January 2021 Short Story Poll

Time to vote on the first short story of 2022!

• The Castle Thief: Solintus the Patient is ironically named, because he’s anything but patient. What the colossal great power wants, he gets, and he’s sent his servant Lane to the frigid karst city of Calo’s Watch to negotiate the purchase of the city’s fortress. Lane has a week until Solintus arrives, and one way or another, their master is taking the castle away with him. Something is rotten in Calo’s Watch, though, and it’s not the peat mines.
• Test of Magic: A traveling affinity tester, with a wagon full of exotic materials, is brought to figure out the affinities of a young noble heir when no one else has been able to solve the puzzle. The affinity tester, however, soon realizes that they’re in over their head— the heir cannot take their family’s seat without magic, and there are those who would kill to stop that ascent.
• Who Killed Seltivor Cloudscale?: In the waning days of the Ithonian Empire, bandits and rogue great powers swarm like flies in its provinces. Seltivor Cloudscale was one of the worst of the lot, performing daring raids deep into the heart of the Ithonian Empire, and earning himself a bounty large enough to buy a small city. When the dragon is finally slain, though, there’s one problem:  No less than a dozen mages claim to have been the true dragonslayer.
• God Doesn't: So, this one's not actually an Aetheriad story at all. This one's a short story I wrote well before I was published (or became John Bierce), and is one of my earliest pieces of writing that I'm willing to share. It's definitely a little rough, and I made a few little adjustments to it (mostly clarity of language, plus fixing up the ending a little bit), but I'm still pretty happy with it. It's about war on, uh... a very oddly shaped world.