DO NOT FEAR, FOR THE WORK WILL BE PURE, by Michael Johnstone, artwork by Karolína Wellartová, audio by Karen Bovenmyer. For all that his Rat Quarter Cycle conferred upon him deserved esteem in Elsidor, leading to a flourishing period of commissions from the highborn, Zayal’s now justifiably celebrated statue of King Rolan I, shaped from […]

FORD, by Mary Soon Lee, artwork by Gary McCluskey  Rain, wind, water, mud– men and horses slowed so that the two-day journey took three days, though they set out before dawn and rode past sunset.  Wind, water, mud, rain– the last light lingering in the west when they climbed the ridge overlooking the ford, the wide river swollen, the plain across the river flooded. Diminished shapes […]

THE DEMON IN THE JAR, by Cullen Groves, artwork by Miguel Santos Under the watchful old eyes of the Carian wizard Hydáspes Onto the black ship of Draba a single amphora they loaded, Painted with sigils strange, stowed in the stern by the steering oars; Draba the captain, night-dark of skin, overtowered the wizard Standing […]

The holidays are over and it is time to get down to business.  The business of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly issue #43!  We’ve got three stories, two poems, and art and audio for you.  Check it out!   Fiction Contents Low Tide, by Conor DiViesti, with artwork by Karolína Wellartová.  A disgraced Naval Captain at on the […]

LOW TIDE, by Conor DiViesti, Artwork by Carol Wellart It was the last week of the low tide and the foreman was waiting for him. Horace limped back to camp alone, dragging the empty crab net behind him as first light crept over the horizon. Pools of quivering, tepid saltwater splashed beneath his feet and […]