The Tower

Ishii of Kashton stood tall with her left arm pointed at her opponent who was illuminated by constant lightning blasts. The two magi faced each other, watched by hundreds of nobles and wizards in stands which were donned in bright red pennants and sullen green banners with sigils sewn into each one. Roaring winds whipped […]

A Blessed Curse

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. For the first hundred-fifty years as a spirit, Morgan tried any sort of method or spell to physically interact with the world if only to stop the incessant noises that haunted her. The clock in Sara’s dining room echoed throughout the cold house, and a faucet’s handle was […]

The Half Decade Anomaly

Four years ago, every person on Earth lost five years of memory. Ranzi remembers commuting on a train to London with her thermos of coffee perched in a cup holder by the window, the groomed countryside passing outside. The next moment, her coffee was gone and the same countryside looked shabby, healthy, but the landscape […]

The Devil’s Card Deck

“Think of heaven and hell as more of a PR divide. They just have the better marketers.” The demon Jaalbzznk led Samantha from New Mexico down a spiral staircase with razor blades for hand rails and stone steps blacker than midnight. “We both provide the same service,” Jaalbzznk hissed with a fork tongue – he […]

The Puppet Master

The biggest mistake of my life was heckling a puppet show. And it wasn’t even a particularly good heckle. It was one of the early Punch and Judy shows in Italy with the Medici family still running the place. Punch was being the usual amount of abusive to Judy, and the fine art of motor […]

Little Witches

Estelle had long ago given up magic for the conveniences of technology. Scares lined her arms from struggling to get Screeching Scarabs into the right caldron and from dealing with self-righteous cats refusing to be familiars. And how many promised first born sons did she have to trek across the country to whisk away after […]

The Ezekiel Colonies

None of the cults got it right in the end. The Lizard people fanatics dropped their protest signs when the Lizard people never shed their human skin. People wearing crystals for secret energy realized dinosaurs weren’t at the Earth’s core. The Illuminati turned out to just be a bunch of middle-aged white dudes taking time […]

The Cockroach Queen

“Lost? I’m sincerely hoping your definition of that word differs from my own.” “I had the vile tucked away in my coat, I swear I did!” Almeida’s lips trembled between stammers. “Just like you wanted, I purchased the Lawa from Elyas’s shop and paid the extra coin to keep it all mum. Then I put […]

The Beast and Its Companion

Light was a fable that Micau heard about from snakes that looked like gnarled trees and from birds that rarely sang. The child listened to the sounds of these creatures stirring from above. Some hisses would slither into words – eyes, dark and damp – some calls into songs that made Micau walk a little […]

Skywind

Winoa hardly ever washed her hands growing up. Tiny hairs of caterpillars tickled her palms, dirt clogs parched from the drought fell apart between her fingers, she’d wrap herself around the coarse stumps of trees, picking apart the bark and searching for the sap that rarely came out. Winoa’s hands once had the soft callousness […]