The Burnt World of Athas

I was wrong,” Bayl said, chewing thoughtfully. “Cooking hasn’t improved them at all.” He pulled the little rodent’s tail from between his teeth and grimaced at it in distaste, then flung it into the fire.

Part 2 of the Lady of Shadows fiction

Pain. Pain the like of which I had never imagined. Like spears of sun-scorched obsidian sliding through my limbs where my bones should have been, the claws of some ravening beast tearing through my bowels, razors across my sweat-slick skin. And, through it all, he was there, inside my mind, pouring fear and anguish into my soul.

We are monsters. We are the damned. We recognise that there will be no place in this new world for us. Like the prophets of old, we are blessed with the foreknowledge of Paradise regained, but doomed never to see it with our own eyes.