Another tear falls, and another. Another and another, anotheranotheranother—and the Godhead is laughing, uproariously shedding tears not of sadness but of joy. His cheeks are wet. His mouth (what I can see of it) curved upwards into a smile.

And already I’m making my way carefully down the stairs winding around Him. I can't see the ground yet, just the thick white clouds, through which I descend still hearing the Godhead’s great guffaws, but less so and less so, ever quieter, until the clouds have thinned and the world comes into clear relief, and what a few hours ago was brown and barren has become—magically? divinely?—green and lush and alive, and things are moving down there, not just figures but also plants, flowers, crops: growing, blooming, bearing literal and proverbial fruit. Even the air smells and tastes different.

When I am nearly descended, I make out Tabatha of Rask, around whom Thask’s farmers are whooping and hollering, celebrating, jumping up and down with their pitchforks, and Tabatha points at me and, stepping onto the fertile ground, I feel I am a hero.

“The master storyteller returns!” she cries.

The farmers stop their celebrating and stare at me with reverence.

“Where even Harpsichordion failed, Grom has triumphed,” she says, and for the first time in my life I feel dignified, worthy. “I knew it as soon as I laid eyes on you, lying there naked and unconscious in the barn.”

I was naked?

“You undressed me?” I ask.

“Yes, but that’s far from the point I’m trying to make, which is that Fate brought you to us—and you brought us salvation.” She spreads her arms wide, encompassing the entirety of Thask, where everywhere crops are still growing, stems elongating, vines climbing, fruits swelling and ripening. “You, Grom, are the Salvator of Thask™.”

That is true. I did do a pretty heroic deed. There could be a ballad composed about me, perhaps even a play someday. Maybe an opera. A grand painting depicting me on the platform, saying saviour words into the Godhead’s ear. In the future, the painting might hang in a museum. The opera would make me rich. The ballad could be performed a hundred years from now by a bard in a tavern in some distant land, where someone asks, “Bard, play us something we haven’t heard before,” and the bard, after giving it serious thought, picks up his lute, strums it gently and begins…

[I actually wrote an eighty-line poem in AABB rhyme scheme as the lyrics to my imagined ballad about myself—then, mercifully for you, my dear reader, unremembered it out of shame.]

Then again, I realize it’s not about money or fame for me. I don’t need to be praised. It’s about discovering the potential that I feel has always been in me, wanting badly to get out, like a bluebird in my freakin’ heart. It’s about testing myself, about discovering who I am and what I can accomplish. It’s about exploring the world and seeing the sights and helping people nobody else wants to help.

(But I wouldn’t say No to money, fame and all that it brings.)

(Not at first, anyway.)

(Youth always precedes wisdom.)

“Are you done?” asks Tabatha of Thask.

Oh. “Yes,” I say.

“So with that little introspection out of the way, tell us what we all want to hear. Tell us the tale that made the Godhead weep when nothing else could. Tell us the Tragedy of Randy and Gertrude.”

And Tabatha and the farmers of Thask close in on me—or so it seems—with great expectation, and that’s when my heroism starts caving in on me. Because was I brave? I literally risked nothing. Tabatha herself told me that if I failed I would face no consequences, and did I really tell a tale so powerful that I made a deity cry? No, I did a terrible job and the Godhead took a little pity on me, and I made him accidentally tear up, not with a story but with the story-of-my-life (up until that point,) which, it turned out, was a decent comedy.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“I—uh, don’t think I can tell it again the same way. Not today. The telling: it took a lot out of me, emotionally. I hope you understand.”

Why can’t I just tell the truth?

(“Because,” says Randy, “that would take bravery, and you’re just a seventeen year-old coward who got lucky.”)

What a perfect time to come back. “Like you’re one to talk about bravery. You were afraid of a ring,” I hiss, which seems to shut him up.

“We understand,” says Tabatha of Thask.

Then she grabs my hand and pulls me toward her, and from somewhere there thumps into existence a beat, and a washboard joins in, there’s clapping, and I’m dancing and we spend the rest of the evening and most of the night in festive spirits (in both meanings of the word, which for me was another first, because I’d never had a drink of alcohol before.) I would say I wish I could remember more of what happened than I do, but based on how I feel in the morning and the wide-eyed looks the hungover farmers give me, I’m rather glad I don’t. I did eat plenty of fresh fruit, which must have been nutritious. Then, in the afternoon, I say farewell to Tabatha, who blushes when our eyes meet, and the farmers, and finally Thask itself. Randy reminds me (in a sarcastic way, naturally) to ask whether anyone had seen Eduard, and it pays off because Tabatha tells me he was also closely watched as he travelled through the village and she confirms the direction in which he went. “How did you know he wasn’t a storyteller?” I ask, and she says, “He was handsome, and looked very strong, and he wasn’t pale and he didn’t talk to himself,” and I wonder what that says about me—when she surprises me with a kiss.

“That’s for saving us,” she says.

“Thank you.”

“My only regret is that we haven’t heard your story.”

I open my mouth, ready to tell the truth—but only spit out another lie. I’m ashamed at how easily the lie presents itself to me. “When I pass this way again, I promise I’ll tell it then,” I say, and smile, knowing that what I’m doing does not befit a true adventurer. Manhilde of Koranth would not be proud of me.

“You are welcome back any time, my cute Salvator of Thask™,” says Tabatha.

(For a reason I don’t quite understand, I feel the two of us are on a first name basis now. Maybe it’s my headache.)

The farmers fill my pack with food and I am on my way again, walking swiftly through fields alive once more with happiness and vitality. I did that, I think. I brought happiness back to Thask. But under false pretenses, and that’s what makes my mood drop.

“Well, nobody’s perfect,” says Randy.

Funny, but I already ended a chapter on that, and it’s too early to start reusing jokes. “Don’t you have some more trembling to do?” I say.

“That ring was evil.”

Then something occurs to me: I completed a quest yet nothing happened. Is that the way it’s supposed to be? I would have expected at least a message. I check my quest log:

> 1. Retrieve your father’s short sword.

>

> 2. Tell the Godhead a sad story and cause Him to cry.

I think completed as hard as I can.

Nothing.

“Randy, what happens when someone completes a quest?”

“It disappears from their quest log and they’re granted the reward for completing it. Why, what did you think happens—enlightenment?”

“Because my quest is still there.”

“Oh, I know. I was waiting for you to figure that out. I wanted to see your face.” He pauses. “Do me a favour and take me out of your pocket so I can see your face.”

My face is confused, much like the rest of me. Why didn’t I complete the quest? There’s nothing more for me to do. The Godhead cried; Thask was saved. There must be some kind of error. This is an injustice. A grave injustice!

Why is my luck so horrible?

“I’d say you got very lucky to have made that statue cry,” says Randy. “Not many adventurers would be lucky enough to be so inept as storytellers and so pathetic generally that a statue would find them endlessly amusing. I mean, imagine how many bad storytellers that statue has seen, how many wannabe saviours. Yet you’re the first one to have that effect on it.”

“We don’t know that I was the first.” (I was almost certainly the first.)

“You get lucky on the deed. You get unlucky on the reward. Averages out to fairness. C’est la vie, mon ami,” says Randy.

“Why doesn’t it surprise me you speak goblin.”

“That’s not—nevermind.”

I shake my head. I sigh. I do all those dramatic things and nothing helps. “What do I have to do to fix this?” I ask: myself, the world, Randy.

“I dunno. I’m not a quest mechanics lawyer,” says the latter.

“That’s a real thing?”

“As real as a living, breathing thesaurus.”

So that’s it. I’m going to have to find a lawyer who can sort this problem out. Now, if I were a lawyer specializing in quest mechanics, where would I be?

Just as I ponder that, I come to the top of a hill and in the distance see something that is both spectacular and frightening, awe-inspiring and repulsive, full of lights and motion and noise. Oh my, the noise. The hustle and the bustle. I can hear it even from this far away.

“What in the world is that?” I say.

“That, Suckleslav, is what non-provincials call a city.”