ERASE THE SLATE, by Jonathan Olfert, art by Miguel Santos A proper funeral was not about the deceased. Sermons were to focus on gratitude for the eternal strategy of the Five On High. Ander Carmora — somehow the ranking Churchman in town tonight, senior to his partner by bare weeks of ordination — stumbled through […]

THE PALIMPSEST OF MEMORY, by Deborah Davitt Brother Thomas bent over his desk in the scriptorium. The quill in his big fingers looked frail and delicate, in marked contrast to the worn and calloused palms. He still couldn’t read—the monks had yet to teach him, in the year since he’d come to the monastery—but the […]

THE HALF-ORC’S TRUE IDENTITY, by Christian Emecheta   he pompously wears his injuries like blood on a battlefield, each scar extending like a city founded on agony and endurance. the sword remembers the violence his mind is fighting to forget, he acts like an angry viper, but his heart knows his true intention, his blade […]

AN OCEAN AND A TIDE, INTERTWINED, by Joel Glover   The Fifth Realm is a beach which stretches From a horizon which cannot be touched to one which cannot be seen There is an ocean somewhere, An ocean and a tide. There is an ocean somewhere, An ocean and a tide. Grains slip between Ásgeirr’s […]

Happy November!   The cycle of the year turns and the last grasping claws of summer finally have released their grasp.  So fill your grasping hands with issue #66 of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly!  We bring you three stores, two poems, art and audio, plus S&S news and information. Fiction Contents Barnaby’s Deceit, by Al Onia.  In […]