25 Tasty
The diversity of foodstuff at the city festival was astounding. All sorts of cultures and races brought in signature dishes, each representing the finest dining they felt deserved to be shared with the rest of the world. Some of the dishes may have...
24 Dizzy
"What day is it?" I asked nobody in particular as I got out of bed. I stood up too quickly, which rendered me dizzy momentarily as blood struggled to get up to my head. I had to place a hand on the door frame momentarily to steady myself before I...
23 Ancient
It's amazing that it still worked, really. A cell phone, circa 1997, found in the midst of moving from one apartment to another, in the bottom of a box that hadn't been fully unpacked in the last several moves. But after plugging it in and swapping out...
22 Ghost
In an era of modern technology, death is only a minor inconvenience. Yes, the first time one is resurrected without a physical body - as if a ghost in a simulation - is unsettling. But if you get over it, there are certainly advantages to giving up a...
21 Treasure
"You've come to steal my treasure!" the king exclaimed, backpedaling quickly from the dragon that had poked his head into the throne room." "_Your_ treasure? Don't be absurd." The dragon snorted in disgust. "You've taxed the life out of your citizens...
20 Tread
It is one thing to be in a land full of dangerous predators. It is another still to be knee-high to a mouse and needing to fear the tread of creatures chasing prey many times your size. Every trip out of your lair - a small alcove in a towering...
19 Sling
It was with a heavy sigh that I moved on. All I could do was sling my bag over my shoulder and keep moving along the road. I'd been traveling for nearly two weeks, trying to make it to a city where I might have time to rest in the relative luxury of...
18 Misfit
The world was originally made for humans. Adapting to anthros was a challenge, but something society copied with well enough. Chairs needed holes for tails and some shirts needed to be designed for wings, but in general things went on as usual. Then...
17 Ornament
Loskra hummed to herself as she worked in her lab, mixing one alchemical substance with another, then waiting to see if the results were as she had hoped. She'd been working at this for a while and was very nearly done, just in time for the...
16 Wild
It was a simple enough concept: transportation by much larger creatures. Why walk yourself when you could instead hitch a ride on a Kaiju? Turns out, there are plenty of reasons why. For those upon the transport, it was quite the wild ride as they...
15 Legend
Out in the vast desert in the middle of a continent, near and otherwise unassuming oasis, sat a dragon. A thousand years ago, when this was just a stop on a trading caravan, the dragon would invite travelers to stay a while and share a story. In return...
14 Overgrown
It was a place largely untainted by modern civilization. A few relics of the past could be found here or there, but this section of rainforest was overgrown and had reclaimed any space which had once been lost. As with the flora, the fauna, too, were...