Category: Fantasy

“Aye, we even found pieces of the boar up a tree ’bout forty paces away from the rest. Whatever this beast is it must be huge.” “Damn it! If this thing gets any bolder it’ll be our guts hanging off branches.” “The help promised by the Monastery can’t arrive here soon enough, our hunters should not be the ones facing […]

Markos sat on his haunches, resting for a few precious moments before spreading out the old, ornate red-and-gold Afghan rugs he carried with him across the sand beneath his feet. He had been traversing a traditional Tuareg trade route from the salt mines of Taoudenni south to bustling Timbuktu for the past several days, and he was spent. An anthropology […]

As soon as Lachlan Quinn came off the job site, he sensed the swirl of spell-craft. He had zero talent for manipulating magic himself, but like some people can taste colors, he had an odd synesthesia and could smell it working every time. This spell carried the scents of peppermint and sage, so two witches were doing the casting. He […]

Gio pretended to sleep, as he did every night. As he lay in bed, listening to the sounds of his family settling to be around him, he thought of the thunder gods, as he did every night. But this night, he wasn’t dreaming of the impossible anymore. This night, he was planning his future. As a child he’d loved to […]

The world is no longer the simple human world we once had. Of course, in reality the world was never simple, but now, it is infinitely more complicated. How is it more complicated? Well to explain the future I have to tell you about the past… Have you ever heard of the ‘Flood’? You know the biblical catastrophe…

On an idle afternoon, you read through a spellbook you just acquired. It contains a lot of forgotten knowledge, much of it extremely dangerous. You can’t wait to try out some of the spells. One says something about summoning a ‘Horrible Creature’. You need a subject to experiment on. You walk through into your laboratory and call for one of […]

“Honey, no, I don’t want to talk about it.” That’s the answer I’ve gotten for the last three months! I’d become obsessed with Daniella, my wife, telling me about her first lover. The only answer she’d give me has been, “I don’t want to talk about it.” I’ve asked her if it was painful? Was it bad? Good? Exciting? Dull? […]

Adina Shoemaker’s head bounced off hard, rocky ground, the impact addling her senses, turning the world blurry. Shouts and screams came to her like they were happening on the other side of a wet curtain. She flailed her legs, turning to get her hands under her. Sharp gravel on what had once been an asphalt road drove into her palms […]

My story starts the way so many stories start, as a boy whose many inadequacies both physical and social resulted in a life of isolation and fantasy. Blame my absent, unknown father, maybe; or a mother more concerned about her looks than her son’s well-being; or a state uncaring of poverty or benefits for single mothers; or the bully whose […]

Miriam was warned not to stray from the path. The hunters and the traders in the village all told her that the road through the Tanglewood had its own hazards at the best of times, and wound through the forest as though a line randomly drawn on the map. But it remained the safest way through the Tanglewood, oft travelled […]