Lisette awoke with a start. She was in an unfamiliar posture, surrounded by unfamiliar textures, in a room with unfamiliar echoes. She bolted upright and summoned a magelight with a gesture and a word. When it flashed into existence, her heart stopped racing and her throat unclenched: her surroundings explained themselves. Her unfamiliar posture came from...
"For heaven's sake, will you please hurry with that door," Olivia whined, stamping her heel on the worn cobblestone for emphasis, "I'm about to catch my death, and this lantern is beginning to get unbearably heavy!" "Shush!" Greta replied as she moved on to the next key on the heavy iron ring. The thick key slid noisily into the rusty lock, but wouldn't tur...
Jamie was hunched over his notebook; the papers filled with scribbles detailing each of the thirteen blood lines. He had to find the key to the tomb and it was hidden somewhere in the hierarchy, he was sure of it. Pressed gently against the paper, his lead pencil took down the minor details streaming from his mind. Crack! He must have leaned on it too...
"I will help you to destroy Brumelle, but the two women must accompany me on this mission." "Very well, but first you will you show me the exact location of the arch from where you entered this world before I allow you to leave with the women." "Yes, I will tell you its exact position. Then as soon as my mission of destroying Brumelle is finished I will br...
There is a small store, an unremarkable door under a forest green awning with one front window. An arch of foot-high gold Victorian-era letters spelling out "Ann Tique's Shoppe" adorn the front window, and are again repeated in one-inch letters on the glass of the door. As for the items displayed in the window, that changes over time. Some of them...
Everyone's pretty familiar with genies or jinn - you rub the lamp, you get three wishes. Ifrits are a little different. They both live in lamps and grant wishes but Ifrit specifically take delight in causing harm - either by twisting the owner's wishes around Monkey's Paw style or by forcing someone good and pure to make wishes that are purely sinful in natu...
This story was posted a few years ago on another site under my pen name of mandil. * For the last half-hour they had been walking in a region covered with small rocks with just a few trees growing here and there. They then crossed a small creek and soon they stood at the limit of an another forest. The minute that they entered the relative darkness and coo...
As soon as she entered the room, she smelled the faintest trace of lilacs. Violet closed her eyes instantly, feeling for where she knew the edge of the bed would be. Blindly, she crawled across it, fumbling for the nightstand drawer, and the blindfold safely and discreetly tucked in its corner. It didn't take long to get it in place, but her heart pounded in...
In Shadowed Silence: Chapter 1 Two bodies writhed intertwined on satin sheets, the soft glow of candles setting their skin aglow. Soft, passionate sounds filled the large bedchamber. The man was pale, a bit soft-looking of body and perhaps a bit past his prime. The woman, by contrast, was fit, lithe and young, with the swarthy skin of the seafaring people o...
TWO That's what a best friend is for: figuring things out when you aren't up to the task. Sometimes it takes more than your best friend, and you have to tell your story to the next circle of acquaintances as well, even though their opinions haven't hit the mark so often in the past, and their way of seeing things doesn't usually line up with yours. In a no...