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 […]

BARNABY’S DECEIT, by Al Onia, Audio by The Bard     “I’ll be back before dawn,” Barnaby whispered. A lie, if the night’s task succeeded or went awry. The small man slid from Aida’s cot in the troupe’s lead wagon and donned his tunic, belted his short sword and mouthed a silent prayer to Beltrum, […]

SANDS & FOREST, by Jason M. Waltz, Artwork by Andrea Alemanno The far edge of the empty grasslands came quickly. Too quickly, in Sands’ estimation. Then he realized his horse had fled along a path new to him, though obviously not to it. Perhaps leaping atop the bare back of the shaman’s blue roan had […]