Page 2 of Grimdark Magazine Issue 48

I set his body down to rest on the cold stone. Five sons dead: Rovan, Mihlhal, Gengrut, Kywin, Young Borz.

Only the twins remain. My latest clutch. They are barely approaching manhood, Yppin and Yppil.

“Let me spare them,” I speak my hesitation to the flame. There it is: my base nature riling in face of what must be done. The world cannot be reborn while old threads still live.

The flame swells white-hot.

In it, I see their faces grown older; they will become men, brawny and broad with all the laughter gone from their eyes. Yppin with his crooked tooth, Yppil with his hands always working wood, whittling wood. Their bodies sashay with the pulsing flame. They whisper the names of their brothers. My Old Guard lies dead, smoking in a charred heap and the keep’s courtyard is but a layer of ash, embers still pulsing. The twins march into my room; I stand at the balcony. I look like a mad dog, that cannot be what I look like, not truly? Is it? Is it? My sons charge and they grasp me and I struggle, weak; they stab me through, over and over.

With this final vision, the fire ebbs and the torch goes out.

I keel before the twins’ room.

“Renew the flame! Renew the flame!” I sputter. The darkness envelops me, a shroud from which I cannot disentangle myself; I cannot find myself amidst the dark. I am blind and alone with only my children’s faces swelling atop this tide of shadows. Nothing, there is nothing here; no fire, no fate, only pain and sorrow.

The torch sputters alive, and with it, my soul is at ease. Truths I have learned through the flame become clear once more—I see the world reborn, brighter than any sun. Rivers of fire course through it like molten metal, reshaping the land, doing away with the quarrels of men. Men are naught but animals, but I am of fire.

And I know what I must do.

I am in their room—the twins’ room—and they shrink beneath their bed covers, wide-eyed.

“Father,” pleads Yppil, his dark hair matted across his brow. “Please, don’t!”

“I’m sorry,” I rasp. Do I mean it? Do they know what I mean to do? They have seen me muttering to the hearth, they have seen me go without food and drink, for flame is enough to sustain the heir. I have heard their whispers in the dark: “Oh, Father is mad, he is crazed, he is but a shell of a man.”

They watch me, too frightened to move, to challenge.

The Old Guard tosses oil across my sons’ bed. A sword death is not enough for them, they are due something far grander.

From this ember shall this world be reborn.

I take the torch; my sons’ dark eyes reflect it back, four flames watch me now. The oil so pungent, the blood of the world itself, and the fire smells it, reaching from the torch in thin tendrils, lapping, greedy, wanting. Give to me give it to me now NOW NOW

Yppil and Yppin hold each other, crying. I toss the torch.

They scream so loud, it is a sound that will never leave me, not even when I pulse with flame myself. Oh, my sons. My seven sons. Can’t you see? I have spared you my fate, my inheritance. I can still see you, can still hear you, so we are not truly parted; we will never be truly parted. But now you needn’t trouble yourselves, torn between a new world rising and the base instincts that pull us. Now you need only watch.

Watch spouts of flame erupt into the night. Watch the keep burn so hot it consumes your bones. Watch cities drown in ash and liquid rock; watch stars fall to meet their kin. Smell the sulfur in the air, the smoking char. See me standing upon the highest peak haloed in blue flame, conducting this destruction: the final heir, the Last Fire-Bearer of Angtíl.

Watch the world be reborn. Cleansed of men like me, men like you.

Our puppet strings are severed, and now we all return to flame.

Alex Fox hails from the wintry Northeast, USA. She likes writing about messed up guys with swords. You can read her work in Old Moon Quarterly, Podcastle, Hungry Shadow Press, Grendel Press, and more. You can find her on bluesky: @alexfox.bsky.social, and afoxwrites.com.

Is Beowulf Grimdark?

by Phillip Chase

“Ure æghwylc sceal ende gebidan worolde lifes; wyrce se þe mote domes ær deaþe.” (Beowulf lines 1386-1388). “Each of us must endure the end of the world’s life; let the one who may achieve glory before death.”

To answer the question posed in the title of this article necessitates grappling with what grimdark means, a task that might daunt even Beowulf. Implied in the question is the notion that, though the label “grimdark” is recent, its characteristics appear in much older stories. So, breath held, let us plunge into the seething mere and describe grimdark:

Moral ambiguity, or “greyness,” features in grimdark tales. In their worlds of gritty realism, being good doesn’t mean you’ll win. The protagonist is likely to be an antihero or at least deeply flawed and scarred by living and suffering in a setting where survival opposes nobility. Adherence to ideals can be costly. What victories the characters carve from life are Pyrrhic. Finally, there’s an absence of higher or benevolent purpose—no plan conferring meaning, no chosen one because nothing “up there” is doing the choosing, just the characters stumbling away from pain into more pain in a hostile world.

This lack of intrinsic meaning in the universe can be empowering. Where characters choose to carry on despite the void looming before them, there is agency. In his blog, author Mark Lawrence calls it “defiance in the absence of hope” (December 17, 2020). Such courage in the face of certain doom was a favorite theme of the culture that produced Beowulf, a recently converted Christian culture with abiding memories of its pagan past.

Understanding the Christian poet’s portrayal of their pagan ancestors is the key to Beowulf’s “grimdarkness.” Writing with deep sympathy and keen admiration for their courage and loyalty, the Christian poet also regarded their forebears with a sense of tragedy, an ultimate futility to the heroic ideals that drove them to seek fame through deeds and perpetuate feuds through vengeance.