A vase smashed through the stained-glass window making way for the girl to jump out of the tall building and land on a nearby roof. She held her arms out, wobbling delicately as she tried to find balance while teetering over the city street below. After regaining her stability, she jostled her shoulders so that her bow and quiver slumped more comfortably on her back. Sighing in relief, she admired her bounty. A bolt whizzed by just barely missing her body and cutting the large rucksack that she carried. A collection of small glowing gems began to pool out of the sack. “No!” she quickly clogged the tear with her hand glaring at the guards who aimed another series of shots from inside the building. The guards didn’t have the confidence to jump onto the roof with their heavy armor. Realizing her advantage, the woman began to run.

She jumped from roof to roof trying to break sight of the hundreds of guards swarming the bustling streets below. The guards denied her any opportunities to slip down into an alleyway or any level lower always keeping an eye on her specific position. The occasional volley of arrows would force her to turn and move in a different direction. She could tell that they were herding her. She had to think fast, she couldn’t let herself get captured, she couldn’t have her identity be revealed or her dad would kill her!

Eventually they managed to corral her to the edge of town against the behemoth city walls keeping her blockaded in. Guards flooded in either street of the building she stood on. It was a dead end; she had no choice. She promised herself to never do this again, it nearly killed her last time but if she didn’t act, she would die regardless. Her baggy clothes bulged as the inside filled out with fur and she lunged impossibly high into the air and straight over the wall. She howled in glee as she saw all the guards’ surprised stares. Finally cresting over the wall, she readied herself to land on the other side.

Her shouting glee then turned to terror as she saw the enormous cliff face below her. She plummeted at an incredible speed, the ground getting rapidly closer until finally she connected and saw only black.

Her consciousness regained to be immediately struck by a pain so absolute she thought she had just died, when she realized she didn’t, she only wished for it. Her eyes were open, yet they refused to register any information sent to them, her mind was trapped by the flatness she felt throughout her body. That was the only way she could describe it, as a flatness, as a sense that her body wasn’t as filled as it should be. She tried to push her body up and instead immediately lost her consciousness.

For a few hours, perhaps even a day or two, she did nothing but lay in the shattered crater dabbed in her blood slipping in and out of awareness. She had to fight bitterly to regain every one of her senses.

First was her mind, a throbbing ache bit into her brain. For the longest time it was hard to even think, she felt she was drowning in her own cerebral fluids. She had to first unravel the blistering knots in her head. A malignance that lived within her that locked her existence. Words and ideas and actions and identity were lost in a flowing sway. But even without self-knowledge she fought against the aching, she thought against the death.

Next was the sounds, the world was gone, run away. A constant ringing pierced into her, it bored through her skull digging into her newly reformed mind threatening to cut it down again. Her ears they broiled in a cool agony. With the capacity for thought she realized that she was still falling! She was tumbling upside down flying into the air, an emptiness against a weak wall, the soft floor below her was spinning into the sky: NO! Her head was still broken, she could feel that a cool liquid was slipping out of her ear. She wasn’t too familiar with anatomy, but she knew that she needed that liquid, it was supposed to stay with her, why was it running from her? Why didn’t it want her? Without that liquid she couldn’t know where she was, she couldn’t know how she was.

Her mind swam in search of a solution, her head still hurt so much. She was tormented by this dichotomy of infantile awareness. She knew that her mind wasn’t thinking the way it was supposed to but simultaneously the thoughts felt so present. She wanted her mommy, no it was a mother. Yes, she wanted her mother but… but that could not happen, why couldn’t that happen? Her mother had left, had gone somewhere. The woman was going there now, going to death. Death was a scary place, she didn’t want to go there; she needed to fight her mind, she needed to fight for the consciousness, she knew this was her last chance.

Her ears were beyond saving for now, the next sense she thought of was touch but she didn’t even want to try and reclaim that sensation. She knew that once the sensation of touch returned the agony would be too much, she wouldn’t survive the torture and if she did her mind wouldn’t come out unscathed. The other sense was sight. That one was possible, her eyelids were opened yet she remained blind, the world deprived of detail. She tried to will sight back into them, she tried to demand the nerves to function once again, but nothing was happening.

She was trapped in this stalemate, pouring all her will into her vision for hours more without any luck until finally a glimpse of dirt. Without hearing or touch she could only see, see the rain wash the blood out of her eyes revealing her mangled arm before her. The arm was mulched into a grotesque mush, barely retaining any semblance of its original form. Something else she saw was a torn rucksack. A bunch of glowing gems were strewn all around the dirt floor.

There was one gem right in front of her, so close that she could grab it with her tongue. There was no chance that she could move anything below her neck, but she might have a chance with the tongue. Her mouth was already hung open dislocated off the skull. With all the effort she could muster she touched her tongue against the gem and instantly a warm fuzz began to fill her. The gem shrunk as the sensation taking over her continuously increased. She internally thanked her mother for the boon; Sapphic had always said that light reached even the darkest crevices and that couldn’t be truer than now.

With the strength granted to her by the gem’s energy she could begin to wiggle her fingers, her toes remained unresponsive; it would seem that her spine was broken. She took her time to master her one functional arm, she tried to move it without her mind’s sense of orientation. She tried to grab the next nearest gem, but her hand eye coordination had become non-existent. It took many minutes for her to finally touch the gem and begin absorbing it, letting its power flow through her. She let the energy rush through her arteries and veins dislodging clots and fixing collapsed pathways. As her body reknit itself, she gained the energy to move to the next gem and the one after that and the one after that.

A few gems into her healing and her nerves had rebound enough for her bodies sensations to send their screeching protest to her mind. The pain was omnipresent, a grounded reality, a new law of existence. She felt as if this physical turmoil was her new form manifest. She battled against the urge to let it take her, to give up and succumb to a death less arduous than life, instead she persevered on. The regeneration was just as painful as the damage, worst of all was watching her flattened arm slowly inflate back to its original state; the rolling reconstitution of marrow and sinew churned her very soul. Some vomit somehow managed to traverse along her battered digestive system and drizzle out of her now relocated mouth. Eventually she healed enough that she could brave the daunting task of craning her neck to see why her spine refused to mend itself.

Her bow which was once slung across her back was now snapped in two and jutted from her malleable abdomen like the rising horns of a birthing demon within her. The tool had always been an extension of herself, now that concept took an uncomfortable specificity. Her bow, her mother’s bow was shattered beyond reconstruction; the many carvings and speckling of historied character littered as bristled shrapnel throughout her body bathed in her organic spew. For the first time, not on the fall, not on her wakings, not when her mind was shattered, not when she regained sensation, for the first time in this whole event she cried. She cried for her mother’s bow. Defeat buried her and tears defiled her dirty visage all while she wailed to the careless skies. Her mother was killed in her uterus. Her writhing sorrow twisted the bloody bow further within her, whirling as a perverted ladle to a biotic medley.

Her breath slowed the sporadic movement granting enough blood-loss to restrain her mourning, a calmness returned. A cold callousness filled her; emotions entombed while her survival instincts commandeered the reigns of consciousness. She took two nearby gems and put them in her mouth without consuming them. Then she grabbed each bow limb in either hand and with a single bout of courageous power yanked them out of herself while crunching down on the two gems.

The battling slurry of death and life tugged wildly at her being. She was certain that she must have died and resurrected multiple times in the few passing seconds after. The offspring spied an off awful sting in this off spring, but she refused to avert her eyes from the deed either. She forced herself to watch the wooden stakes birth from her. She watched as a ribbon of muliebrous organs clung to the deathly sapling refusing to release the relative. The energy released from the gems quickly washed down to her abdomen and nethers in frantic assembly of the woman once been.

She cradled the broken vestiges of her mother in her arms allowing the river of loss to flow from her to a degree it hadn’t since Sapphic had left. The bow was damp, drenched in an amniotic viscosity. She could see some of the gem’s energy still remained in that personal fluid, without being able to feed on her essence it should have dissipated to nothingness but rather it kept its dim glow until in a sudden burst of power, grey fur started to grow off the wet wood mending it together until it had somehow completely reassembled itself.

She laid aghast as she witnessed her reconstituted bow, it now dressed in long soft grey fur. She felt around the bow and the wood was still there hidden below the thick coat of fur and it was harder than before. The bow breathed with a new power, if she focused very hard it still contained some of the gem’s glow within, not only refusing to disappear but even slowly rebuilding itself as if this bow had its own source of essence. The bow was dressed in magic!

The realization caused her to let out an amazed gasp that had her body jerk ever so slightly. The hurried motion sent an awful reminder of her current trial sending her gaze back to her lower body. As she took in the sight, she lost consciousness.

As time pressed on her body slowly healed itself together enough that she could once again move if only at a crawl. The only remaining gems were out of arms reach and with her balance shot so badly It seemed a near insurmountable distance. But near insurmountable was not insurmountable and so she began to crawl one weary arm in front of the other, pulling her limp body forward. She orbited around her fall ever increasing her circumference to swallow up every loose gem in the vicinity.

Overall, she would have guessed that it had been nearly a month since she initially fell from that city wall and only now could she finally stand. She still hadn’t fully recovered from her injuries but her supply of gems in the area had depleted. One of her legs were still broken but otherwise she was fine. Or as relatively fine as a magically recreated body could be. Her very nature now posed many questions to who and what exactly she was. What she had gone through shouldn’t have been possible. The only reason the gems could do anything at all for her was due to her special condition inherited from her mother. Even then, from what little she knew it wasn’t a condition necessarily known for its restorative capabilities.

With a broken leg the girl’s motion was still very stilted, but she at least had better motion from when she was crawling around. She limped out of the crater and into the dense forest shrubbery. Her leg bellowed in distraught protest with her every step. Her first priority was a splint for her leg which she incompetently jerry-rigged out of a thick branch tied to her body by leaves drenched in tree resin and thick plant fibers. She couldn’t be completely to blame for the shoddy workmanship, she was really working with the worst possible materials in the worst possible conditions. Now with the splint set in place she could walk with only a mild stab of insufferable agony. With her immediate problems sorted she could now focus on longer term objectives; as if granted permission to escape from her subconscious the girl’s stomach rumbled pleadingly and she instantly became aware of how dry her throat was.

Her body was suddenly much heavier than she remembered it to be, without the adrenaline and pain coursing through her she was left with a deathly weakness. She felt so frail that she believed if she were to lean out from the protection of the forested trees the wind would take her away never to be found again. How she managed to even block this horrible deprivation from her mind she had no idea, but suddenly the idea of travelling back to society felt impossibly farfetched.

She needed food and she needed it now. Sadly, this meant she had to move, had to hunt it out. She gave one last glance around the crater that had been her residence for the past month and then suddenly realized that her quiver was nowhere to be seen. She had somehow miraculously managed to get her bow functioning again but didn’t have any ammunition to use it. To her stomach’s great despondency, she would have to hold off the hunt to find some ammo. With her furry bow in hand, she hobbled further into the dense forest. Of the many lessons left behind by her mother a congruence with nature was amongst one of the most focused. Even in her weakened state she could still navigate through the underbrush with a transient ease. As she walked through the woods, she began to collect materials.

She found a small collection of rocks and her attempt at sitting quickly turned to collapsing onto the cold forest floor. The girl grabbed onto a small fist sized rock and then whacked it against another nearby stone. There was no zeal in her swing, it was imprecise and tired. She lazily swung a few more times before finally willing the energy into herself. With an aggravated force she struck the two stones together smashing the one in her hand apart. The sudden shear tore a large gash across her palm but now that the hunger was on her mind no other ailments could steal her attention. The stone had exploded into a fragmentation of many small flint pieces. She managed to collect a couple that appeared well shaped and significantly sharp.

The girl gathered around a couple nearby branches and started shaving them with the flints, shaping them into small wooden shafts. The cutting was rough and strenuous. Her flints made for terrible carving knives and she was constantly ripping her own flesh as the flint adamantly refused to perform any clean slice. Along the construction she shattered a few of her flints and snapped many more branches but she finally got herself a decent supply.

The last tool she needed for her build was a feather, but she had no idea how long it would possibly take to find one, so as a replacement she used the thin inner bark of the surrounding trees. The wet bark was in desperate need of drying, so she piled some leaves and her failed branch carving attempts to make a campfire and lit it by striking two flints together a couple times. She shaped the bark into a series of long thin triangles and then started to carve in the wedges.

She needed to somehow groove two of these wooden triangles into the end of the wooden shafts she had made. It took her many hours and even more tries to trial through the different configurations but eventually she managed to complete her work. Out of all her many flints, branches, and bark she managed to build one arrow. It was a horrible arrow with its jagged asymmetrical head and barky fletching, all stitched together by loose notches packed tight with sticky tree resin. The single piece of ammo was a bulky behemoth, a disgusting insult to any archer yet it was her only one and it would have to do.

At this point exhaustion was a ubiquitous pressure, her perseverance could only push her so far and though she had the equipment to hunt she didn’t have the capacity to go out and do it. The girl found what she hoped was an animal’s burrow and slumped against a nearby tree. Then she waited until either she died, or an animal emerged.

The soft fur compressed under the intense pressure, its own skin pressing inwards plunging into the soft organs hidden bellow. A stone razor pierced through the flesh lodging firmly into the small creature’s heart. The heart still tried a few more beats struggling to push its flowing blood around the intruding material, but the pumps only helped to pour the blood out of the newly made exit and soon the heart stopped completely.

The girl’s mind went blank as her craven instincts took hold of her. She hurriedly clambered over towards her prey tossing her monstrous bow aside and clutching at the food. The aggravated grumble of her stomach demanded immediate action. For a brief second the civilized woman within wanted to prepare a fire and cook the rabbit but it just as quickly disappeared without another thought, her hunger had been pushed to its utmost limit already and she refused to wait a moment longer. She bit into the rabbit’s tough flesh tearing and pulling it apart. She ravenously scarfed down every thread of fiber she could rend from her prey. Like a savage animal she sat over her hunt drenched in blood wolfing it down. She tilted the captured beast up over her head as she ate trying to let as little blood as possible spill, it was her best source of drinking water so far. It was true, hunger was the best spice for this meal was the greatest she had ever eaten. Temporarily she lost her humanity, lost in the euphoric gore, savoring each dribbling giblet that rolled down her throat. She hadn’t even removed the creature’s fur her mouth now covered in the patchy coat sticking against her elated tongue. The last vestige of edible morsel slipped down her soft throat and still she craved more; except now she had the energy to get it.

Almost as if waking from a nightmarish slumber she became human again. Her belly was full, and muscles felt vitalized. The fletching of her arrow had been replaced with actual feathers and she had five arrows total now. Her skin and clothes were caked in dried blood, she wasn’t sure anymore whether it was hers or not. A nausea choked her breath and without response she emptied her stomach, a putrid red goop poured from her mouth, crushed bone, feather, and fur came out in large, congealed clumps. It had saved her life but with all the gems being wasted she had no restraints on her condition. Weirdly enough she still had her bow with her, usually when she lost herself, she would drop any simile of tools but not this time.

Her splint was also gone, the only markings left of her fall being calloused stains of scars from a seeming bygone time. Her hunger and thirst sated, her body healed, she could now start making her way back home.

It was a long trek, but she could use the day star as a compass to guide her back. She spent many days camping and hunting, but safe from the brink she could keep her humanity in check. She wasn’t sure she could survive losing it again.

It took her a few weeks more, but she made it back to civilization. The townspeople were understandably wary of the young woman emerging from the forests drenched in vital ichor, but she managed to trade a few pelts and meat for a ride that brought her back home.

Her father was there on the front porch of their farm, half empty bottle of ale in his hand. His eyes were dead, visage imprisoned in a dour melancholy. The second she spotted him she broke into a sprint. “Papa! Papa!”

His ears twitched as the words he thought he’d never hear again came through. He turned his head up and immediately dropped his drink at the sight. The man rose with such speed he nearly stumbled over but he didn’t care about the mess he was making. He too broke into a sprint towards his cherished daughter. “Biddy you’re alive!”

Before the two could clasp in a much needed embrace the chime of a bell rang out. In between the reuniting family a small pink rhombus grew out of thin air, or it was a rhombus, but its body would reject any stable state. It would shift and transform, shrink and grow, continuously morphing into other shapes. The pink shape finally locked into a form resembling that of a featureless human with only one limb. The arm was outstretched towards Biddy holding a glowing parchment: It read.

You have been invited to The Tournament You are The Toxophilite