The Scarlet Chair #
31 July 2025 #
A story set in the world of Dusk and Dawn #
To be published in The Literary Fantasy Magazine: Summer 2025
Year 398, during the first Wystran rebellion
We made camp in the Kaldkrik, a moldering bog just beyond the borders of the Golden City. The march was merciless and brutal; we’d lost three hundred men crossing our own lands. We knew the risks. We knew the land. We were tired of the southerners laying claim to our home, weary of the Valentines telling us how to be—we’re Wystrans. We know how to be. So we assembled and followed the infallible Queen Collantz over the deadly chain across the Wyse. The motherland is ours, but her winds care not for whom they cut down. So too, the swamp mosquitos and blood flies, sucking us dry.
Some of my men had gathered round a bonfire, the white smoke of fresh fallen pine keeping away the bugs. All was silent aside from a woman’s voice—a Skanu, by her dark skin, and a fighter by the cords in her forearms. Comely, to be sure, but her eyes were fierce, not to be trifled with. She wore the leopard-hide robes of a Keeper; she was a follower of Great Mother Death, a priestess of Morgana. The men kept their distance as they listened to her tales with rapt attention.
I sat on a log next to my lieutenant. He was young, only earning his name after my previous lieutenant took a raider’s arrow in the neck, not five leagues gone from Wystra. My boy had dragged him to safety best he could, but the damage was done.
“So, what’s all this about?” I whispered.
The boy only shrugged. “Some storyteller. Joined the march as we passed through Asvold.”
“What’s a bloody Skanu doing in a backwater like that?”
“Passing through, I reckon.” he said, chewing on a lump of salted venison. “Just like us.”
The woman spoke like a poet, her words swaying with subtle rhythm. It was a show, a rehearsed performance. I stretched out my legs and took a swig of watered wine from my skin. Can’t be mad at a free show, I thought. Can’t be mad at all.
An excerpt from The Haimiad
Hear my voice, o’ blessed spectators, and learn the truth of the Goddess Corrupted! In the Vale Betwixt, she sits upon the Scarlet Chair. Accursed and vain, once liberator—now tyrant—the Lady of the Chair sings her song, breaking the ears of all she surveils. The balance between Life and Death hast shifted, the world off kilter, souls like pebbles sent sprawling in the night.
We are but ants amidst giants, grains of sand in vast oceans.
Hear the tale of the Dread Angel, how she in her infinite kindness grew bitter and hateful towards her mortal children. We are nothing but chattel to the Goddess Corrupted, tools to be used and discarded, fuel to feed her gluttonous fires. Hear the tale of Morgana—the Goddess Corrupted, once the ferrier of souls and custodian of the Great Beyond.
She rules the Vale Betwixt, divided by the River Acheron, whose silver waters rise, drowning the earth with preternatural expansion. Once a valley on the brink, now a sea of waste on the edge! The undelivered souls within Morgana suffer and fester, trapped in a place now sequestered by boundless obscura. Careless and lifeless, the angel sits upon her throne, the Chair that Lives, which feasts upon the blood of lives lost and souls sundered.
We are cursed, my friends, cursed to live fitful lives, waking dreams compared to the eternity of torment awaiting us in the underworld. Our benefactor hast fallen, a cruel torturer taking her place, wearing her beloved face. But how could this be? How hast the Gods fallen, descended to pathetic sublimation? How hast Dusk, shepherd of the dead, keeper of souls, fallen so low? Why hast she abandoned us to languish alone?
Yes friends, I know the tale! Listen closely, and listen well. Hold tight your lovers and children, for they’re all you have. There’s nothing awaiting us across the sands. The River Acheron has flooded and congealed—now, a sea of foul intent and festering cruelty. Yes friends, I know the tale! Listen close, and listen well—for we’re all damned to Hell.
Long ago, in the Vale Betwixt
Baptiste Fournier had begun to fear his lord. Everyone feared his lord, but never the lord’s chosen. Never them. For the centuries that Baptiste had spent serving the lord’s every whim, overseeing his every errand, Baptise had known Lord Guilaume Sanguine to be a just and level-headed patron, a man worthy of his immortal station, and of the blood he tithed from his thankless subjects.
Baptiste slouched over his writing desk, rubbing his temples. Everything good must come to an end. The philosophers loved the sentiment, but even as a self-styled philosopher Baptiste had spit in the face of impermanence. What makes a flower so beautiful—its colors? Or the fact the colors will soon fade? He once believed all colors were absolute if painted by a master. Now he wondered if the only color standing the test of time was crimson.
Blood. Gods how Baptiste hated blood! The irony was not lost on him, just as the irony of his bittersweet relationship with philosophy was laid plain to him. Had Baptiste rejected Lord Sanguine’s offer all those years ago, he might have died a proud man, an accomplished man. Instead, his high command had declined to the role of a lowly steward in service to a mad man, driven wild by centuries of never being denied anything. The lord started his reign over the County of Monrovia as a stoic, in control of his base desires, his primal hungers. But the blood had poisoned him, just as it poisoned everything.
A crow perched on the window sill and squawked, then pecked at the clouded windows looking out over a foreign, gray wasteland. Baptiste screamed and hollered at the wretched bird, scaring it back into the dark skies. He had thought living in the Silver Valley might have yielded some relief from the oppression of the mortal world. Instead, it only opened up avenues for the oppression of the immortal one. The lord’s chosen could walk by day, lit only by artificial sun and illusory sky, but this boon came at the cost of everything else.
It’s that damned throne… Baptiste reflected as he inked his quill, began drafting a letter he had put off for far too long. The chair changed him, I know it has.
Fleeing the oppression of the sun, Lord Sanguine had led his chosen and his disciples to the Vale Betwixt, following the mouth of the River Acheron where ancient myth foretold of a home for those bound to the night. An eternal throne fit for an undying king. They chanced upon the great keep, waiting unclaimed atop the highest peak overlooking the valley. It was built entirely of limestone and tall like the jagged peaks of the far north. Stained glass windows depicting angelic figures adorned the keep’s gray walls. Back then, the long grasses surrounding the site were a vibrant phthalo, the river shone silver. Now, everything took on the sickly pallor of slate.
“How could such a place lie empty?” asked one of the Chosen when they first explored the keep’s expansive walls.
Baptiste had known the answer—rather he thought he had known. “The Lord was chosen to rule. This is fate, this place was built for us.”
And perhaps it was fate that had led them there, but the keep had been built for a purpose beyond his comprehension. A cruel, unforeseen machination led Lord Sanguine to the throne room, so he may lay eyes upon a petinaed chair, with a glowing ruby embedded in its back rest. That chair became the lord’s singular obsession every day hence. The lord named it The Scarlet Chair, not for its physical features but for the invigoration it seemed to inject into him each time he enjoyed its cushionless seat.
Gone were the days of blood tithes. The lord had his sustenance forever more. If only such things were so simple. Baptiste should have known better. The fact he failed to detect and dispel such a blatant curse served ill omen to the consequences of his blind admiration for a fallible, imperfect man. Immortal or no, the lord was only a man.
Baptiste had failed his lord, and was now reduced to sprawling out on his desk, screaming obscenities at birds through the window.
Dear honored friend, his letter began. He offered no other salutation, nor possessed any hope of it being delivered. Baptiste gambled on the possibility that simply putting his thoughts onto the page might conjure the result he was after. I write to you because the balance has been broken. I see it now, my misguided nature, my misplaced faith in a false idol. I plead for your forgiveness, to return us to our natural fates and restore all that we’ve pillaged. Not a letter, in truth, but a prayer.
When he finished writing, he burned the parchment in his fireplace. As the last corner smoldered, storm clouds gathered over the keep and mist rolled through the grounds. Rain drummed on the roof and Baptiste realized his prayer had been answered.
What have I done?
An excerpt from The Haimiad
No one knows who forged the Scarlet Chair. Likewise, no one could see the veins plunging into the ground, sweeping across the battered valley, wherein runs the River Acheron. Pulsing invisibly, near inaudibly, the Chair siphons the soul’s blood from all within its reach.
Hear my voice, o’blessed spectators, know that the ancients wept the day Sanguine discovered his throne’s crimson allure! Lo, the gods were powerless to resist his desire, and likewise, the strength the world’s blood afforded him. They could not intrude upon his demesne—not lest they be invited.
Addicted to the sweet taste offered by the Chair, the Lord Sanguine launched a campaign herding subjects to his newly established county on the borders between life and death. The blessed valley fell ill as the living quarried her body and cut her hair to build their houses and their temples and their banks. People from near and far flocked to the great County of Monrovia, free from the grip of the Empire to be ruled instead by a beloved immortal lord.
Yes, dear friends, the people of Monrovia knew Lord Sanguine for what he was. He did not hide his nature, but had promised an end to the wretched blood tithes of generations past—for no one understood that they paid a far steeper price by living within the Scarlet Chair’s influence. All was well for a time; the people were fed and wealthy, comfortable and content. Until the time came when the gluttonous lord was not.
Long ago, in the Vale Betwixt
Lightning flashed, thunder clapped. The valley’s soil congealed into mud. Baptiste watched the flames in the fireplace dwindle, reflecting on all that had gone so horribly wrong. Three hundred and fifty-two years he had served the good Lord Sanguine. Three hundred and fifty-two years since Baptiste had imbibed the blood of his progenitor. The people in the old kingdom were happy—wary of the blood tithe, as they should have been, but content with the lord’s rule. They trusted in the stability of a ruler who could never falter, never to be replaced by a tyrannical son, nor ousted by nefarious factions. Yet Sanguine’s court had left the old kingdom in an act of hubris. The old kingdom was good—secure and fair. Monrovia had started that way, too. But slowly, the lord fragmented before Baptiste’s very eyes.
And the day his worldview upended was forever burned in Baptiste’s memory. The day he recognized the Scarlet Chair for the curse that it was.
On that wretched day, Baptiste finally realized the fallibility of the infallible, the impermanence of the immortal. A simple act, a declaration in court; nothing sickening nor dramatic, but thoughtless in a way completely out of character for the good lord.
A young woman pleaded divorce from her drunken husband, begged the lord to revoke the father’s parental rights to their children. Baptiste watched the lord’s empty expression as the woman passionately presented her case, pondered the lord’s unhearing ears as she described the manner of monster she was bound to.
With a flick of the wrist, Lord Sanguine decreed the man be sentenced to a life of servitude in the quarry—and that the children become the wards of a banker. He then sent the poor woman away, sentencing her to a life of isolation without a second thought.
Quietly, only after the court was vacant, Baptiste had leaned in and whispered: “My lord, was it necessary to strip the woman of her scions? Surely she is still fit—”
The lord backhanded him without another word. And that was that.
Cracks appeared in the shell, threatened to burst apart. Things only grew worse—the lord acted erratically, screaming at servants and advisers alike, muttering incomprehensibly under his breath when he thought no one was watching. He took pleasure in imparting brutal sentences for minor crimes. That was when executions became a weekly affair—and then a daily one. Soon, though Baptiste was unsure if it was the Chair’s doing, a plague ravaged the people of Monrovia, consuming the masses with waves of living necrosis and entropy carried on the backs of rats.
An angel manifested in his study, draping his entire height with an eldritch shadow. Baptiste fell to his knees before the Goddess he had forsaken in his pursuit of power—his hubris. He wept shamefully, pressing his unworthy cheeks to the cold floor. “Please, Great Mother… cleanse this place of the corruption we’ve sown! We have rebuked you too long! Please… my people are suffering.”
Where he expected wrath, Baptiste felt only warmth. Acceptance. He looked up, beheld a face thrown of perfect porcelain, eyes etched of impossible obsidian. The angel wore blackened iron armor, pitted and notched with age and too heavy for a mortal to wear practically. Her raven’s wings folded around them in a tender embrace.
She is here… Dusk has answered my prayer. We are saved…
“You invited me into your house,” said she with the myriad voices of a gentle chorus. “Will you accept me again in your heart?”
“Yes! Of course! Anything to put an end to this madness…”
“Look into my eyes!” A sourceless gust invaded the room, ousted the meager fire. “Swear to me you will forsake your bloodlust and adopt again the natural cycle.”
Baptiste had grown tired of his unending life, his restless eternity. Unceasing hunger plagued him, insatiable desire ruled him—that, and more, had been the price of his power. Part of him remained reluctant to embrace the Great Mother Death, even after stealing so much time beyond his natural end. When the lord falls, so do we all. I’ve summoned death upon my kin.
“I swear, Great Mother,” Baptiste said, venturing to gaze upon those unknowable eyes. “I forsake Sanguine’s gift. I will return to you when next you call.”
An excerpt from The Haimiad
Dusk answered the pleading call of Sanguine’s betrayer! Invited into the one house for which she held no key, the Great Mother Death melted into the walls seeking the heart of corruption poisoning the Silver Valley.
See, o’blessed spectators, the Goddess was blinded by divine wrath, consumed by a vengeance she dreamed of enacting upon the only one who succeeded at desecrating her holy domain. Before Sanguine dammed the River Acheron, Dusk ferried lost souls to their final rest. Since his accursed occupation, alternate and treacherous routes had been laid to maintain the cycle.
Whether the Lord Sanguine meant to or no, he had disrupted the natural order with his undying presence, and in his ignorance he unleashed pestilence upon the people he once loved! For this crimes, the Great Mother Death descended upon him in the night, towering over the lord cowering behind his beloved throne.
“Relinquish your perversion and know mercy,” decreed the goddess.
The Lord Sanguine did not answer. He was powerless to the will of his seat. Dusk drew her ebon blade, ablaze with holy flames, poised to strike him down in his obstinance, poised to reclaim his foul soul. Her intent to scour the Vampyre from reality, unbeknownst to the goddess, was folly—for the Chair had already laid claim upon the Lord Sanguine, had already devoured his soul.
___ Long ago, in the Vale Betwixt
Baptiste watched the Goddess slay his patron from the shadows cast by the light of her holy longsword. He watched with tears in his eyes as the man he had so admired fell at last in the wake of his own conceit. This is of your own making, my friend. We never should have cheated Death.
The Lord Sanguine did not resist as the goddess plunged her blade simmering into his gut. The mad, aloof expression on his face did not falter, nor did he seem to recognize what had just happened to him. With the brutality of an enraged berserker, Dusk kicked Sanguine to the floor. The once-great lord slumped unceremoniously at the foot of the Scarlet Chair. By all accounts of his condition, Baptiste knew that the death of his progenitor should mean his death, and that of all the vampyres Sanguine had sired.
But death had once again eluded Baptiste Fournier.
Baptiste looked at his tremulous hands, searching for any sign of discomfort or pain. He found nothing of the sort. When he gazed again upon the angel, he saw she was as dismayed as he. He had never witnessed a sight more disturbing. Gods in hell and up above—what the fuck is happening?
Dusk staggered back as Sanguine’s corpse suddenly ignited, reduced to naught but a pile of ash in an instant. A pulse like heartbeat resounded through the ground, the walls shuddered and the windows swayed. Dusk reached out to the ashes for the soul that had somehow escaped her grasp.
“No!” Baptiste cried, but he was too late.
The Goddess had laid her hand upon the Scarlet Chair. A pall fell over her porcelain face, a glaze seeped over her obsidian eyes….
And the Goddess Corrupted took her rightful seat on her new throne.
Year 398, during the first Wystran rebellion
We sat silent as the woman finished the tale. Usually the bards and poets we encountered on the road had a way of uplifting my men. Still I marveled at how this storyteller shattered the wills of a hundred men without even a single spell cast. A few boys began arguing about the legitimacy of it—the story was not Wystran by any stretch, that much was clear.
It was borderline heresy to my ears. I’ve prayed to Morgana on the eve of every battle I’d fought. I thought of all the family and friends I’d lost over the years, the soldiers I lost just in the last season crossing the tundra. I shivered to think the Great Mother wasn’t waiting for them at the other end.
When most of my boys wandered off, I confronted the Skanu woman. “Why in the name of all that’s good would ya tell a story like that? You know where we’re headed!”
The storyteller smiled, showing perfect, unnatural ivory teeth. “It is the kindest story I know, captain.”
“If that’s the case, I think you’d best move on to another camp.”
“No matter—I did not offer my words for succour.”
Nothing wears at me like people speaking in riddles. I shook my head. “So you burdened us with doubt for the fun of it? We march with Queen Collantz against the whole of Valencia on the morrow and my boys are already defeated by your lies!”
The storyteller laughed, reached into her robe and produced a gnarled twig. She pressed it into my hand, closed my fingers round it. Holding my hand shut, she said: “My story is old, the conflict long resolved—your comrades will know the soul’s rest when their time comes. Still, the past exists so that we may comprehend the present, and prepare for the future. Think about my words, then think about your quest, eh?”
With that, the woman left, disappearing into the fog.
I thought maybe she was a sorceress or a witch, or more likely, some soothsayer, foreseeing the cloud of lives to be stolen from either side in the days to come and doing what she could to prevent it.
I rolled the twig between my fingers, ruminating on what she had said, the story she had told. I thought about my queen and the brutal path laying before my kin. I’d been a soldier my whole life, and for the first time since leaving home, I thought about turning around to brave the elements of the Wyse. That, I thought, might be preferable to what was to come.