It’s before sunrise. I’m clothed, packed and equipped.

Randy, a.k.a The Accursed Ring of Eventual Insanity, is still asleep, or whatever it is a talking ring does when it’s not talking.

I tried telling my parents about him last night—I don’t usually wear jewelry and my mom noticed the ring on my finger—but he wouldn’t say a single word in front of them. I doubt he’s shy, so it must be part of his overarching strategy: to make me doubt reality. Regardless of the reason, it didn’t make me any crazier but I think it convinced my parents I’m putting too much pressure on myself.

In the evening I told them I want to set out tomorrow (presently, today) and they tried to talk me out of it. My mom said that it’s the latter half of summer, which means soon it will be fall and after that winter, which is cold and dreary, and for a lone adventurer most of all, and that the ideal time to set out on an adventure is in the spring so that you have the most warm-weather days ahead. I don’t disagree, but if there’s anything my uneventful life has taught me thus far it’s that things seldom work ideally, and if you wait around for ideals you might lose out on life itself. My dad backed me up, which at the time felt great, by saying he actually left home on his first quest mid-winter—at night—during a snowstorm—but when I made it to bed, Randy (now he decided to talk) told me that my parents obviously just want me out of the house so they can finally have it to themselves: “I mean, what sane person wants a stat-deprived teenager around?” I don’t believe him, of course, but his snide little observation did gnaw at me until I fell asleep.

Speaking of Randy and my dad’s missing sword, here, for the benefit of posterity, is what I’m currently thinking, on this, the day my quest begins in earnest:

Eduard obviously believes dad’s sword is somehow significant. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have stolen it. The emergence of my quest proves Eduard correct. Because he believes dad’s sword is significant and because I’m the one who gave it to him, he probably predicted (correctly, as it turned out) that his taking the sword would trigger a quest for me. Believing that, it’s likely he left Randy in his smithy on purpose for me to find, to hinder me in my pursuit of him. I must therefore consider Randy my enemy. (It’s not hard to do that.) But what I’m stuck on is: where Eduard went. If our village is a single point on a map, there’s world literally everywhere around it, in all known directions (plus up and down, but I have chosen to discount those possibilities.) All I know about Eduard is that he came from the west. Does that mean he’s more or less likely to return in that direction now that he’s in possession of the sword? Moreover, did he come from the west in flight? Would he therefore continue fleeing east even with the sword, or maybe especially with the sword? I don’t know. I just don’t know!

“You’re overthinking it,” my dad says.

I’m standing in the doorway.

“All these types of considerations will come later,” my mom adds. “For now, focus on walking outside and familiarizing yourself with the overworld map and the basic mechanics of questing. Besides, I’m sure you’ll be back home soon. We can talk more about the particulars of the quest then.”

“I don’t know, mom. I have a feeling this quest will take me pretty far. I’m not sure when I’ll be back around these parts again. And when I am—if I am—I’ll probably be a changed man,” I say, with a certain gravitas.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Just remember always to have fun and that I put two dozen of your favourite kind of cookies into your pack,” she says.

“Travel well, Grom,” says my dad.

And—just like that—I take a couple of steps forward, grip my board-with-nail-hammered-through-it, and I have begun my quest.

It feels…

It actually doesn’t feel all that much different than the thousands of previous times I’ve left my house, but now I’m not going to buy milk, or tell Mrs. Kieślowska that I found her elderly husband wandering in the fields again, or to lie down in the tall grasses and imagine an adventure. This time, I truly am on an adventure!

“So what now, Suckleslav?” Randy asks.

He woke up. “I’m not even sure what that means,” I say.

“It’s a play on your name, Gromislav, and the fact you’re the most momma- of all the momma’s boys I’ve ever known. I mean, cookies… on a quest. You’re seventeen years old, man. Act like it.”

“You say that only because you lack a mouth,” I tell him—and feel proud of myself for saying it. “And you know what, for a ring whose purpose is supposedly to make its wearer insane, you don’t do a very good job. Mostly you’re just mean.”

“That’s to break you mentally,” says Randy.

I don’t say anything back and try my best to ignore him as I walk through the village to the main road, then up the road to the edge of the village and beyond, into the rolling hills and its wilder, denser flora, and when I look back and can’t see my home anymore, that’s when it hits me. Butterflies in my stomach, shaking hands, sweat, the desire to sit and eat a cookie (OK, all the cookies), but I don’t do that. Instead, I keep going because that’s what adventurers—at least in the books I’ve read—do: they buckle down, suppress their emotions and force their way through the toughest moments until, inevitably, they triumph. They don’t give up. Ever.

And then I hear something.

My pulse quickens. What was that? Probably a beast. A beast on the road. It makes sense. Where else would beasts prey on unsuspecting travellers if not on roads the travellers travel? (Although, if you think about it, if the beasts were so predictable, the travellers would turn from un- to suspecting ones, and the beasts would stop having as much success preying on them as as before. That’s a quandary, alright.)

But not for now—

Now I take out my weapon and I am ready!

“You got your, uh, nail-board primed there, Suckleslav?”

“Not now,” I say, teeth clenched.

“I bet whatever horror it is, it smelled your mom’s cookies and now it’s going to kill you to get them off your dead body. Makes you kinda wonder if she didn’t give you those cookies on purpose.”

“Shut. Up.”

I hear it again, but I don’t see it. I see nothing out of the ordinary.

“That’s the least polite I’ve heard you be. Congrats.”

My nail-board and I are one.

“Maybe it’s all just in your head,” Randy says, “or whatever that tired old cliche is.”

But it’s not—

And the rabid squirrel reveals itself—

Comes at me and—

Battle begins! First: the music, whimsical but dramatic, then the groove: despite myself, my body begins to sway to the music’s rhythm, and not just my body but the squirrel’s too. And the squirrel, just seconds ago it was a mere fraction of my size, but now it has grown, its fangs longer, eyes more bulbous and bloodshot and claws more ready to tear me apart. It is as if we are two apart from the world, as if nothing exists but the squirrel and I, locked in deadly combat! Man versus animal. Board-with-nail-hammered-through-it versus claw-and-fang! Only one can prevail!

You can do this, I tell myself.

(“Doubt it, says Randy.”)

To say I’m nervous would be an understatement. I am over-excited and I am petrified. But I must—and, mustering all my roll-given strength, I lunge and strike at the rabid beast!*

I hit!

For a single point of damage. (My first point of damage ever!)

Then the squirrel hits me for a lot more than that.

My vision flashes: yellows.

I would strike again, the board-with-nail-hammered-through-it all-but demands it, but I cannot, for I am stunned, immobilized, and all I can do is passively experience, in utter terror, as the squirrel proceeds to bite and tear me to my first ignoble battle defeat.

The world goes yellow, red—and

black.