WITCH AND PALIDIN, by Reilly S. Blackwell   Let me pull you into blackberry blood and tangled thorns. Let me teach you of skin and bone and meat that you saw, breathing, moments before it died.   Let me teach you that your faith and your willpower, your selfless conviction, are nothing against a bear’s […]

THE DANCER, by  Susan Carlson   A dancer haunts my dreams. In Enzabar she saved me with one sharp jerk of her chin during a routine of exquisite softness. The man who crept behind me went to his gods screaming, as all cowards go.   She was never a coward. When I stole her, she […]

Greetings and happy fall!  2014 is winding down and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly has what it takes to get you through to the new year.  We bring you world-spanning fiction, some familiar names, and some new talent. Fiction Contents Crazy Snake and the Comazotz, by Eric Atkisson Trouble brews in the Yucatan!  Pyramids brood in jungle […]

CRAZY SNAKE AND THE CAMAZOTZ, by Eric Atkisson I There was no word for it in the tongue of his people, the Nermernuh, whom the Utes named Kohmats–They Who Are Always Against Us–but his mother had spoken of something like it when he was a child. He could picture her delicate hands shaping it in […]

SHADOWS AND FOXFIRE, by R. Michael Burns    “Everything in this world is but a marionette show.” –Yamamoto Tsunemoto, Hagakure, ca. 1700   That night, the gods raged. Fūjin’s winds lashed the towering pines, bowing them before him.  Raijin slammed the narrow valley with fists of rain, his thunder-bellows shaking the earth.  Caught in the heart […]