Guild Of Zeroes

Chapter 1

It was a bright, mid-summer afternoon when someone had the audacity to interrupt my first week off in a month by stuffing a quest envelope under my door. The messenger knocked and shouted from the hallway, “Wake up, Parsnip. You have a job.” 

I stood with a huff and stomped across the room. I’d been Parsnip my whole life, but I still couldn’t tell if the nickname was supposed to be insulting or endearing. In a tower full of people with nicknames like Hawk, Sabre, or The Flame Blade, being Parsnip felt a little foolish. It was all for the best, I supposed. Anyone who felt the need to put a 'The' in front of their name was a pretentious arse, and given the choice between pretentious arse and Parsnip, I’d choose Parsnip every time. Snatching the envelope up, I opened the door and waved it at the messenger who was retreating back down the tower’s stairs. 

“I’m off this week,” I said. 

The messenger shrugged. “The job asked for you,” he said over his shoulder. “Hawk won’t be happy if you turn it down.” 

I groaned and shut the door, taking the quest back to the writing desk sitting below my window. As far as quarters went mine were small, even by Guild standards, but they were mine, my own little oasis away from the general chaos and kerfuffle of the Tower. The room was barely big enough to hold my bed, desk, and chest. Over the years, I’d done my best to fill every spare inch of the place with knick knacks, tidbits and junk that I’d collected. Sketches of plants, wildlife, and more than a few fire breathing drakes adorned the walls. The few shelves I’d put up were loaded with funny looking stones and bits of wood I’d collected, strips of fur, antlers and teeth from beasts I’d slain, stone weapons and tools from the time I’d helped Hawk fight off a pack of Ogres. It was two decades of life and adventure condensed and crammed into one room, a statement that said 'I was here. I mattered.'

It was likely the only kind of legacy I would leave behind. All of the Fire Falcons, and Skull Splitters, and Death Walkers of the Heroes Guild would leave entire chapters in the Guild’s Archive when they left this life. A Parsnip would be lucky to have a footnote. But that was okay, wasn’t it? We couldn’t all change the world. We couldn’t all go down in the Archives. I was sure that for every Deathblade, there was probably a whole legion of Turnips, Potatoes, Dunder Heads, and Flapjacks who didn’t make the cut. That was okay with me. I could be one more cog in the Guild’s great machine, one more unsung zero helping the true heroes along. 

Being a quiet zero was good. It was enough. I glanced down at the envelope crumpled in my fist. Or was it? Did I deserve to be more? Someone thought so. 

Maudlin, wandering thoughts and trips into the mists of memory weren’t going to get me anywhere, so I slunk to my desk, sat down, and tore through the wax seal. Sinking back into my chair, a sigh of relief slipped past my lips. I wasn’t being asked to duel a Storm Serpent, or to travel to the furthest reaches of the old Empire, or to fight an Ogre with nothing but a toothpick. I wasn’t being asked to do anything a real hero would do. I was being asked to guide the local blacksmith and his sons on a hunting trip. 

That was something I could handle. 

I headed down the Tower’s steps to the armoury that was all the way down on the ground floor. Like my quarters, Tower Four wasn’t much, but it was mine. It was home. In contrast to the other Guild Halls, Tower Four didn’t have any fancy titles or names pinned to it. It was something of a misfit compared to names like Razor’s Spire, The Griffon Roost, and the Blackstone. Each had been named for an event or person who was legendary even by Heroes Guild standards. Tower Four was the outlier. Here nothing interesting ever happened. It was plain and boring. We were a lot alike in that way. Tower Four was a plain spire of wood and stone. I was a plain girl who most people couldn’t pick out of a crowd. Well, I guess that wasn’t really true. I kept my dark hair shaved on the sides, and back and the rest of it was pulled into a short tail, just like Hawk’s. My arms were dappled with Guild sigils and heroic deeds tattooed in black ink. I didn’t have many deeds of note beyond my basic training and rites of passage, but that was fine. So maybe in a crowd of normal people I stuck out, but among my Guildmates, I was as boring as they came.