CANVAS TEARS, by Steve Rodgers   As the smells of roasting human flesh weaved through the Grand Suuk market, Amis began to entertain new doubts about his strategy. From atop an auction platform, the idea of defeating a weather-invoking madman in his own city suddenly seemed a half-step away from lunacy. What foul mead had […]

THE GREAT BEAR GOD, by Gary Every     The Siberian shaman sings and prays at this ancient place where the rocks wear faces.   The river cascades across the rows of stones, many of the boulders wearing human visages, features of geology and erosion.   This cliff above the waterfall resembles a gathering of […]

CHASE OF THE BLUE BLOOD, S.K. Naus   Torrid black clouds blistered along the heavens, Their bellies exploding with cold hard rain. Majesta’s cloak billowed around her and the horse she was riding Like a brazen red flame that could not be extinguished. “Ride on, Victory!” she urged the gray stallion whose ears stood at […]

WHAT YOU’VE BECOME, by Gretchen Tessmer   if wishes were horses? more like rooks and herons kings and beggar men— made weak by yellow-haze sloth sipped at the pond of mud-slick weeds and greed all fools in the face of temptation   I remember when you were brave and knew something of careful deliberation   […]

Although Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is an international affair, its physical headquareters are in Central Oklahoma, and it has been full-on winter here in central Oklahoma! A weird kind of winter, too, cold, but no snow or sleet or anything.   Just the cold, and the wind and the threat that any little spark will light up […]