The neighbour's rooster crows me awake in the morning, which is a funny thing to say given that crows are also birds, and crows don't rooster (or pigeon or hawk) but caw-caw-caw (one flies by, near). However, I digress—and, digressing, reveal the present state of mysleeplessmind.

(Even my thoughts are slurred.)

I rub my face.

And go downstairs, where my parents are already sitting at the table, watching me with a silent kind of beaming pride. I can almost hear their loving eyeballs say, “Oh, Gromi, my little Gromi. Growing up so fast.”

“Morning,” my dad says.

He says it man-to-man-like, but with just enough artifice I can tell he's trying too hard. I don't mind. It feels good to be treated more like an equal, a peer.

I see that my mom has already made breakfast. (Have I mentioned that I like her cooking?) Eggs, sausage, boiled root vegetables. They've evidently been waiting for me to join them. (My parents, not the food; although the food's been waiting too, I suppose.) “Have a seat,” my mom says. When I do, I expect her to say more, something along the lines of, “Eduard’s back, and he brought your father's sword—it's beautiful, and I told you so,” followed by: “Of course, this means, and please don't take it too hard: it means you've failed your quest.” Then my father will say words like, “Not everyone completes his first quest, Grom. I know plenty of adventurers, fine adventurers, who did not,” and I'll ask if he completed his first quest and he'll say he did. Gods, my mind is scatter-brained today. Or is it my brain that's scatter-minded? Or am I… a mind that my mind just—

I shake my head and both my parents chuckle.

“How is it?” my dad asks.

“How is what?”

“Your inevitable level up hangover.”

So that's what it is. “I didn't know that was a thing,” I say.

“My sense of self used to feel like a cracking fishbowl afterwards. It's really the only drawback of gaining a level,” says my mom.

(In my case, I gained a level but the level is zero, but don't let's get philosophical about it.)

I feel like I'm reading a book but my mind is several pages behind what my eyes are seeing. Symbols: seen, generating images and ideas, delayed. And the book is actually me. And half of it's written in another language, one that I don't know, (which would be any language other than the one I'm speaking in.)

“It passes.”

“This will be the least unpleasant level up hangover you ever get too. Because you're home. On some dark night you'll level up and wake up the next day in a ditch with a terrible headache and no memory of how you got there,” my dad says.

“True story?” I ask.

“Sadly.”

I eat, and eating helps settle my thought process, which arrives at: “Any idea if Eduard is still missing?”

“He is,” my mom says.

Which means my sword retrieval quest is still active.

“You can always check your quest log,” my dad says. “You didn't sleep through your first quest, if that's what worries you.”

I smile. The smile signifies happiness. The happiness is genuine, but there's some part of me—some cowardly and comfortable part—that experiences also a slight disappointment. Nobody told me questing can be scary. (I mean, I knew adventures involve the unknown and danger and beatings,) but what I fear is less tangible than that. It's more low-key, a fear of not having my mom’s eggs, sausage and boiled root vegetables for breakfast again; of not having a bed, my bed; of leaving home: yes, that's it: ‘s a fear of losing what's most dear to me and that I didn't even realize was so dear to me until finding myself on the brink of leaving it all behind for a quest,” I say.

(Wait—I was speaking?)

“That's not cowardice. That's growing up and striking out on your own,” my dad says.

(Ugh. Hangover.)

My mom giggles. “You're thought-louding, Gromi.”

I shovel the rest of the food into my mouth and chew. Why does questing sound increasingly like some kind of mental condition? I think (silently) and, “because perhaps it is,” a voice responds, and, “who said that?” I say. “Said what?” my dad asks, and my mom just can't stop giggling.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

After breakfast I walk with my dad over to the village tool shoppe because finally I can equip things. Weapons, armor, rings, pendants, boots, etc.

“How do I know if something’s equippable?” I ask my dad.

“It’ll have a glow,” he says.

After we enter the shoppe (“Mornin’ to ye, sirs,” says the keeper) my dad points to the wares on the shelves, some of which glow and some of which do not. “See a difference?” he asks.

I tell him I do.

“Because I can't—not anymore. No active quest, no need for equipment,” he says with a tinge of nostalgia. “But go on, tell me what all's equipment up there.”

I point to a hunting knife, a bow, a quiver, a yellow cap, a compass, a leather satchel. It's easy to tell apart the equipment from the non-.

“May I help you gentlemen with anything today?” the shoppekeeper asks.

My dad pats me on the back. “Sure, Karol. My son's preparing to embark on a quest and I would like to purchase some equipment for him. Basic items. A weapon, some armour. Do you have anything in boiled leather?”

“Afraid I'm all out of boiled leather. My leathermaker’s become more of an ale-drinker these past few months. The old lady left him, you know. That, however, is beside the point.” The shoppekeeper turns to me. “Let's have a gander at your stats and I'll see what we can do for you, lad.”

The expression on his face when I do, somewhere between pity and disgust, hurts. “I see. I suppose nothing too heavy then, or requiring too much skill, agility or much hand-eye coordination or dexterity.” He loses himself in thought, probably taking mental inventory of his shoppe. Then: “How about a small club? I don't keep it out in public view, but I know I do have one in the back.” He disappears, then reappears holding a sturdy-looking club. It's small but not embarrassingly so. I take it from him. It feel lights—mobile.

I swing it around a little, imagining I'm conking goblins on the head. I can almost hear their little brains rattling about their skulls.

“Try equipping it,” my dad says.

I can't.

The equipping rejects.

I mumble an apology and hand the small club back to the shoppekeeper. He thinks again. “I'll be right back,” he says.

“It's fine,” my dad says. “I don't picture you with a club anyway. Clubs are for brutes and barbarians. I see you wielding something that requires a little more finesse, Grom.”

We hear hammering from the back of the shoppe, and a few seconds later the shoppekeeper emerges holding what appears to be a wooden board with a nail hammered through it. “This should do, a little custom-made number. I used to moonlight as weaponsmith. Untrained but quite in demand, if I do say so. I bet you fellows didn't know that.”

“Is that a mace?” I ask.

“No, no. Certainly not a mace. Not sure it has a name, not technically. But I like to call it: board-with-nail-hammered-through-it.”

I reluctantly take and equip it, successfully to my utter dissatisfaction.

“There you go!” says the shoppekeeper.

“It'll do—until you improve your stats and win something better in battle,” my dad says.

It costs us a single coin (“because, for tax purposes, I'm not legally allowed to give items away,” the shopkeeper explains.) None of the shoppe’s armour is equippable by me, but we do buy a bracelet that multiplies my charisma (currently: 1) by 1.05 so when I equip it, my charisma rises to 1.05!

Unfortunately, stats are expressed an integers, so the bracelet functionally does nothing, but I do like how it looks and feels, and my dad says it'll give me practice being equipped. Plus, it will become marginally useful once I gain more charisma. If I gain more charisma.

I also have my heart set on the shoppe’s yellow cap, which seems like it weighs next to nothing, but it turns out the cap was designed for a particularly intelligent goat and my intelligence stat is too low for me to equip it. (“Aye, the goat,” the shoppekeeper reminisces, “he was a fine beast, sharp as a tack and brave as a company of knights. Met his end trying to attack a cliff face. Also got into the ale, that one.”)

When all’s told and tallied up, my dad is two coins poorer and I leave the shoppe equipped with a board (with a nail through it) and a useless bracelet, but I do enjoy being equipped for the first time, as well as seeing the glow of equipment out in the wider world, even if I can't actually equip most of it.

My dad heads home to his cauldron. He has work to do, potions to make.

I stop by Eduard's forge. It's empty, and Eduard hasn't been back, but I go inside to see if maybe I missed something when I searched it last night. I'm almost convinced I didn't—when, buried among a pile of coal, I spy the faint glow of an equippable item. Digging, I uncover a ring. I pick it up, inspect it. It is, to my untrained eye, made of gold, but there are no markings on it, no jewels or other adornments. I slip it onto my finger and equip it.

“Hey, buddy!” I hear.

I spin—casting my suspicions everywhere, on everything.

My heart: beats.

(The voice was not Eduard's voice.)

“Who goes there?” I yell, and follow that up with, “Show yourself, fiend!” which is something I read in a book once, and which sounded decidedly less lame to me then than now, when said aloud.

I see nobody.

“Why, it's me, chum. On your finger.”

I look at my finger, the ring. “Hello?” I say to it, feeling like an idiot.

“There you go! Hey.”

“Who—or what—are you?”

“I'm Randy, but you probably know me by my official name: The Accursed Ring of Eventual Insanity!” (Thunder clap!)

“What… do you do?” I ask the ring.

“I make you go insane. It's not really my fault. No more than it's your fault you're a pathetic excuse for an adventurer who still naively believes your parents unconditionally love you. So, the both us—it's just how we were made.”

I unequip the ring.

I try to unequip the ring, but I can't. “That would be too easy, now wouldn't it?” says Randy.

I try again.

“You can keep trying, but doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity, buddy. I don't usually have my effect on people that fast.”

“So what do I do?” I ask.

“Nothing. I have a little property called ununequippability. In layman's terms that means: you and me forever.”

“You should know I am about to embark upon an important quest. Are you sure you wouldn't rather stay here?”

“Here, among the coals? What do you take me for, silverware?”

“I—no, but…”

“Fantastic! It's been ages since I've been on a quest. I can see us now, you doing the mundane stuff, like walking and eating and sleeping, and me systematically causing your madness. It'll be—fun!”

And so it is that on the first day of my life as an adventurer I find myself equipped with a board (with a nail through it), a mathematically insignificant bracelet and a talking ring that wants to drive me crazy.

On the other hand, my hangover is gone.

Tomorrow has to be better.

Right?

(“Oh, It'll be better alright. Insanely better,” says Randy.)