      Lord? the Bard cried out.

      The Light dimmed to something approaching tolerable, and took on a source. The Bard looked to it. A vast distance away was the Creator, hovering over It’s ruined Creation. There weren’t words, the Bard found, to their dismay, to describe the Appearance of the Creator. The Creator’s Manifestation was spherical, but a roiling mass of color and feature ever changing. Something approaching an eye replaced in a flash be something the Bard didn’t have words for. The Bard fell prostrate. Lord, they said, and then, finding nothing else worthy of saying, Lord!

      A laugh shook the Bard to the marrow.

      THERE YOU ARE. The voice softened. On your feet, Bard. Let us have a look at you.

      The Bard struggled to their feet. The laugh came again, softer now. It filled the Bard with a sense of comfort, of Belonging, of Destiny fulfilled.

      Yes. You’re perfect. A resounding success if I do say so myself.

      The Bard looked around them. Colors and features of the landscape bled into each other into one roiling, grey mass. Gone were the trees and the mountains and the sea. And the beauty. The beauty was nowhere to be found. Briefly, and the Bard was unsure if it was a trick of the light, or of memory, a face surfaced at his feet, one half of it ripped away, and hanging from a broken horn. The face of the Bard’s oldest friend, the Knight.

      So, how did you enjoy Life?

      The Bard looked out at the desolation. Now that there was light he could see remnants of beasts and friends floating like flotsam in the primordial soup around them. The Bard looked up at the Creator. It was everything it was supposed to be. I loved. I had children. I had purpose. And in the end, I lived to see You. What more could be asked for?

      There was a self satisfied grunt from the Creator followed by words the Bard’s mind reeled at trying to comprehend. Lord? the Bard said, Forgive me, I couldn’t understand you.

      Nothing. The Creator said. Nothing you need concern yourself with.

      As you say, Lord, the Bard said. I am simply here to bear witness to what comes after the End.

      Right. Let us begin.

      Immediately, the Bard was taken up and shown the entire surface of the world. Time returned and flew by as the Creator sat about the task of Remaking. The Light and the Dark were divided and named. Continents were formed, atmosphere created. When the Creator brought forth life, beginning with a single cell and guiding it through to a multiplicity of living things, plant and beast alike, the Bard gasped.

      It is good, isn’t it? You know, sometimes I even impress myself?

      Is this Paradise? Where all who have died will live on again for Eternity? the Bard asked.

      The Creator took form then. A strange form, both alike and unlike the Bard. Lean and muscled, with a shaggy sort of fur atop its head. Arms and legs like the Bard’s twisted and moved, but there were no scales, no tail, no horns. The Creator worked its mouth a few times. Teeth, the Creator said with a voice that sounded mushy and wet to the Bard. That’ll take them some getting used to.

      Lord?

      What? Oh! Yes, the Creator said. Yes, of course, you’ll get to live here.

      The Creator gathered some of the beasts he created, the ones that looked like brutish versions of the form they now occupied. It got to work, twisting and sculpting with time and environment until at last the offspring resembled the Creator’s form. Let us make Man in Our Image, the Creator said, and breathed some of Its Essence into the thing. Instantly, an intelligent light sprang to life in the band of creatures. Genders this time, I think, two, potentially more. Should yield the results we’ve been looking for.

      The Bard was stunned. Made in the Image of the Creator? What could that even mean? There was something in their eyes, a look. An Agency that the Bard could not comprehend.

      What? The Creator asked. You’re spluttering like a hot spring.

      What have you wrought, Oh, Lord? the Bard asked. What manner of being is this?

      A Free one, the Creator said. I’m trying free will this time. Makes it more interesting that way. More multipurpose.

      The Creator called to them. Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground, the Creator said.

      Surely not, the Bard thought. Surely not. There’s some mistake. This was Paradise. How could the Bard and everyone be rewarded for their service by being placed under the dominion of a creation?

      But the Creator spoke again. I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all

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