In 2020, I will be writing a new monthly short story that’s going to be an ongoing monthly serial, featuring a brand-new point of view character.
Whether you’ve read Guild of Tokens and GoT: Origins, or nothing at all, this story has something for everyone.
Below is the first part of Guild of Tokens: Beginnings!
As much as I like to think it was the opposite, in reality, the Quests found me.
I was walking one afternoon through Brooklyn Bridge Park with some friends from my hall and on a fencepost I noticed this little vial. It looked like a tiny beaker that stood on its end and had a cork stopper in it and was sealed with hand-dripped red wax.
So I left my friends and walked over and I could see inside was a tiny paper scroll.
It looked like something left by a wood nymph who had escaped from a Grimm fairy tale.
And I remember thinking, “Maybe I’ve stumbled on some viral scavenger hunt or a prize. Or even a prank. Maybe I’m being filmed for some weird Internet TV show.”
I glanced back at my friends, who were deep in conversation about some profound nonsense our history professor had said during yesterday’s lecture. And rather than share this discovery with them, I instead opened the vial and turned it upside down. The scroll fell neatly through the neck of its container and I unfurled it slowly.
Written on the paper was tiny, tiny writing in red ink and what it said was:
“You’re here because you know something. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.”
I stared at the scroll.
All that build-up for a fucking quote from The Matrix.
Sorry, I don’t usually curse, but someone clearly had too much time on their hands, at least that’s what I thought at the time.
If I had known then, what I know now, then maybe I wouldn’t have rolled the scroll back up, stuck in back into that tiny vial, and chucked the thing into the East River.
***
The boy next to me was snoring.
Which was annoying, because we were currently sharing the twin bed in his small-even-for-New-York dorm room, leaving me with few options to escape.
It’s not that I didn’t like him, I probably did, although we had only hung out a couple times. But there are some things that I just couldn’t tolerate and this was one of them.
I gently lifted up Zack’s arm up over my waist and slid out of bed, looking back to see him turn his body to face the other way. It was 4 in the morning and the autumn sun wouldn’t be up for at least a couple hours.
I considered my options. I could quietly get dressed in last night’s clothing, slink out of the dorm, and take a long subway ride back down to the Village, and hopefully not get mugged or worse. Or, I could quietly get dressed in last night’s clothing, slink out of the room, and flick through the channels in the lounge at the end of the hallway.
The computer monitor on Zack’s desk suddenly flickered to life and a third option presented itself. I wasn’t one for prying into other people’s electronics, but the window currently open on the screen was like nothing I had ever seen on a modern computer.
It was white with black ASCII text, and it reminded me of the rudimentary software my grandpa used to keep track of his crop rotations.
“Welcome back to the Quest Board, zack_attack,” it said at the top. A list of ten numbered entries appeared below and I swear it was like reading a page from one of those fantasy novels that lined the shelves of my older brother’s room. Except instead of an imaginary world filled with elves and dwarves, the “Quests” on the screen were asking for things in New York City.
Seriously!
1. Feed a leaf of the Corpse flower from the Botanical Gardens to one of the sea lions at the Bronx Zoo. Reward: 17 iron.
2. A cup of dirt from Corlears Hook Park. Put it in the mailbox on the corner of Madison and Gouverneur and I’ll take it from there. Reward: 3 iron.
3. Hiya! Could you help me out by fetching me a handful of blueberries, a tillandsia, an orange popsicle, and three pounds of 80/20 ground beef from Chelsea Market? Leave in the windowsill of 194 West 9th Street. Thanks! Reward: One wood”
My eyes scanned the rest of the entries until I reached the bottom of the screen, where further instructions awaited:
Select your Quest, or press A for the next page, B to submit your own, C for Q-mail, D for Quester Profile, or Esc to quit.”
My mind was racing and all thoughts of fleeing evaporated as I clicked through page after page of these so-called Quests.
I was about to open Q-mail, whatever that was, when I heard rustling in the bed behind me.
“Kate?” mumbled Zack, half asleep. “S’hat you?”
“Yeah babe, it’s me,” I said, quickly turning off the monitor. “Just had to pee.”
I retook my little spoon position in bed, Zack’s arm soon returning to my thigh, and tried to forget everything from the past 10 minutes.
It didn’t work.
So I did something rash, something bold, something the 18-year old girl who left Lincoln, Nebraska a few weeks ago would have never done.
I went back to the computer, turned the monitor back on, and selected the first Quest.
To read part two and future installments, subscribe to my newsletter here. In addition to Beginnings, you’ll also get three additional free Guild of Tokens short stories.