Questing

by Charles Payseur

Lancelot has been playing the Game for a long time. When you’re an immortal soul reborn again and again because you drank from the Holy Grail, there isn’t much else to do than galivant around the globe, accomplishing quests for points and competing against your fellow immortals. For Lancelot it’s life, and yet after centuries he finds himself distracted by a different thrill -- the one he gets from his greatest rival, Palomides.So when Palomides approaches him with a new quest, Lancelot jumps at the opportunity, even if it takes him to the edge of nowhere, to the deep woods of Wisconsin, chasing after a myth. When the myth turns out to be deadly real, will Lancelot get swept up in the battle and zeal of questing, of playing the Game, or will he find that there’s a different way he’d much rather score?

20 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 22, 2023

About the author

Charles Payseur is an avid reader, writer, and reviewer of speculative fiction. His works have appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Lightspeed Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others, and many are included in his debut collection, The Burning Day and Other Strange Stories (Lethe Press 2021). He is the series editor of We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction (Neon Hemlock Press) and a multiple-time Hugo and Ignyte Award finalist for his work at Quick Sip Reviews. When not drunkenly discussing Goosebumps, X-Men comic books, and his cats on his Patreon (/quicksipreviews) and Twitter (@ClowderofTwo), he can probably found raising a beer with his husband, Matt, in their home in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.