The Girl with the Sword Arm

Chapter 1

There was once a girl who walked the earth with a sword for an arm.

Sqade hadn’t always been this way. Just a few years back, she’d been a relatively normal girl with an interest in forging swords. However, that life was lost to her after a bored Originator decided to replace her right arm with a long sword. Her fellow townsfolk, upon seeing this abominable creation, banished Sqade from the village of her birth. After wandering aimlessly for days, she made a vow that she would hunt down this Originator, no matter how long it took nor the hardships she might have to endure, and she would slay him.

And so she went forth with rage in her heart and purpose in mind.

Sqade shook her head as she stood up from her rest. These memories wouldn’t help her hunt down the Originator who had laid this curse upon her. What would help would be finding her way to a coastal city, like Svuiel or Lemhite. There, she could finally get some more information on her tormentor. She knew there were literally thousands of Originators, but she hoped that a cathedralis in a city as large as those would be able to identify the ones that had been active on this continent in recent years. 

As she walked across the plains, she noticed that the sun was rather low in the sky. Not wishing to be in the open when night fell, Sqade picked up her pace and headed for a copse near what looked like an old, derelict barn. She wanted to get up and off the ground before falling asleep, otherwise she ran a high risk of being attacked by the swarms of myarrls that came out at night. They were tiny creatures and no real threat by themselves, but the real danger lay in the fact that they hunted in swarms upwards of 100 myarrls. There was only one sure way to be safe from them, and since she wasn’t going to be over water anytime soon, Sqade had to make do with what protection the trees offered her.

As she reached the copse she’d been heading to, the sun was dipping below the horizon. Knowing she had only a few more minutes of safety, Sqade slung her pack up and onto the lower branches of the tree nearest to her. Knowing that the climb would be, as always, difficult, Sqade gritted her teeth and swung her right arm into the branch above the one with her pack so as to anchor herself as she worked on climbing up. She had to get at least twenty feet up before she could relax at all, and she could already see the glowing eyes of some early-rising myarrls eyeing her from the underbrush. Putting some gusto into it, she pulled herself up to the second branch and pulled her arm out of the tree. She bent over to grab her pack before returning her attention to climbing this tree. She needed to hurry, because the eyes that had been a distance away were now underneath her and joined by others. 

As her gaze swept the trunk, she noticed that there were enough knots on it that she could use them as decent footholds, while pulling herself up along the branches. Making sure her pack was secure, Sqade set to work and made her way further up. After twenty minutes, she decided that she was in a safe enough position for the night. Taking out some rope from her bag, Sqade used it to lash some of the smaller branches together to form a semisolid place to pass the night. It wasn’t the most secure binding, as she’d yet to learn a good way to tie a knot with only one arm in the three years since she’d left, but Sqade was reasonably certain that it wold hold for what she needed to. As she lay down to pass the evening, she let the dulcet tones of the myrrls tearing into some hapless animal that hadn’t made it to shelter for the night wash over her and put her to sleep.

Sqade was awoken rather abruptly the following morning as her right arm cut through the ropes holding her safe. Cursing mightily, she swung her right arm into a branch to stop her fall. Very quickly she knew she’d made a mistake as the sudden jolt dislocated her shoulder, leaving Sqade to scream in pain as all of her weight hung there by her now nearly useless arm. As she furiously blinked the tears out of her eyes, she heard a rustling above her. She looked up just in time to see her pack falling trough the leaves and glancing off of her left shoulder. As she watched it hit the ground with a dull thud, Sqade hoped mightily that her one possession of value was still in one piece, before turning to face the problem at hand; namely how to get out of this tree without causing even more damage to herself. She tried to pull herself up, but was rewarded only with another burst of excruciating pain from her right shoulder. this last movement proved to be too much for the branch supporting her, however, and with a stretching crack it broke. As Sqade fell, she just hoped the fall wouldn’t break her legs. She still had an Originator to kill, after all.

For the second time that day, Sqade awoke suddenly. This time, at least, she wasn’t falling but simply being jabbed repeatedly by some sort of large bird. As she sat up, the bird gave a loud sqawk and Sqade gave a loud yell as she knocked her right shoulder into a tree trunk. Once her eyes stopped watering, she looked around and saw with some alarm that it was already late afternoon. If she wanted to get out of the plains by nightfall, she’d have to move quickly and try to cross the river before sundown, as she was in no shape whatsoever to climb a tree again. But before she could do that, Sqade would have to do something about her dislocated shoulder. 

There wasn’t a whole lot she could do to fix it by herself, except for one way that she just wasn’t sure she had the reach to pull off. Knowing she had about shit-all choice in the matter, Sqade pulled off her tunic and did her best to wrap her sword tip tightly in it. Moving carefully, she grasped her sword in her left hand tightly, put her feet on her wrist, and clenched her mouth as tight as she could; she’d really rather not be have a severed tongue and a dislocated shoulder if she could help it. After a three count, Sqade quickly pushed out with her legs, pulling the shoulder back into its socket and presenting her with a pain she hadn’t felt in years. Knowing that there wasn’t anything else she could do until she got to a healer, Sqade grabbed her pack and broke into a jog, making sure to avoid hitting her right shoulder on anything. She only had a few more hours of light left, and if she didn’t get across the river by night, she ran a high risk of being eaten alive by a myarrl swarm. As the river was a good seven miles away, she knew her chances weren’t the best in the world, but she also knew there wasn’t much choice in the matter.

Night was fast approaching as Sqade reached the river. She was exhausted by that point and wasn’t sure she’d be able to cross the river without some sort of fjord set up, but as she paused to look around for one, she heard a low, hissing mumur rise up from the ground around her. She looked around and saw with some horror that she’d manage to stop right on top of a myarrl colony. She still had a few minutes before they started coming out, but Sqade knew now that it was either risk drowning or be eaten alive by a few hundred myarrls. She knew which she had a greater chance of beating, and so she started forging her way across the river, thankful that at least it hadn’t rained in recent weeks. 

Halfway across, Sqade noticed lights in the distant sky. Squinting, she realized that these weren’t stars or fireflies, but lamps of a village. It was still a solid half-day’s journey to get there, but she knew that if the villagers were living in the area, then there weren’t any major predators or myarrl swarms to deal with. With this knowledge giving her some joy, Sqade made it across the rest of the river without incident. As she reached the bank, she paused to turn around and look at the now fully awake colony of myarrls she’d managed to stand above, all staring hungrily at her but incapable of crossing water. With a slightly crazed laugh, Sqade gave the swarm her equivalent of a double bird and collapsed on the bank out of exhaustion. She knew it wasn’t the best idea, but the day had been hard enough that her body just wasn’t going to do anything else until she rested. So Sqade closed her eyes and went to sleep, knowing that one small milestone in her journey had been accomplished.