The Last Black Eye of Antigo Vale

Residing in a secluded village christened after his mighty namesake, Antigo is the last of his family line in a town that has long forgotten ancient pledges and rites which bind the mythic and monstrous Skekstatsiis within the forest. Tradition maintains Antigo must become a man by the end of harvest or those eldritch fetters will shatter.

Unceremoniously passed over again by all suitors, Antigo finds the corpse of a friend. Convinced of the Skekstatsiis’s return, the elders write it off as fairytale and delusion, or worse: a plot by the Trade League to disrupt the harvest!

Only Bersham, the old crone who raised Antigo after a long-past tragedy orphaned him, believes in the Skekstatsiis who released a living weapon into the village so they could once again feed upon the souls of the Vale. Bersham knows that her young ward is a child of destiny and embodies one of the three attributes needed to destroy the beasts once and for all—though wielding this power to overturn the machinations of the Skekstatsiis will come at a high cost.

The Last Black Eye of Antigo Vale is something of a prequel/origin story/novelette in The Kakos Realm fantasy series and was originally published in Sorcerous Signals, May/July 2009