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Discover weekly, the best short stories

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

14990+ Fantasy Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. Though fantasy is well known for its epically long sagas, fantasy short stories can deliver all the genre’s best attractions with one punch — or, shall we say, in one fiery dragon breath?

Fantasy Short Stories – Page 795 of 1000

Do As You're Told

Submitted to Contest #62

I’ve always found it funny how Tellers are never wrong.  My best friend’s older sister, Kyteari, was Told when she was nine. She was Told she would become a dragonrider; which everyone laughed at, because dragonriders must be unwed, untouched, unbound, virgin, clean, free; and Kyt was long since betrothed to the Duchess of Aolderen’s secondborn son. Even as her parents laughed the Telling off, there was uncertainty in their eyes, but they laughed nonetheless. “Preposterous,” they said. “A dragonrider, our daughter? Never.” And then Kyt ...

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Unholy Crown of Aimene

Submitted to Contest #62

“The time has come, he must be taken birth somewhere. The sky is turning orange like a fire ball.” Grantham was looking at the sky. It was deep orange in the day time. Argonne nodes silently while looking in the same direction. “Hey speed up, you are so slow Cian. See I am about to reach to the target.” Aimene mocks and shouts at his beat friend in cheerful voice. Aimene was holding canvas headgear and his biceps were popping up in the rhythmic movement. His silky black hair were moving and talking with air. His sand coloured skin was shinin...

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Peas, Securities and Whatever That Third Thing Was

Submitted to Contest #62

By now Chris knew exactly where to look. Oliver thought he was being clever, but Chris was getting better at predicting his patterns of behaviour and his likely hiding places. Last time, he was found in some kind of shady bar down by the harbour and since he never hid in the same bar twice, logically he would be on the other side of the city. That said, Oliver knew that Chris knew his behaviours so as soon as she realised he was missing, Chris went straight towards the harbour. He would almost definitely be at a bar, or some other place he c...

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The Cloud Friend, Snow

Submitted to Contest #63

Molly looked around. The smell of nature filled around, and sounds of birds singing lullabies chirped. Sitting on a tree house and looking down below you where the flowers was a tiny red dot was scary. But the breezes and winds of gushing air that passes through you is a beauty. Molly slowly closed her eyes, feeling the beauty of silence and nature. She started to feel relaxed when, she was disturbed. ' Molly! Hello Molly! Excuse me, are you awake?' Molly snapped her eyes open, and also jumped up. Hmm. A boy was on a ladder, slowly climb...

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Surprised

Submitted to Contest #62

His personal pod glided silently out of the cerulean blue sky, touching down on the open balcony 40 floors up. The doors to the apartment and the pod opened silently and simultaneously. He crossed the room, his sinuous body clad in a tight silver suit which enhanced his enviable physical structure. He bent to pick up a shiny metal disc from the low table and stepped into his transport. In moments they were rising high into the atmosphere, heading towards the mountains far to the south of the country. He leaned back and shut his eyes, probab...

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Gardening in Hell

Submitted to Contest #63

Gardening In Hell By the time I stepped outside, the leaves were on fire. "Ugh, I overslept again," I muttered to myself, walking along the winding, uneven path that led from my house towards the flower beds I maintained in my free time. The fires only started at half-past noon, never a moment later. If it wasn't for these trees' punctual and practical design, nobody would ever know what time it was in the Aboveworld. Though, to be fair, I couldn't fathom why anybody would need that particular information. I raised my eyes to ...

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The Mage & The Oracle

Submitted to Contest #62

A purple mist flooded the wooded great hall and hung low to the ground. It was wet and cold like a morning frost, but entirely unnatural in origin. The smell was thick, like bloody iron. The Oracle stood in the centre of the hall, draped in heavy deep burgundy robes that covered her whole body. The hall had soaring ceilings that were so high even the tallest trees could fit inside and also become enveloped in the enchanted mist. Next to The Oracle was her magic staff with a black, glowing orb of energy encased in a glass ball that sat next t...

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The TIME CAPSULE- then and now.

Submitted to Contest #62

THE TIME CAPSULE-then and now.           In 1990, I interred not a body but my time capsule in Van Cortlandt Park, in the Bronx. I played there as a child; I climbed rocks, chased birds, skated on the lake in winter and rowed boats there in the summer. It was only fitting that the capsule be buried and hidden there, in the burial ground on vault hill.           1990 was a good year- Germany was reunited; Namibia became independent...

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Chameleon Tag

Submitted to Contest #62

Her throat was overtaken by the taste of a childhood skill. The unmistakable tang of blood and mucus, clot against the back wall of it. Hot air travels up and down its pipe with every pant. She’s tired. She’s been running for hours. But she can’t stop, because she remembered her. Her was the woman from the house, called Elizabeth. Elizabeth was forty three, and worked in an office before she worked here. Her life devoted to milk colored blouses, and coal colored pencil skirts, and red wine lip stain, and whitening strips stapled to her tee...

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A Matter of Pride

Submitted to Contest #62

Everyone knew that Alexandra was bad news. Every single one of her neighbors, her classmates, her relatives, the elders, even people twenty towns over knew better than to believe that anything good could come from associating with her. It had always been thus and would continue to be so until the end of times. Or until the apocalypse, which would be completely her fault and would lay waste to their entire civilization. Or so the prophet believed. And if the prophet believed it, so did everyone else. Whatever. In her humble opinion, the P...

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Lived Well Life A

Submitted to Contest #62

I wake, though I cannot open my eyes. Everything seems so much effort. I draw breath. A butterfly hand takes mine. “Dad?” Who’s dad?  “It won’t be long now,” a distant voice says I draw another slow, painful, rattling breath. I don’t think I want to do that again, and as I let it out in one long, slow hiss, a voice says “Time of death, 09:36”.  I’m left thinking was that it? *** I wake. But I thought I’d died? Maybe that was someone else. Still cannot open my eyes, still difficult to breath.&nbs...

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What Is To Be

Submitted to Contest #62

The brown-haired woman being wheeled down the hall doesn’t have much time left. She is fading away from grief, I think, seeing how tightly she is holding on to the tendrils of her past. She has interwoven the strands of her memory so tightly with every possibility of her future that it has been cut short. I look away. My attention turns back to the nurse administering medication to the few other patients sitting in the common area. She perplexes me. A strong, vibrant portion of her path points her away from this place, flashing like a neo...

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Unlucky Is My Middle Name

Submitted to Contest #62

I was an ordinary person, with an ordinary life. I was young, carefree, and innocent. Until the day things started going as told. *** Everything started going wrong the second I was born. The doctor passed out during labor. The nurse got my name wrong, and put down Lily instead of Lillie. I fell off of the crib. Two nurses were sick that day.  I'm a very forgetful person. I would forget my umbrella on rainy days, remember to bring my umbrella on sunny days. Arrive at the bus stop a second too late, and have to wait for the next bu...

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Heart Never Lies

Submitted to Contest #62

Halloween taunts her. Every decorated house, every person walking down the streets in costumes, every kid out for treats or trick, and even Halloween editions in shops were a reminder of what Grace could never have. Grace pulled the scarf around her neck tighter as she walked past the house decorated with fake skeletons, at least she hoped they were fake. People believe that Halloween is one day when all the witches and fairies in the town roam freely without the fear of being caught. It was the day their powers were at peak. It wa...

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Comet's white light

Submitted to Contest #62

Pure white light.Around me there were beings of all shapes and sizes, in stasis. Looking at themselves and their ephemeral bodies. All of them made of a slightly opaquer light. It was a sight no one on Earth could ever behold, and yet it feels like we were all here before.It was like the air was pure emotion. You breathed in the warm love, the suffocating suffering, the crisp anger. I looked closer. It was a place where white was not so white after all. I focused on a being right in front of me, must have been within my reach. You could see ...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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