Set in an isolated kingdom ruled by a vindictive, theocratic regime, Blank Slate follows a diverse cast including a grizzled mercenary, a devious minstrel, a rogue knight-errant, and a heretical nun. In the face of oppression these unlikely companions must fight to survive–and to make sense of the strange and demonic entity that links them together ever more strongly with each passing season.

“We can do better. We can do more.” Her voice scourged me, dragged me out of the dark and the peaceful silence, and I moaned, tried to curl to one side into the heat of the forge. “You will not die, not yet, my Dermot. I’m not done with you.”

Lass. I’m broken. What more is there to be done? I just…want…

“I am not leaving you. Give me your hand, Dermot. Say my name!”

Sorry, Grannine.

“Damn you, Dermot Slate.” She was fire behind my eyes, pricking, inescapable. “By song and silence I swear to you, I will make your final moments an interminable agony if you do not fucking crawl now as I command!”

Blind. Breathless. I had no will to fight Her. I leaned back into the light and madness of Her voice.

I fumbled over tools, burning my hands on iron that felt cold enough to freeze my flesh like water. My hands moved numbly, out of my control, and I was too tired to resist as I hauled myself up onto the shelf by the forge, scrabbling for purchase. Voices, distant.

“Leave him. If he wishes to set himself a pyre, who are we to deny him?” The Templar. “Reid. See to Walter. Perhaps he is not beyond saving. You, cut that rope.”

The mouth of the forge was all I could see. It loomed, a doorway to warmth, to comfort, to Her. A promise. An end.

You’re right, lass. It is beautiful.

I put my hands out to the fire and took it for my own.

Excerpt From

Blank Slate

Written By

Michael Quevedo

Michael Quevedo is a Mexican-American author with wide-ranging interests in fields from astronomy to anthropology. He has lived in many parts of the United States, but retains an especial fondness for the ecosystems of the Pacific and New England coastal regions. An endlessly curious writer with a broad and rigorous philosophical background and an idiosyncratically anticolonial approach to fun and florid fiction, he has been writing since the age of 11, and is always delighted to present his newest project to a wider audience.

Text © Michael Quevedo