It was morning and the girl sat on her bed. By all rights she should have been really hungover by know, but it seemed like that wouldn’t be an issue anymore. The list of changes to her body was steadily growing. It had gotten to a point where she would almost be surprised if she didn’t find something new every now and then. The room she had been given was cold and barely furbished. It also had the questionable perk of being close to a chicken run, so at least waking up hadn’t been a problem.

She was famished, but she was also broke. The deal she had with Rune didn’t include breakfast, so she would have to find her next meal somewhere else. She tried rubbing the tiredness away from her eyes. Judging time would have been a lot easier if there were clocks around, but she was rather certain that she didn’t get to bed until it was very late. The ale she had drunk with her dinner had put her in the mood for more. After a while of solitary drinking Rune had showed up and joined her. His tolerance for alcohol being what it was, it didn’t take long until he was absolutely smashed. It seemed out of character for him, but he appeared somewhat remorseful for his previous hustle. Not that he publicly apologized or anything, but he had stood on a chair and announced that he would give a coin to anyone who could beat him in arm-wrestling. Since he wasn’t very beefy, the line of challengers quickly grew long.

By the end of it he had lost quite the sum, but since many of the winners were among the losers of yesterday, it had sort of served him right. Rune had a glum face, but his many losses sure put a smile on the rest in the room. Afterwards he had sulkily increased his pace with the ale until he had fallen asleep in a corner. A bit later the barkeep had come over and asked her to carry him to an unoccupied room. The old her would have been hard pressed to carry an unconscious man, but to the new and nifty her it was as easy as flinging him over her shoulder. She didn’t even break a sweat. It felt so good that it was almost worth all the extra shit that came with it.

Hanna rubbed her eyes before she set about gathering all her stuff. She probably wouldn’t sleep here tonight so she had to make sure that she took everything with her. Not that it was that much: she had long since dumped the bad smelling poncho, the rusty shovel and her makeshift spear. The only things she owned now was the clothes that she wore and the stuff that she had gotten from Björn. In the small amount of time that she had owned them, the stuff that she had thrown away had acquired a surprising amount of sentimental value. It probably was what usually happened when something more or less saved your life. Still, it wasn’t as if she could walk around with a rotting carcass for clothing. She was shunned enough as it was.

With the leather backpack flung over her shoulder she made her way down the narrow stairs. Rune was nowhere to be seen, which really wasn’t surprising. By now he was probably either passed out or heaving his guts out, like a normal human would. It almost made her jealous. She would no longer be a part of the broken heroes that spent their mornings wallowing in self-pity and indulgence. Instead she would get the shit kicked out of her by the toughest bastard this side of death.

It was a wet and grey kind of day. The uniform colourlessness of the sky did nothing to alleviate the miserable look of what was beneath it. Everything was slightly moist, and the mud which was everywhere in the village had almost turned liquid. At first, she tried tiptoeing her way through it, but she soon realized the futility of it and just accepted her fate. Soaked shoes did not improve a shitty day, but it was what she was stuck with.

Birgitta hadn’t specified where they would meet, and Hanna hadn’t thought about asking. The area where they had trained earlier seemed like an obvious choice though, so she had made her way there, one sloshing step at a time. She didn’t look forward to meeting the other kids again. It was all too easy to imagine their judgemental stares.

As she got closer to the training grounds she saw that they were all gathered up around Birgitta, just like they were yesterday. Hanna happily noted that no one had seen her yet. If it could only remain that way, then I could very well wait until… she thought. But her plan was snuffed by Birgitta waving her towards her with huge arm movements. Like a group of whatever animals Timon was, all of the kids snapped their heads towards her. She met their stares with a bad feeling in her stomach. One or two had a curious look, but most of them looked annoyed to see her. A few of them seemed outright hostile. After some searching she noticed Olof in the back. He had his eyes glued to the ground. Muddy was nowhere to be seen.

“Listen up kids!” Birgitta shouted. “Because of what happened yesterday, Hanna is no longer going to practice with us”. Someone laughed when they heard her. Birgitta said nothing about it. “Instead, I will be training her personally. This means that from now on Björn will be in charge of you guys”, she continued.

This clearly annoyed most of the teenagers. A general murmuring was quickly growing among them. Muddy’s female sidekick seemed especially annoyed, Hanna even caught her spitting on the ground in disgust. Wow.

Birgitta didn’t seem to appreciate their lack of focus. “Oi asshats!” She bellowed. There was definite anger in her voice. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up”, she said, somehow managing to make complete sentences of single words. Hanna rolled her eyes internally, but carefully made sure not to let it show. There is an important line between sassy and suicidal, and she was definitely not going to cross it.

Birgitta’s outburst had its intended effect on the teenagers though. They were all dead silent, and most of them looked a little pale. A few of them visibly flinched when she spoke again. “I don’t know where you guys picked up the idea, that this is some cosy get-together where we all hang out and gossip. In case I’m not being very clear… It fucking isn’t”. She said, and her voice was low and smooth as honey. The lower volume only came off as more threatening.

The teenagers all leaned in closer, afraid to miss some part of it. Hanna on the other hand stopped listening. It just sounded far too much like the hundreds of sergeants in war movies she had seen. Where’s the originality? She thought. Also, she was pretty sure nothing that was said would be regarding her.

In the end, all off the teenagers set about jogging around the training grounds. Hanna didn’t hear how many laps they would be running, but judging from their slow pace and dead faces, they were probably going to spend most of their day in the mud. It put a smile on her face, more from their suffering than from her not having to join them. Her heart froze for a second when she saw that Birgitta had noticed her smile, but the feeling passed when she caught the wide grin on Birgitta’s face. It was an odd moment that they shared, seeing the ugly touch of sadism in a person, at the same time as you admitted to it yourself.

“Don’t tell them this, but I’m thankful that they gave me cause for this”, Birgitta said. “Otherwise I would have to admit that I forgot to tell Björn to come over”, she continued with a smile on her face. It almost made Hanna burst out in laughter. She didn’t though. The grin on Birgitta’s face earlier had made her a bit less eager to push her luck. Also, Birgitta’s current level of comradeship felt very out of character. It was almost to the point of being disturbing, like a cat cleaning the pelt of a mouse.

Hanna settled for what she figured was the safest option and only smiled in response.

Birgitta gave her a disappointed look but dropped the subject. “We won’t be practicing here. There are far too many rumours going around, it seems kind of stupid to fan the flames”, she said, as she walked them over towards the house with the equipment. Once inside she deftly picked out a shield, a short sword and a spear. She handed them to Hanna as she picked them up. By the time they got to the spear, Hanna was out of hands, but she still reached for the spear like an idiot, inevitable dropping all the stuff on the ground. The sword landed point first, wedging itself into the ground despite its dulled edge. What was worse was the miniscule amount of space between the sword and the general area of Birgitta’s pinky toe.

Hanna turned her head from the ground towards Birgitta’s face with a dreadful feeling. To her relief she was met with a stoic face, if anything Birgitta looked slightly disappointed. Hanna quickly grabbed her backpack and fastened the shield on the outside of the bag before she picked up the spear and the sword. She felt her cheeks blush slightly as she stood up.

“Are you done?” Birgitta asked, but she didn’t seem to care for an answer. She led them out towards the edge of the village, to the side that faced the mountain. As they left the village behind them and the slope got steeper, Hanna saw the odds of her eating breakfast steadily grow worse. Her stomach seemed to second her assessment, as it got increasingly more vocal.

Eventually Birgitta must have gotten tired of listening to her bowels singing, because she stopped without warning and begun rummaging around in her pockets. “I take it you didn’t eat any breakfast”, she said as she tossed her a cured sausage. Hanna managed to catch it without letting it fall into the mud, but since both her hands was full it meant she had to drop her sword in the mud to do so. It landed in the brown slush with a wet sound, and Hanna realized with a groan that the leather handle would undoubtedly be a pain to clean afterwards.

Leaving the sword in the mud, she studied the sausage. It looked edible enough, but she didn’t want to think too much about how long it had been laying around in Birgitta’s pocket. It was hard to the touch and had that sweet smell of old meat. All in all, it seemed a pretty ordinary sausage, if maybe a bit on the larger side. She took a bite and was pleasantly surprised. It had a smoky and gamey flavour; the meat was probably smoked deer or something similar. As far as rations went, it was absolutely superb. It was also surprisingly filling, she almost had to force the last bits down.

“Ready?” Birgitta asked. She looked somewhat impressed.

“Sure”, Hanna said with a pained face. She had to force down some massive gas to get her answer out. Perhaps she had eaten a bit too fast. At least Birgitta didn’t seem bothered by her problems, she set off at once when she got her answer. Her pace did not harmonize with Hanna’s stomach.

As the slope got steeper Hanna begun to wonder just how far up the mountain they were going. She had realized after a while that they were following a path of sorts, but earlier it had barely been visible due to all the mud. That problem had at least decreased as they got higher up the mountain. She turned around to take a look at the village and was surprised by how far down it was. She had noticed the incline for sure, but she would never have guessed just how much height they had traversed. Slopes were tricky like that.

She turned back towards their path. It continued on like it had done for the hour or so that they had walked, but a bit higher up she thought she could see something. As they got closer it turned out to be a fairly large cave, with a stone wall covering most of the opening. It wasn’t a terrible high wall, but it was high enough that climbing over it would be impossible without some sort of equipment. In the middle of the wall sat an ancient wooden door, which in turn was protected by a netting of iron bars. It looked like it would be pretty hard to break in to. Or out of, the girl thought with a shudder.

A cold feeling grew in her stomach. What if they weren’t here for practice? What if they had brought her here to lock her up? The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. It didn’t seem practical to walk an hour or so uphill single way just for some morning practice. And this place had all the makings of a prison. Fuck! She thought. How could she be so naïve?

Hanna didn’t spot anyone on the wall, but apparently it was manned. She considered making a run for it but decided against it. She wasn’t arrogant enough to think she could put up any sort of resistance against Birgitta. Plus the fact that she would undoubtedly fall if she were to run down that steep slope. The mud might cushion things a bit, but it was still a really long tumble.

As they walked up to the door, a loud sound came from inside the wall. Hanna imagined it was the sound of something heavy dropping to the ground. A few seconds later the door slowly swung open, creaking dramatically as it did so. Birgitta led them through the door without missing a beat. Once they were inside the cave, the door reversed its previous journey. This time the creaking sounded a lot more ominous. The finality of the situation was accentuated by the heavy thud as the door was locked into place. Hanna couldn’t help but groan at the sound of it.