Chapter One - Bjorn's Trial

  Golden steel clashed with shining ivory, the late summer’s sun reflecting off of the two blades. On one side of the fight stood an amazon, her scarlet hair tied up in a braid that ran down her back, her face the picture of ease and confidence despite her opponent. He was a giant of a man, as wide as a barn door and as strong as an ox. Though, he traded little in terms of agility for his strength. He was just as keen with his blade as any other great swordsman, perhaps even moreso. He was certainly at least an even match for the young woman that struggled greatly against his grip.

  “Give in, already. You’re not ready.” He stepped forward, jolting the two locked blades and forcing the redhead on the retreat. She didn’t seem dismayed, though, simply shaking her head. Her mouth twisted into a playful, almost arrogant smirk, as she began to speak.

  “One hit, right? That’s what you said. Today’s my lucky day. I can feel it.” It had to be. She’d been in training for far too long. The fort which she had called her home for the last twelve years no longer felt intimidating to the amazon. The great walls and towers that confined her for so much of her youth had been great challenges that she had to conquer. They were home, now, however. Comfortable. She knew that the world beyond these walls far grander, and her vision of the fort now matched its actual modest size. She had to get out. She had to prove she was worthy to continue on. Her hands tightened around her blade’s grip, knuckles whitening.

  This wasn’t a new occurrence, sparring with Bjorn. Ever since she could hold a sword, there was some form of competition with the giant to be found in each day. She had long since proven herself in contests of agility and in acuity with a bow, but it was these sword-fights that kept her coming back for more. These swordfights, the lone challenge she had yet to conquer. For the past few months, she had been sparring with him every day, itching to earn her freedom. To get that sniff of air beyond the walls of the fort, beyond the forests surrounding Ulssia. Each fight had been left with her defeated and laying on the ground, but with each fight she learnt something new. Each time she got back up the next day, come rain or shine, whatever injuries came her way, nothing stopped her from her training. It was in these last few months of serious sparring that Bjorn had issued her her ultimatum. A singular strike to prove her worth. To prove his teaching effective, that there was no more that he could offer her. A single strike to set her free, to set her loose on Eunicia.

  In truth, there were many more trials laid out by Master Bjorn and his partner, Colt. Going out on a solo hunting trip, identifying various types of poisonous mushrooms, learning the different types of currency that were offer across the continent and even a smidge of noble etiquette should she be unfortunate enough to get caught up in such affairs. They were necessary, of course, but none were quite as difficult as this last one. The one thing that stopped her from experimenting in who she was, the one opponent she had to defeat was also one she had fought with and against a thousand times.

  She knew all his strengths, and had been on the receiving end of them plenty of times. She couldn’t attack his legs or his feet, his legs were like tree trunks and his feet the roots that kept him bound to the ground. The only place that attacking low would get her was in the med-bay. His kicks were far more dangerous than a cut from his sword, truthfully. Even his travelling boots had slips of steel surround his toes. A kick to the chest would certainly at least crack a rib, she certainly knew that much firsthand. He was weak to strikes from behind – most things were unsurprisingly – but the main problem with that was getting there. He was too wide to simply go around – and even if you managed it, he was fast enough to pivot and keep his eyes on you. She’d tried that multiple times, as well. Trying to get within his guard was all well and good until you remembered that his arms weren’t just for show. A single shove from him was more than enough to reopen the carefully closed gap.

  Her options were to either break his guard or go over him. As great and powerful as he was, nobody was trained to fight in the air. Especially not when his primary weapon was a spear. The things he could do with that thing terrified her. He was like a demon with it in his hands. She was just lucky that he chose to use his sword for their sparring sessions, else things would be truly messy. There was a very good reason that nobody fought in the air. Someone with such a mastery of wind magic often had better methods of dealing with their opponents than fighting head-to-head, and archers were far easier to come-by than any flying mages. If she tried to simply leap over her master, she’d end up cut in half, or – if he had chosen to spar with the spear - impaled upon shiverpoint’s blade. It would never work... Or could it? The idea she had was crazy. It’d never realistically work, but she had to try something different, right?

  She swept her blade low against the ground, where it clashed with the blade of her master, bouncing off it. She wheeled around, coming from above with her next strike. Once more, he raised his blade, though the defence was imperfect. Her strike pushed the blade downward. Sure, it had been blocked before successfully hitting him, but she wasn’t aiming for that. She brought her blade back towards her, holding it level across her chest. This whole operation would take perfect timing, she’d be doomed if she messed it up. She lunged forward, thrusting her blade at her mentor. As his own moved to parry, she leapt into the air – dropping her weapon in the process and letting it clatter to the ground. Nobody said that the strike had to be with a blade, did they?

  She twisted in the air, landing on one foot. With the rest of her momentum, she brought her other leg around, chopping at her mentor’s shoulder with an axe kick. She felt her leg meet something solid. Something sturdy. She almost didn’t want to look, to crush her own dreams... but she did. It was a clean blow – heel digging into the shoulder of the great bear of a man. His blade was mere inches above it... but inches didn’t count.

  “eeeh- ehehehe!” She grinned, bringing her foot down from her mammoth-sized opponent. “Nailed it!” She could barely contain her excitement, it took everything to resist leaping into the air in celebration. She settled for a simple fist pump instead. The large man sighed, turning around to meet her gaze. Although his expression was as hard as the stone that lined the walls of their fortress home, she could see the pride in his eyes. All fortresses had their weaknesses, and Atalanta could read Master Bjorn like a book.

  “That you have. Although, were I not an honest man, I would have disbarred you for that stunt. You know why, don’t you?”

  “Uuugh, come on-” He just had to rain on her parade, didn’t he? She’d won, but he couldn’t just accept giving her a smidge of praise, could he?

  “Atalanta.” Bjorn’s gaze sharpened, and Atalanta squeaked in surprise. She knew the reason, she just didn’t want to say. It was the very thing that caused her to win, afterall.

  “Because I dropped Balmung. I’m sorry, Balmung. It won’t happen again.”

  “Won’t it?”

  “ehhh- No. Of course not. Nobody else would be strong enough to force me to drop her.” She winked at the larger man and knelt down to grab her discarded blade. Balmung was special, she knew that much. There was more to it than just being an old family heirloom. The thing never wore out, no matter how many times she swung it, it always kept its perfect edge. Even putting it in a fire to test – something she did when she was the foolish age of only 14 – she found that Balmung never even heated up in the fire. The blade was inert in all senses of the word. That didn’t mean that Atalanta didn’t need to take care of it, though. Dirt and dust still gathered on it, she still needed to polish it and keep it looking sharp, even if the golden blade kept itself physically sharp. That was the least of her duties.

  “How can you be so certain? What if you are outnumbered?”

  “Then I’d bust out the super special power that Balmung supposedly has. No big deal. You said it wasn’t suited to a duel anyway, right?” There was some prophecy or other that came with the blade. Something about awakening the beast within, and both the peril and heroism that accompanied it. Only the Gods knew what that meant, though, Atalanta had never felt so much as a magical hum out of the golden sword.

  “You, Atalanta, are a bigger fool than I thought. But you are a talented one. Come, we will inform Colt of your ‘victory’. At last, our fort will no longer have to be a nursery.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “Aw, come on. If you were so desperate to be rid of me...” She let her playful tone and jab of Bjorn’s shoulder fill in the rest of her sentence. It was entirely a joke and the pair knew it, Atalanta would never have accepted the easy road through this. If they’d drilled anything into her, it was that shortcuts had no place on the path to power.

  “Now you ask for an easier challenge, hm?” The two shared a knowing glance and each cracked a smile. That was about as much emotion as Atalanta was ever going to get out of Bjorn, that was a definite win in her books.

  As they got inside the fort, Bjorn and Atalanta found a lithe man with sandy blonde hair languishing over the war table. Considering the staffing of the fort was made up of a grand total of three people – two highly trained mercenaries and one Atalanta – the table was seldom used. Despite that, it was a true thing of beauty. A great map was spread out across it, covering the entire continent of Eunicia – all the way from the former Azelline Theocracy in the west to the Queendom of Mercia in the east. There were names of towns and cities that Atalanta had only ever heard of in reference to myth and the great exploits that Bjorn and Colt had been on before taking her on as their apprentices.

  There were, of course, some settlements that she was familiar with due to their regional and national importance, though; The great City of Ice, Boressia – the seat of the Boran Empire’s power – clung to the Northern edge of the Silessian Mountainrange that split the continent in two. Boressia wasn’t the largest of cities, but it was a city that had plenty of history and was known for its great warriors. Initially just a small tribal village in the distant past, it took only three generations for it to grow from a fringe village into a local power. Stone from the nearby mountains was used in great construction efforts. The grand arena that sat in the heart of the city, great sky-scraping walls and even the royal palace were all made from Silessian slate. It was only in the last two hundred years that the city of Boressia became the centre of a continent-spanning empire. Most of their early land was gained at spearpoint, with local militia unable to combat the highly-trained soldiers that the Boran King commanded.

  Either side of the mountains there were two great duchies. In the flatlands of the east there was the Duchy of Solkurn, which stretched all the way from the Boran-Mercian border in the south to the northern frostlands where the gods resided. Its proximity to the country’s continental neighbour made the Grand Duchy of Solkurn the safest in the land. With plenty of money flowing in and out of the towns of the region, they would have been prime for banditry, but the affluence of the duchess ensured that the roads were patrolled regularly and kept free from the risk of banditry. Although much of its wealth came from its land, the duchy of Solkurn still possessed the largest city in the empire – possibly even on the continent for all Atalanta knew – with the city of Schafgart being renowned for its textiles, culinary scene and holding the headquarters of the nation’s merchant and weaving guilds.

  On the western side of the mountains was the duchy of Pandaros, home to the oldest and second largest city in the empire, Monteuse, the last bastion of the Azellines. Their production methods were some of the most advanced on the continent, with a grand university dedicated to unravelling the magics and history of the fallen empire that had once roamed the halls of its great institution. Unlike Solkurn, much of Pandaros’ wealth was centralised in Monteuse and the ducal family was more interested in keeping the obsidian city and its supporting farming settlements safe than the entire duchy. There was plenty of work available in the area, but all of it was dangerous.

  In the middle of all three of them, nestled up and out of the way in the mountains was their little fort. Easily the smallest location marked on the map, and indeed only on the map because Colt added it himself. It was expected that Atalanta know how to get to each of the three grand cities from where they were. From there, she would certainly be able to send out a messenger bird or direct a pegasus-courier up to the mountain fort in case of emergency. Anything beyond the scope of the three great Boran Cities, Atalanta would be left to find out about on her own.

  “What’s brought you here?” Atalanta peeked over Colt’s shoulder – not too difficult a task, considering she was ever so slightly taller than him. In his right hand, he held a letter. The handwriting looked fancy – with all the letters and words practically flowing into each other on the sheet of parchment. Although she was far from the worst terrible reader, it easily would’ve taken her all day to decipher the message scribbled on the paper. That was just something that’d come to her in time, though, she assumed.

  “Oh, it’s you two. Finished playing with the whelp, Bjorn?” That same disparaging old nickname. Ugh, she resented the thing. She knew there was no malice behind it, and that it was only a reminder of where she had started, but it still irked her.The whelp that had arrived at the fort a sobbing mess and begged to return home all those years ago had been reforged into the toughest woman on either side of the Silessian mountains, Atalanta wagered.

  “Aye, I have. How goes it?” Bjorn peeked over Colt’s other shoulder – his eyes meticulously scanning the letter in the strategist’s hands. It didn’t seem to be good news, given the drop in Bjorn’s jovial expression.

  “We have received a missive from Countess Arlissa. She requests our presence at once. It appears she has an invention that she wishes to show off to Duke Pandaros.” She understood the second half of what Colt had said – if anybody would have the technical knowhow to help improve an invention, it would be him. So why on earth would this countess that she hadn’t heard of be needing their help?

  “Sorry, but... who is countess Arlissa? And why us of all people?” Colt glanced across and shook his head with disapproval.

  “She’s a noblewoman in the west – from beyond the great scar. She doesn’t want us, Atalanta. She wants myself and Bjorn. We’ve done work for her parents in the past. They’re good folk, distant enough from the central duchies to be free of their schemes.” He drew a line across the map with a finger, going all the way from their fort to the far western side of the continent, almost to the western coast. “Alas, she appears to be quite secretive as to what this invention actually is. The likelihood is that it is something world-shattering, only for the eyes of trustworthy advisors and mentors.”

  “So what’s the problem, then? Go work with her, it’s not as if you’ve never left the base before.”

  “This time is different, Atalanta. She has included a provisory that we tour with the invention once it is complete, should we do a good enough job in guarding it the first time. There is no saying how long we will be gone for, a year at the least. It’s far too long to hold up your training, you’d be more likely to just run off and get yourself killed if we left you here with nought to do.” Colt sighed, placing the letter down on the table and reaching over for a pot of ink and a sheet of his own parchment. “We have no choice. The only play is to cordially reject the summons-”

  “About that...” As Colt’s quill touched the parchment, Bjorn spoke up. “When I was training with the little miss, she passed her final trial.”

  “And? Even once she had passed her trials, we were still going to keep an eye on her on her independent excursions. The girl doesn’t know how to pick a good client, for all she knows, a presentable bandit chief wouldn’t look too different from a businessman. No chance.” Although there was a glint of pride in Colt’s eyes, his words were scathing and cut deep. She was a better judge of character than Colt gave her credit for, she knew that. She was far more capable than either of them knew, all she needed was a chance.

  “I am still here, you know-”

  “Yes, I am aware. Though it would be better for you if you weren’t, you’re not helping your case, here.” So that’s how it was. Alright. Atalanta pouted and crossed her arms, turning her attention to the map, trying to figure out if she could figure out a plan. Some plot that would let her masters go on their mission, whilst letting her be free to do as much as she wanted. She could try to enroll in Monteuse University... But then again, she was hardly an academic. That’d never work. Besides, it would be the more practical applications of magic that she would be interested in, and she was tragically poor when it came to her spellcraft. No, she’d spend far too much time camping out in the hills around the city and hunting rather than studying. So then what about Solkurn?

  “I could go to Solkurn. It’s nice and quiet, the harvest season is approaching, I can probably make my way there by the year’s first snowfall. I’ll make money by helping out on the land, no farmer will turn down an extra pair of hands.”

  “Ah, of course, our masterpiece. The self-proclaimed Great Huntress herself. A farmhand. You wouldn’t be happy with that, Atalanta. Not a chance.” Colt shot her idea down as if it was nothing, but her words managed to get through to Bjorn somewhat, as he raised a hand to his beard in thought.

  “What if... We send her to Rosalinde?” Atalanta had never heard of a Rosalinde before. Was it someone the pair of mercenaries knew? A troubled ally from the past? A former lover?

  “No.” Colt immediately shut him down, Bjorn grumbling his discontent.

  “You’ve got to make up eventually, Colt. Send Atalanta to her as a peace-offering. She’s not stupid, she’s not going to lead Atalanta astray.” Colt sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. For a few seconds, there was silence as the strategist thought. A silence that was only broken by him speaking, his tone resigned and the slightest bit bitter.

  “I so hate it when you’re right. Fine... Go and get me another sheet of parchment. I’ll need to write Atalanta a letter of introduction and a response to The Countess. Atalanta... congratulations, my girl. You’ve done yourself proud. Go. Rest and collect your essentials, you will leave in the morning.” He reached his hand up to ruffle the hair atop Atalanta’s head – something he just... started one day and never stopped. She didn’t mind, though, it was a sign of a job well done to her.

  “Yes sir!” She gave him a salute and left the war-room, beginning the trek over to the other side of the fort where the barracks were. Tomorrow. Tomorrow was her big day. The day that marked the whole world learning who Atalanta Flammschwert was.