Low rode the outrider, pale and shorn. From out of heavy fog came he to a village, shattered. The dead lay in carrion comfort, the acrid scent of decay hanging like wool on the air. Then came clawing, sharp nails on stone. From the well rose the Haunt: sodden, cloying, hulking. The outrider drew and fired. Cracking booms split the silence; silver slugs punched through the beast and sent it roaring and plunging to its watery death. From one of the corpses, a keepsake: a locket, by which to remember this place, and the haunting that would outlast its passing.
Category: Uncategorized
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Through fog and foul swamp the young man travelled to the witch in the woods, in her home in the hen-legged hut.
“Speak! Make your request,” she hissed.
“Please, Witch, grant me strength that I may be king!”
She grumbled, “As king, what would you do?”“Why, I would be fairest in all the land, and marry the finest princess, and richness would abound.”
She scowled.
“Swallow your eyes.”
The boy recoiled. “What?!”Against his will, his fingers shot into his eye sockets.
Over his screams, the witch granted his wish, and said, “The noblest kings are the least proud.”
-
He snorted the electrics off the dashboard, emboldened. He threw his head back to clear them down his throat, and then trained his eyes, with an automated whirr of shifting gears, on the hospital out front. Humanity lay ahead, in that building, at the end of the barrel of his gun.
“G-Get down on.. what — “ Security scrambling.
The man with the gun had no face – he was simply a tool, chrome and anonymous – but he demanded one today, a face of flesh and blood. To be recognized, to be set free. To be more than a machine.
Steel doesn’t bleed.
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I tried something new today, that I want to share here as well. I rewrote a story of mine as an interactive text adventure. Give it a try. You play as the outrider Kris Kestees, sent to hunt down a heretic, a Priestess of the old Metal Gods, who are blamed for the ruination of the world and the coming of the Evernight.
https://doablewarrior.itch.io/the-high-priestess-of-the-metal-gods
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The outrider Kris Kestees kept to a slow trot on his approach to the crystalline ruins of a city that no one any longer knew the name of. He readjusted in the saddle and gave a low haa to Boreas, his mecha-horse, as they eased through the arched stone gateway. The outrider scanned what he could see of the ruins ahead of him for any movement, for any sign of life. He was wary, and cautious, and that was unlike him. To hesitate, he knew, was to die.
As he edged nearer the cracked and dashed crystal structures that once made up the great towers of a civilization long dead, the wide road Boreas carried him along began to fill on all sides with twisted metal and broken glass. He spotted the wrecks of old hovercrafts which now lay blackened, empty, immobile; relics of an age nearly forgotten. He noticed the shattered cockpits and broken wings of small ships which might have raced through the skies from one crystal tower to the other. Now they all lay dead, with no carrion birds to pick from their ruin. Well, that wasn’t necessarily true, thought Kestees.
And then his mind went, for a moment, to imagination. What world had truly been left behind? What greatness had the races of TItan achieved before the fall, and before the evernight had swallowed up the world? The chronicles told of glory and majesty, but he’d dismissed it as folk tale and myth most of his life. Here, however, he began to wonder. He turned his mind back to the task at hand.
As he passed through the arched and tarnished gateway of the old city, and entered into its high walls, the darkness of the evernight eased, which put him off. The old city’s collapsed crystal towers, long dimmed of their own brilliance, seemed inclined to it anyway, and caught the moonlight, reflected it, and otherwise illuminated a world that had been so long without. He pulled Boreas to a stop. Anything could be hiding behind the refracting crystal structures which protruded jagged and serrated like broken teeth from black, dead earth.
Kestees lowered the crimson scarf that covered the bottom half of his face and spat. He was only just beginning to realize how claustrophobic he found cities. He’d never had to think about it before because none any longer stood. Neither did this one, he thought ironically. Though as Boreas, with a blow through his nose, took him to within its walls and through its arched and tarnished gateway, he could feel it encroach upon him, as if it remembered what it once was, looming and glorious and replete with wonder.
A crack some distance sixty yards away to the left of him pricked up his ears and turned him around double quick. He threw his woolly black cloak over his shoulder to reveal the guns which hung on crisscrossing holsters either side of his chest. They were chrome and silver and black, and heavy, though perfectly balanced in his practiced hands. They were thick as bibles, and electric blue fire ran through them through translucent tubes connected from the butt to the barrel, which acted as a propellant for the thick slugs the guns took as ammunition. A coolant ran through another tube, on the opposite side of the guns, stopping them from overheating in Kestees’ leather gloved hands. They were as much machines, tools of his trade, as was his horse Boreas, as much machine as wild beast.
He drew the guns and fired toward the sound, pulling both triggers one and then the other. Sparks and fire exploded from their chambers, as if the guns were old flintlocks, and two great silver slugs with the width of bottle caps banged out, leaving trails of electric fire like lasers hanging briefly in the evernight. The sound of Kestees’ guns was deafening, a sound like the scream of a banshee and the roar of a tiger cat. It was a sound set to get your guts to drop and your heart to stop beating in your chest. The sound of those guns had earned them their reputation. They told stories about the sound of Kestees’ guns. They called them The Judgment in the stories.
Kestees kept his guns raised and waited in deafened silence for the exhale of smoke from the bores of his pistols to clear. Then he saw what made the noise, and it was as he’d thought. Nothing but a manrat, a sort of underworld scavenger scarcely seen above ground. Little was known about them, but rumour was they’d built up tunnels and cities in the underworld, in the outer reaches, and lived in packs and the like. Kestees felt no sympathy. They were more beast than man in his eyes. The manrat was probably up here looking for loot, or salvage, trying what he must to make his way among the ruination of the world, for whatever that was worth.
He expected the manrat to be stone dead, but wrapped as he was in his own mind, tired as he was in pursuit of the priestess, he’d only winged it. Still, slugs like the ones he was firing would tear you in half, winged or otherwise. The manrat was torn across the belly, eviscerated, huffing and puffing and bleeding out of the charred tear that would kill him momentarily. Shouldn’t have made a sound, Kestees thought. Would have lived a little longer. He turned away.
And then he thought twice. The sound of his guns would no doubt have tipped off the priestess, who could only have been some ways up ahead of him, somewhere among the ruins of the Crystal city of Gossamer. He turned back to the manrat. Better to get some information.
“Manrat,” he called over, “I’ll trade you mercy for information.”
The manrat’s eyes beamed up at him as he huffed and puffed for breath, as each and every beat of his heart forced more blood out of the wound in his gut, every second a closer step towards death.
“Outrider,” coughed the manrat, “th-the p-pr-priestess… she, she makes communion…”
The outrider Kris Kestees hopped out of the saddle of the great steel and flesh beast, Boreas, and knelt next to the dying manrat. “She what?” Had he heard correctly? If the priestess had found a temple here and communion was made, he would be no match for her.
“Sh-she makes communion, Outrider… Turn back, turn b-…” The manrat’s own beating heart had finally killed him, it seemed. His beady eyes still glared up and into Kestees’ own, but the fire in them was out.
Kestees thought before rising. He’d hesitated entering the city, he’d been cautious in his approach, and now he’d missed his shot at a godforsaken manrat. If it had been the priestess, the bullets never would have left his guns. He collected himself and turned to Boreas.
“Boreas, report to base. The priestess makes communion. Make the walls of the inner world aware, should we not ride home.”
The machinery that made up the inner workings of the mind of the great beast did as it was commanded, and it raised and lowered his head in affirmation to Kestees.
“Right. Come on boy,” Kestees began as he jumped back into the saddle. “We’ve got us a witch to hunt.”
-
A short comic script based on Sanction by
Dylan VasiloffPage Count: 6
Submitted for Mad Cave Studios Talent Search 2025As snow falls on Leningrad before the New Year, a burdened but relentless detective takes his dog for a walk and stumbles into a miracle.
PAGE ONE (TEN PANELS)
PANEL 1: Interior, in the study of a Leningrad apartment, early evening. Cozy but cluttered. DETECTIVE BORIS DIMITROVICH (late 30s, weary, greying) pores over a file at his desk. BORIS is visibly frustrated.
- LOC BANNER: Leningrad, USSR.
- DATE BANNER: December 29.
PANEL 2: We get to take a look at the case file from BORIS’ point of view. Black and white images of ANNA, a child of around ten years old, of her school, and the area she was last seen, very near to BORIS’ own home.
3. CAPTION: Anna Abramovich was reported missing after having last been seen leaving school, presumably on her way home, just yesterday.
PANEL 3: More pictures, those of her parents, but this time from a slightly different perspective. Now we can also see BORIS, and the anguished look on his face.
4. CAPTION: Her father, a man I have known since we were children, looked at me with a helplessness in his eyes that will not leave me.
PANEL 4: Finally, the last bit of evidence. A hair barrette with a sort of ornate design, something obviously handcrafted. Unique. All that was left of her at the scene. It is taped down to the file.
5. CAPTION: I can scarcely imagine the depth of the pain he is feeling. It is haunting me.
PANEL 5: From the next room, SOFIA, the wife of BORIS DIMITROVICH, is sitting on the sofa, knitting. Her feet are up, and they are bare. The dog, MALCHIK, some type of cross between a Bloodhound and a Beagle, has his scruffy head in her lap. BORYA is a nickname for BORIS.
6. SOFIA: Borya, they’ll be out of bread soon!
7. SOFIA: And don’t forget Malchik needs a walk.
PANEL 6: BORIS DIMITROVICH has his thumb and index finger on his forehead at his desk, feeling the emotional pressure of the case weighing on him.
8. CAPTION: I will not rest until I bring that little girl home.
PANEL 7: SOFIA appears at the door of BORIS’ study.
9. SOFIA: Borya, are you okay? Please milyy, don’t think of that now. You know better than to bring these things home with you.
10. SOFIA: Best to take some air, no? Maybe it will help.PANEL 8: SOFIA embraces BORIS even as he sits at his desk. BORIS leaves the file open on the desk.
11. BORIS: A wife knows best. You’re right.
12. SOFIA: And if you see any mandarins at Nikolai’s stall, pick some up, will you?
PANEL 9: They stand and he kisses her on the forehead.
13. BORIS: Oh, da? Something sweet for someone sweet?PANEL 10: BORIS shares a laugh with his wife as he stands, their embrace continues. MALCHIK the dog has his paws and face up on BORIS’ desk, sniffing at evidence. We can see the barrette by the dog’s nose. He has picked up a scent.
14. SOFIA: Boris, don’t tease me!
15. BORIS: Look who’s joined us! Okay, I’ll be back soon then. Bread, mandarins, and maybe a small treat for Malchik – if he’s good.
SFX: sniff sniff
PAGE TWO (FIVE PANELS)
PANEL 1: BORIS and MALCHIK are leaving the seven-storey Stalinka, a quite beautiful Stalin-era building. It is snowy and cold, and they are dressed warmly. Even MALCHIK is wearing a scarf. The streets are well lit. These are not like the much more modern (for the time) ‘Soviet style’ Khruschevka, built during the presidency of Nikita Khrushchev some two decades earlier. This Stalinka is much more western European in appearance, have a look. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinka)
- CAPTION: I am so blessed to have Sofia. If it wasn’t for that wife of mine, I would be as grey in the face as I am getting on the head.
PANEL 2: BORIS and MALCHIK make their way down the road, MALCHIK ahead of BORIS. There are Christmas decorations hanging from the streetlights along the road.
Let us use Kanonerskaya Street as a reference; there are quite a lot of Stalinka buildings here, and this will take us right to the Griboyedov Canal and the centre of Leningrad, so that we can see some sights with BORIS and his furry friend.
- CAPTION: Still though, it feels so close. What am I missing?
PANEL 3: I think it could be cool and interesting to do a few very similar sequential panels here of BORIS and MALCHIK walking along, under the streetlights, with flashes of Leningrad around them. Along the canal and so on, toward the very centre. Here, MALCHIK is sniffing around a tree.
- CAPTION: What we know is that she was on her way home from school, the same path she always takes. She was on her own. Not unusual.
- BORIS: Come on, Malchik.
PANEL 4: And here, MALCHIK has his nose down and is pulling ahead.
- CAPTION: We found the barrette from her hair where we believe she was taken. The side of the road towards home. Right here, where I am standing now.
- BORIS: Malchik, not so fast!
PANEL 5: And here, MALCHIK is greeted by a LITTLE GIRL who is with her mother: just like the little girl BORIS is searching for.
- CAPTION: Someone must have offered her a ride, and she accepted. Or worse, she was pulled in. But for no one to have come forward? Perhaps it was someone she recognized.
- LITTLE GIRL: So sweet!
- BORIS: Be gentle Malchik!
PAGE THREE (EIGHT PANELS)
PANEL 1: The detective greets an old shopkeeper, NIKOLAI, sweeping snow from the front step of a small grocery store – a Russian magazin.
- BORIS: Evening, Nikolai.
- NIKOLAI: Hm! If you came for bread, don’t forget milk. Sofia will have your head if you return home without the milk. And butter! What is bread without butter?
- CAPTION: But who? The parents have suggested nothing. And I know her father. He could never have done this. So what then?
PANEL 2: There is a pile of groceries on the counter next to the cash register that Boris is trying to pay for – the shopkeeper’s haranguing has persuaded him. Malchik has his paws up on the counter too, looking for a treat.
- NIKOLAI: And what, you would return home without eggs? I will charge you for a dozen and you can pick them up on the way out, da?
- BORIS: Better if I just leave you a New Years bonus!
- NIKOLAI: On your salary? Heh!
PANEL 3: BORIS realizes he has forgotten something. NIKOLAI feeds a treat to MALCHIK at the counter.
- BORIS: Nikolai, do you have any mandarins? My wife asked for mandarins.
- NIKOLAI: Sure, sure, but they’ll cost you.
PANEL 4: BORIS holds a paper bag of groceries in one arm and MALCHIK’s leash in the other. MALCHIK is leading again, head down, sniffing, searching, this time along a darker road. BORIS is distracted by his thoughts.
- CAPTION: And to think, if I go home with this on my shoulders? If I try to spend the weekend with my wife knowing that there are parents out there relying on me to find their daughter?
PANEL 5: Further down this darker street, and now BORIS has noticed he is being led. They stop.
- BORIS: Malchik, where are we going? Home is the other way. What are you chasing after this time?
PANEL 6: And on Malchik goes, pulling. We can show some resistance on the leash, and BORIS giving in, distracted once more by his thoughts.
- CAPTION: How can I rest while they suffer?
- CAPTION: How can I face myself if I just ignore this now? Sorry Abramovich, she is gone. No.
SFX: sniff sniff
PANEL 7: BORIS clues in, sudden realization on his face that MALCHIK has caught a scent.
- BORIS: Malchik, what is it boy?
PANEL 8: A wide panel across the bottom of the page. We want to get a sense of this place. A more rundown, unwelcoming, dark place. Something bad is here. MALCHIK is sniffing ahead, and pulling BORIS towards an alley.
SFX: sniff sniff
PAGE FOUR (FIVE PANELS)
PANEL 1: They stand at the mouth of the alley. A lamppost casts a menacing light down directly onto them. MALCHIK is sniffing furiously at the base of the lamppost.
- BORIS: Malchik, what is it?
- CAPTION: Once in a while, in a job like mine, you just need a bit of luck. Something to go your way. Something to point you in the right direction.
PANEL 2: BORIS inspects the base of the lamppost, and we see another of the barrettes in his hand, just like the one from the case file. Both MALCHIK and BORIS have a look of shock on their faces.
- CAPTION: It can’t be. He has the scent! He must have picked it up off the barrette at home!
PANEL 3: BORIS springs into action, running down the dark street with MALCHIK ahead, following the scent, under the light of the lampposts.
- BORIS: Good boy Malchik, good boy!
- MALCHIK: Ruff!
PANEL 4: MALCHIK continues to pull.
- CAPTION: Sometimes you need a miracle. I need one. Little Anna Abramovich needs one. Her mother and father need one, maybe most of all.
PANEL 5: Big wide panel. The warehouse. There is a truck parked alongside it. A light is on inside. BORIS and MALCHIK look small next to it, like it is looming over them.
- MALCHIK: Ruff! Ruff!
- BORIS: In here Malchik? You’re sure?
PAGE FIVE (EIGHT PANELS)
PANEL 1: BORIS approaches the double doors of the warehouse. He presses his ear close to the door. He still has his left arm around the big paper bag of groceries.
- CAPTION: It can’t be. Is that crying I hear? My heart is pounding. My ears are ringing. She’s in there.
- MALCHIK: Ruff!
- BORIS: Quiet Malchik, quiet now.
PANEL 2: A series of small panels here, to show us BORIS’ quick movements. BORIS places the groceries on the ground.
PANEL 3: He steps back from the door.
PANEL 4: MALCHIK looks on.
PANEL 5: BORIS charges at the door.
PANEL 6: We see the double doors kicked in.
SFX: CRACKPANEL 7: Little ANNA ABRAMOVICH is sitting on the floor of an empty warehouse, unhurt, crying.
PANEL 8: MALCHIK comforts ANNA. She puts her arms around the dog’s neck. BORIS crouches to her height. ANNA is in shock. She doesn’t speak.
- BORIS: It’s okay Anna, I’m with the police. You’re safe now.
PAGE SIX (SIX PANELS)
Panel 1: BORIS is back at the apartment later that night. The groceries are on the kitchen counter. A kettle is steaming. MALCHIK is curled up on the rug by the sofa.
- CAPTION: The truck outside the warehouse belonged to one Grigoriy Astaryan, a foreigner. Smirnoff and two patrol officers arrived on the scene minutes after I called it in from a phone booth at the end of the road.
- CAPTION: They arrested him at his apartment, and they’re processing him down at the station now. I’m sure I’ll get the full story on Monday morning.
PANEL 2: BORIS is sitting at the kitchen table with SOFIA, who is peeling a mandarin. She is smiling at him.
- CAPTION: Smirnoff couldn’t believe I found her just like that, like a miracle. I told him it wasn’t me, it was the dog. He only laughed.
- SOFIA: Borya, you are a good man, you know?
- BORIS: Where did that come from?
PANEL 3: MALCHIK has approached the table looking for a snack. SOFIA’s mouth is full of mandarin. BORIS sips his tea.
- CAPTION: I will never forget the haunting look in Abramovich’s eyes when he reported his daughter missing.
- SOFIA: A good man does not forget the mandarins for his wife at New Year.
- BORIS: Well, a good wife deserves them. Anyway, Nikolai took nearly a hundred rubles off me.
PANEL 4: SOFIA hands a treat to MALCHIK, and BORIS pats his head.
- CAPTION: At least I can rest easy knowing his family are all back together again.
- SOFIA: Boris! You gave that old kook how much?!
- BORIS: Sofia, please! You know how sly that old man is!
PANEL 5: BORIS and SOFIA laugh at each other, and MALCHIK smiles too.
- BORIS: Let’s have a happy New Year, da?
- SOFIA: We already are.
PANEL 6: From the perspective of the outside of their large living room window as we zoom out and away from this story. We look in at this happy little family of BORIS, SOFIA and MALCHIK.
- CAPTION: It is moments like these that make all the heartache of this job worth it. Moments where the good guys win. Where everything really turns out okay in the end. Happy New Year.
END
Dylan Vasiloff 