They agreed to five posse members per team, not counting Con and Tor, the leaders of the temporary pax. Tory thumbed her mobile phone and, after several months, assembled a cracked team of heisters: Turbo Lean (the speedster), Andreas Ut (the fireworks ex…

In Keshintai's absence, Taka fell to sadness. Her life became a series of motions that she followed. Her lessons lost most of their meaning, her time in the library was spent absent mindedly browsing the pages of long-forgotten tomes, though not a word wa…

"Leave that girl alone!" The stranger called. The children turned to regard the newcomer, a woman, clad in purple rising armour, accented with gold furs, holding an ornate spear.

Now nobody could accuse these children of being particularly intelligent, b…

There was an abrupt change of context, so violent that Tenever felt himself feeling for the edges of the dream, but was thrown back by the immediacy of the scene.

The interior of an armoured vehicle was once again folded around him, but it was mostly ups…

Mornington did not need to close his eyes. Rather, there was a superposition of that which would be over that which merely was. Descending under erratic control, he fumbled with infinite possibility and finite perception. His exhalations slowed, turned to…

"Hraz'Elarion!"

"Hraz'Elarion, have you been climbing trees again? Look at the state of your clothes!" Selura fussed over the young half-elf. In truth, she was proud of the boy. He had grown up to be a compassionate, charming, benevolent contradiction …

It wasn't Neptune who found us first, though.

A pirate craft dropped down on us a few days later, plummeting from a heavy cloud bank where it had been lying in wait. It arrested its fall neatly and elegantly off our starboard side, heliographs stuttering…

No, I wasn't concerned about faceless, independent threats. I was waiting for a far more dangerous foe to show his face.

"Nothing at all in the last few days," the crewman said to me over a tumbler of whiskey. "Nothing 'cept for a whisper of some Martese…

You strike the window with your hand, but the only effects are a dull noise and a pain in your hand. You try again with your elbow, but no joy. You'd better go over to the stairwell.

But you have leapt back and landed hard, and this time the floor shakes under your feet! You leap back again and watch in fascinated horror as the center of the hallway where you were just standing falls in onto the stairs leading to the second floor, bot…

You take a deep breath, settle your feet, and smash the window with the fire extinguisher as hard as you can. There's a huge cracking sound and a triangular part of the window falls in; you jump back and are not cut, but you can feel the floor getting sti…

You land badly. Good thing the acrobatic judges were only imaginary. You land on your shoulder; thank goodness it wasn't your neck. But you bang up your head and a wave of dizziness descends over you. You can hear that other voice still ringing out as you…

You don't think it's wise to stay in this burning building any longer than you have already. You take a deep breath, trying to judge the distance rightly, and leap as high as you can over that burning hole, all the while training your eyes on the strip o…

The Walmart and its parking lot were gone, replaced by a fleshy dome. Colors swam inside, alternating back and forth between contaminated white of curdled milk and the oily yellow of spoiled butter. It heaved and sighed and rippled with jellied motion.

W…

I need to get my mind under control,

Or else I might not ever find success.

But when I try to focus, dread distress

Engulfs me. Like a damn’d, eternal soul,

I seem to see a future filled with fear

And torment, doomed to fail the friends I cherish.

My faul…

You reach out with your hands, ready to shove against the pushbar.

Yowtch!! It is burning hot.

You'd better get your handkerchief or something before trying that again.

Dust. It was the dust, Tenever had decided. A very simple phenomenon that somehow accurately described everything that was FUBAR about this current situation. Normally any arcane practitioner of just about any ability had at least one warded layer to prot…

Story is marked as mature

Rain poured down in thick sheets, dense enough to severely limit visibility. I couldn't see the enemy troops--not a single soldier, tanks, or mech--but I knew they were out there ever since my radar and communications equipment stopped chattering. The sto…

"Which couple will brave the journey?" the gypsy matriarch asked her captive audience. She had bespoken a spell and sand rose like smoke and drifted towards me and the one that I wished was my partner.

The spell was listening to my heart, but if I let it…

The Silver Skies was surprisingly spacious, for a clipper. Wooden crates lined two cargo bays in the side of the ship, while a larger stern bay housed two launches and the larger items of cargo.

"The captain would like to apologise for the mess," the f…

Although the night was clear and cloud free, the streets were dark. A summer wind brought a refreshing coolness off the ocean and I stopped my midnight wanderings to lean against a building, letting the air wash over me. It was sweeter than expected, almo…

Astarlane was not with them. She was gone, folded into her cloak on the other side of the fire, her mind somewhere else entirely. She had been here before, in brief moments and scattered audiences, but she sensed this time was different.

She floated towa…

Leland slumped looking at his hands. He could still hear each of the sour notes that they had drawn forth from the baby grand piano, the horrid music--no it wasn't music but noise!--hanging around, permeating the air like the stench of vinegar. What a tra…

"I used to be madly in love with you, but you pushed me hard away."

"No! When did I do that? I never pushed you away."

"The day you said to me that you would never try to steal me away from my family."

"I wouldn't. Family is important."

"But that was the …