The Veil between worlds smells like overripe fruit, a deep purple scent. Cloying. Decaying. Bruised.
The sanitized atmospheres of living worlds lack the depth and complexity of abandoned realms. They never smell like the Veil, suffused with the scintillating aroma of death.
I breathe it deeply.
Invigorating.
Its heavens, ever-clouded. Its ground
In four minutes, I’ll be dead.
I didn’t plan to go down like this, but you know what they say: Make plans or don’t make plans, God hocks a loogie in your face regardless. So here I am, dripping with holy spit in Jackson Square. Here I am with a splitting headache
So many rats.
Mayor Osveld sidestepped a chittering swarm as he hurried down the cobbled streets of Hamelin. Children flocked, picking up the creatures and tossing them back into the gutters or at each other, laughing. Children and rats. The two main commodities of this stinking town.
He turned into a doorway and sprinted
“Tell us how y’all got that shiner, Cap?” Private Cordone’s voice crackled over the comms. I couldn’t remember his full name, Something Something Cordone IV.
I shook my head and closed my thermos, suppressing a sigh. Ever since I’d reported for duty with a black eye, the squad hadn’t been able to
Eighty bucks seemed like a lot, but it was for Gerald’s thirtieth birthday, so I clicked “confirm” before I could regret those eighty dollars—which turned out to be $97.89 after shipping and tax. I was already on the receipt page when I started to worry how legitimate it was.
Thankfully,
Any ship on approach gets to see the giant ring I call home. It’s a beautiful structure, gleaming brightly against the backdrop of space. Great place to live, but honestly—a circle is the worst when you’re trying to evade someone who wants to space you.
Robyn whipped around a corner. She tried to activate her comms
Judy Suarez lit a cigarette and took a drag. Against her left shoulder she cradled a landline desk phone. In her right hand she clenched a screenplay lacerated with pen slashes.
“Hemingway once said to write drunk and edit sober. Honey, you should be writing sober.”
The screenwriter on the other end of the line said
Through closed eyelids, Magister Calysma watched the silvery-blue energy pulse around her as it filled the room with the sharp smell of raw magic. Perched on a pyramid of velvet cushions, she monitored activities across the kingdom. Set in the white marble walls were dozens of quartz crystals, each the size of her head,
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Kevin had only been in this new, magical land for five minutes, and already something was trying to kill him.
The life of a world-hopping hero must be a short one.
“What is that thing?” Kevin shouted, ducking behind a crumbling, ivy-covered wall. An iron spike embedded in a crack in the wall, quivering
It takes a special kind of stupid to ride a dragon drunk.
Or maybe I rode a drunk dragon. The details are fuzzy. Many things are fuzzy right now, starting with where I am and how far I fell before I landed.
I open my eyes. Currently, they’re the only parts of my body that don’t hurt.
The biggest risk of being a superhero was ending up a cliché.
Caspian had always mocked the stereotypical hero speeches he’d seen on the news, but now, facing his own villainous showdown in a closed pawn shop at midnight, well… it seemed like the only things he could spout were tired old
Sounds of children at recess filled the midday air. Laughter. Creaking swings. The metallic ping of kickballs on asphalt. Lurking in the bushes, a lanky bunny hated every noise.
A cunning white Vienna rabbit, Braxton the Sorcerer had stalked these rotten school grounds for days. Watching. Searching. Binkying. The tiny emerald
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