Heading Off

In Cathartia, prophecy is more civil service than divine revelation. The Ministry of Prophetic Affairs oversees the process with all the warmth and efficiency of a tax audit. But when the king falls ill and his son, Prince Owyn, assumes control, he decides prophecies need less red tape and more theatrical bloodletting.

To prove he’s tough on crime (and destiny), the prince appoints a loyalist to run the MPA, forces out the old Minister, and pushes for more brutal executions. Enter Dr. Garumund Executionerson, Cathartia’s foremost executioner and the Department Head of the School of Decapitatorial Sciences at the local university. When a new Dark One is born, Garumund is chosen to fulfill the prophecy by striking him down with the Great Axe – which the prince insists be “the sharpest an axe has ever been,” despite Garumund’s protests.

The axe shatters. The baby survives. The prophecy collapses. The realm is doomed. Garumund is thrown into the dungeon and rebranded as “the Axedemic,” his name now shorthand for the greatest screw-up in prophetic history.

But there, beneath the stone floors of Cathartia, he hears something unexpected: the cries of the baby Dark One, tortured daily as state-approved alternatives to decapitation are tested on him. When he learns the crown plans to exploit a legal loophole to detain the child indefinitely, Garumund makes a daring escape – and takes the baby with him.

On the run, Garumund finds himself raising Evil itself: a child shadowed by spirits, worshipped by cultists, and prone to unsettling acts of violence, often in Garumund’s defense. Desperate to save both the boy and the realm, he turns to the only thing he knows: the science of mercy. Convinced that ethics can be taught as rigorously as technique, Garumund begins training the child in the decapitatorial sciences, teaching him the geometry of restraint, the moral weight of the blade, and how to use his Evil for good.

Heading Off is a satirical fantasy in the spirit of Nicholas Eames’ Kings of the Wyld and Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils, lampooning red tape, chosen ones, and the kind of heroism that requires permits in triplicate. It will appeal to readers who enjoy sharp wit, blunt instruments, and the grim comedy of bureaucratic prophecy gone horribly, horribly wrong.