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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.

150+ 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 8 of 10

Cerberus and Alethea

Submitted to Contest #314

I have no heartbeat. No breath. No sleep.But I wait.For millennia, I have stood sentinel at the threshold of the Underworld, where the very air hangs thick with ash and forgotten souls. Silence reigns here and not the gentle hush of peace, but the weighty stillness of oblivion. Beneath my claws, the stone is scorched black by ages of sorrow, etched with the footprints of the dead. My three heads do not slumber; my eyes remain forever unblinking. I am the final gaze that greets the souls of the departed, the last witness before their names ar...

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The Never Queen

Submitted to Contest #314

One Summer’s day, when the city was a smouldering inferno of superheated alleyways, scorching brickwork, blinding glass, wilting people, she fled, not to the burning wildfires of the country, the charred destruction of centuries-old woodland lost in minutes, but to the basement, the blessedly cool, dark, silent room that few knew and fewer visited. The light buzzed annoyingly, but she could live with that. The heat it gave off irritated her, but not enough to worry about. She wandered through the aisles, through ages of history piled and sor...

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Shall I call you Lost?

Submitted to Contest #314

The dark haired boy wandered his land. Sinking beneath shade in the unusual heat, avoiding the streaks of warm honey dripping from the sun, he was almost one with the world. Wispy black hair curled into the shadows as green eyes mimicked the dark dipped leaves coating the trees. He was draped in a moss boa, and a coat of messily woven fronds, with a similar air to vines. Peaceful to simply live, yet utterly untamed, beautiful in the correct place, hideous in the wrong. As he moved, he almost drifted. Not a leaf creased beneath his step, not ...

2 likes 1 comment 1
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arachne: a twist in the tale

Submitted to Contest #314

There is a loom resting in the corner of a house. It throws shadows upon tiled walls as the sun dances across the sky. A woman threads her fingers through strings of multifarious coruscating hues that hang limply from the beam. They tangle together like vines, riotous colors clashing, baring teeth at one other. These colors are bold, so different from the pale, insipid ones commonly used throughout Lydia. Those ones lack lustre, lack life. Women have resigned themselves to the dullness of the esoteric art that is called weaving. Often, they ...

8 likes 2 comments 2
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The Secret History of Water

Submitted to Contest #313

The absence of daylight in the surrounding area betrayed the fact that it was actually noon. Darkness enshrouded the sun, blocking its rays from shining through. A slowly advancing horde paused and hovered, awaiting their orders. But none came. The wind blew steadily from behind, pushing them onward, so they continued. Although the Zerem were as numerous as the sands on the seashore, without their commander leading them, they felt as if they were wandering aimlessly, unsure of where to go next. Suddenly, a thunderous rumble filled the sky, e...

12 likes 15 comments 15
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Bainbridge

Submitted to Contest #313

Bainbridge Sometimes, driving, I’ll get the smell. A car will stop short, or a big truck. It hits me right in the nose, that burning rubber stench, and then I’m six years old, back on that one-lane country road in the hills of Pennsylvania. It happened years ago, before I started school. I've tried telling people about it over the years, and folks laugh or stare. They look at me, wondering when I will deliver the punch line. There wasn’t anything funny about it. It started one fall day, in September. The air was crisp and clean....

7 likes 5 comments 5
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Fated to Die

Submitted to Contest #313

The ground always smells musty when you’re six feet below the surface. As a mortuus actor, or a professional death artist, Tornicasa had grown accustomed to the feeling of being buried alive. The dampness of the mounds of dirt pilled above him were kept at bay by the warmth and protection of a sturdy coffin. The pitch-black grave provided growing clarity of mind. Tornicasa wished that one day he could partake in the final sleep of death but, for the time being, his purgatorial prison allowed him no peace.Living remained harder than dying. Th...

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Tomorrow

Submitted to Contest #313

TomorrowLike most things do, it started innocently enough. Early on a Friday afternoon, Pete Smith had just sent his final report of the week to his manager. As a data analyst, he could work from home whenever he pleased, but since his wife’s recent passing, he preferred going to the office most of the time. “Just to be out and around people,” He would say.But with several errands to run over the next few days, today he decided to work from a spare bedroom office to get a head start on the weekend.The first thing on his list was dropping off...

2 likes 1 comment 1
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Old men and trees

Submitted to Contest #313

The kiss of snow woke him more violently than any sound ever could. The absence of light should have warned him of snowfall’s coming and, had he been able to see, he'd know better than to let himself fall asleep so exposed, so unprepared for the bitter cold that was now painfully icing its way through his veins. Still dazed, he felt his way around him, casting off some of the soft blanket from his sleeves and knees. At least the hood of his cloak had protected his neck, ears, and the useless part of his face he used to rely on for vision. ...

16 likes 7 comments 7
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Dawn, that was Good!

Submitted to Contest #313

Small town anywhere, dead quiet at the crack of dawn, no cock-a-doodle-do, no heavy traffic, just the subtle sound of a small opalescent-colored pigeon egg falling from the brittle branches of an extremely thirsty neighborhood birch tree. Thud — it hits the soft dry grass below and gently rolls onto the somewhat cool concrete sidewalk — stopping only a few inches shy of the roadway. No damage whatsoever, one of those sporadic miraculous moments in time. But the day is only beginning, and it is forecasted to be another scorcher. Very soon, th...

4 likes 3 comments 3
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Ears-A-Plenty

Submitted to Contest #313

Once upon a time in the village of Wishyouwell there lived a crabby old woman called Ears-A-Plenty. She was called Ears-A-Plenty because it was true, she did have more ears than the average two or three that we might have nowadays. Yes, she even wore the extra ears, sprouting from the top of her head, gathered up with a velvet ribbon like a bouquet of posies. Ears-A-Plenty was a shopkeeper, the best shopkeeper for miles around. Each morning, smells of coffee and buttered toast wafted on the breeze, gathering customers to her. Once inside the...

15 likes 13 comments 13
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The hottest summer days…Midsummer’s Whisper

Submitted to Contest #314

Midsummer’s WhisperIt was the hottest day of the year… Even the wind had stopped moving, like it couldn’t bear the weight of the sun. Air shimmered above cracked paths, and shrines held their breath beneath soot-stained trees. The sky had curled into a brass dome, and mortals trudged beneath it like forgotten prayers—slow, quiet, too tender to break. For ten years, I had slept beneath the stone fox statue nestled in the hillside shrine. Kitsune like me don’t count time the way humans do. Our clocks are made of emotion, of memory, of grief we...

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The Forest that Makes You See Things that Aren't There

Submitted to Contest #313

The forest has a way of making you see things that aren’t there. Faces in bark. Arms in branches. Whispers in the wind that sound like secrets you had long forgotten. But the king had commissioned them ages ago and time was running out.Felix and Kai had put it off for as long as they could, clinging to rumors as excuses and the names of those that never left. But promises to the crown were never broken.And even though they were twisting their fingers and cinching their breath, they refused to let the other see it. As they stood before the ed...

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Brackish Footprints A Pathways Alliance Short Story

Submitted to Contest #313

Brackish Footprints is a short story set in the world of *The Pathways Alliance*, a post-apocalyptic saga where animals and humans form interspecies alliances to resist the lingering threats of a fractured world. The protagonists, River and Silver, are intelligent raccoons—larger than their ancestors and gifted with telepathic abilities due to radiation exposure generations ago. In the wake of a limited nuclear exchange and environmental collapse, certain humans and creatures absorbed gamma radiation and. were twisted by it, becoming what so...

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Succession

Submitted to Contest #313

The scent of the sun-warmed lavender fields wrapped around the town of Tyburn like a blanket. By this late in August, it overwhelmed every other smell. Even the tanneries on the far side of town struggled to compete with the heavy, close smell of the lavender weighing down the air, although Charlotte was still grateful to be far from that side of town. Today, she was sitting on an iron bench on a sun-drenched balcony, letting the floral-scented air waft her hair back from her face, preparing to do something terrible. “It smelled like this ...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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