Shane D. Spear
Bio
I am a small-town travel agent, who blends his love for creating dream vacations with short stories of adventure. Passionate about the unknown, exploring it for travel while staying grounded in the charm of small-town life.
Stories (52)
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The Cog-Boy of Aethel. AI-Generated.
Master Elara Vance found him three hours later. The workshop that had once been Baron Von Greed's private laboratory was now a scene of controlled chaos. Academy artificers worked alongside city engineers to catalog the Baron's equipment (the man himself had vanished in the confusion following the resonance cascade). Awakened automatons wandered the space, some weeping electronically as they rediscovered their suppressed memories, others simply marveling at the return of choice to their existence.
By Shane D. Spear4 months ago in Fiction
The Cog-Boy of Aethel. AI-Generated.
Baron Von Greed was waiting for them. Cogsworth had expected pursuit, searches, perhaps even mechanical hounds sent to track him through the city's steam-filled streets. He had not expected to find the Baron standing calmly in his carnival quarters, examining the maintenance tools with the casual interest of a man appraising property.
By Shane D. Spear4 months ago in Fiction
The Cog-Boy of Aethel. AI-Generated.
The streets of Aethel's older districts were a maze of copper pipes and crystalline conduits, perfect for an automaton trying to avoid detection. Cogsworth had disabled his external lights and muffled his mechanical sounds as much as possible, moving through the shadows like a ghost of brass and gears.
By Shane D. Spear4 months ago in Fiction
The Cog-Boy of Aethel. AI-Generated.
Three days later, Cogsworth made his decision. He left the Academy during the lunch period, slipping away while Sarah Chen was distracted by a complex alchemical equation. His brass-shod feet carried him through Aethel's winding streets with mechanical certainty, even as his decision circuits churned with uncertainty.
By Shane D. Spear4 months ago in Fiction
The Cog-Boy of Aethel. AI-Generated.
Three weeks into his academic life, Cogsworth had settled into a routine that gave him something approaching contentment. His classes fascinated him—particularly Advanced Mechanica and Aetheric Theory—and he had developed a genuine friendship with Sarah Chen, who seemed to appreciate his unique perspective on their studies without pressing him about his peculiarities.
By Shane D. Spear4 months ago in Fiction
The Cog-Boy of Aethel. AI-Generated.
The Alchemical Academy rose from Aethel's academic district like a Gothic cathedral made of metal and glass. Spires twisted skyward, crowned with aether-collectors that fed the building's vast experimental laboratories. Students in brass-buttoned coats hurried across courtyards where fountains danced with liquid mercury and crystalline trees grew in perfect geometric spirals.
By Shane D. Spear5 months ago in Fiction
The Cog-Boy of Aethel. AI-Generated.
In the heart of Aethel, where copper pipes snaked between buildings like metallic veins and steam clouds drifted perpetually through brass-framed windows, Master Elara Vance bent over her greatest work. The workshop around her hummed with the constant thrum of aether-powered machinery, crystalline conduits pulsing with ethereal blue light that cast dancing shadows across walls lined with gears, springs, and arcane instruments.
By Shane D. Spear5 months ago in Fiction
The Never-Ending Midnight
The morning sun cast long shadows across Anchor's End's cobblestone streets as Finn Mercer leaned against the weathered brick wall of Gulliver's General Store, his dark eyes scanning the small crowd gathered around Mrs. Henderson's produce stand. At seventeen, he possessed the kind of easy charm that made people forget to count their change and the quick wit that turned every conversation into an opportunity. His unruly brown hair caught the coastal breeze, and his crooked smile suggested he knew something you didn't—which, more often than not, he did.
By Shane D. Spear6 months ago in Fiction
Beneath the Dust
The wind was a constant sculptor in the Grey, a patient artist carving canyons from ruins and smoothing skyscrapers into tombstones. Kael knew its language—the high, thin whistle that presaged a glass storm, the low moan that carried the scent of Scrabblers on the hunt. He was a creature of this desolate wasteland, a reclusive scavenger defined by the silence of the spaces he inhabited. His lean frame was a testament to a life of scarcity, his eyes, the color of rust and watchfulness, missed nothing. He was cunning, a master of survival, but bravery was a currency he couldn't afford and didn't possess. His world was one of solitary, calculated movements, a life of evading conflict by being less than a ghost.
By Shane D. Spear8 months ago in Fiction
The Ghost Train
Chapter 9: The Truth of the Train The train hurtled through landscapes that defied classification—mountain ranges that floated upside down above churning seas, cities built from light and shadow, forests where trees grew backward into the earth. Sarah had stopped trying to document it all in her notebook. Some things were beyond recording.
By Shane D. Spear10 months ago in Fiction
The Ghost Train
Chapter 8: Sarah's Stop Sarah had barely made it back to the passenger car when she felt it—a peculiar sensation unlike anything she'd experienced before. The steady rhythm of the train began to slow, the clacking of wheels growing more deliberate, more measured. But it wasn't this change in tempo that made her grip the nearest handrail until her knuckles whitened.
By Shane D. Spear10 months ago in Fiction
