Today we're launching Deck of Worlds: Atlas of Legendary Places, a PDF collection of 13 original settings created by professional authors and artists using the alpha Deck of Worlds. These locations and lore will become available for the first time since 2022, when they were released to the backers of the Deck of Worlds Kickstarter as the Microsetting Lorebook.
This excerpt features The God-Touched Road, with lore and story by C.L. Clark and illustration by Frances P. The lore section is abridged. The story "In the Gutter of Divinity" appears in its entirety. Pick up Atlas of Legendary Places to learn more about the history, ecology, and culture of The God-Touched Road.
Art by Frances P.
The Lore
“The God-Touched Road” is a long road that stretches from the resting place of the Divinity to the holy city where the Divinity was born. It is also well known for a stop along the way: the town of Hraika, where pilgrims may stop, rest their legs, and perform their devotions. Hraika is known for its strict adherence to holy ritual and etiquette, including their precise gestures of greeting and the cuts of their clothing.
Fervent dedication to this holy etiquette comes from its proximity to the Glorious Wasteland. The Glorious Wasteland was once a town not unlike Hraika, but it is said that their devotion was not as complete, and so the Divinity smote the town. Hraikans who break the holy etiquette are lashed for the first offense, and exiled for more.
Travelers attest that those who have walked the full length of the road can request a blessing of transformation from the Divinity themself. More typically, devoted pilgrims return with changed human traits, including permanently painted skin, different sexual characteristics, or facial features they find more appealing.
In the Gutter of Divinity
by C.L. Clark
I enter Hraika at sunset. The wind at my back urges me forward, pressing my purpose. Everything is as I remember before the pilgrims’ town cast me into exile, daring me to make a life in the Glorious Wasteland if I refused to be bound by the Divinity’s laws.
Even now, I stand out: I do not wear the correct garments, I do not greet others the way piety demands. They called me a heretic, but I am full of sudden longing. It is time for the Divinity’s holy days, and the town is festooned for the occasion in green and gold and purple and pink, colors of transformation, of the sky at dawn and dusk. I close my eyes so I do not weep. I dress in colors of the road, the hazy brown of the foggy wasteland itself.
“Yokri.”
My name from beloved lips with familiar scorn. Tonnu straddles the thoroughfare, arms crossed. The woman who was my wife. Once, I would not have struggled to place the emotion tightening the corners of her eyes.
“You’ve changed,” she says finally.
“By the grace of the Divinity.” I place my hand against the now-flat plane of my chest. It is almost, but not quite, the gesture I should have given. “So have you.” Swirls of permanent ink map her hands, her bare arms.
She glowers.
“A storm is coming,” I say. “I’ve seen it from my camp. Postpone the celebrations and—please, let my people shelter, too.”
“You’re not welcome here.”
“Hraika’s leaders may think otherwise. Let me—”
“I am Hraika’s leader. Go.”
I straighten stiff as my walking stick at the cold iron in her. I step closer, speak softer. “You’ve been on the pilgrimage.” I reach out as if to brush her ink and she flinches away. The loneliness of that sojourn stretches within me.
“You’ve been gone a long time.” Tonnu avoids my eyes. She shivers, reaches for absent sleeves in the brisk wind.
Behind her, protectors bristle with steel.
I swallow around the lump in my throat and journey back down the hill.
I return at sunrise, stomping down the boulevard to the Hall without paying my respects to a single one of the statues carved in the Divinity’s myriad image.
“Tonnu!” I call. “Tonnu!”
Tonnu comes out raging but it is nothing compared to the ceiling of dark clouds encroaching on the peach-purple of dawn’s light.
“Hraika will become another Wasteland.” I speak loudly so that all may hear.
Tonnu matches my volume: “You come into the way station of pilgrims and threaten our holy days? You, who were exiled as a blasphemer and a heretic?”
“I am no heretic,” I growl.
“If we abandon the Divinity’s rituals, then we’ll end up like your Glorious Wasteland.” She gestures widely, encompassing the town, its pilgrims and its people, its decorations and its shrines. “Enough,” the woman who was my wife barks. “This time, do not return. Forget us.”
A droplet of water falls to her cheek and at first, I think she’s crying—and then, on my own cheek.
Tonnu wipes her face and her expression hardens. “A storm. It will pass.”
I pull her close, my lips against the curl of her ear as the spring rain pelts us.
“You’ve received a boon from the Divinity. You know the truth of their nature. Change. Do not stagnate now and risk everything.”
She wrests herself away. This time I track her gaze from the smear of ink along her arm to the stain on my wet hands.
“A heretic and a liar,” I whisper. Awed. Amused. Accusatory.
“Leave.”
My people and I dig ourselves into ditches on either side of the God-Touched Road. At sunset, I look again toward Hraika, toward her, but there has been no word, no conciliatory messenger, no succor.
I am asleep when the storm hits. Lightning sears my eyelids. Thunder stutters my heart. I wake as my tent rips free, leaving me bruised by pellets of ice like road gravel. We scramble. We are out of time.
Someone grabs my hand and presses their mouth against my ears. All I hear is Hraika, Hraika, Hraika. They point and, in the darkness, a lone figure lists in the wind like a cart with a broken wheel.
I race to Tonnu. She steadies against my chest, staring up. From the yellow-gray of the sky, the clouds reach down, swirling into narrow, shrieking fingers. My people crouch transfixed in their ditches as they spin nearer.
“If that isn’t the Divinity’s hand, I don’t know what is,” my wife whispers. Somehow, I hear her.
In the darkness, our slick hands find each other one last time.
Deck of Worlds: Atlas of Legendary Places is on sale today!
About the Author
C.L. Clark is a BFA award-winning editor and the Nebula-nominated author of a handful of books, several short stories, and a few essays, including the Magic of the Lost trilogy, beginning with The Unbroken, the novella Fate’s Bane, and the Arcane novel Ambessa: Chosen of the Wolf. When she’s not imagining the fall of empires, she’s trying not to throw her kettlebells through the walls.
About the Artist
Frances P. (“JellyfshFortuna”) (she/her) is an Ontario-based illustrator. The love she has for vivid works and imaginative palettes is reflected in her work. She wants to create images that burst with color and creativity!