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Discover weekly, the best short stories

Looking for a steady supply of adventure short stories? Every week thousands of writers submit stories to our writing contest.

150+ Adventure Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. From riding the high sea to climbing behemoth mountains, there isn’t any action that’s out of reach when it comes to adventure stories.

Adventure Short Stories – Page 7 of 10

Beneath the light of the comet

Shortlisted for Contest #354 ⭐️

The summer ET was released on video I was first in line at the rental store - itching to watch it - having been deemed too young to see the original cinema release. Five viewings over one weekend confirmed it was more than just a film. From sparking a BMX obsession, to our family make up replicating the one in the film; experiencing it felt like belonging, at a time when our fractured family unit had shattered this comfort. Weeks later on a blazing December morning, as mum’s Holden pulled up outside a small house in Hanmer Springs we couldn’...

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Journey to Harcourt Harbor

Weekly Contest #354

“Next!”Jemma shuffled to the next available space in line, clutching her passport and luggage tightly. The port was filled with people arranging their belongings and managing small children as they boarded their ships. She adjusted her head to see the podium a few feet away from her. Two people were ahead of her in line, giving her some time to think about what she was going to say to the port security officer. The officer had a sour look on her face, angrily stamping passports and waving customers away in a hurry.Thump!The officer’s stamp h...

5 likes 1 comment 1
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Four For Elba

Weekly Contest #354

“Can’t you loosen these cuffs, Robert? They’re cutting off my circulation,” Cisco McGraw grouses.Robert’s steely blue eyes crinkle in frustration. A herculean seven feet tall, the immense A.I. security guard has the rugged features of a no-nonsense jailor. By contrast, Bridget, the Aeolus’ A.I. pilot, has the silken redhaired appearance of a hip twenty-something. But like Robert, she will not deviate from her mission to bring her passengers to the prison planet Elba.“Per EarthWorld Security’s rules of incarceration, all prisoners must be hel...

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The Castle Under the Stars

Weekly Contest #354

A drop of water pelting my nose wakes me to another monotonous day. Crisp spring air carries notes of last night’s rainfall. If there’s ever a reprieve from the rain, it’s for a brief window in the wee hours of the morning. The hours I usually prefer to spend sleeping. Chirps and caws bounce off brick walls like ping-pong balls. Sunlight beams through the old frosted glass, casting a scene of a bustling world of shadows, colours, and light refraction.My naked toes and my button nose tingle from drafts of cold air. I run warm, so I like to le...

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The Tether Between Us

Weekly Contest #354

“Why does a cosmonaut need a gun, Papa?” The corner of his father’s mouth rose. He followed Pavel’s gaze back through the museum doors to the display case holding the survival pistol.“How old are you now—eight?” he said playfully.“Eight,” Pavel said with glowing accomplishment.“But why do they need one?”"Ah—I can tell you the real story about why every Soyuz spacecraft has one. Come on, it's beginning to snow."Pavel tilted his face into the snow for a moment, then sneezed. "It tickles my nose," he said, wiping his face on his sleeve. Yosif s...

32 likes 26 comments 26
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Revolution

Weekly Contest #354

Pops could be heard before I could define my city’s shape…cracks and pops, quiet, then more of either. At first I assumed the noises a celebration of some type but easily they grew into being guns firing in the joy and anger of revolution. Within the haze of the port city spiralled funnels of smoke were reaching toward the mountain peaks that joined the clouds. Grey strips in the tree green of life. But the city sparkled as it always did around this time of day with a sun just leaving morning knowing it will continue to make us a day. I look...

3 likes 0 comments 0
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Street Crime: Memories of LIfe on Twenty-Eighth Street

Weekly Contest #354

STREET CRIME: MEMORIES OF LIFE ON 28th STREET1994 words In the 1940’s, when I was a young boy, 28th Street Northwest was a nondescript street in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of the District of Columbia, located about a half mile west of the National Zoo. Only two blocks in length, with just a single lane for one-way traffic and a curbside lane for parking, it was certainly a nondescript street in a nondescript neighborhood, but for us children that street was our playground and the center of our world. There was not a real playground or...

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The Cartographer of Quiet Places

Weekly Contest #354

Maren Voss has spent seventeen years making maps nobody ever truly reads. She charts dead moons, catalogs debris fields, marks the coordinates of places so remote that the light leaving them won’t reach Earth for another thousand years. She is employed by the Interplanetary Cartographic Archive; a quiet, bureaucratic institution that files her work into databases accessed mostly by automated systems and the occasional academic. She has never been famous. She has never wanted to be. She is fifty-one years old, traveling alone in a survey vess...

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A Weave of Trees

Weekly Contest #353

Zeus looked longingly at his creation far away from his perch on Olympus; a grey void planet where the stench of rot emitted was so potent that the other Gods and Goddesses complained to Zeus.“The Earth remembers what we forget”, cried Zeus, “surely it will remember to create…”, this time his words fell more desperate into the ether. The Earth had many a time been subject to war and famine and mining on itself and usually the spirit of Mother Nature, Gaia could restore balance but it appears that Gaia herself was no longer talking.“The soul ...

12 likes 2 comments 2
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Seed

Weekly Contest #353

Lavanya pierced the black, swirling waters with her oar, dragging it through the foam, her torso searing with the pain of a thousand coals. Only she knows the path to the last seed, the elders prophesied, for without her, all of humanity shall perish.The ancient wisdom of this path was said to be passed divinely—mothers could not pass it to their daughters, nor fathers to their sons. Instead, three traveling hermits—the Vashwanah—visited each home that welcomed a new child, whispering in tongues to a swaddled newborn, waiting for some glimme...

9 likes 3 comments 3
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The King Of Qadesh: The History of the Power Talisman

Weekly Contest #353

“Years ago our nation was facing unparalleled peace. After the split from Egypt, our people established themselves near the basin.” Grandma stated as she held the book containing the secrets of our nation’s history. Today we are learning about the history of our nation. This week we have to learn about our kingly duties. I am Amana, descendent of Amaziah, King of Qadesh. My twin brother and I are to rule this wonderful nation of ours when the time comes. Our father taught us that the best leaders are those who are knowledgeable of their past...

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The Giver and Keeper of Life

Weekly Contest #353

I am Earth; mother of the moon; daughter of the sun; sister of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; and stepsister of Pluto.I am the ground beneath your feet, the water which you drink, the oxygen that you breathe. I am the giver and the keeper of life for trillions of species. Each organism plays a vital role in maintaining my ecosystem, whether it’s a plant, animal, fungus, bacteria, protozoa, or microbe. Just as I give them life, they give me mine.And I love every single one, except for Homo sapiens. Journal Entry #...

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The Seed

Weekly Contest #353

Chunk was popping off in my ear about the rain, his voice heavy like he just ran a block. I paid him no mind. My shades were on, and I was working.I glanced around. Nobody in aisle forty-two of the local Food-Mart. Time to act. I slid my backpack off my shoulder, ripped it open, and reached for a Lunch-Pak on the shelf.Chicken or pork?“Oink, oink, B.” Chunk’s voice rang through my earbud—other problems.The security guard was standing to my right, apparently shocked to have caught a sixteen-year-old girl in the act of stealing.“Chicken or por...

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One Feather

Weekly Contest #353

One FeatherA story of Garuda, son of Vinata They called my mother a slave.Not in whispers. Not behind cupped hands. They wound their coils around her wrists and said it the way you state weather, matter-of-fact, already bored by the truth of it. A wager. A loss. A life, handed over at the seam of a word. My uncles, smiled with their flat, lidded eyes and said: this is simply how things are.I broke the sky the morning I was born. They say it as a warning. I wear it as a name.I came out blazing. The gods on their peaks saw the light cracking o...

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The Old Man of Maesteg

Weekly Contest #353

“Then, of course, there’s the man who lived in the mountains.” Your 80-year-old grandmother’s thick South Wales accent bellows, snapping you and your sister to attention. You look at her and can’t help but feel a blend of warmth and fear. Your sister glances at you with an understated smile that bears the weight of your shared childhood. “I always believed grandad,” she said, turning to you. So did you, you thought. Your grandad spent his life talking about nature. He was never one to stray too far into the trees, but you’d often find him fe...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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