Chapter One: An Outside Observer

The End began when a woman strode across the sky. Piercing the clouds she towered, skin darker than the shroud of night, and galaxies falling from her eyes as tears.

Briddy couldn’t catch her breath. Between the singing, harrowingly close slices of the swinging buzzsaws, and the horde of bludgeoning rocks raining on her head, there was no time for pausing, no time to think. The course was designed on hairpin moments, constantly barraging the participant into split-second decisions, and then heaping the consequences upon them if they chose poorly.

  What lay in front of her served as the perfect example. Two facsimiles of narrow stone hallways, poorly lit and claustrophobic. One was filled with the humming of spinning metal, the spiked discs standing taller than two of her. The other was a wide wooden passage riddled with holes across the ceiling and floor.

  A glance -spent while dodging more rocks- told her that while the wooden floor seemed to offer safer passage, the rhythmic swings of the saw blades offered consistency. Briddy chose not to gamble, ducking under the projectile fired from behind her from a constantly approaching wall of automaton artillerists. The solid, confining stone around her narrowed her view to solely focus on the path ahead, and the dance required to exit it without harm.

  Her heart thudding a staccato in her chest, she took the first step between a pair of blades, each rotating disk of metal standing twice as high as she did.

  “No accounting for nerves here.” Bridget gasped, pulling her body as upright as possible to avoid the swing of the saw behind her.

  She had to get through this as quickly as possible, had to do it without harm, without hesitation, without- She winced, her forearm grazing the very edge of the metal, which bit into her skin easier than a knife in smooth butter. That timing had been late, and she had allowed herself to get distracted. No thoughts. Only purpose. She repeated the advice silently, drawing herself up. Almost through, but she was losing time here.

  Breaths came quickly now, and Briddy stooped down, wiping at the blood that was quickly flowing from her arm. Seeing the futile effort, she shook it once as she exploded upwards from her crouch, the sting of pain being left behind in the trail of purpose. That had been the easiest lesson for her to master- pain was temporary, and therefore could be ignored. If there was a purpose, pain wasn’t it.

  After a few, heart-stopping leaps and only tripping over herself once, Bridget jumped past the final blade, rolling into a somersault that beautifully ended with a click. Frowning, she looked down in time to see the Goo Mine under her foot, which had just perfectly pressed into the trigger.

  “Bones!” Briddy hissed, the word barely getting out before a loud pop filled her world with light and ringing, quickly followed by a wave of sticky, sulfuric sludge. By the time her vision cleared-and, she had wiped enough goo away-her ears still felt full, though that may have been the slime that currently coated everything.

  Catching her breath while trying to ignore the stench of rotten eggs, Bridget slowly sat up from where the blast had knocked her prone, slapping the ground beside her with a flat hand. “Bones!” She spat.

  Her mouth drew to a thin line as she wrung sludge from her clothes and half-heartedly swiped at the tawny mess of hair that surrounded her head. A foolish mistake, rolling into the minefield, and one she could not afford to make. One she should have known not to make, considering she designed the accursed course.

  Bridget put her head in her hand, resting the elbow on her knee and ignoring the goo that dripped down her arm while she drummed the fingers of her free hand on the ground. Her choice may have been the correct one for the short term, but the long-term consequences of the fact that she couldn’t see past the blades to plan a landing had been her downfall.

  “Piss-poor performance, if I do say so myself.” A voice said, and Briddy could already hear the smirk in its tones without seeing its owner.

  “Go away. I’m practicing.” She groaned.

  “Practicing failing?”

  “Go away.”

  “You know, I bet if the Relic knew its future wielder just rolled into a minefield of sludge, it would’ve chosen differently.”

  Bridget swallowed hard, still not turning. She rolled her shoulders, then her neck, willing the tension to slide out with the motion. It didn’t work.

  “You act like it isn't aware of everything around here. I’m sure if the all-powerful Relic had problems, I’ll know. Or father will. Either way.” She kept her tone even, final.

  “I’m just saying. It didn’t know what it got itself into.” The voice grumbled.

  An old pain coated those words, striking a chord in Briddy’s heart that resonated into her voice.

  “I didn’t choose this. I was chosen.” She snapped. If he wanted yet another fight, she would happily give him one, because now she had an edge that not even her brother could hold over her head.

  “A poor choice then. A legend can hardly revolve around clumsy clubheads rolling around in filth. Might as well just end it at that rate.”

  A pause. Bridget needed to select her words carefully. Did he know? Had Nolan, like her, somehow ferreted out what their parents had been planning? Turning her head, she scanned his face with silent eyes, looking for some sign that he shared the same terrible secret she did. Nothing. At least nothing that he was betraying.

  She took a deep breath, steeling herself. “And what, Nolan, would it have chosen you?” Briddy pushed herself to stand, gazing up at him. Even younger than her, her brother still towered, slender build cutting a shadow against the afternoon sun.

  Something crossed his face as their gazes met, his eyes eventually dropping over the angles of his cheeks as they pushed down something unspoken, and leaving his mouth to twist downwards. An outside observer could easily see the resemblance in the Vasily family scowl, and Briddy knew that her face was currently upholding the tradition.

  “The Relic would have chosen Adelaide.” She said, letting the words out slowly, emphasis on the would.

  Nolan scoffed, running a hand through his brown curls and turning away.

  “The Relic should have chosen her.”

  She sucked her breath in as his remark cut her deep. Those words had been unspoken, reflected in her family’s gaze since that day, and repeated incessantly in Bridget’s mind, but unspoken. Now they laid out bare between them.

  She gave him a long, measured look, chin rising as the moment dragged on. The hurt didn’t matter. She wouldn’t let it, right now.

  “It didn’t, though.” Her voice was less sure than she wanted, its edges wobbly and soft.

  “A waste then.”

  She had no reply for that, and her little brother knew, so he left her there, alone on the course with the weight of those words added to burdens that she already placed upon her own shoulders. She had never been meant for this, was never built or raised to wield powers like this, and had never studied what to do with them.

  Of course, every Fable-Child dreamt of being called by their parent’s relic, to be chosen as worthy by a simulacrum of pure, living magic and wield its might. It was just that...for Briddy, it never seemed viable. Weapons and war were the way of her siblings, where she found her calling in the realm of purpose and functionality.

  A sickly child spends most of their time indoors and often finds their greatest refuge in the pages of a book. She had been no different, diving into stories and staying there until forced to return. As time passed, she had become somewhat healthy, but Bridget always remained stronger in mind than body.

  Adelaide and Nolan had grown too, flourishing under the same training that beat her down day after day, and becoming stronger while she stagnated. Her parents had despaired of her and wrote her off to a life of academia, focusing their attention and resources on helping the blazing stars of her siblings ascend.

  Briddy couldn’t blame them. There was little remarkable about her aside from her mildly good grades at the local academy for basic training. Unfortunately, an inked letter on paper rarely looked as beautiful as the shining silver trophies Nolan brought home from different sorcery exhibitions or the golden melee medals that Adelaide earned through her tournaments.

  Yet here she stood in a field of green goop, fingers grazing her collarbone in thought, wanted and chosen where her brother and sister were not. The great Titanium Kerr’s mighty weapon had chosen his weakest offspring as its heir, and she had no idea what to do with it.

  Huffing, Bridget set to work, brushing the goo from her body with quick swipes of her hands. She headed towards the door Nolan had previously vanished through, a tall portal bisected through the middle horizontally to create two swinging panels. The wood was a deep brown, marred around the edges by the scratches and wear of years in use.

  Before she could make contact with the knob, it rattled. The clear, faceted crystal was briefly wreathed in purple light as it turned without touch, pulling both sections of the door forward and revealing the flagstone floor that led into the kitchens beyond.

  "I could've gotten that myself." She said to no one in particular, pulling off her boots after walking in.

  "Not with your hands like that, you're not." A deep voice admonished.

  Briddy gulped. He hadn't been watching that, had he?

  "I would've cleaned it after." She said, forcing brevity into her voice.

  "Bridget."

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  Hope fled with that one word. He had been watching.

  "Father."

  "It isn't working."

  Her head snapped around. "I'm improving quickly enough that-"

  "You can set off every trap in a five-mile radius?" Her father finished the sentence with a weary sigh. Nolan had certainly inherited his gargantuan frame from their father, though none of his cunning or tact.

  Briddy's eyes flicked over his face as she searched for the words to refute her father's. Years of trials, hunts, and different campaigns had left a hardened man, still full of the fire and rage that had carried him to overwhelming fame, but a blaze that was now the candle’s flicker to the raging bonfire that had roared in his youth. Now, he was tired and disappointed in everything that he found in the world. In everything that he found in Bridget.

  She shared his gray eyes and his laugh, though she could hardly remember the last time she had heard it not twisted in mockery. Better to stay silent now, let him react how he would. Titanium Kerr could rage to the four winds of the world, but even he could not force his relic's choice. Not like he wanted, anyways.

  Another sigh escaped her father as he ran a hand through his golden-peppered hair, the gilt bracers on his arms glinting in the morning sunlight. When sunbeams caught the metal, intricate scrollwork shone, embedded within the armor itself rather than scratched upon its surface. The longer you tried to look for the pattern in the depths, the more it shifted, different tiny lights of prismatic brilliance fooling your eyes. When she was little, Briddy had often sat beside her father, tracing the tiny loops with her little hands and gasping in delight as they disappeared, only to reform into new shapes. Such a time felt like a dream now, ideal and unrealistic.

  "Did you call it yet?"

  "I've been taking a slow approach, trying to take it easy so we can-"

  "Did you call it yet?"

  The question hung there, repeated and unamused.

  "I think?" She shifted. Her heart rate was racing again, bringing heat to her cheeks and restless energy to her bones.

  Her father limped out of the back of the kitchen, a swollen, angry leg dragging to the side with each jerking movement. Briddy asked, "Shouldn't you be resting? The healers said that the Mountaincore venom will leech faster if you take it easy. Or let them just magic it from you." An outside observer might have thought she was just offering comfort, but Bridget was just grateful for an opportunity to distract him.

  A snort answered her as her father waved her off with a meaty hand, pulling a chair out from a table near the outside door, and taking a seat.

  "Call it" He growled, gingerly repositioning his injured limb on a nearby stool.

  Bridget could swear her heart skipped a beat.

  "Sorry?" She said, backing towards the door.

  "Call it. You've heard the name, you can remember the first piece, as you're the only other who can so call it."

  Her mouth was dry. She knew as well as he did that she could call all she wanted, but the relic had only ever listened once.

  "I'm not asking Bridget. Call it."

  "You haven't really shown me yet though, I shouldn't ne-"

  "Bridget Vasily!" He boomed. "Call the damned weapon. Now."

  Biting her lip, Briddy clasped her hands behind her back to hide the shaking and took a deep breath. When she had first heard the relic's name, only a bit stayed with her, slipping through her memory like fine silk through fingers, as was the nature of the artifacts. Names had to be earned, as did power, and now she got the opportunity to display her lack of both.

  Vex.

  A quiet, but heartfelt plea, begging for a response, a spark of life.

  Nothing.

  "Call it, girl."

  Vex, please.

  A silent void was all that waited within, an impassive wall of darkness muffling out her call.

  Her breaths were coming faster now, the heat threatening to overwhelm her.

  "Nothing." Her father's voice cut in, hard. "This is going to be a scandal."

  "I'm trying"

  Vex, come on.

  A fist hit a wooden surface somewhere nearby. "Trying isn't good enough. Call. It. Now."

  Vex, I know you can hear me.

  "I said CALL IT!"

  "VEX!"

  Bridget collapsed to the ground, everything within her abruptly spent. Her knees splayed out to the side as she gasped to find her breath. At some point, she must have released her hands from behind her back, because her arms were now wrapped around herself, offering a shield in symbol if not function.

  Looking up through blurry eyes, she could see the smooth metal of her father's bracers shifting as if suddenly made too loose for the chiseled forearms they usually clung to. She looked hopefully up at Titanium Kerr, to see if he saw as she did, and his eyes coldly slid downwards to his hands, where golden mist had begun rising.

  Her father’s mouth tightened and abruptly, the shifting stopped, metal shrinking as the relic began once more conforming to its current owner.

  Briddy looked at the counter. The table. The doorway. At anything but her father as she called to the relic one last time, every part of her throat raw without a single scream sounded.

  Vex….

  Only the suffocating silence responded, both within and without.

  “I wish I could say that I expected better, Bridget.”

  Her head snapped up, mouth opening as if to protest his underestimation and then slamming shut. Gone was the usual look of glazed apathy, the product of so many failed callings and disappointments on her part. In its place was gray-eyed disapproval, keener than a knife’s edge at slicing through the thin shield of her bravado. At this point, she wasn’t sure which look was worse.

  She waited, and he watched, neither speaking nor giving ground. Eventually, the flash of rebellion within Briddy’s chest told her it was a good idea to raise an eyebrow, wordlessly.

  Her father cleared his throat. “You need to do better.”

  “I-”

  “If you truly wish to be capable of deserving this,” Titanium Kerr rotated his wrist, metal glinting. “You need to be better. I’ve let you try it your way, running repeatedly into a wall and designing your little courses. Now we do it the right way.”

  He spoke with a finality and dismissal that turned her stomach.

  “I am better. If you’d-”

  “Not enough. Not quickly.”

  “Are you sure? Or do you simply not want to be wrong?” Her voice was the crack of the whip, her spine stiffer than a rod.

  A long scrape rasped against the flagstone, and Titanium Kerr unfolded to his imposing height, injured leg be damned. An outside observer would have been easily cowed into leaving at this point, but not his daughter. She had weathered worse storms.

  “You’re a child, Bridget. A Fable Child. You know nothing of what carrying a relic means, nothing of the honor and responsibility of having a legend wrought out of the stone of your life. You’ve remained sheltered your life and think yourself large for walking astride a small world. Never has the chime of the Silent Horde filled your ears, nor the screams left behind the Breknan Scourge…”

  Briddy scoffed inwardly. He always resorted to grandstanding when losing an argument, which largely lost its effects after the first few hundred times she’d had to sit through it.

  “- your entire life in Sekna’s Embrace and never needed to know the horrors that lay outside it. A university can prepare you for it, but if you can’t even consider the greater scheme beyond your own clubheadedness, then hear this.”

  Her arms crossed, Bridget tilted her head, letting nothing show on her face.

  “There is a legacy you must uphold, and a legend you must continue now that you have insisted upon this path.”

  “I’ve heard this before-”

  “As you are, you are not fit to carry my legend. Let alone die in it.”

  She blinked. That was new. His words briefly knocked the air from her before she breathed in, launching an attack of her own.

  “Die in it? As opposed to-”

  “Don’t finish that sentence young lady.”

  A horrible triumphant smile leaked into the corners of her mouth. She felt dirty for the pettiness of it, but part of her wanted to hurt her parents as badly as they had hurt her.

  “Why not, Father?” The words were slow, deliberate.

  “You made your choice.”

  She threw her hands up, exhaling hard.

  “Made it? I was never given one!”

  Titanium Kerr started to speak, but her fury was already well-honed into a blade, and risks be damned, she would speak now after being silent for too long.

  “You mean that I ruined yours.” She jabbed a finger in his direction.

  The merest flash of his eyes was the only warning. A hand flew up, hovering. Briddy raised her chin, looking her father in the eye.

  “Do it. You’ve already planned worse for me.”

  The hand stayed there, but now it shook, something stirring behind the mask of twisted fury that covered her father’s face.

  After a moment, then another, the only sound that remained in the room was the harsh rush of breath, each exhale sending trembles down her body. She wouldn’t back down, and wouldn't break her gaze. She might have, once, but if the relic’s choice had changed her family, it had changed her just the same. Briddy slowed her breath to a quiet hush. She could refuse, and even great heroes like her parents could not force her.

  Eventually, complete silence fell, and so did the hand.

  Simultaneously, father and daughter let out a deep breath, considering the other before speaking, two beasts circling the other and considering one last attack.

  “Well, there’s little to be done now. You’ve seen to that.” Kerr broke the quiet first, the impassive mask of apathy coating his words once more. Clearly done with her, he turned his back to her and began making his way over to the arched stone doorway that led out of the kitchen.

  “I’m not apologizing.” Briddy began, but the anger that had earlier filled her with strength was washed out, leaving her words hollow.

  Titanium Kerr stopped, the broad mass of his shoulders briefly tensing before he rolled them.

  “Do you want to die today, Bridget Vasily?” He did not turn to look at her as he spoke.

  The sudden formality took Briddy aback, and she stumbled over her response before getting the words out.

  “Not while I have the will to live.”

  “Then start doing better. And do so quick.”

  She watched him go, her eyes narrowed and burning a hole between the span of his shoulder blades.

  An outside observer might have thought that the great Titanium Kerr, Sunderer of Mountains and Rod of Marikai, was comforting his daughter with the famous battle cry of his guild.

  Briddy knew that he meant every word.