It was the day of Drace’s sixteenth birthday that the doom came to his village. He’d had an argument with his father - a terrible shouting match, because he wanted Drace to marry one of the local girls, but Drace wanted to make his own way in the world. He’d run out of the village, crying, up into the hills. It was then that the dark cloud came to ( Read more... )

Mary paused in the bedroom door. Her mother was sitting on her bed, staring out the window and holding something in her lap. It was strange to see her so still, so quiet. She felt a tremor of unease in her stomach. “Mom? Are you ok ( Read more... )

Come closer, and I’ll tell you a story. Would you like to hear the one about the moon’s mistress? Or how the stars lost their color? Something scary, you say. Well, I think I can manage that. Did I ever tell you how I got this scar, here on my ankle? It’s not a pleasant tale. Maybe I should choose another… No? Well, all right then ( Read more... )

“No! Husbands don’t just up and disappear! He went in there, and I’m going after him ( Read more... )

It begins with a door ( Read more... )

This is how the stories start: the blue oracle spoke a labyrinth, and one of its prizes is this tale. You hear it all the time. I never thought much about it, honestly. I never thought that the blue oracle or the labyrinth or the prizes of the maze might actually exist. Not until I found myself here, trapped ( Read more... )

Silas the Black shoved The White Idol back into the closet and leaned against the door. The damned thing kept trying to escape. This wasn’t the most secure location to keep it, but until he could hand it over to The Time Traveler, it would have to do ( Read more... )

When I first came to Hub - and that’s a hell of a story itself; maybe if we’ve got the time I’ll tell you some day, not that you’ll believe a word of it - I didn’t know much of anything. It was this wonderland to me, crystal buildings and floating islands and a billion different kinds of life mingling in the streets. Since everything was ( Read more... )

There is a hidden garden in Fey Sessowyn, a secluded blue and green sparkling gem set behind the fortress of the Immortals, near the Guarded Way. In the center of this carefully tended glen, there is a pool of crystal clear water which feeds an ever-flowing stream. If you follow that stream, eventually you would come to the Sea of Sorrows, which ( Read more... )

He’s sitting at the desk, staring out at the stark lines of the landscape through the window, wishing it were strange to him, that something different would happen today. The sky is the same flat dull silver, the ground the same dusty blue. There is very little vegetation on Semavall, but he keeps a cutting of a droshi plant on his desk, as a ( Read more... )