Fiona Tarr
Jun 3, 2016 | Fantasy, 1st pages
The old man could not sleep. It was not that his body ached, he was used to the pain of his ageing human existence. He longed for the day when his eternal spirit would be free. It was his people keeping his mind occupied and awake. They had been coming to him for months, asking for a king. They wanted to be like all the other nations, ruled by a man, not by God.
He was angry and hurt. As the spiritual leader of the Israeli nation he felt the people were rejecting him. He had always done his best for them, passing on the message of faith and advising people according to God’s laws on matters of dispute.
The trouble had begun with his own flesh and blood, his sons. What he had done wrong, he could not understand. Now that he was ageing and knew his time in the flesh would not be long, he had appointed two sons to judge over matters of discord. Their role had been to implement the laws of their forefathers, handed down by God Himself to the prophet Ishmael.
His sons had turned from the way and accepted bribes and adjudicated according to their own personal agendas in line with the influences of the rich and corrupt.
Jean Kaczmarek
Jun 1, 2016 | Fantasy, 1st pages
CHAPTER ONE – THE EARTH OPENS
The iron-gloved hand passed reverentially over the long mural. It brushed forests of spears pitched against monstrous caparisoned animals and flowed over warlords clad in blazing armor. In the darkness bleached only by the glow of large cinnabar candles, the Skorpios Lord paused at the image of a raptor flying over a large dome with open claws. He made a discreet sign of devotion in thanks to the victors of the Scarlet War, and moved away from the bas-relief.
Behind him, a beautiful green light crept along imperceptibly, like the glow of fireflies dancing on a summer night, bathing the engraved stone. The wings of the stone bird suddenly shuddered and a humanlike form materialized. It extricated itself from the molten mineral. Draped in razor-sharp elytra, it now stood on the wall. Slowly, it raised a faceless head toward the wicked spikes of a huge flanged mace which aimed to shatter it. It dodged them almost in slow motion, but in the blink of an eye its wing sliced open the banded sections of the knight’s breastplate and knocked him backward. He rolled violently against a pillar, his guts spread around him. The last two guards arrived instantly. The creature used the membranes of its wings like pliers to tear off the arms of the first, and then scythed open the throat of the second, right through to the vertebrae. The creature placed its talons on the floor of the blood-washed nave and hissed in pleasure as it approached the altar.
It stood hypnotized for a moment, contemplating its prize. In an instant, its wings sacrilegiously tore into the heavy lead walls of the tabernacle and the beast savored the burning wave of radiation. Intoxicated by the invisible fire that made its every cell tingle, it slowly and with devout respect wrapped a claw around the jewel of the city of Adrion.
Then suddenly, the Araknee turned its head and spat out a screech. One hand holding in his intestines, the other upon his morning star, the lord flung himself at it with a howl of rage, calling on his decades of strength and experience. But the spikes of his morgenstern were prevented from reaching their target, hampered by an invisible barrier.
The Skorpios Lord let go of his torn innards to put both sticky hands on the shaft of his weapon and force it toward the creature with all his might. The force field gave way and the phosphorescent spine was split with a blinding flash.
K.A. Lentz
May 27, 2016 | Fantasy, 1st pages
Forced to wait three, long days for his marks to arrive, the assassin heaved a sigh of relief as the fleet of four finally sailed into the bay below. Hidden from view along the face of a mountainous cliff, he crouched low atop a high ledge and surveyed the scene before him. A flotilla of anchored warships lazily bobbed side by side on the incoming tide. Their forest of masts rose from layered decks housing a company of sleeping cannons, all together creating a formidable barricade hugging the rugged shoreline.
Scanning their profiles outlined by the setting sun, the stealthy onlooker watched as hordes of sailors loaded onto ready tenders for their brief but welcome shore leave. Skeleton crews dutifully remained behind hustling along as they loaded various sized containers onto a non-stop stream of dinghies ferrying supplies to the budding encampment. The assassin turned his eagle-eye gaze away from the ships and down to the sheltered beach below. Its creamy ocean of sand was alight with trails of blazing torches marking the hubbub of hurried activity.
Bustling along like a colony of ants, the crew of each vessel remained busy setting up clusters of camps for the entire armada.
Multiple campfires sparked to life as the waking stars above crawled through the growing darkness to begin their nightly glow. Between spots of firelight the assassin could hear commanders barking orders to their underlings diligently scurrying about.
Carol Marrs Phipps & Tom Phipps
May 27, 2016 | Fantasy, 1st pages
Chapter 1
Someone shouted in the kitchen. Tess Greenwood sat right up in the blackness. “Dad?” she gasped.
Someone screamed.
“Mom!” cried Tess as she stumbled onto the floor in a panic of pillow and sheets, in time for her door to fling wide with blinding light and a bang that shattered things on her dresser.
“Hey!” barked the silhouette in the doorway. “No way you're running by me!” And with that, he tramped right in, jabbing her in the throat with the end of his e- truncheon.
“Aah!” she wailed with the throb of its electric jolt as she sat down hard on the floor.
“Like that, little witch?” he hissed through the mask of his plastic helm. “Now you're going into the kitchen on your hands and knees, real careful or I'll hold my stick against your stinking throat 'til y' pass out. Move!”
As Tess rolled onto her knees, she could hear her sister's squeals of defiance as she kicked at the pair of cops who had hold of her in the kitchen.
“Nia!” shouted her mother before crying out in pain.
“You vile bastards!” roared her father.
Tess leaped through the doorway in time to see two of the police from Children and Family Assistance squirt his mouth full of thick polymer from their gob stopper gun, as he gagged, bouncing and jerking against his restraints in red-faced fury.
“I told you!” bellowed Silhouette, grabbing Tess by the arm and yanking her onto the floor.
“Tess!” cried her mother. “Stop! They'll kill you if y' don't quit!”
“That's right!” shouted Silhouette.
“Nia!” cried Tess at the sight of the police kicking her.
“Hey!” shouted Silhouette. “That little whore's going to the capitol. And they won't take her all beat up! But this one,” he grunted, giving Tess a furious kick, “has earned it!”
“Tess!” screamed her mother in time to be silenced with a kick in the head.
Her father sprang from the floor in spite of his restraints, slamming into Silhouette in a rage that knocked over the refrigerator behind them. Suddenly police were everywhere, beating him senseless, dragging him and his dear wife out the door into the early light of dawn.
“Mom! Dad!” screamed Tess as car doors slammed outside.
Now they had Nia by the arms. “I'll love Drake forever!” she wailed as they forced her outside.
Tess bit the hand that grabbed her mouth and dashed outside to leap down the steps as two of the police cars lurched into the roadway with a chirp of tires.
“Bite me again, little witch!” roared Silhouette as his truncheon came down behind her ear.
***
Beyond the front steps, the sun rose well into the morning, glinting on a green bottle in the bare red dirt of the yard. Sparrows cheeped everywhere in the noise of the traffic from the roadway.
Nathalie M.L. Römer
May 27, 2016 | Fantasy, 1st pages
Keldarra was once a beautiful and tranquil land of peace.
It is long forgotten by the people who live there now. In the city of Ruh'nar, prosperity is relatively untouched by the warfare the Wolf Riders inflict upon the land. Some people even said peace never existed. Others claimed it existed, but some sort of curse brought on the world, destroyed it. It is the largest of the three ancient continents making up the world.
The fate of other continents, or as to whether the Wolf Riders actually reached those distant shores, is an unknown.
The ocean between Keldarra and its closest neighbouring continent is too vast to breach with the small ships many seamen possess. The days of the majestic ocean-faring ships are long gone, and a part of The Old Days. This is why people now live in more close knit communities, and why they don't travel or venture out to distant lands much.
It also seemed most people who lived in the turbulent Keldarra grew to care less about distant lands, and every part of Keldarra is prone to this perspective. It is uncertain which one – peace or eternal warfare – is the truth, and which version is just rumour brought into existence, because of the turmoil existing in this fragile world.
Only the Keepers of Truth know. Or so it is whispered quietly, when people thought no one in authority is listening. Even the Keepers of Truth are seen by many as some conjured story to explain the lack of anything being done about the turmoil seen in the world every day. The latest whisper, however, to do its rounds is of the impending incursion by the Wolf Riders, a menacing reality everyone is aware of, because they become more aggressive and bolder in the last few decades.
Marrida shudders at the thought of them coming to her beloved city as she heard the rumours, of them coming closer every day. Many of the usual merchants, who would busy themselves in the central market square of the city, already stayed away out of fear of the impending incursion.
“The city feels so empty these days” she thought with some sadness.
The pain of the feelings about the looming incursion is so visible on the faces of those she passed in its streets as she hurried home herself. Even she is feeling fear in the deepest recesses of her heart. Not so much for herself but more of what might happen to her younger brother.
“They will snatch you too…” she shouted at him in a latest fit of anger, when he again made his suggested choice of vocation at her.
He, in turn, stomped off to his room, and slammed the door shut, and stayed there for hours. The gesture of a meal being left at his door would not get him out of the room.
Marrida is a young headstrong woman, barely a few years out of her woman initiation – called First Rites. She, her younger brother and much younger sister occupied a small but lavish looking house on the most north eastern street off the central market, just a few streets further than her uncle's shop who sold exquisite pottery, leather wares and stone works. The district she lived in is notable for many centuries now for its many artisans, but even those are fewer these days as greater numbers of the city dwellers sought the safety of untouched cities on the western coast of the vast continent. Her district is still considered among the wealthiest parts of the fast diminishing city.
Even grandeur pays the ultimate price.
Robin Glassey
May 27, 2016 | Fantasy, 1st pages
Sha’Chivok raised a frozen hand to the prison door and hesitated briefly. Before he could knock on the frosted barrier in front of him, Mortan called out irritably, “Enter!” Bracing himself for the inevitable confrontation with the ancient Elf, the frozen Water Elemental turned the handle and entered the room deep in the heart of Castle Simmai, located in the northern reaches of Gor Vodi. Of all the places in Fathara, this was the perfect place for Mortan to plot and plan, experiment and expand.
Sha’Chivok was not privy to all of his master’s plans. None of the Sha’andari, of which Sha’Chivok had been the first, knew all of Mortan’s plans (for the Elf trusted no one). And yet Mortan promised them so much: power, magic, and immortality. The sorcerer had made Sha’Chivok glorious promises, grand promises. In truth, immortality was nothing to an Elemental. Sha’Chivok could choose to live forever if he wished, yet his power and magic were still limited compared to what Mortan now wielded. The sorcerer’s promises were tempting for an Elemental who had endured much — so tempting.
Sha’Chivok resisted the urge to look down at the gaping hole burned clear through the center of his stomach. His fluid nature could shift the scar, but why bother? He couldn’t make it disappear, only move its position. Only Elemental magic could damage him so. It reminded him of his carelessness in the past. Carelessness in the future would mean more than an inconvenient hole; it would mean his death. Mortan wore his red robe with gold trim down the front today (never a good sign). On the thick gold trim were woven several magical symbols to amplify Mortan’s power. The Sha’andari often wondered how many rubies it had taken to cover the robe.
In contrast to the blood-red robe, Mortan’s chalk-white face and midnight hair stood out. At his advanced age, the Elf’s hair should have turned silver but Sha’Chivok suspected the sorcerer used alternative means to keep his original color. It was unlike an Elf to show such vanity — such weakness. There were some signs of the Elf’s age such as paper-thin skin and a few wrinkles around the eyes and the corners of his lips. Other than a few wrinkles though, Mortan’s skin remained incredibly smooth for one so old. Sha’Chivok suspected there were more signs of his age that the sorcerer kept carefully hidden using magic.
In the center of the room, suspended in mid-air by a globe of green light, hung a forest windah. The small wooden creature had clearly been tortured for some time as his bark lay in peels — scattered around on the icy floor below him. Slivers and chunks of wood also lay around the room, yet Mortan held no mortal weapon in his hands. Sap oozed slowly from several places of the windah’s body, including the corners of his tiny brown eyes. His head slumped forward with thin twigs sticking out of the top of his head like spiky hair. One solitary green leaf remained on a twig — sticking straight up — as if in defiance of the brutal torture being delivered. The windah’s arms stretched out painfully up and to the sides with his tiny wooden legs dangling uselessly below him.
