A rattleshake is a monstrous scavenger from another world. Where, precisely, none can say. Only that the monster was never ago known in the time of Noren.
A rattleshake is a monstrous scavenger from another world. Where, precisely, none can say. Only that the monster was never ago known in the time of Noren.
When a bear, driven by rage, or scarcity, or territorial decline, is forced to prey not on its harmless fare of nuts, and berries, and scavenged meat, but on humans, it becomes a barghest. A creature of unceasing hunger and rage, its existence reduced only to the insane pursuit of those two drives.
They crouched midst broad tuffets of musty earth. Grassy-topped knolls, like turrets of root and dirt carved by floodwater. No water flowed among them now, however. Only a thick and swirling morass of fog and acrid smoke. Soldiers crouched there, black jackboots and woolen knees sopped through with mud and trampled grubs. Men and women […]
Something slithered in the underbrush. A bobbing shadow pursued it, fast and methodical over duff and scattered twigs. A scaly tail flicked, disappeared under a drift of rotten leaves. The shadow leapt. There was a scuffle, a crunch. “Karl, I got it!” shouted the girl, cheeks flushed red. She shuffled upright, waved her fist in the […]
Chips of sticky bark scattered on the snow. Hod wrenched his axe from the fir trunk, hoisted it. His shoulders knotted, lifted under furs and wool. Steel bit deep again into white wood. Hod levered the axe away, swung again. He huffed and puffed, breathed deep the winter air. A musk of pine and frozen […]