Debts Unpaid (Short Story)
To hurt people, you must have a taste for it.
After disgracing herself by losing her first, pivotal duel, a young swordswoman named Ryna is forced to serve as a bodyguard for an unscrupulous necromancer called Sozu to pay off her own ransom.
Ryna has been trained as a vysora—a warrior skilled in the art of tearing apart the body and mind of their opponent without killing them. To kill is forbidden, for it means becoming tormented by the ghost of one’s victim forever.
As Sozu introduces Ryna to the wondrous city of Senkaku and its wild ghosts, Ryna realizes that she will have to choose between holding onto her honor as a vysora or embracing Sozu’s cruel path to pay off her debts.
Old No-Eyes (Short Story)
When the end of the world comes, I will be the only one left to see it.
The foundations of the illustrious Grand Schools of immortality have been shaken by the appearance of a small black book—the Nokizi. Its mysterious author, Old No-Eyes, not only claims that the Schools are built upon lies, but that the true path to immortality lies in escaping time itself.
However, the only scholar capable of deciphering the Nokizi’s encoded instructions may be Yute, a disgraced mage who was expelled from the Grand Schools due to the scheming of his rival, Tenza.
After Tenza arranges a meeting with Yute to beg for his help in unraveling the Nokizi’s secrets, Yute’s revenge takes horrifying shape…
Reviews
“…author Christopher Mahon does an excellent job of establishing character and tone at the start…Mahon does an outstanding job of balancing the still simmering tension of their past conflict with the pair’s philosophical inquiries. “Old No-Eyes” makes a sharp left turn into nihilism near the end, a choice that doesn’t sit well in my stomach, even if it follows logically from the set-up.” – Goodreads
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“I didn’t think I would care for Christopher Mahon’s “Old No-Eyes” at first, but the story grew on me the more I read it. It turned out to be quite powerful at the end.” – Amazon
HYPNOTICA (Short Story)
There are breeds of magicians here that only exist between sunset and sunrise.
Enter the mind-bending world of dreamwrights—mages who craft surreal musical performances in grand, shared dreams. Dreamwrights split their lives between the waking city of Senkaku, populated by the living, and the dreaming city known as the Yoshiza, inhabited by ghosts whose hunger for entertainment is only matched by their taste for cruelty.
Living between two worlds carries terrifying risks—including madness, phantom limbs, and addiction—but the lure of fame, wealth, and adoring fans draws ever more dreamwrights into the Yoshiza, where they hope to etch their names into history.
NO-FOOT and GRIN are two such dreamwrights, but their hopes are dashed when their virtuoso performance goes horribly wrong, forcing them to consider a perilous deal.
The Lotus Gambit (Short Story)
Everyone builds their own prison within their mind.
In the freezing depths of a secluded prison, a blind, silver-tongued criminal named Yute challenges Shiro, his ambitious but frustrated jailer, to an impossible bet: he claims he can beat her at a game without seeing the board or pieces.
To accomplish this, Yute asks Shiro to fold a paper lotus, claiming that by examining the folds, he can learn the shape of her soul and predict her moves before she makes them. As the game unfolds, Shiro is faced with a disquieting question: Does Yute know her better than she knows herself?
But when the board and pieces are put away, the true game reveals itself.