Samuel DenHartog's Blog: The Road to 1,440 - Posts Tagged "spain"

Saludos, seekers of the storied and sublime!

With my latest endeavor, "Tales from the Hills of Hispania," I beckon you to traverse the rugged landscapes and whispering forests of Spain's richest provinces. Here, the ancient mythos are inseparably intertwined with the very threads of nature. Together, we shall voyage across time to a realm where the deeds of the Anjanas, the footsteps of Basajaun, and the silent processions of the Santa Compaña dwell in every hill and valley.

Each narrative is a doorway, opening to the vast, undulating spirit and profound cultural legacy of Cantabria, Basque Country, Galicia, and Asturias—inviting an odyssey that spans the contours of history, mythology, and the depths of the soul.

Lace up your walking shoes for a journey into the enchanting soul of Iberia, where the ancient world is a living, breathing presence. Embark on this captivating odyssey, where every cobbled path and rolling riverbank is steeped in tales longing to be recounted.

See you in the verdant valleys of Spain,
Samuel DenHartog

The sea offers no explanations. It gives no warnings, makes no promises, and remembers no names. In that kind of world, survival depends on judgment, instinct, and the ability to act when hesitation would mean death. That’s where Tamsin Kendrick lives—not in defiance of her time, but firmly within it, shaped by its demands and tested by its dangers.

Her journey begins far from any battlefield, but she doesn’t stay an observer for long. Thrown into the heart of a conflict between empires, she adapts quickly—learning the pulse of the ship, the language of command, and the sharp edge of trust earned under fire. She doesn’t rise by accident. Every place she holds, every order she gives, is the result of actions that speak louder than rank.

The battles she faces aren’t just fought with powder and blade. They’re found in the quiet calculations before dawn, in the way alliances form and falter, and in the weight of every choice made under pressure. The ship becomes more than a vessel—it’s a crucible. And in its confined, dangerous space, a crew becomes something more than strangers sharing a deck.

"Salt and Gunpowder" is a story born of that tension—of loyalty forged in the heat of conflict, of respect earned in the harshest places, and of a woman who never once needed to prove she belonged. She simply did.

After all the buildup, the story finally continues. In this latest installment, our four witches leave behind the familiar streets of East Haven and step into a fractured past where magic still lingers in stone and silence. The riverbank, once a place of quiet reflection, becomes the entry point into something far older. They find themselves in Alexandria during the last days of its great Library, where a secret coven entrusts them with a task only they can complete.

Each girl is pulled into a different thread of time and place. Laurel walks among the firekeepers of ancient Ireland. Susie finds herself in a village ruled by fear during the witch trials of England. Blanca witnesses the fall of a kingdom in Spain as earth magic slips beneath the soil. Andrea follows the wind into the depths of the Black Forest, where superstition and truth twist together. These chapters test who these girls are becoming and ask who they are willing to be.

The heart of this story lives in the way the past speaks to the present. Each setting reveals something elemental about the girls, both in terms of their magic and their character. The history they walk through is not static. It asks for something in return. It demands courage, honesty, and sometimes loss. As they recover the ancient texts, what they truly gather is a deeper sense of what legacy means and how much power lives in what we choose to carry forward.

Back in East Haven, life seems unchanged. But under the stillness, something new stirs. The girls have brought more than magic back with them. They carry memory, responsibility, and a bond shaped by everything they had to survive alone. In the quiet moments after the final page, that feeling lingers. The sense that what was lost has only been waiting to return. And now it has.