While I was strolling through the streets of my hometown of St. Charles, a mysterious traveler in black slipped me a tightly bound scroll. “Keep if safe,” he whispered. “And honor the pact of knowledge.” When I got home, I found it contained a copy of the latest issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, plus a tasty-looking recipe for Canadian date squares. Looks like it’s my lucky week.

The latest issue of HFQ includes stories by Evan Dicken, Raphael Ordoñez, and Jason Carney, plus poetry from Andrew Crabtree, Kendall Evans, and Michael Tilbury. Here’s the complete TOC, with fiction links.

“Between Sea and Flame,” by Evan Dicken. Aztec adventuress Hummingbird is back, facing murderous armor-clad invaders, the demons of her own past, and a multi-dimensional threat that would make HP Lovecraft blush.

“I Am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds,” by Raphael Ordoñez,  Down and out Conquistador Francisco Carvajal returns to our digital pages.  There is something foul in the lands, something trying to push its way into our world from the great mountain Akihwa, and Carvajal is chosen by the Corn Maidens to deal with it.

“Rakefire,” by Jason Carney.  We delve deep into the sorcery side of sword and sorcery on this one, Trokarus must find a rogue hedge mage to find the rogue wizard who trained him.  Easy enough, if only you can capture the hedge mage.

See the complete issue here.

HFQ 33 includes story-specific artwork by Skye Hembree, Raphael Ordoñez, and Miguel Santos. The cover, “Epic Dragon Battle,” is by Jereme Peabody.

Poems this issue are:

Colder than Mars, by Andrew Crabtree. Mars is a complicated god, and even though the story always ends the same, those who serve him are complicated, too.

The Pirate Queen Ching Shih Confronts Her Doppleganger, by Kendall Evans. In this long-form poem, things get weird onboard the The Flying Dragon when a mysterious novice turns out to be way more than what she appears.

The Dolmen, by Michael Tilbury. The gate between the living and the dead is sometimes hard to resist passing through.

The issue also contains reports on the various Goings On with the staff.

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is an ezine dedicated to publishing short works of heroic fantasy. It is edited by Adrian Simmons, David Farney, William Ledbetter, and James Frederick William Rowe, and published four times a year in July, October, January, and April. Issues are posted to the website, and are completely free.

Joe Bonadonna interviewed editors Adrian Simmons and David Farney for us back in June.

We last covered HFQ with Fletcher Vredenburgh’s report on issue #32 in his April Short Story Roundup.

Our July Fantasy Magazine Rack is here. See all of our recent fantasy magazine coverage here.