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neck over its slumping
shoulder to see what was causing it so much pain. The dust had
cleared enough for her to see the two warriors shielding themselves
from the thrashing of the troll’s long tree trunk arms, swinging
like limp maces in the hands of a drunken knight.
    Astrid retracted her blades and dropped to
the ground before the troll could catch sight of her. She lunged
though the troll’s vein-etched legs and crouched in the blind spot
beneath its enormous sunken chest. Thank the gods , thought
Astrid as she danced back and forth to keep the troll’s vision
obscured by its hulking girth, that this creature can’t see its
feet .
    Her eyes searched the arena for the fallen
girl. She stood near the armored dwarve, her face hidden in her
hands. Astrid, glad to see the girl uninjured, glanced over to the
contending warriors to see if she were to gain any assistance in
her fight. Each cowered in his own corner, yelping with each swing
of the troll’s fists. She shook her head. These two, so used to
dealing with foes their own size, could never survive a night alone
in the desert. She smirked at their fear and thrust her daggers
into the back of the troll’s right ankle, digging them across his
protruding tendon and shredding it in two. Trolls , she
thought, dodging the beast’s writhing body as it crashed into the
dust, couldn’t they have gotten something a little more
challenging? She had once snuck out to watch Warrior Vintas’s
class hunt trolls. Though, the usual ways to fell the beasts were
to set traps, however in a pinch slicing through the thin skin on
their ankles always works best.
    The dust plumed up over her head. She could
hear the troll rasping and whimpering. In a way, she pitied it. She
only hoped its master was merciful enough to put it out of its
misery instead of releasing it back into the wilds of the desert
where it would discover a much more cruel way of dying.
    Astrid felt her way around the troll’s
quivering mass toward the girl. From what she had seen, the child
looked almost too young for words. Finding her mother in the crowd
would be a near impossible task. That is if she had a mother.
Astrid reached her hand out and brushed the child’s tear soaked
face with her fingertips. The sound of the child’s breath caught in
her throat at Astrid’s touch.
    “It’s going to be alright. You’re safe now,”
said Astrid, taking advantage of the child’s stillness to scoop her
up in her arms. The girl didn’t protest and only buried her dirtied
face into Astrid’s shoulder, hiding from the fierce world around
her.
    When the dust had cleared, Astrid stood with
the girl in her arms on the stage behind Fryx’s satin throne. The
myriad of guards that surrounded them jumped to their feet, all but
a few well-trained ones still struggling to pull their swords from
their sheaths.
    She kneeled beside the startled dwarve, her
face hard and eyes menacing.
    “This child was spared today. The next may
not.”
    Astrid kneeled down and sat the child on her
feet. She looked up at her, rubbing the grime from her eyes, and
smiled.
    “I have an offer for you,” said Fryx,
stroking the yellow braids in his beard.
    “Meet me at my villa in an hour. I assure you
it will be well worth your time.”
    Astrid scoffed and looked up the crowd. The
audience was hushed with an uneasy silence. Dark eyes glared down
at her while they hissed their disdain in each other’s ears. “She interrupted a trial, all for a child! And she didn’t even
kill the beast, what kind of warrior is she! She has no respect for
our ways, none at all.”
    She turned away from the spiteful crowd back
toward Fryx.
    “I’ll be there.”

Chapter Three
    Fryx’s villa was carved into a cliff just
outside the city’s walls. The rumbling sea foamed up around its
base and trickled down alongside a winding set of steps. The walls
of the villa were smooth and windowless. Astrid stood staring up at
the large gaping door before her, a