Gina

by Gustavo Bondoni

in Issue 77, June 2018

The girl – young, voluptuous, nubile and dressed only in streaks of ceremonial paint –screamed and struggled. She tried to scratch at the jailer’s eyes, but the enormous man simply swatted her attempts aside as he pulled her inexorably towards the red glow of the pit. A single heave was enough to send her tumbling over the edge.
 
Her final shriek of pure desperate terror ended abruptly.
It’s about time, Gina thought as the guard turned back to the remaining captives. She’d waited with ill-concealed impatience as nearly a dozen girls – she thought that to call them maidens would have been a bit optimistic – were sacrificed to the fire-demons of Hell’s Gate. It hadn’t been a pleasant wait. The heat in the bowels of the mountain under the city was oppressive, and the red light from the pit and flickering torches, not to mention the continuous begging for mercy and screams of the women, were giving her a headache. She couldn’t believe some of the things that the girls offered to spare their lives. But the guards just leered at them and tossed them into the pit.
 
Fortunately, finally, her turn had come.
 
The huge man, streaked with soot and paint that had come off the struggling victims undid her shackles and grabbed her arms very tightly. “No need for that,” Gina said. “I’ll come quietly.”
 
The guard looked into her eyes, shrugged and let go. There was nowhere for her to run, as soldiers blocked the only exit. Trying to escape would only delay the inevitable.
 
Gina had no intention of making a break for it. She hadn’t come all the way here just to chicken out at the last minute. The heat, already oppressive at a good distance from the fires, beat into her brow. At least the paint on the rest of her body seemed to be shielding her more sensitive parts from getting broiled. Five paces from the end of the ledge, it began to be painful even through the paint.
 
Seeing that she truly was walking to the edge of her own volition, the guard decided that he didn’t have to get singed yet again. He stopped dead and encouraged her to walk on with a very intimate shove and a deep chuckle. She walked.
 
Out on the ledge with her back to everyone else in the room, Gina smiled to herself. The absence of the guard would give her additional time – time that would make little difference in the outcome, but would mean that she didn’t have to rush.
 
Toes over the edge, Gina pretended to hesitate as she looked down into the swirling redness below. Molten rock mixed with tongues of flame, but the darting movements beneath the surface left no doubt that something in there was alive. The demons knew that more souls were coming their way, and they were hungry to consume them, tear the bodies to shreds, take the astral power for their own. The peace between the citizens of Hell’s Gate and the things that lived beneath the mountain had been kept this way for centuries.
 
The guard, fed up with the delay, shouted at her to get it over with.
 
Gina looked down again and smiled. She said a few words under her breath. Out loud she said: “Haggan,” and took that final step forward.
 
She did not fall.
 
The guard’s footsteps rang out behind her as the man realized that something had gone wrong and rushed towards her to correct it. Not only was he much too late, but he was also running in the wrong direction. Any intelligent person living in a city as infested with magicians as Hell’s Gate would have taken one look at the floating woman and run the other way.
 
Sadly, dungeon-keepers were not selected for their intelligence. The man kept coming as Gina turned back the way she’d come. A contemptuous flick of her arm brought a tongue of fire from the depths. A gesture sent it towards the rushing defender, who could do nothing but look down at his chest in horror as a searing lance thicker than his arm penetrated his sternum and emerged from his back.
 
Steam rose from the wound, all that was left of the man’s heart, and he collapsed without as much as a whimper.
 
Gina smiled again, but this time with true pleasure. She’d waited more years than she could count for this moment. She was going to enjoy it.
 
She stepped slowly towards the rest of the people in the cavern. The naked girls chained to the rock watched her wide-eyed, but the palace guards at the foot of the stairs that led to the surface were less cowed. They had charms against sorcery and magical weapons. A single witch was not going to do them much harm. There were six of them, and they advanced with purpose, drawing their swords.
 
Gina laughed. “I’m glad to see the men of Hell’s Gate are not cowards. I’d hate to rule a city of sniveling, worthless pigs.”
 
The captain of the guard said nothing. His hard eyes bored through her as he led his men forward.
 
Another gesture from Gina brought the demons out of their pit. They emerged from the lava like ants from a threatened hill. Small demons that glowed pink, winged demons that circled in the shadows in the cavern roof, but mostly demons of glowing rock, whose skin turned black in the cooling air.
 
The men fought valiantly, and their charms did protect them against the heat of the demon hordes, but there weren’t enough guards. The demons didn’t need magic to overrun a paltry six defenders. They simply overwhelmed them through sheer force of numbers and crushed them with their magnificent strength. Soon, only the captain stood, one arm hanging limp, but still struggling.
 
“Haggan,” Gina said, “Stop toying with the men. I want the captain alive.” Two huge demons, living, walking boulders, materialized behind the man, and had him on the ground in seconds. Gina looked down on him, and then at her own body, covered in ceremonial paint. “Bring him with us.” The man just continued to glare at her.
 
Not looking to see whether her orders were being carried out, Gina strode toward the exit. One of the women chained to the rock tried to touch her arm. Tears wellled in her eyes. “Thank you, my lady. Thank you for saving us. I will be your servant forever. Anything you want, you only have to ask it of me.” The other women also looked at her, a mixture of terror and hope in their expressions.
 
“I thank you for the offer,” Gina replied. “But I already have servants. They are strong, they are faithful.” She paused. “And they have been unfairly deprived of part of their prize. I will not deprive them of the rest.” She made another gesture with her arm, wove a string of elemental magic and spoke, barely more than a whisper: “You may feed.”
As she began to mount the long, dark stairs that led to the palace far above, the screams of sacrificial lambs meeting their allotted fate followed her.
 
She smiled, content in the knowledge that things were finally being put into their correct places.
 
 
***
 
 
The fireball came from an unexpected quarter, blowing a dozen of Gina’s demons into screaming fragments. But there were simply too many of them, and the mage responsible for the attack had made the same mistake as every other enemy they’d encountered so far: they attacked the fierce-looking demons and ignored the tiny, naked slave girl in their midst.
 
The logic behind that escaped her. Did they think the demons were bringing her along as a snack?
 
Whatever the reason, it served her purpose. A dozen demons more or less were nothing to her and, as their comrades bore the wizard to the floor and tore pieces off until he stopped struggling, Gina was able to watch in complete safety.
 
She was tired. They’d climbed from the subbasement where the sacrifices were made to the tenth level of the palace. By now, resistance, other than sacrificial snipers such as the one they’d just neutralized, had solidified around gates, doorways and especially staircases. There would be another few chambers to take before she could reach the throne room at the apex of the castle. The Tyrants of Hell’s Gate did not believe in building on a small scale.
 
Or maybe they were well aware of what lived in their cellars and wanted to be as far away from it as possible. It was also possible that they’d designed it this way to make military assault impossible. Gina had lost hundreds of demons already, and they were not easy to kill; the combination of booby-traps, ambush points and magic assault was lethal. A human army would never have made it past the first few flights of stairs, but the demons were driven by magic. Her magic.
 
The corridors, growing more and more ornate as they advanced, had morphed into column-lined and lavishly decorated marble avenues. Just a year or two before, she would have grabbed any one of the treasures on display and been content to live off the proceeds for the rest of her life, but that was before she’d fallen in with those notorious adventurers, Sangr and Yella. They’d been on their way to depose an evil regime to the north, and had stopped long enough to save her from being hung by a village sheriff.
 
They’d seemed to be able to read her mind, and had quickly discovered her deepest secret. She still burned in shame when she recalled the conversation.
 
“So, you can control elemental spirits,” Yella said. It hadn’t been a question.
 
“Why do you say that? No one can control the spirits. They are wild and unpredictable.”
 
Sangr casually backhanded her, drawing blood from her lip. “Don’t lie to Yella,” he said. “She gets cranky when you do, and then I have to put up with her. Now tell us about this magic. Where did you get it – and what have you been doing with it?”
 
Gina made up a story about having observed a wizard beside a river, calling to river sprites and ordering them around. Sangr and Yella shared a smile, and then Sagr punched Gina in the stomach. “It’s pretty ungrateful of you to lie to us, don’t you think? We could have just left you to hang in that little village back there. No one would have missed you overmuch, I think.”
 
Gina tried to give him a defiant look, but her heart wasn’t in it, partly because of the pain – he hadn’t held back when he hit her – but mainly because this was a new experience for her. No one had ever been able to see through her like that before. She’d often been praised for her honest, open demeanor, even when she was still sticky from teaching the stable boy a thing or two behind the barn.
 
Back then, no one ever suspected anything. Perhaps these two were just guessing. They expected her to lie to them, knowing her type. She tried an experiment. “I studied with the priests of Wasyl, down on the plains. They taught me how to sing to the spirits.” She tensed, expecting the blow. It had been the truth, but they had no way of knowing it.
 
The blow never came. Sangr grunted and walked off to tend to his horse, and Yella smiled. “There, doesn’t it feel better when you tell the truth? Now, tell me, what did the priests do when they found out you weren’t… let’s just say eligible… to be a priestess?”
 
Gina had felt her cheeks flush. How could this woman have known? She was so surprised that she actually answered the question. “They never found out. I ran away before they tested me in my final year.”
 
“Impressive. It’s not easy to get away from those elementals.”
 
“I was their best student. None of my teachers could control the most powerful spirits. I could, from the very first day my mother abandoned me at the temple. I was four, and I had more skill than any of those old men. And, despite what they said, it never went away, even when I… even when the stable boy…” Her voice fell away.
 
Yella chuckled. “Men in positions of power like to spread false rumors about the importance of virtue. It makes them feel like they can control us. I would ignore it in the future.” The older woman gave Gina an appraising look. “What are you going to do now?”
 
Gina paused. She’d expected to ride along with the notorious duo, learning as she did, becoming a part of their team. She thought that was why they’d saved her. But it seemed silly somehow to put it into words. Yella saved her the embarrassment with a sad smile. “We ride alone, Gina. We have too many secrets from everyone else and too few from each other to allow strangers into our midst. And I especially prefer that the strangers not come in the form of pretty young thieves.”
 
Gina thanked her silently for not finishing the phrase with the words ‘of questionable morals’ and just said, “Then you might as well have left me to hang. There isn’t much I can do on the plains. I can’t go back to Wasyl, can I? And I’m not welcome in any village between here and there anyway.”
 
“You have magic. You can survive.”
 
“Magic? All the elementals can do is tell me when people are coming. Even the strongest of the air elementals can barely pick a lock. It’s handy, yes, but not much use to me when I get caught.”
 
“True. But do you know why the priests have their monastery on the plains?”
 
“Because it allows them to look into the distance from their towers and contemplate the enormity of the world?”
 
“Because they can’t control their wards in the mountains.”
 
“Why, because there are more places to hide?” Gina well remembered the feeling, as she slipped into the night, that when daybreak came, she would be visible from any of the towers.
 
“No, because there are spirits, powerful spirits, that live in the mountains. And even moreso underneath. Spirits that truly can make you powerful, but only if you can control them.”
 
“What happens if I can’t control them?”
 
“Then you’ll be dead, and it won’t be a problem any longer.”
 
They sat in silence for a few moments until Gina got the courage to ask the first and less uncomfortable of her two questions. “Why did you tell me this?”
 
Yella actually laughed at that. “Mainly, it’s because I don’t think we’ll be riding through this part of the world again, and won’t be in any danger from whatever you do. But it’s also because I think that, if you don’t get yourself killed, you can irritate the hell out of the local Tyrants, which would make Sangr happy. He’s pretty upset with them right now. And the reason we saved you is that I wish someone had saved me at your age. I wasn’t on a path to goodness, and neither are you, but at least you’ll have a life of some kind for a few more days. Maybe you’ll do someone else a kindness one day.”
 
That had been Gina’s other question. And she sat silently as night fell.
 
The following morning, Sangr and Yella had set off towards the Casin pass, leaving her with strict instructions to walk in any other direction. She had complied.
 
By now her demons had broken down the ornate doors, and an older and harder Gina could only spare a second to wonder what had become of those two before the tide of angry, animalistic bodies propelled her through the opening. The demons smelled victory, and they were becoming harder and harder to control.
 
They emerged into the formal antechamber. The Tyrant’s bureaucrats would belittle lower nobles and even some common-born petitioners for the amusement of the unwashed, allowed to spectate from the balcony around the room. Though there was no connection between the balcony and the chamber, and crossbowmen to deal with anyone trying to climb down, it allowed the poor of Hell’s Gate to feel that they were part of something important. Gina herself had watched from the galleries, before learning the city’s dark secret.
 
Those balconies, hundreds of paces long and completely in control of the high ground, were now packed with soldiers in the Tyrant’s livery.
 
Inhuman screams filled the air as thousands of magically fortified arrows landed among her troops. Gina hastily ordered the beast next to her to turn its heat down to bearable levels and cover her with its body. She was amused to note, as she dropped, that the captain of the guard, beaten and trussed but still breathing, had been dumped beside her.
 
She thought she heard her demons attempting to rally, thought she heard them climbing the ornate walls, imagined there were human screams among the beastly ones, but there was no way to know. The demon above her shuddered with arrow and spear impacts, and its temperature soon went from comfortably controlled to the cold of death. Still, the sound of battle raged.
 
When the noise subsided, Gina peered out from beneath her improvised shield. The balconies were empty of defenders, but also, it seemed, of demons. Blood and ichor spattered every visible surface, and bodies of every sort littered the ground around her. She tried to sense her demons and quickly located some on the upper level – they must have given chase when the men on the balcony retreated – and some behind her. The ones behind trickled in as she sent out her will, but did so reluctantly, as if the recent slaughter had calmed their bloodlust.
 
Haggan, notably absent from the front ranks, stepped through the ornate doorway and gave the massacre a critical look. “You don’t seem to have much respect for your troops, my lady,” he observed in a surprisingly human-sounding voice.
 
“I didn’t know you could speak,” Gina said.
 
“Of course. All the underworld lords can speak. I would have thought that anyone with the power to command us and had taken the time to study our race in enough detail to know my name would have been aware of that.”
 
This gave Gina pause. She wondered what other little tidbits her teacher had forgotten to tell her. He seemed very enthusiastic about what Gina had offered in trade, but less so about his teaching duties. She would have to have a nice long talk with old Carle when this was over.
 
But now wasn’t the time. “Why didn’t you speak to me before?”
 
“You didn’t command me to.” Was there a mocking gleam in the demon’s huge black eye? She couldn’t tell. Perhaps it was just reflected torchlight.
 
The doors at the end of this room represented their destination: the audience chamber, the Tyrant’s throne room. It would be the most heavily defended of the chambers. Any really nasty surprises would be on the other side.
 
Gina thought they would need to improvise some kind of battering ram to get through the barrier but, just as she was about to begin giving orders to create one, the doors began to open by themselves, gliding silently apart. A glowing cloud spilled into the antechamber from the other side of the doorway.
 
Haggan walked towards the opening, ignoring the vapor. Gina was about to order him to stop, to turn back, but two things halted her. The first was that there really was no reason for the demon to turn back. It wasn’t her life that the elemental spirit was putting at risk, after all. The second reason, though she hardly even dared admit it to herself was probably the stronger of the two: simply stated, she was afraid that the demon lord would ignore her command. And then what would she do?
 
She looked around at the numerous human bodies in the antechamber. None of the bodies were in one piece, showing the price one paid for not being able to command demon magic. She considered making herself scarce, simply gliding through the hordes and out of the palace into a deep dark hole somewhere.
 
The press of demons behind made the decision for her. Accidentally or not, one of the demons jostled her forward, and then the mass of hot flesh pushed her all the way through.
 
The throne room of the Tyrant was magnificent. A colossal crystal dome rose up above them, allowing sunlight to soften the dark reds and blacks of the décor. The clouds along the floor were streaked with magical blues, yellows and greens, and the throne itself was mounted on a dais twice as tall as the demon lord himself. A small man with a white beard and blue robes sat there, his head resting on one hand. Without knowing how she knew, Gina sensed the presence of countless troops hidden among the shadows, in the mist.
 
“So, Haggan, the day has come.” The Tyrant’s voice belied his size and age. It echoed in the enormous chamber and seemed to make the floor vibrate. Gina’s legs trembled at the sound, and she fought to keep them under control.

Haggan was unaffected. “You will find the outcome very different this time around,” the demon replied.
 
“And why would that be? Have the elementals of the Earth sunk so far that they would foreswear their most ancient and sacred obligations?”
 
“Obligations? Only the fact that your ancestors tricked us when we were innocent of the world has kept us bound all these years.” The demon lord seemed to be holding himself back from attacking by sheer force of will. Gina would have sworn she could see the waves of pure hatred radiating from the elemental.
 
“Be that as it may, you agreed. And it was you, Hagan, not some forgotten ancestor, who bound himself to the terms in the Rite of Anari. I don’t even know how you’ve managed to come this far. Killing a single member of my household other than the offerings should have dissipated your essence.”
 
“I came because I was commanded to by a human bearing the magic.”
 
This pronouncement was met with silence as the Tyrant looked into the crowd at the foot of his throne. His eyes lingered on the captain of the guard, who had regained consciousness and was now standing unsteadily under his own power. “Do you mean to say that the loyal Engris has had the talent of magic, hidden all these years from our screening?” The tyrant’s eyes glowed green for an instant, and the guardsman stumbled slightly. “No, there is no magic in that one. “Then who?” His eyes alighted on Gina and he smirked. “The slave girl? I thought you’d brought her along as a snack. Let’s see…” Gina felt a wave of cold rush through her. The Tyrant sighed contentedly. “Ah, yes. A moderate talent. Not the kind of thing one normally encounters among the peasantry, but strong enough, even so. It’s a pity this one couldn’t have used her discretion. Or worn something a little more according to her rank. Witches can’t go around the world covered only in paint, little one.”
 
Gina tried to glare at him defiantly. This was the man who held the entire range of the Hell’s Gate Mountains under his thumb and thought nothing of sacrificing its people to the creatures that dwelled in the fire pits below. She found it impossible to hold the Tyrant’s gaze.
 
“So you’ve found someone to command you to come here. Have you told her that you only follow her commands because it suits you? And that when it no longer suits you, you will consume the essence of her very spirit, dooming her to eternal torment?” The eyes found her again. “Has he told you that, little girl? You would have been better off dying poor and alone in whatever hovel you were born in.”
 
“Don’t listen to him,” Haggan said. “He’s just trying to save his own skin. He knows his end is near.”
 
“Ah, but that’s not quite true, now is it? The command to attack me or any noble must be given separately. You can’t just walk in here and slaughter us. She hasn’t given it yet, has she?”
 
Haggan said nothing, and the Tyrant chuckled before continuing. “But I have no such constraints. I can reduce all of you to cinders floating on the wind with no need to get a command from a trembling pleasure-slave who’s walked into something she could never comprehend. And the girl won’t do it, because I promise her that she’ll be made a noble and trained beside our children if she just stays where she is, silently, while my magicians finish you off.” He raised a hand, and a group of grim-faced men stepped out of the mist, their outstretched hands beginning to glow orange.
 
Gina knew she had to act immediately, but still hesitated. Could the Tyrant be telling the truth? Would Haggan turn on her when the deed was done? Would the Tyrant honor his promise?
 
She looked out over the magicians, bearded and hard-eyed, and something inside her snapped. She exerted her will over the demon. “Kill them,” she whispered. “Kill them all.”
 
The demons leapt into action immediately. The front line attacked just as the magicians grew ready, and was incinerated, but some of the second wave got through. Human screams mixed with the animal grunts of the demonic horde. Gina found herself surrounded by a press of demon bodies, which pushed her against a wall and pressed the hapless guardsman into her. They were pushed with no heed to their surroundings and almost fell out an arched window, unshuttered in the cool air.
 
Gina felt an instant of panic, convinced that the demons were going to take advantage of the confusion to kill her, that she would be eaten where she stood, but then she realized that the outer layers of surrounding demons were being hammered by fireball after fireball as well as other kinds of magical energy. Waves of cold, waves of strange light, broke on her shield of bodies. She realized that these attacks, far from being calculated to thin the elemental ranks, were aimed at eliminating her. The press of bodies was all that kept her alive.
 
She turned to the guardsman. “Would the Tyrant have kept his promise? Would he have treated me as one of his own? Did I misjudge him?”
 
The captain seemed dazed, barely able to comprehend what she was saying. She screamed into his face. “Do the Tyrant’s daughters get magical training? Would he have given it to me?”
 
It seemed as if the man wouldn’t respond, but he finally realized that Gina was speaking to him. “The Tyrant’s daughters were each sold to noble houses as pleasure slaves, cementing alliances, on the week after they had their first moon-blood. Each was ceremonially deflowered in the public square by their new owner and his brothers when he took possession. But I truly doubt the Tyrant would have given you such pleasant treatment after all the trouble you’ve caused.”
 
Gina had known that would be his answer. The Tyrant was not known for his mercy, nor for his honesty, but that wasn’t what had given him away. It was simply the fact that of the hundred mages that had stepped forward to fight the horde, not one was without a beard. Not a single witch among the hundred warlocks. “Kill them faster!” she screamed over the din of battle.
 
Haggan must have heard her, or the magic linking them must have transmitted the urgency, for suddenly, every demon remaining launched itself towards the dais at once. The carnage was incredible, and the losses to the horde were atrocious, as demons were vaporized in masses.
 
But the numbers were just too great, and the mages in defense fell, one by one, under their sheer weight. Finally, Haggan himself, smoke pouring from multiple wounds on his enormous torso, reached the top of the platform. The Tyrant held his arms above his head, an instinctive gesture to protect himself, but Haggan brushed them away. The crack of snapping bones echoed across the chamber.
 
The Tyrant had time for one final whimper before Haggan’s fangs buried themselves in his throat.
 
 
***
 
 
As soon as the Tyrant’s body had been consumed, Haggan stood and turned to Gina. “That last command of yours was unnecessary, foolhardy. We could have won the fight with fewer losses. Your impatience has left us with less than thirty elementals to do my bidding. I cannot hope to hold Hell’s Gate with that.”
 
“To do my bidding,” Gina corrected. She could feel the magic binding them. Strong, vibrant, like a rope of glowing warmth. She would command the demon lord forever.
 
“I meant what I said,” Haggan replied.
 
The cord cut. Gina gasped. It felt it like a physical blot to the gut, and she understood that Haggan could have overcome her magic had it been a hundred, a thousand times stronger. In that, at least, the Tyrant had spoken truly.
 
Now she would die, but not like this. She turned to the guardsman and whispered. “Please. The window. See if you can push me out.”
 
The captain seemed to be caught by surprise again, but recovered quickly. He wrapped her in his arms and rolled out of the opening. Air rushed past them.
 
“You didn’t have to come,” Gina said.
 
“I think a clean death is preferable to that, don’t you?”
 
Gina knew she was going to die. There was no way to avoid it. The flagstones were coming up at them at a huge rate, and they were nearly a hundred and fifty paces away. There was no surviving this fall.
 
Air elementals, numerous among the mountain winds, pulled at her hair. She smiled and touched them as they shot past, strangely calm at the moment of dying. She had tried. She had failed. Life would go on for others.
 
But suddenly, a sense of urgency filled her, and she screamed a silent request, backed by the full force of her talent to the air elementals around her, a desperate plea to magical creatures who, individually, would never be powerful enough to shrug off her wishes.
 
At first, nothing happened but, when it looked like their time was up, the air around them thickened, and their fall slowed. A little at first, and then more, as the air itself seemed to full them back. The ground met them not with crushing finality, but with only enough force to knock the wind out of them.
 
The guardsman’s eyes were filled with awe. “You saved us.”
 
She thought quickly, her heart racing. “You made the right choice in coming with me. Never underestimate me. If you are willing to follow me, I will give you magical protection.”
 
“I will not cross you. I’ve seen your power.”
 
“Good.” Gina felt relief pour through her. The guardsman could have killed her, raped her, beaten her, and there was nothing she could have done to stop him. An air elemental wouldn’t stop an angry man. “Then let’s get out of this city. People are going to begin asking questions soon. And I need to have a long talk with one of my old teachers.”
 
The man hesitated, unmoving, and Gina’s fear rose again. “What is it?” she said.
 
“I wouldn’t question your wisdom, but…” he seemed afraid to speak further.
 
“Out with it, man. We need to move.” A small crowd of passers-by was already forming around the witnesses who’d seen them fall from the sky.
 
“Don’t you think you should get some clothes before leaving the Hell’s Gate? Those mountains are cold as the devil’s heart.”
 
Gina smiled. Maybe this one would be useful after all.

©June 2018 Gustavo Bondoni

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist and short story writer who writes primarily in English.  His debut novel, Siege was published in 2016, while two others, Outside and Incursion, were published in 2017. On the short fiction side, he has over two hundred short stories published in fourteen countries.  They have been translated into seven languages.  his writing has appeared in Pearson’s Texas STAAR English Test cycle, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Perihelion SF, The Best of Every Day Fiction and many others. His work has appeared previously in Swords & Sorcery.

Other recent work includes an ebook novella entitled Branch, published in 2014.  I have also published two reprint collections, Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places (2010) and Virtuoso and Other Stories (2011). The Curse of El Bastardo  (2010) is a short fantasy novel.  His website is at www.gustavobondoni.com.