cathfach | one_shot | Complete
All living things have needs that must be met if they desire their life to continue. Such needs range from the universal requirement for sustenance, to the more specific, such as the requirement of all higher life to sleep, or even the esoteric, such as the requirement of a pain demon to inflict suffering. The ability to exploit those needs is what separates, to pick a random example, a successful summoner from the shrivelled (but very happy) corpse that had, a few minutes earlier, conjured up a succubus with no plan of how to control her. The Cruithia Kingdom is well known by its neighbours (or at least, by the subset of them that aren't carbonised silhouettes) for exploiting such needs to bring a shining example of the world's apex predator under their control. For the past hundred years, anyone daring to encroach on the kingdom's territory has found themselves faced, very briefly, by a dragon. But perhaps 'control' isn't quite the right word, and it's that very dragon that the kingdom's betrayed crown princess is going to need to convince to aid her if she ever wants her position back. A creature of selfishness and pride, evil by any human standard, and yet occasionally steerable by those who know the correct levers. Not that convincing the dragon to help her take back her kingdom is her primary concern. That accolade goes to the need to convince the dragon not to eat her. Again. This is a short story (8 chapters/17k words) about a betrayed princess and an evil dragon. Neither has a particularly great time. Published here and scribble hub. If you see this anywhere else, it's stolen.
9.82 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 15:24
COMPLETED: 01/02/2019 "The loneliest people are the kindest.""The most damaged people are the wisest.""The saddest people smile the brightest." All because they do not wish to see anyone else suffer the way they do.
3.76 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 15:25
A man gets thrown into an alternate world after what was supposed to a harrowing escape from death. Follow him as he uses his knowledge from his previous life of research to adapt and survive in a place that is void of human contact, only to find out later how absurdly ridiculous his abilities are. Journey alongside this man as he attempts to change the new world for a better place, to turn it into one that he loves. PS, it will follow the reincarnation template very closely in the beginning (what do u expect? this is RRL), but will deviate from it as the story progress Warning: Crude language
139.76 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 15:47
C.T. Yarrow | contemporary | Complete
A tale of sexy spies, Celtic deities, ancient magic and a little light Isekai. It's 2008. The Blanks are Britain's most valuable intelligence assets; dangerous, damaged people who sacrifice everything for a number, a code name and the chance to serve Queen and Country. Between them they can infiltrate anywhere, kill anyone and steal anything. But now someone is hunting them. Picking them off in ways that seem supernatural. Updates every second day. This novel is already complete. New content published every second day. If you want me to publish more often, or more stories with these characters, then you can always get my attention via Ko-Fi.
60.76 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-25 12:44
LonMair399 | contemporary | Complete
Finally! I was finally free of all the drama surrounding Ethan and his harem from last year. Now, I just wanted to enjoy my new high schoolLakewood Academyand avoid the shenanigans of Ethan and his new group of infatuated girls. This proved difficult, however, when one of the girls approached me with a request that I was forced to accept. Damn my best friend and his meddling. Anyway, such a simple request somehow ended up with me being suckered into helping all of them grow closer to Ethan. It seemed like no matter what I did, I was destined to remain his sidekick. I guess my life was going to be a lot livelier than I imagined. Or annoying. Definitely one of the two.
50.55 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 16:59
Adelaide West | contemporary | Complete
Julia wanted revenge, but she didn't imagine she'd get a demon to help her with it. Three girls worked together to cast a ritual, and summoned a demon to grant their wishes. Whether its peace of mind, the confidence to not be bullied, or revenge, the demon is willing to please. What matters afterward is the price that has to be paid. Not only by the summoners, but by the ones who have wronged them. --- Cover photo by Mallory Johndrow on Unsplash.com --- [participant in the NaNoWriMo Royal Road challenge]
26.72 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 17:03
Returning to a previous life she doesn't remember, Tori wakes up in a fantasy world as the heir to an empire. One where magic called cultivation rules. While doing research and kickstarting an industrialization, she has to deal with a family of transmigrators, politics, and spirits. Maybe she'll even figure out why some of them keep trying to kill her. Life in a different world has its challenges, even if it's the life you're supposed to lead. This is a slightly tongue-in-cheek take on a transmigration/cultivation novel. The story will be more focused on characters than action. A few characters, including the MC, are LGBT+. Updates: Mon. & Thurs.
296.81 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 17:37
LAJistics | historical | Complete
Alea was once a soldier. However her life came to a tragic end during a mission. Lying in the target's desolate hideout, her body broken and mangled looking at the corpses of her comrades. She wished she could have one more chance to live. It seems something answered her wish! But when Alea opened her eyes again she soon understood that she was no longer in her original world. Follow Alea along her journey in this new world, where she has some "big" changes to accept about herself. Though I'm sure that her fiance will help her accept these changes. https://ko-fi.com/lajistics patreon.com/LAJistics
16.25 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 17:42
GhostImageArt | horror | Complete
Dave is not a happy man, But he is a man with a plan. After many years working as a Janitor in the College of Magic, he is finally ready to seize his destiny and become a mage. He has the knowledge he has overheard as he worked and a forbidden object as his focus... but that has to be enough. Who cares if his focus is a mirror? After all... Mirrors can't eat people.
5.61 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 18:19
Lack of Poochline | horror | Complete
My dear friend, I have sent you a transcript of a most curious find I bought from a street peddler. In this package you may find a weird, dateless diary where the most lively and mad servant of "Lady Scarlet" details his day to day working in her impossible palace: organizing balls that have a gender, using valuable wine to water the garden, and in general being at her beck and call. But soon after he started writing, he began to notice foreign messages were being written in it by a vandal: "Pierce the heart with the sword of gold! Set it ablaze and sear the wound with the blade! Kill the dragon, Francisco! Kill the dragon before it gets you again, before it consumes you." Armed only with his holy sword and the magic he learned before becoming a butler, he sets out to find who this individual is, what he wants, and which dragon they refer to, as such beasts were seemingly not allowed into the realm of Lady Scarlet. I hope you enjoy this find, and even if you don't, appreciate my work transcribing the pages, molded, stained with, or written in, blood.(This story is a Writathon project.)
30.62 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 17:46
DWinchester | horror | Complete
[June 2023 Royal Road Magazine Contest Entry] This story is a work of Lovecraftian horror set in the 1920s, detailing the inexplicable happenings at the Bergen Estate, and the only one Josephine can turn to for help is a 200-year-old vampire. Though she has thwarted many smaller evils, and is not without her own powers, sometimes only a monster can hope to defeat another monster.
6.30 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 17:43
LittleCreepy | horror | Complete
If Cthulhu can be summoned by humans who are so far beneath it, why can´t humans be summoned by ants? The answer is, they should be. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I´ve been wasting my time away on Tumblr and stumbled upon a nice Idea. This is the extrapolation of the question; how do ants see humans and how would you react to a bunch of ants chanting your name? Would you give them sugar if they ask nicely? Would you be a benevolent higher Power? Or something way darker and more sinister than you could imagen. As this is the first story, I have ever written, I could do with some feedback. Thanks The picture is from Ants Australia - YouTube. Just tell me if I should take another picture.
2.62 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 17:44
The only thing scarier than being alone in the dark, is not being alone in the dark. Alice had always been good at keeping secrets. However, when a young man mysteriously disappears, a catastrophic series of events are triggered, threatening to upend Alice's seemingly quiet life. Haunting memories of her past threaten to make themselves known. A childhood protector turns predator, threatening to defend her from all threats No matter the cost. Can she navigate the dangers of the unpredictable present? More importantly, is her secret worth dying for?
21.53 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 17:48
Denwa Macska | mystery | Complete
Mutated, despised, hunted and sentenced to death this is life as Salia knows it, and it catches up with her when she and hundreds of others are captured to drown in the vastness of the sea. But water doesn't forget, and just as the last hope threatens to fade, a way out reveals itself that requires only one sacrifice: Humans.Destruction can be so simple.Until Salia realises that revenge will never bring peace.
15.22 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 17:58
SPOILER WARNING: This is a sequel to Tome of the Body. If you have not read it, please do before reading this story, otherwise, a lot of things will not make sense. It can be found here. ~SYNOPSIS~ Every great story needs an author. Samuel Bragg, now the chosen champion of Arcana, has returned to the world of Ahya after one hundred years of being presumed dead. He awakes in his old home village, tended to by his last living friend, now an old woman. He spends some time enjoying the peace he finds but finds that his time away from the world has weakened him. Struggling with his new purpose in life and the returned boredom of village life, Samuel sets out on a nostalgic trip back to the capital city of Milagre. He is surprised to see that much of the world remains unchanged in the past hundred years, with a few exceptions. Accepted back at the Mage's College with high honors, Samuel is offered the chance to teach his own class and educate future mages, but declines, deciding he needs more experience. Desperate to learn more about the mysteries of magic, he takes an apprentice and travels to the distant land of Zaban, where it is rumored that mages skilled in unique magic live. He is given a new title and permission to travel from the Royal Family of Gorteau and sets out for the natural nation of Zaban. On his journey, he learns new skills and discovers his talent for teaching. Powered by Arcana and guided by his influence, Samuel returns to the capital city Milagre, to find those small parts of his life that were lost. He encounters his old friends Shigeru and Grimr, each now well-known for their services to the world. But upon connecting with the world as he knows it, he also learns of a terrible war brewing beneath the surface, filling everyone with unease. With a god behind him and a new ally at his side, Samuel steps once more into the unknown. Can he continue to grow as a mage and find triumph again? Read Tome of the Mind, the second book in the Tomes of Ahya series, to witness the truly thrilling tale of a growing legend and the challenges he will face. This story is also available on Scribblehub.
50.78 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 18:04
OscarWilder | psychological | Complete
One moment, Oliver Grace is mowing the lawn while his pregnant wife cooks dinner. The next, he's standing beneath an alien sky. His Marine Corps training keeps him alive and his father's heart calls him home& but it's the engineer in him that first recognizes just how powerful this world's magic can let him become. Join Oliver on his journey as he kicks a few butts, rights a few wrongs, and shows two worlds what happens to the things that get in the way of a father going home especially when that father happens to be a U.S. Marine wielding the power of science and magic combined. Warning: Produced on shared equipment in a factory that also handles software engineering. May contain musings on the nature of mortality and consciousness, physics and dad jokes.Does not contain: grammar errors. Slow-burn isekai high fantasy with LitRPG elements. No tables. Release schedule: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 8pm EST.
76.05 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 18:09
DarenGillingham | one_shot | Complete
Demons, Dragons, ghouls, and gheists. The monsters of Terra are many. I, Nicholas Wolfram shall tell you all about them in the hopes you may avoid the fate of some of my students. Read on, lest a lack of knowledge be your undoing. These monsters are based on those found in The Alchemist Series.
20.83 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 18:22
Majorian | one_shot | Complete
Cadet Commissar Karl Waino wanted to be a war hero. After years of schooling, he finally got his chance on the planet Banshee, attached to an Imperial Guard regiment to prove he had what it took to lead men into battle. What started as a simple reconnaissance mission becomes the ultimate fight for survival as Karl Waino learns just how horrible war is in the 41st millennium.
15.43 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-29 18:20
Tokage Noshipo | historical | Complete
Notes for a forthcoming work that have been cobbled together to form a historical narrative from the distant past. A first attempt at world building, the setting is an alternative Earth/Isekai and is written based on the common sense of that reality. I anticipate many changes may be made as this is only a draft, and the primary work is still a ways off from completion, but I place it here for practice, and if any soul chooses to take it on, notes and advice would be greatly appreciated.
4.61 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-21 18:31
J Regan | psychological | Complete
There is a place between sleep and dreams where fortunes fly at the whims of the dice. Where people from all walks of life can gamble for more than just money; they can wager their talents, their health, their family... so long as they own it, they can put it on the table for the chance to win the impossible. Where unwitting guests can have their luck and their cunning tested in games where the winner takes all. For time immemorial, the Silver Wheel Gambling House has run by these rules, giving people the opportunity to experience the greatest thrill or the deepest despair. But everything would change one fateful night, when the casino becomes host to an unusual and diabolical guest. A guest who raises the stakes forever. The first of a three-part series. You can read part two here, and part three here. Cover art provided by the talented and wonderful nebai.
40.54 Ten thousand words | Updated at 2024-03-21 18:49
