Category: The Book of the New Moon Door

The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Six

Red

The Book of the New Moon Door cover image: A book with yellowing, wrinkled pages lies open on an old wooden desk, with a sprig of lavender lying in the center.

Table of Contents

Isabel had never received a reply to her letter asking the Sentinels of Vernay to weigh in on the conundrum of the broken spirit of Mikhail Ranseberg—or, maybe, an answer was waiting for her at the temple, never to be reclaimed. She wasn’t going to risk the high priest’s wrath by setting foot in there now. She’d answered her own questions in the weeks that followed, anyway, and now here she was, with the thing that had torn Mikhail’s soul apart grasping at her through the gaps in a wall of bone. 

Still, she’d like to see something familiar. If she had a home, it would be Vernay, in the church where she’d spent her childhood sweeping between the headstones and her adolescence poring over dusty tomes in the library. She’d been trying to return there ever since arriving in Mondirra, the city’s bustle and noise straining her faculties even when she had time to eat and sleep, which hasn’t been often, of late. Vernay is quiet, as a rule, and the dead do not wake there. The turning of its ancient mill has continued uninterrupted since the time of the Inquisition. It’s hard to imagine the cataclysmic changes that have come to Mondirra visiting Vernay’s ancient, packed-earth streets. 

The dying red sun refuses to set as the evening grows late, and long after nightfall should have arrived, it burns like a stubborn ember on the horizon. Perhaps, Isabel muses as she strains her eyes over the as-yet-untouched West Gate district, the light there isn’t the sun at all, but rather some alien fire that was transferred here from the nether when the world was torn apart and stitched back together. 

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“After everything, and considering the end of the world, you might as well call me Berend.”

Isabel takes this into consideration and decides that she won’t.

The Book of the New Moon Door

We’re 3/4ths of the way through the book, and our protagonists just might be becoming friends. You can read this latest chapter on Patreon.

The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Five

Choices

The Book of the New Moon Door cover image: A book with yellowing, wrinkled pages lies open on an old wooden desk, with a sprig of lavender lying in the center.

Table of Contents

“I’m sorry,” Isabel mutters, her eyes sliding from his face down to the mist-shrouded earth between her feet. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

It looks bad, Berend admits—a whole swathe of the city is gone, swallowed up in dense gray fog streaked bloody with the strange red sunlight. The sun should have set by now, he’s fairly certain, but the light lingers dim and cold over the wet landscape. He can just make out the sharp, flickering shapes of broken ghosts, gathered at the edge of what’s left of the cemetery. The solid, heavy shape of the Temple of Ondir stands firm and untouched at his back, but it doesn’t offer much reassurance. It doesn’t have Isabel in it. She’s out here, instead, which means she has already been inside. It’s the first place she would go—church folk are predictable like that, and Isabel is a particularly churchy sort of church folk. And she’s not still inside where it’s safe and dry and relatively warm, and where there are a few people nominally devoted to the safety of the city and the maintenance of the terribly abused order of the world, so something must have made her leave. 

Whatever it was, it doesn’t bode well for Berend’s immediate future. As bad as things look, here at the edge of the familiar world, he’s sure they’re actually much worse. 

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This is a problem for theologians, nether-world researchers, and the high church fathers in their southern palaces, not some washed-up mercenary and a disgraced, low-ranking Sentinel. He’d much rather let more qualified minds handle it, and wait out the apocalypse in Lady Breckenridge’s feather bed. He’d be happy no matter which way the end of the world turns out, and that seems to be the best outcome he can hope for.

The Book of the New Moon Door

Things are bad and only getting worse in the latest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door, which you can read now on Patreon. If you need to catch up, all the previous chapters are available for free under the Stories tab above (under the Menu if you’re on mobile).

The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Four

Empty Road

The Book of the New Moon Door cover image: A book with yellowing, wrinkled pages lies open on an old wooden desk, with a sprig of lavender lying in the center.

Table of Contents

Berend leaves Warder in the nurses’ capable hands. He’ll be back later, when he’s found his things and a safe place to sleep, and maybe something resembling a meal. It’s not like Warder is going anywhere. 

Bodies in varying states of decay clog the stairwells, lying piled against the doors and draped over the edge of the stairs. Some are fresh, their wounds raw and crimson, dressed in bloodstained nurses’ uniforms or fresh bandages. Berend steps over a gray-skinned body, naked except for the torn remains of a shroud clinging to its shoulders, its arms broken off above the elbows. He finds the missing limbs a few steps later, clutched in the hands of a fresher corpse, the back of its skull smashed in from a fall. Blood slicks the steps, sticking to Berend’s boots. 

They were tearing each other apart. Behind the sleeve he put up to shield his nose from the haze of disinfectant and decay—so thick he can almost see it—Berend grimaces. A horde of undead isn’t an army; there’s no loyalty or camaraderie. They’re a haunting by another name, a manifestation of the pain and rage of a spirit who can’t accept that it’s dead. Losing limbs doesn’t stop them, nor does smashing their faces against a stone wall. A little collateral damage wouldn’t make a difference.

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“I came here to find you. I’m alive, and I wanted to make sure you were, too. I’m fine, by the way, thank you for asking.”

The Book of the New Moon Door

In the wake of a zombie apocalypse, Berend makes his way across the empty city to find Isabel and ask her what’s going on. You can read this chapter right now on Patreon.

Also, brief update: I’ll be hitting my word count goal of 30k for the month of May tomorrow, but I’ll have about a chapter and a half left before the end of the book. The draft will definitely be done this week, and then the real work begins.

The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Three

Circles

The Book of the New Moon Door cover image: A book with yellowing, wrinkled pages lies open on an old wooden desk, with a sprig of lavender lying in the center.

Table of Contents

Father Pereth is, in fact, still alive. The novice with the smudged face escorts Isabel through the sanctum, where the priests in prayer don’t look up to acknowledge her, and down the narrow hallway to the high priest’s office. The door is closed, and someone has carved the sigils of the seven gods into the wood with a pocketknife, in an attempt to ward the room against the dead, should they have breached the outer doors. There had only been one body in the morgue, and the rest seem to have been repelled by other means. It’s fortunate that this warding wasn’t put to the test. Isabel doesn’t know what might have happened. 

The novice knocks, and the sound of furniture being moved and the lock disengaging follows. The door swings open to reveal Father Pereth, his cassock dusty and his hair disheveled, but otherwise unhurt.

He takes one look at Isabel and says, “You.”

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Pereth’s bloodless mouth draws itself into a tighter, paler line. “Heresy,” is all he says. He reaches for the door.

The Book of the New Moon Door

As the world crumbles around her, Isabel tries to seek guidance. Spoiler: it doesn’t go well. You can read this chapter right now on Patreon, or wait until next week to read it for free here.

The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Two

Chaos

The Book of the New Moon Door cover image: A book with yellowing, wrinkled pages lies open on an old wooden desk, with a sprig of lavender lying in the center.

Table of Contents

At the head of a column of ghosts, with Risoven and the dead priests of Ondir at her side, Isabel approaches the crumbling wall. It buckles outward, looming toward her, holding back the weight of the thing behind it by faith and force of will. The many eyes, clustered together like sprouting fungus, roll in unseen sockets to appraise her, pupils contracting to pinpricks. 

It’s foolish, what she’s doing. At best, it will stave off the destruction of the world for only a little while longer. She hopes it will be enough time for someone wiser than she to find a more permanent solution. 

Another step, and an ear-splitting whine shakes the shattered sky. Isabel puts her hands over her ears, but it doesn’t help—neither the sound nor her hands have a physical presence here in the world beyond. Ripples form in the mud beneath her feet as the high-pitched note goes on and on, stabbing through her spirit form like a hot knife. Stones fall loose from the wall and dissipate upon hitting the ground. 

There is triumph in this horrible song, and a warning, and something else Isabel can’t name, a sort of mad, painful delight at causing the world itself to tear apart at the seams, as it screams with both love and hate of the task. If ever this thing possessed the power of reason, the ability is long gone. It is a creature—a structure, an all-pervasive thought—of pure chaos. 

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“I need help,” she says to the empty city, the impossible forest, the gods, and Brother Risoven’s lifeless body. Her voice is hoarse, and it cracks. No one will hear her. No one is here, not even the gods.

The Book of the New Moon Door

I have a brand-new chapter for you on Patreon, where you can find out what happened to Isabel after the end of Part Two. Read it now by subscribing, or wait until next week when it will be up here on the blog!