Chapter 3 - The Making of a Warrior
992 Words
Kaelira Ashwyn
The blade kissed my ribs before I even saw it coming.
I gasped, stumbling back against the stone wall of the training
chamber. Blood—warm and wet—soaked through my tunic. The
underground room spun, torchlight dancing across ancient
weapons mounted on the walls. My lungs burned. My vision blurred.
Velira stood three paces away, her practice blade dripping red.
She didn’t smile. She never smiled.
“Dead.” Her voice echoed off the vaulted ceiling. “Again.”
I pressed my hand against the wound, feeling the sting of split skin.
Not deep enough to kill, but deep enough to remember. The metallic
taste of failure filled my mouth as I bit down on my tongue to keep
from crying out.
“I’m sorry, Mistress Velira. I—”
She moved. One moment she stood across the chamber, the next
her blade pressed against my throat. I hadn’t even seen her cross the
distance.
“Sorry gets you killed.” Her gray eyes held no warmth, no mercy.
“Sorry gets the Queen killed. Sorry gets the Prince killed. Is that what
you want?”
“No, Mistress.”
“Then get up. We go again.”
I pushed off the wall, ignoring the blood trickling down my side. My
legs shook. I’d been training for six hours without rest, without food,
without water. But Mama’s face flashed through my mind—pale, dying,
slipping away while I stood helpless.
Never again.
I raised my blade.
*****
The secret order of handmaiden-warriors had existed for three
centuries, hidden beneath the palace in a network of chambers carved
from living stone. Queen Seraphine commanded us. Twenty women
sworn to protect the crown through methods the public could never
know. We were shadows. We were blades in the dark. We were the
Queen’s hidden hand.
And I was the youngest ever inducted.
The training grounds sprawled beneath the east wing: combat rings,
obstacle courses, meditation chambers, armories filled with weapons
both conventional and arcane.
Enchanted crystals provided light that never wavered, never dimmed.
The air tasted of stone and sweat and old magic.
Velira became my world. She was fifty-three, scarred from decades
of service, and she showed no favoritism. If anything, she pushed me
harder than the others.
“You’re small,” she said during my first week, circling me like a
predator. “Weak. Soft. But small can be fast. Weak can become strong.
And soft...”
She struck without warning, her palm cracking against my cheek.
“Soft can be beaten out of you.”
I learned to move in silence. To read the shift of shadows. To find the
vulnerable points on any opponent, throat, kidney, femoral artery, the soft
space between ribs. I learned to kill with my hands, with blades, with wire,
with nothing but pressure applied to the right nerve cluster.
The other handmaidens became my sisters in blood and bruises.
Mira, the healer, taught me anatomy while stitching my wounds. Her
hands
were gentle as she worked, her voice soft. “The body is a map, little one.
Learn its roads, and you’ll know exactly where to strike.”
She showed me how to brew poisons, how to identify antidotes, how to
keep someone alive when death reached for them.
Nyssara, our dark magic specialist, was sharp-featured and sharp-tongued.
She taught me to recognize curses, to shield my mind from psychic intrusion,
to sense the taint of blood magic. “The Drakmir use forbidden arts,” she said,
her fingers weaving protective wards around my wrists. “You must know your
enemy’s weapons to survive them.”
The twins, Jora and Kessa, were inseparable, mirror images with matching
grins and matching scars. Their sarcastic wit and funny personalities made us
laugh and see the brighter side of things. A contrast to the rigidity brought
by Velira.
They taught me archery, trap-making, and the art of misdirection. “Make
them look left,” Jora said, notching an arrow. “Strike right,” Kessa finished,
releasing her own shot a heartbeat later. Both arrows found their marks.
I absorbed everything. Combat forms. Stealth techniques. Poisons, remedies
and politics. The layout of every noble house in Lumendor. The weaknesses of
our enemies. I trained until my muscles screamed, until my hands bled, until I
collapsed in my narrow bed too exhausted to dream.
But the dreams came anyway. Mama’s face. Her labored breathing. The
helplessness crushing my chest as I watched her die.
In the dreams, I tried to heal her again and again, pouring everything I had into
her failing body. But the magic never came. She always slipped away.
I woke gasping, tears on my cheeks, and channeled the grief into the next day’s
training. Harder. Faster. Better.
I would never be helpless again.
The years blurred together. At twelve, I completed my first solo infiltration…
a merchant’s warehouse suspected of smuggling weapons to Drakmir sympathizers.
At fourteen, I killed for the first time… a traitor who’d sold intelligence to enemy
spies. I remembered the weight of the blade, the resistance of flesh, the way his eyes
went wide with shock before they went empty.
I vomited afterward, shaking in the shadows of an alley. But I didn’t hesitate the
next time.
By sixteen, I bore scars across my ribs, my shoulders, my thighs… a map of lessons
learned in blood. I moved through the palace like smoke, unseen and unheard.
I could scale walls, pick locks, forge documents, seduce information from loose-lipped
nobles, and vanish before anyone realized I’d been there.
Velira watched my progress with those cold gray eyes, never praising, never satisfied.
But sometimes, I caught the barest hint of approval in the set of her jaw.
On the morning of my seventeenth birthday, she gave me a gift. “You’re almost ready.”
Almost.
It was the best compliment I ever received from her.
- Writer
