“There are a couple of ways of doing it, depending on the harnesser, the stone in question, and if you’re part of a collective harnessing force or harnessing on your own. What you saw me do earlier was harnessing a personal stone using a personal device. What we do to harness those massive pillars is a bit different. The pillar itself is encased in a harnessing device, and the city basically recruits an army of harnessers to work together to use the thing,” Tan explained.

“It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. In fact, it’s probably one of the most unpleasant things you can do. I feel like a slave when it’s our shift. Imagine a hundred people all lined up in a circle for hours at a time, in total unrelenting exhausting concentration, unable to move or do anything but focus on harnessing the stone to do what we need it to do,” Ardin added. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “I hate it. As...

“What else can you do with the stones?” Jo asked.

“Us specifically, not too much yet. We’ve just started to be able to learn. They don’t allow anyone under the age of 14 to harness stones since it’s a pretty dangerous and complex art. There are some real masters out there though, and the stuff they can do is pretty wild. Fuse stones together, move entire homes, even split the earth.” Tan replied.

“Is that how those huge stones were created? What are they for?”

Tan nodded. “With a few exceptions, the amount of power you can harness from a stone is proportional to its size. Many of those stones provide public services for the city. That stone, for instance,” Tan said, pointing to an emerald spire somewhat in the distance, “cools the entire city when needed.”

Ardin pointed to a ruby pillar adjacent to the emerald tower. “And that heats the city. Between the two of them, we’re able to...

When they noticed her staring, the boys looked at each other, and then the taller of the two began to walk towards her, with the shorter one trailing closely behind. She felt a jolt of anxiety as they began to approach. Even in her dreams, interacting with people terrified her, it seemed. Elvir had been okay because he had been clearly outlandishly a dragon–but the fact that these boys seemed, apart from their plain and roughhewn burlap clothing, very much like anyone she might encounter her own age in the real world made the encounter that much more real and nerve-wracking.

She determined to stick her ground and do her best to convey an attitude of nonchalance. This was just a dream, she reminded herself.

When the taller boy finally reached her, he spoke with a comprehensible, but very strange accent. If she had to place it, she’d say it seemed like some combination of...

Exactly one terrible day later, where indeed her breath did not prove to be of any importance as she spent her entire time at school in complete silence, Jo returned home. She hated this part of the day, coming home from school, almost as much as she hated being at school. Her mother wouldn’t be home yet for another five or six hours. She was staying later and later at work these days.

In the meantime, Jo felt incredibly alone. She had no friends she could hang out with or even talk to. She’d already read every book in the house three times over. As the final nail in the coffin, mother had requisitioned her computer until she got her grades back up. There was absolutely, positively, nothing for Jo to do.

As much as she griped and despaired about it, she had to admit—the computer thing was working. Even homework was mildly enjoyable when there was actually nothing else to do. She...

“Jo! You’re late again! You’ve got ten minutes!”

Jo woke with a start and a stifled scream. It took her a few seconds to collect her bearings and deduct where she was and who was yelling at her. She was in her bed. That was her mother.

She glanced at her alarm clock on the bed-stand. 6:50. Crap. She really did have 10 minutes before she’d miss the bus and with the muck and snow outside, there was no way she’d possibly make it to school without motorized transport. Or, she thought, mind turning, she could just pretend to be incredibly sick and skip the whole dreadful debacle of school in the first place. She yawned, bleary eyed and totally exhausted. It was like she hadn’t slept at all. It was time for Plan B.

“Mom…I’m really not feeling well. I’m not sure I can make it today…” Jo moaned, in what she hoped was her most convincingly sick voice.

An exasperated sigh emerged from the...

Jo dreamed again. This time, she found herself on a hill overlooking an expansive and verdant valley. From her vantage point, she could see a lazy little river coursing its way through the heart of the valley. Nestled comfortably to one side of the river, directly downhill from her, appeared to be a small village.

Village could be an overstatement, Jo thought. It was more like a collection of haphazardly constructed thatched roof huts, no more than several dozen in number. She could see smoke rising softly from a few now, trailing languidly upwards towards the sky. She didn’t see anyone out and about, however. That seemed a little odd to her, but she wasn’t sure why.

Still early in the afternoon, the sun shone brilliantly overhead, illuminating the valley in vivid and crisp resolution and beaming a comfortable degree of warmth over Jo. It was midsummer, right around the end of the...

In response to the Reddit Writing Prompt here: WP If your death is imminent, time stops for everyone but you. This allowed you to cheat death on many occasions by avoiding all sorts of danger except for now - you have no idea whats threating your life. Its been a year since time stopped. : WritingPrompts

“If your death is imminent, time stops for everyone but you. This allowed you to cheat death on many occasions by avoiding all sorts of danger except for now - you have no idea whats threating your life. Its been a year since time stopped.”

This had always been my worst fear. Ever since time began to stop, I’ve been having nightmares about the day that it would stop forever. It didn’t take me long to figure out that this would be an inevitable eventuality - after all, everyone dies, and someday, my death, at long last, would too be unavoidable.

When that happened, time would...

Answering Reddit Writing Prompt: https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/8va8hg/wp_humanity_split_into_subspecies_alters_who/

“Humanity split into subspecies: Alters, who alter their genes, Augmented, who augment flesh with machines, and Ascended, who uploaded their consciousness. After centuries of coexistence, the tenuous peace between the ideologies is threatened.”

Numerous safeguards had been put in place, but of course, no system remains secure forever. Doomsayers had been heralding this day for ages, and just like a broken clock - well, eventually, they were right. The inevitable had happened, and now all of them were indeed doomed.

The fear that this day would come was precisely why the Altered and the Augmented had refused to join the Ascended for all this time. In the end, however, it all seemed futile. Technically, sure, the Ascended had been obliterated first -...

Myra hunched over her laptop, furtively browsing Facebook mindlessly while trying to give a pretense of working - to whom, exactly, she wasn’t sure - while she waited for the hour to pass.

It was late afternoon on a Thursday, and sunlight forced its way through the half shuttered windows of the coffee shop with oppressive summer heat. The coffee shop was nearly deserted, partly because it was late afternoon on a Thursday, and partly because the heat was getting overwhelmingly unbearable.

Myra was sitting alone in a corner of the shop, perched on a high stool with an uncomfortably non-existent backrest. The shop had installed wooden slabs across two of the walls of the store that served as workbenches, and Myra was hunkered over one of these now, half checking her Facebook feed and half wondering about the purpose of her life.

Myra wiped a few beads of sweat from her forehead as she...