The First Quest

We went up to the board. It was filled with Quests and their basic information.

"Which Quest should we take?" I asked Lily. She kept looking at the list of Quests. After a few moments she replied "Maybe we should gather the herbs from the forest." She pointed at a Quest. I read the information about the Quest. "It says here that we have to give the Quest number to the Receptionist and she will give us the illustrations of the herbs. The Quest number is 64. Let's go."

We both turned and went back to the Receptionist. We gave her the the Quest number. She handed us drawings of the various herbs we were supposed to gather. We thanked her and went to one of the city gates.

The gate guard looked at our IDs and back at us with suspicion. I guess he was wondering why two 10 year old kids were Questers. He eventually shrugged, gave us our IDs back and let us through the gates.

A light breeze of fresh air greeted us as we exited the city. I had not noticed it before but now that I was looking around I noticed that the area around the city was mostly devoid of any trees or any other vegetation. There were no trees for at least a kilometer and the treeline was beyond my horizon.

At first it may have seemed odd but I understood, mostly due to reading too many war stories, that it had a more practical purpose. Due to this lack of hiding spots around the city and the city itself being surrounded by a massive wall the city could be easily sealed off in case of an attack, The city's defense would have to simply fire arrows at the invaders and most of them could be easily stopped before reaching the city. The walls ensured that there was no cover from the rain of arrows. It was simple and yet effective. What I could understand was, why? Why would this city even need these defenses? From what I heard from Lily about this city, it was a rest stop between the cities in the inland continent and the Port City of Magnes from where you could go to the island City of Moslam. I kept wondering about it on our way to the forest.

We finally reached the forest. "We should split up." I said. "But what if we're attacked!?" She asked, shocked. "I'm not saying that we should stray too far away from each other. We should still be in each other's sights. That way we won't be in any danger and we can cover more area in less time." "Ok if you say so." She said. She very clearly disagreed with me but she knew that I was right. We needed to be Quick. I took out the illustrations and gave some of them to her.

We went in opposite directions. She in the right, I in the left. We searched for about an hour and a half. I couldn't tell the exact time but I guessed from the position of the sun that it must have been around ten-ten thirty AM. I called out to her, "LILY, HEY LILY! Let's go back now. I think we have collected enough herbs." We couldn't really regroup inside the forest since there were too many trees between us.

We started walking towards the edge of the forest. We were just about to reach open ground when suddenly I heard a noise that sounded like a galloping horse. 'That can't be a horse it sounds too heavy.' I turned to look at Lily. She too had heard the noise. The noise grew louder and louder.

I turned back and saw a giant boat, the size of an SUV, charging at me. I barely had time to hear a scream before the beast attacked me. One of it's long horns pierced my stomach and the other lodged itself in the tree beside me. It was because of that tree that the boar was stopped before its horn from going through my body. But the force of the impact was so much that I was launched into the air. I flew for a few seconds and hit another tree.

I was on the verge of losing conciousness. I looked up and saw the animal shaking itself violently in an effort to free its horn from the tree. I looked at Lily she was still frozen in shock. I heard the beast freeing itself from the tree. It looked around. The first thing it saw was Lily, still frozen. I grunted loudly and charged at her. 'Oh no.' I thought. 'She's still in shock she won't be able to dodge. I'm too far away. I..I....What should I do??' ( Raise your hand. Raise your hand and concentrate on the thought that you want to stop it, you want to freeze it in place.) I was a little surprised but still listened to the author. I raised my hand and pointed my open palm towards the huge boar. I thought with all the will power I could muster that the monster had stopped. That was the last thing I remembered before passing out.