Short Stories

Some nights, the moon’s face is full enough to consume the entirety of the east. It perches between the peaks of mountains, glaring down through a multitude of grey eyes that spot its face like warts. Its dim blue fills the space of the sky above, staining it the color of the ocean at midday.…

It has been years since last Bahram slept. Sleep had become a horror, and nightmares snake up from the darkness of night to snap at dreams. As darkness closed in about him, he would see again that shocked face, and the mad creatures who leapt upon it, tearing and screaming in their barbaric Oghuz, in…

It was likely early in the morning, with how much Zaihao’s stomach rolled. The ground rose and fell rhythmically, in time with his own chest. It made him even sicker. The ship was breathing with him; the waves were breathing with him. It was disgusting. When he leaned his head against the delightfully cool wall,…

Today was the beginning of the world. Destiny has come to rest here, in these very fields, in this the Year of the Migration 857. All the eyes of the dhimmi are upon one man; the Sultan Mehmed, the blood and seed of Osman. The man who brought the Turks to the gates of Konstantiniyye,…

The report of blaring horns marked the return of the Legio IV Italica. The army came through the Via Aurelia, punctuated by the clattering of boots and the steady thump of swords on shields, singing their marching song in a rumble of voices matched only perhaps by the din of battle. Steel flashes in the…