(Mallea)

Mallea Thorgil’s hands shook beneath the crimson dragon-scale dagger. She wasn’t afraid of it, nor was it too heavy. Mallea simply shook from excitement. The dagger was the work of her aunt: Desmia Thorgil. The woman was one of only five living black hammers, the penultimate rank in the Blacksmith’s Guild.

The tighter Mallea gripped the dagger, the brighter the steel blade glowed. Were she to drop it, Mallea knew that the wooden dinner table of her humble home would ignite into flames.

“Mallea, dear, what did my sister send you this time?” Her mother asked. Loosening her grip, Mallea watched the dagger cool instantaneously. She quickly pocketed the metal masterpiece.

“Nothing, Ma. Just a note,” Mallea said, holding up a sheet of parchment and hiding the dagger as her mother entered the room.

Dear Mallea,

I hope this letter finds you well. My adventures have recently taken me to Mount Juniper, where a local man was selling leftover dragon scales from a recent hunt. If only some legendary warrior would join me on my journeys, I could cut out the expense of the middleman and get such beauties from the source.

My travels aside, I wish you luck with your final year of schooling. More importantly, I wish you luck with the selection. I was selected as an eleventh year, and my two companions are still lifelong friends. Yet, no matter what happens, know that I am proud of you and love you.

Love, Aunt Desmia

P.S. Happy birthday.

“No birthday gift?” Mallea’s mother asked. “Well, it’s for the best. No doubt that metal-crazed woman would have sent you some sort of blade. Not to mention, she was two weeks late; you reached eighteen two Thursdays ago.”

Mallea watched her mother exit, sure to wait until she was out of view to admire her dagger again. The young woman adored her mother, but there was no doubt that she lived her life prioritizing safety over adventure. She was the opposite of Mallea and Desmia.

The selection would come tomorrow, and Mallea was anxious that the opportunity to reach the capital would slip past her. Once a year, every city in the kingdom chose three students to study abroad in the capital. One student from each of the final three years of education would be selected. However, Mallea was in her twelfth and final year of schooling. The upcoming selection would be her last chance.

Mallea adored her hometown of Mazgrove, but it didn’t have the opportunities she desired. She needed training with expert blacksmiths, and her current mentor was just a green hammer. Mellea felt terrible for not appreciating the essentials he’d taught her; she could make sturdy weapons thanks to his teaching. However, Mallea wanted to go beyond that. She wanted to work with magic.

All guilds in the Solluna kingdom operated on the same ranking system. Red signified a new recruit, and they could pass to orange with a recommendation by someone at least two ranks higher and a subsequent test. The same was true for yellow, green, blue, and violet. Black, the final rank attainable by most humans, was special. The rank was only bestowed by a majority vote between the guild leader and all black-ranked members. Black was the rank that Mallea was shooting for, only because the highest guild rank was often confined to the capital. Mallea wanted to explore.

Diamond. It was the final rank of all guilds, reserved for the guild leader. The current diamond hammer was Johan Leverette, the greatest blacksmith in the four great kingdoms. It was said that Leverette’s best work could draw out such overwhelming magic that a one-armed schoolgirl could slay an adult dragon with one of his daggers.

Mallea dreamed of seeing Leverette himself at the capital. She needed to get into the Blacksmith’s guild, and the selection guaranteed recommendation to a guild. Please, Mallea prayed, I wasn’t chosen as a tenth-year or an eleventh-year. If someone else is selected this year, I may never catch up to Aunt Desmia.

Before she prepared for sleep, Mallea left Desmia’s dagger in its protective sheath. She could only hope that her aunt had the foresight to make the sheath with the hide of a heat-resistant creature like an eastern volcano boar or a giant redback salamander.

For what she prayed was the last time, Mallea changed into the rags she was forced to wear as nightclothes. Students selected to study at the capital were given wardrobes befitting the city’s most elite private schools. Mallea supposed that a nice closet included a nightgown that wasn’t falling apart at the seams.

The dreams she had that night reminded Mallea of “the bard’s dream.” The bard’s dream was a nightmare common among students of the bard’s guild. It was always the same dream: the bard would be performing for a large audience and suddenly forget the lyrics to the song they sang. In Mallea’s dream, she kept hammering away at molten steel. However, no matter how fiercely she struck, it would never take the shape she wanted.

Desmia had once told Mallea that students were all molten metals. Some had more potential than others, but a fantastic smith could forge the most unlikely substance into a brilliant weapon. Similarly, a poor one could turn the most brilliant materials into a useless paperweight. Mallea could only wish she’d be forged into something that would make her aunt and parents proud.

(Asher)

“Ash, wake up! It’s selection day!” Asher’s mother yelled. She had woken him up an hour earlier than most parents would wake their children, but Asher wasn’t like most students.

The seventeen-year-old boy rolled out of bed and headed for the bathhouse, block of soap in hand. Asher refused to start a single morning without a bath. He also liked to bathe as early as possible. He had to go before the oils and dead skin from other bodies penetrated the pure water.

Asher didn’t mind getting dirty, sweaty, or covered in blood. In fact, he earnestly enjoyed all three. However, cleansing himself of those things was necessary. He wished others in his town had the same commitment to cleanliness that he did. Cleanliness. Organization. Order. Asher demanded absolute perfection of his routine and of his body. If he couldn't be perfect, he would never be able to become the diamond blade.

Asher ultimately didn’t care about his rank in the warrior’s guilds. He desired the coveted title for only one reason: to prove he could. He wanted to surpass the other members of the Setric clan. The most reknown clans of warriors in Solluna, Setrics like Asher were just one step from nobility in the capital. However, his entire branch was cut from the family tree two generations ago when his grandmother married his traveling merchant grandfather.

They’d passed the Setric name down to their son, hoping it would help them thrive. His father hadn’t made much use of the name, but Asher planned to. He desired to see the faces of the capital elite when a small-town boy arrived bearing the name Setric. Even more, he wanted to defeat the current diamond blade and patriarch of the Setric family: Berin Setric.

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Asher exited the bathhouse, free of any impurities from the previous day. He donned his Mazgrove school uniform for what he hoped would be the final time and returned home. He still had two people he needed to see before leaving for the selection.

“Ashash, welcome home!” Echoed the voices of a boy and a girl four years his junior.

“Woah, there, you two. Settle down!” Asher said, chuckling heartily as his twin siblings tackled him to the floor. Ashleigh, named by Asher after himself, turned her back to him and pointed at her long blonde hair. It was a few inches longer than Asher’s, but they were almost identical in color. Even her face was a slimmer version of his.

“Brother, can you braid my hair one last time? Before you leave for the capital?” Ashleigh asked. “It needs to be put up for blade practice.”

Ashleigh desperately wanted to be a warrior like Asher and did everything she could to emulate her brother. She was already beginning to look like the best warrior in her class, outperforming girls and boys alike in swordplay and archery. Their mother worried that Ashleigh would be discouraged when the boys caught up in physical maturity, but Asher had absolute faith in his so-called mini-me.

“Being the town’s greatest fighter doesn’t mean that I’ll be selected, you know,” Asher said as he braided the girl’s hair with expert precision, the same way his mother had taught him. “They look for different things every year.”

“They didn’t choose a warrior last year, though. The probability is high!” Said Clovis, Ashleigh’s twin brother. Clovis was nothing like his sister or older brother. He was a scholar through and through.

While Ashleigh was always glued to a weapon, Clovis was always glued to a book. He was always trying to teach his siblings some odd new fact. Clovis’s words occasionally went over their heads, but Asher wasn’t opposed to learning. Academically, Asher was surprisingly above average. Students had to be ranked in the upper half in general studies to qualify for the selection, even if their talent wasn’t in the scholar’s college. Asher took that challenge to heart. He had ranked in the fifteenth percentile for the end-of-year exams. They weren’t genius-level scores by any means. Still, Asher had worked hard enough to be deemed reasonably intelligent by his peers and teachers.

Perfection, Asher thought. Near perfection, at least. There can be no areas where I’m weak. If I completely fail at anything, the Setrics will take that as proof. Proof that they were right in exiling my grandmother. Proof that our bloodline isn’t worthy of the Setric name.

“I pray you’re right, Clovis,” Asher said. “I’m off to the academy now. If I’m selected, we’ll have a great dinner to celebrate before I leave, alright?”

“Yes, sir,” the twins said, giggling as Asher kissed their foreheads. With the death of their grandparents and his father at a young age, Asher had quickly become the man of the house. He always did his best to ensure his siblings got the childhood he was denied.

It pains me to leave you alone with Ashleigh and Clovis, mother, Asher thought as he closed the creaky wooden door behind him, but I’m going ahead. For our family and my pride, I have to be selected.

(Safreya)

Safreya anxiously flipped through the book in her hand. She could typically read at a lightning-fast pace, but her excitement for the day ahead made it challenging to focus on the text. Safreya had recently reached her tenth year of schooling and her sixteenth year of life, placing her in one of the three age groups eligible to be selected.

“Safreya, put that book away! The selection is about to start!” Yelled Amalda, a girl from Saferya’s class. The two had been childhood friends for ages and had risen to become the top two young scholars in their year. Should a scholar be selected from their year, it would undoubtedly be one of them.

Of course, there was no one scholar’s guild. It would depend on what guild Mazgrove was sending a student to. Amalda’s specialty was in mathematics, while Safreya was a zoologist. There was nothing that Safreya loved more than mystical animals. In particular, she was amazed at the way they could assist humans. The healing properties of a phoenix feather, how dragon scales could be used to give weapons magical abilities, and how pegasus tail bows altered a violin’s sound all dazzled Saferya’s mind.

“Sorry, Ama,” Safreya said, “but aren’t you nervous?”

“Nervous? We have two more years!” Amalda laughed, “I’m sure we'll both be selected eventually. It’s just a matter of when.”

“You know that the selected often stay at the capital forever…” Safreya sighed, “this could be the last time we see each other for years.”

Amalda considered Safreya’s worries, then shrugged with a light-hearted indifference. “The one left behind will have to catch up to the other one, then.”

Easy for you to say, Safreya thought. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Truthfully, Safreya wished that neither of them would be selected. She had never experienced life without Amalda. She’d also yet to truly figure out what the feelings swelling in her chest meant.

The large wooden stage before Safreya was usually used by traveling members of the bard’s guild. However, today it would be used by an instructor from the capital city: Solluna. A handsome man with grey hair was the first to approach the stage. The pin on his lapel of a violet bow and arrow brought hushed whispers from the crowd. There was no doubt about it. The selection was about to begin.

“Hello, students! My name is Jakob Reinsburn. I’m a violet arrow and one of the head instructors of the Archer’s Guild. I’ll guide the selected to the capital.”

Safreya’s heart raced. Out of instinct, she tightly wrapped her hand inside Amalda’s. Strangely, while it would have been a comfort years ago, touching Amalda’s hand now only made Safreya’s heart thump faster.

“We’ll begin with the year twelve student and work our way down to the year ten,” said Jakob, pulling a small piece of parchment from his pocket. “These students have been selected based on overwhelming talent and academic ability. They’re the best of the best and are worthy of continuing their education in Solluna.”

Safreya had wondered as a child why they started with the oldest group first, but she had a theory. Not being selected as a twelfth year was difficult news to accept. Their chances to be selected were over. Delivering the bad news early in the ceremony gave them more time to grieve and decompress while under the watchful eye of the capital guards. There would be far more unruly behavior if the twelfth years had to cope as the ceremony ended.

“Mazgroves’ twelfth-year representative… reporting to the crafter’s college, with recommendation for the Blacksmith’s Guild, is Mallea Thorgil,” Jakob said. Amidst the ensuing anguish from most of the group, one young woman emerged onto the stage.

Mallea was taller and thinner than Safreya. If she hadn’t known better, Safreya would have assumed that the young woman was selected to be a model rather than a smith. Her light tan skin indicated parents from two separate kingdoms. Her surname was Sollunan, but the eastern half of her was more prominent.

She’d worn a traditional eastern dress for the selection, thin fabric with ornate flower patterns. Her hair was put into a bun, with a long pin through it to keep it in place. Safreya could immediately tell the respect and care that Mallea had for her heritage.

“For the eleventh-year representative,” Jacob continued. “Reporting to the warrior’s college, with recommendation for the Blade Guild, is Asher Setric.”

There’s just no way… that titan is only one year above me? Safreya wondered. Asher Setric was a name she’d heard before, but it was the first time Safreya had witnessed him in person. Judging by his size compared to Mellea’s, Safreya estimated she’d hardly reach his shoulder. She was already nearly a head shorter than Mallea.

Don’t go comparing yourself to them, Safreya, the young woman told herself. It’s not like you’ll ever see them again after this. They were destined for more extraordinary things than you.

“For the tenth-year representative, reporting to the scholar’s college, with recommendation for the zoology guild, is Safreya Lanvein.”

Safreya’s vision began to swirl and blur around her. The last thing she remembered before falling unconscious was the feeling of collapsing into Amalda’s arms.