Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Featured stories
Activity feed

Discover weekly, the best short stories

Looking for a steady supply of adventure short stories? Every week thousands of writers submit stories to our writing contest.

8550+ Adventure Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. From riding the high sea to climbing behemoth mountains, there isn’t any action that’s out of reach when it comes to adventure stories.

Adventure Short Stories – Page 183 of 571

The Honorable Battle of the Barbarians

Submitted to Contest #183

Everard raced through the dense forest, his armor clanking loud enough for both armies to hear. He paused for a moment, raising his hands as far above his head as his bulky shoulder plates would allow, catching his breath. His metal chest plate gleamed in the dappled sunlight. A twig snapped. Everard spun toward the sound, the arrow leaving his bow before the foe could step fully into the clearing. He fell with a garbled “for king and country…”  Everard snorted. “The wrong king and country. Obviously.”  Everard reassessed his ar...

11 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Mrs Macintosh

Submitted to Contest #183

Old lady MacIntosh was a weird old bird who was best left alone. Just ask the neighbourhood kids.  Over the last five years, they had lost countless stray pieces of sports equipment or toys over her fence. It was your typical grumpy old lady who moves into a friendly neighbourhood and just ‘Wants to be left alone’ story… until last week. Last week changed everything.  It all started with a request from our neighbourhood watch coordinator, Jim, who had phoned me out of the blue one night. “Jack, how are you?” “Oh, hi Jim, ...

10 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The Follicle Chronicles - Pt.3: Hirsute Pursuit

Submitted to Contest #183

Nothing is complicated with Mace. According to him, infiltrating Madam Scanlon’s private grounds will be as straightforward as ‘taking a dump’. Sometimes, I think we’re just too different to work together, but he has this undeniable knack for getting things done.He parks his pickup truck next to the compound boundary so we can scale the wall. ‘Mind the drop on the other side,’ he warns me. ‘And watch out for the moss.’ But I slip on the green slime, and tumble off the wall into a hedge that provides perfect camouflage. I wriggle do...

11 likes 10 comments 10
Read story

Sunflower

Submitted to Contest #183

Five miles in and I'm tired already but I feel the buzz of a new adventure moving through me. I set the purple backpack on the picnic bench and take a deep breath before opening it. Day 1 on the trail and I have a turkey and cheese tortilla wrap ready for me. Fresh food. Yum. I've already lost my appetite after two bites. I continue to chew, slower now. I look at the engravings and pull out my phone to take a picture. "Bill Bryson is a . . . " I read and then look down at the picture. That's right. He didn't finish. At least he tried. At lea...

14 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

The Gray & Blood In Between

Submitted to Contest #183

Sensitive Content Warning: This story contains scenes of fighting, war, blood, and death. My ears rang as the barrage of artillery rained down around me as I stumble- walked- ran bleary-eyed through the unfamiliar hilly terrain. In all my years in the small town where I’d grown up, I’d never seen such chaos. Such utter destruction. No video game had ever prepared me for what I had come to witness. I wanted to close my eyes to it all but that would mean my immediate demise. So, I struggled on. Losing my bearings in all the anarchy, I...

13 likes 13 comments 13
Read story

Going home

Submitted to Contest #183

“We could stay here, how much money you got left?” My friend Kevin says as we walk down under the Venice sign in Venice Beach. Sedate, he looks around taking in his first time in Los Angeles, but not California. The heroin has something to do with his leisurely manner. “I don’t have much, a few hundred.” I speak. “I have about the same, but we could make it work. Stay here?” He says this in a joking manner but with a hint of seriousness. I scoff first and then say, “Eh, these fucking desert people, sometimes I think we’re just too different....

5 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Aerelian

Submitted to Contest #183

Aerelian felt the fangs of the pijavica snag on his left shoulder, perforating his Imperial-issue tunic. Blood began to drip, if only for a moment before it was all licked away.  He thrashed and kicked, rolling in the dirt. The monster’s silhouette in the torchlight was truer to its form than the image of a girl before him. Her hair was lilac, her skin was dark and healthy. Pillowy lips clasped around his wound. Though he thrashed and wriggled, her movements were nothing but graceful, mesmerizing. The only trait betraying her nature w...

21 likes 9 comments 9
Read story

My brother goose

Submitted to Contest #183

In a small village, where people live calm, peaceful life, one farmer had a barn. Not big, but not small. He had cows, sheep, horses, chickens and geese, and some other animals, who spend their lives in the same way, as farmer did. Day was going after night, and night after day. But once happened one situation, that changed this peaceful way of living in the barn. One chicken gave a birth two living beings. As you can understand, they both hatched from eggs. And the thing is, that one of her children were a chicken and another one – goos...

7 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

I Drink My Tea With Sarcasm, Thank You.

Submitted to Contest #183

It was a normal day in London, or as normal as it could be in a world where Snowflake Soul-Reaping Ghosts roamed free. The cloudy skies and the prospect of rain did nothing to dampen the spirits of the people of London, for they were always smiling. But these were not happy smiles. No, these were smiles meant to fool the ghosts, for in this world, the only way to avoid having your soul reaped was to use sarcasm as a defense mechanism. The Snowflake Soul-Reaping Ghosts were the stuff of nightmares. They were ethereal entities, transparent a...

15 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

House of the Moon

Submitted to Contest #183

I woke up with a vicious hangover. Vulane’s ‘Nightlife’ district was not a place for casual tourists... or detectives. Bleary-eyed, I looked around my temporary lodgings. I grabbed my tail: yup, still there. I must’ve barely made it through the door last night. It was still raining as I looked through the misty window. The street below was filled with performers, families, pickpockets, and - somewhere - a heinous villain. I could hear the sound of drums, fiddles, and laughter from what seemed like every direction: including from within m...

9 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

The Dungeon of Deus ex Sapiens

Submitted to Contest #183

Secret ingredients(don't tell anyone): Guns, swearing, gore.Bullets pounded the wall where Arthas had been. He blind fired from what little cover the lift offered as the doors threatened to close.“Is it too late to surrender?” Detective Jacques asked. He was a long way from Mars. Of all the ways the Martian had imagined dying, being turned into Swiss cheese by assault rifles had to be one of the worst.“Far too late, Mister Jacques,” said the taunting voice of Lord Banks. The aristocratic puppet master spoke through the public address system....

23 likes 20 comments 20
Read story

Deep Shallows

Submitted to Contest #183

The trip was going sideways. It started normally. Your average hallucinogenic haven. By the third Saturday of each month, I typically need to retreat to that haven to purge the nine-to-five, nine-to-five, nine-to-five drudgery. The little hippy girl down the road made me two heart-shaped chocolates that I took with me to the woods. She sold them for twenty bucks a pop but would drop down to ten if you brought something shiny or interesting to sweeten the deal. This time, I’d brought a lavender urchin shell that washed up on the beach with al...

12 likes 11 comments 11
Read story

Going Going Gone

Submitted to Contest #182

Going Going Gone Roxy gets in the taxi cab and says “Follow that Car”. It’s a Tuxedo Black 1962, first generation Chevrolet Corvette, beautiful, majestic, with black and white interior, chrome as shiny as the full moon and glimmering stars. The man driving, mysterious, tall, dark and handsome. Wearing, you guessed it, a Designer Black Tuxedo with black Italian shoes. I need to find out everything I can about this man and first, is where he lives. The Taxi driver is pretty good at this, swerving and dodging, skidding around corners and keep...

9 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

The Follicle Chronicles - Pt 2: A Fistful of Follicles

Submitted to Contest #182

Apparently, the best spot for a clandestine wig-slinging operation is the basement of a laundromat whose opening hours are zero. Well, zero for everyone except those clutching a fistful of follicles, like myself. I’m fresh off of my first job with Mace, laden with more hair than I dare carry in the streets, and I’m wondering how much the wigmaker pays for a spectacular haul like ours. There’s 15 grams of my own hair, 42 grams of my wife’s, and a sheaf of blonde lifted from the elite madam whom Mace and I robbed like the highwaymen of old. Or...

10 likes 14 comments 14
Read story

Tacos Interrupted

Submitted to Contest #182

  I am  walking with my sister Molly to the local Tom Thumb grocery store for taco fixings. We offered to make dinner for our family today.  I’m just a year older than Molly and a bit taller too. I’ve always been close with Molly, as we have so much in common. We love volleyball, and drama club, and spending time at home in the kitchen around the large island. We love to cook and bake, and Mexican cuisine is a favorite. We look like sisters, light brown hair and grey eyes. Well, Molly’s eyes are greenish in color.  &...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story
RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

Bring your short stories to life

Fuse character, story, and conflict with tools in Reedsy Studio. All for free.