Brave Quest, page 9
“I’m leaving this place,” you say more firmly, holding up an object in your hand. “And I have the real key.”
You took it from Mount Transformation. For a long time, you had forgotten it, hadn’t known what it was for. Now you do. Now is the time.
When they see the key, the twins’ eyes darken. Howling, they twirl their knives, lunge. Your sword slips free. Stepping sideways, you dodge their thrusts. You counter and backslash. With two swift strokes, you bury your blade in their hearts.
“I will have no part of you,” you whisper fiercely.
Gasping, they fall to the ground. As they do, you feel a pang in your own heart, as if they were somehow a part of you, like venom or an infection. Your eyes clear even more. The poison has been sucked out.
You have made your choice. It’s time to go.
Seek first His kingdom.
MATTHEW 6:33
DAY FORTY-SIX
The key is big and made of wood, but hard and heavy like iron. It’s shaped like a cross. Carved along the length of it are three words: Thy Kingdom come.
Something deep in your core thrills at those three words. It is a thrill unlike any gadget or toy or feast or pleasure you experienced in the Fortress of Boredom. It is better than feeling handsome and powerful. It is a sense of mission, of purpose and significance. You have been born for such a time as this. You have a task, given only to you, by God Himself. The challenge of your life is to find it and fulfill it. You ponder the meaning of all this. How does focusing on the Kingdom of God release you from the boredom caused by worldly enchantment?
Enough thinking. You can’t wait any longer. Inserting the key, you turn it slowly, holding your breath. It fits perfectly. The door springs open, and light floods in.
For the first time in months, you step outside. Into sunshine. Wind. Fresh air. Green grass. You put the leather strap of the key around your neck. The shape of the cross hangs right over your heart.
Where it belongs . . .
You exit the Myway Highway immediately. Too much time wasted there already. You know where you must go: You must face an old foe.
You start to run, following a side road. As you sprint ahead, you see the old man, the one with the sign. He is holding a new one.
Fear Not, it says.
You don’t have time to stop. He gazes at you sternly as you pass by, but there is something solid and reassuring about his eyes. Something familiar. Before long, finally at the edge of the swamp, you take your stand. You unsheath your sword, lean back, and cry out as loud as you can, “Fearful beast, I summon thee!”
And the Bog Monster comes. Rising from the grass and mud nearly a hundred yards away, the beast pulls earth and bone and rock and wood to take his shape, and it is fearsome indeed. He bellows, the sound of a grizzly and a lion and an elephant all rolled into one deafening noise. You feel your knees grow weak. With a few giant strides, he will be upon you.
You have no plan.
Then, a memory.
“Not every weapon is made of metal, Questor.”
You drop your sword, fumble through your satchel. There! Veritas, Valorium, Integris.
But which one? Which? The Bog Monster howls in rage, seeing you unmoved. He has cut the distance in half. Some spark of intuition guides you to another memory. This time, you hear your own voice.
“Really, I don’t know that I’m ready for manhood. I don’t know that I can pull it off.”
Today, your battle is fear. Fear of failure. Fear of not measuring up. Of disappointing others. Yourself. Sometimes, the easiest thing for a man to do is not even try, rather than try and fail. You suppose this is because . . .
This is a fear common to man. But today, you will face it. You open the Valorium scroll. Inside, it reads,
“Not by Might
Nor by Power
But by My Spirit
Says the Lord.”
You don’t hesitate. You don’t think. You don’t question. You seize the moment, the scrap of truth you hold in your hands, and you draw courage from it. The courage to trust. The courage to behave foolishly, if needed.
“God!” you shout. “Deliver me!”
The Bog Monster pauses. Your voice rolls across the swamp only a few feet, then drowns among the fen. Nothing. The sound of marsh birds and mosquitos. Howling again, the beast draws near, his enormous legs pounding, splashing mud. He is almost upon you. You draw your sword, ready for battle. You have asked, trusted. Now you ready yourself. This won’t be pretty. But if you must go down, you will give the monster the fight of his life.
One more stride . . .
Out of the corner of your eye, you notice a dark shadow roll across the entire swamp, darkening the sun. Too late, whatever it is. You have no time to think or look. The beast rears back to swing.
And then, it starts to rain.
Pour, really. Buckets of gushing rain come crashing down from the heavens, from a thick pile of clouds that has suddenly moved overhead. Immediately, you are soaked. The beast is soaked. He howls, begins to flail and writhe. His body, made of mud and clay, cannot handle the direct assault of water.
Within moments, he crumbles.
One spirit, with one mind.
PHILIPPIANS 1:27 ESV
DAY FORTY-SEVEN
You move as swiftly as you can through the swamp, heading in the direction True Man told you to follow. The sense of memory, places, and times slowly returns to you. Things forgotten. As you march through the muck and mire, you chide yourself to listen better and trust more. True Man is leading you to a good place, the place you want to go. He knows what he is doing. Stick to your guns and follow and obey. Don’t be weak.
Be true.
Like him.
As you near the opposite side of the marsh, you approach a shack made of sticks and mud and old wood bound together with ropes, raised on stilts. An old hag is standing on dry ground. She is a map of wrinkles, with beady eyes and a jutting chin and a mole on the tip of her hooked nose with three black hairs growing out of it. She wears black wool and a tall black hat and carries a broom.
“If you’re going somewhere,” she says in a brittle voice that reminds you of sandpaper, “where?”
“To the tree, on that hill.” You point. “And then beyond.”
“To what?”
“I don’t know.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
The old hag cackles. Whenever she speaks, she stretches her first word for emphasis. “If you don’t know—to where, or for what—how will you get there? And why?”
You trudge forward. “Because. I’ll just know.”
“Oh, you’ll know, all right. You’ll know if you make one wrong turn and fall off the Rim of Insanity. Or if you get lost in the Forest of Foolishness with a thousand wild pygmies chasing you, thinking you’re dinner, or accidentally stir up the Jealousy Hornets and get stung a million times. You’ll know if you run headlong into the Black Knight of Pride near Lake Haughty. That’s when you’ll know. Too late, but you’ll know.”
None of that sounds good. And of course, you don’t know this land. You’ve narrowly escaped a dozen dangers already. Just left one behind at the other end of this same bog.
“I just want to get to that tree,” you say.
“’Course you do! Just listen to old Witch Iff. I’ll help you.”
“Thank you.”
“So you want to go to that tree, but you don’t know what for. Well, that makes sense.” Her voice drips with sarcasm. “Once you get there, you just want to leave it again, though you haven’t quite figured out where to. I see. About as fine a plan as I can imagine. Truly, why bother with details?” She holds a bony finger to her chin, studies you, even though her eyes are white with blindness. She must be ancient.
“I don’t really want to just wander,” you explain unconvincingly.
“Make up your mind. Now you’re telling me a different story.”
“I am?”
“Which is it?”
“Which what?”
“No . . . which if. If you go, where? If you stay, why?”
“Huh? I’m not staying here. I didn’t say I was staying.”
“Precisely! Which is why you need to stay. Until you know where to go. Otherwise you might arrive nowhere, which is much worse than not arriving somewhere.”
The more the old hag talks, the more your brain feels like it’s starting to melt. Your thoughts are growing thick like honey. Where are you going? And why? The tree seems like a silly destination if you can’t answer a few basic questions. You start to feel dizzy, want to sit down.
“I bet you’ve made a bunch of mistakes getting even this far,” says Witch Iff, clucking her tongue. Confusion thickens in your thoughts. “Let me fix you some broth. Be a shame to just blunder along farther. That would probably really disappoint True Man.”
She pauses, saying the last part cautiously. It is her first and last mistake. The name of True Man shocks you to wakefulness, like cold water in the morning. You close your ears, shake your head, grab the Veritas scroll. Before Witch Iff can speak again, you read aloud,
“Your ears will hear a word behind you, ‘This is the way, walk in it.’ . . . Only be strong and very courageous; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go.”
It is a simple declaration, but when you look up, Witch Iff has turned to a statue of stone. Her face is contorted in pain. You ponder a deep thought. For a moment, you were starting to feel paralyzed. Past regret and the unknown lay like traps before you. So how does a man balance faith and reason? What does obedience mean when the road is uncertain and you are full of questions?
You realize that this can be tricky. You remember when you’ve been stuck in the spell of if. If I had only done it differently. If I hadn’t said that stupid thing, I wouldn’t have looked like a fool. If only I had tried harder, listened closer, or been a better friend. If only I had more information, I could have made a better choice. You realize the Witch Iff is a dangerous foe to the soul of a man. If a man can be paralyzed with indecision, he is no longer a force in the world for God’s Kingdom. The sorcery of this witch addles the brain, turning men of boldness and action into men of hesitation and self-doubt. Yet wisdom sometimes calls for caution too.
You remember a saying you heard once: “A good plan performed today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” What do you think about this?
He is like a tree planted by streams of water . . . its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.
PSALM 1:3 ESV
DAY FORTY-EIGHT
You leave the bog and the statue of Witch Iff behind and soon approach the hillside with the distant tree. The tree is huge and gorgeous. Its luxurious green leaves, blowing lightly in the breeze, dazzle your eyes. The tree is full of sparkling jewels that twinkle in the sunlight. Or no, you realize, they are actually little pieces of candy.
Other young men and women older and younger than you are climbing the branches of the tree, laughing, stuffing their mouths full of candy. They see you and welcome you.
“Hey! Come on over! You’re gonna love this!”
You approach, but your guard is up. After all, you’ve been down this road before. You think back to the very beginning, when you chose the hard road, the untested road. It’s been loaded with difficulties, and almost anything that looked good and easy along the way was loaded with trickery and testing. You suspect this is no different. True Man told you to come here. He did not tell you why.
“Oh man, you gotta try this one,” a boy says. He’s grinning from ear to ear, holding out a yellow piece of candy just plucked from the tree. “This one is delicious. You’ll feel like you’re sipping lemonade on a warm summer day. I get a high every time I take a bite.”
You hesitate. Should you take it? It does look delicious. But still . . . you can’t help but feel the irony of your question, since part of what you learned at Witch Iff’s was of the danger of getting trapped in questions and doubts that have no answer. But you suspect there is an answer here.
“Does True Man permit us to eat from this tree?”
The boy smirks. “Dude, relax. True Man probably doesn’t even care. Besides, everybody’s doing it. Look at us. All the cool people come here to eat.”
He’s right. You hadn’t really noticed before, but they do look like the cool crowd. Cool haircuts, cool clothes. They all have that “cool” attitude. As one, they turn to stare at you. You feel the pressure of their gazes. They are measuring you to see if you qualify as cool. The jury is out. You can tell that you are expected to perform a certain way if you are going to make the cut. The boy before you is still smiling, friendly-like, but his eyes slightly narrow in judgment, as if to say, “This is your one chance, buddy. Are you good enough to join us?”
“What is your name?” you ask. You try not to notice the others, but you feel their eyes on you. You hear snickering. Your heart starts to pound. The candy must be good. Otherwise, why are they all eating it?
Maybe just one bite . . .
“My name?” The boy repeats your question, acting mildly shocked. “What’s it matter? Do you want the candy or not? I’m giving you a gift.” He extends his arm once more.
Just one . . .
“Names have meaning,” you say. “Your name will probably tell me something about your true nature. I don’t trust you yet.”
You are surprised at your own boldness. But it’s not easy. Instantly, you feel the collective gaze of all the other kids grow hard. They begin to mock.
“Loser! I knew he was a loser,” one says.
“Yeah, what a jerk!” says another.
“We were only trying to be nice and look what we get. What a stuck-up.”
The boy with the candy speaks up. His face is a challenge. “He’s not stuck up . . . he’s chicken!”
Everyone around the tree grows silent. A very pretty girl walks up to you. Her eyes are condescending. She tosses her beautiful hair.
“You’ll never get a pretty girlfriend like me,” she says sweetly, “unless you eat the candy.”
After her, an older boy approaches. He looks maybe sixteen. In fact, he looks a lot like one of the popular guys back home—someone you wish you could hang out with, be friends with.
“Look, man, if you’re too scared to hang with us, you need to leave. We don’t like sissies.”
Your own thoughts begin to echo in your head. Just one bite. It’s just one bite.
You feel an intense pressure to give in, be a part. You begin to breathe faster, and your hands grow damp. These are the cool kids! You could join the crowd. Besides, it’s only one time. . . .
A bird flies overhead. It is a white bird. You have no idea why, but it can speak. It cries out.
“Sustain your life!”
You’ve heard that phrase before. Where?
“What is . . . your name?” you say again, less confidently. “I need to know.”
The boy with the candy lowers his arm. He is no longer smiling. But it seems as if he can’t resist. “My name is Hollow. Big deal.”
You ponder the name, unsure what it means. You don’t even notice that the assembly of teens now begins to surround you. They are making threatening gestures, slapping their fists in their palms. For the first time, you are afraid. There are a lot of them.
Then you remember. Sustain your life. The note with the Three Lost Scrolls. You have one left.
The crowd looks intense. You can’t escape. You grab the scroll, fumble to unroll it, and read aloud:
“We have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception. Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity.”
Immediately, a wind begins to blow. It blows stronger and stronger. You look around. All the cool kids begin to struggle in the wind. You feel the force of the wind, but it is easy to stand firm. Not so for them. As they begin to twist and turn, you notice for the first time that they are paper-thin. They are shells of paper, shaped like people, but they are empty on the inside. They have no inward substance to support them. They begin to cry out. The wind grows stronger. You hold your ground, while they are blown away.
Stunned, you pull out your journal. You don’t want to lose this moment. What made them hollow? Why did they lack substance?
“Young man, I say to you, arise.”
LUKE 7:14
DAY FORTY-NINE
You stumble away from the tree, only to find True Man waiting for you on the next hill, overlooking a broad plain. He is beaming with pride. His long hair catches in the breeze, and his eyes look like fire.
“You did well, my son!” he says, pulling you to his chest in a fierce embrace. He kisses your forehead, and you feel the bristles of his whiskers like sandpaper on your cheek. You feel strong in his arms. Strong and safe.
“I didn’t trust them. I don’t know why, but I didn’t trust any of them.”
“The Tree of Forbidden Sweets is a difficult challenge to be sure. Most young men fall prey. It is in your nature to want to belong, to prove yourself, to be included. But you must always ask yourself, ‘What am I proving? And is this worth belonging to?’”
You nod, telling yourself to remember those questions.
True Man says, “I know that you have faced this test before. You have felt pressure from others to do the wrong thing. If you know something is wrong, why do you think it is hard to stand your ground when others are pressuring you?”
True Man nods at your response. “Good, Questor. It is not wrong to be tempted, only to yield. What people and sources of guidance are in your life that you know you can trust? What things count as good pressure?”
Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to . . . receive the heavenly prize.
