Hagglestone

  The stars were spilling into the evening sky.      Across the city of Tavash, the ivory towers climbed into the heavens. The castle was large and grand, with ivy-covered brick walls that added to its grandeur. A moat circled the outer walls, with three inner gates made to protect the palace gardens. Terraces littered the towers with windows and standing ways for patrols and royals to observe the valley. Knights stood at posts around the clock.      On the highest terrace of the northern tower, a large man stood and watched his Kingdom. His bejeweled hands wrapped around the stone balcony. At his side hung a large gem-encrusted sheath. Dark magic flowed through the blade inside.      The man was a beast by human standards. He stood 7 feet tall, with shoulders the size of a normal man's head and arms strong enough to lift the largest of warriors. His fine silk robes were pristine and embroidered with lavish silk and gold thread. His dark...

  If you were walking along a beach in medieval England and happened to pick up a small stone with a hole worn clean through the middle, you might have just found something people believed was far more valuable than it looked. To most of us today it would simply be an oddly shaped rock. But centuries ago, many people believed this kind of stone held the power to reveal things that ordinary eyes could not see. The object is known in folklore as the hag stone , sometimes called an adder stone or witch stone. And for generations people believed it could expose witches hiding in plain sight. A Stone Shaped by Water — and Mystery Hag stones are not rare in nature. They are usually pieces of flint, limestone, or sandstone that have had a hole worn through them by water, sand, and time. Rivers, tides, and currents slowly grind away at the rock until a small opening appears. Today we understand exactly how that happens. But to people living hundreds of years ago, a stone with a perfe...