© Schlock! Webzine
Rab Foster, my fantasy-writing alter-ego, is on a roll this week. Just two days ago, The Cats and the Crimson, a story I wrote under that pseudonym, was published in Issue 159 of Swords and Sorcery Magazine. Today, another Foster-attributed fantasy story appears in the new edition – Volume 19, Issue 4 – of the monthly online publication Schlock! Webzine. It’s called The Shrine on the Moor and chronicles another adventure in the life of my sword-and-sorcery character Drayak Shathsprey. By my calculations, this is the sixth tale featuring Shathsprey to have made it into print.
In fact, The Shrine on the Moor is a direct sequel to a story called The Pit of the Orybadak, which featured in the magazine Savage Realms Monthly in January 2024. Pit of the Orybadak was about Shathsprey’s experiences during a bloody battle and its equally bloody aftermath. The events of The Shrine on the Moor, when he escapes onto the moor of the title, and encounters the shrine of the title, take place a few days later. Has he really escaped the battle? Is there nobody around who still wants to kill him? Of course not…
I’d like to think The Shrine on the Moor has a flavour of the 1968 John Boorman movie Hell in the Pacific. But, being a sword-and-sorcery story, it has ghosts and primordial gods mixed into it as well.
For the month of May 2025, The Shrine on the Moor can be read here. And you can access the contents page of Schlock! Webzine Volume 19, Issue 4, with links to a dozen tales of fantasy, horror and science fiction, here.