Hanna sighed. They had been whittling and hunting ever since they got here, and it was getting on her nerves. The trek here had been uneventful and short. Just a day’s march around the mountain, halfway down its slope. The road leading them here had honestly been more of a path, but her dull oaf of a teacher had cherished every step, all the while instilling in her the great honour of threading on it. Apparently, countless generations had walked the path towards the forest, to complete some trial and take their first steps towards mastery of the spear. Of course, he kept tight-lipped about the actual content of the trial. Hanna hardly knew the man, but she could already tell that he wasn’t one for clear and helpful instructions. Grandeur and ceremony sure, but actual teachings seemed off the table. What was worse was that he seemed utterly without a sense of humour. Any jabs from her only made him sulky, and since he kept quiet when he wasn’t spouting large words and nonsense, time wasn’t exactly flying.

She was sitting in her usual spot: on a lone rock by a swamp in the woods, slowly chipping away at the massive log in front of her. Calling it whittling was a huge understatement, about as misleading as calling what they did the rest of the time hunting. The log that she had in front of her had been arduously wrestled away from the bottom of the swamp. The task had been made that much more annoying by Anders’ insistence that she at all costs must avoid contact with the water. He claimed that it wasn’t really water and that it was harmful to the body, but she wasn’t buying it. Even if it was true, she was willing to bet that her fucked-up body2.0 would be able to handle it. Hanna had chalked up his weird rule as some silly part of her training, meant to teach her the value of preparation and patience or something similar. It had thought her the value of preparation and patience, but that was beside the point. It was annoying and frustrating as hell, and that was just describing the process of bringing one end of the log close enough to shoreline that she could grab it.

Hanna had been given special gloves by Anders that reached well above her biceps and had fitted terribly enough to make pulling the log out of the water about twice as hard as it would have been without them. As she slowly had gotten the huge thing out of the swamp, it had dawned on her just how obscenely heavy it was. She had to use every ounce of her strength just to move it the slightest bit, her feet constantly struggling to find purchase in the wet ground.

The only upside to Hanna’s two-day struggle was the workout she had gotten, as well as an increased awareness of her contact with the ground. Her absurd strength coupled with her light frame made her footing an ever-present concern. Her weight plus whatever traction she could get was the direct limiter to how much force she could exert, and she was honestly growing dead tired of pushing herself around like a moron whenever she had misjudged how good of a grip she had on the ground.

When the damned log was finally out of the swamp, the only instructions she had gotten from Anders had been to make sure it stayed wet, and to start whittling away at it. All questions she had thrown at him had pointedly been ignored, “Keep it wet and keep whittling” being the only answer that she got out of the man. She wasn’t sure what was worse, having to constantly submerge the log in the swamp or spending hour after hour chipping away at the impossibly hard wood. Anders didn’t help at all. He spent most of his time stoically practicing with his spear, always making sure to keep within her line of sight.

It was unclear if it was to annoy her or to teach her something, but if it was the latter he wasn’t very successful. She spent most of her time looking at the log anyway, as it was unexpectedly hard to affect the wood even with the axe that she had borrowed from Anders. Each deliberate strike from her only removed small pieces of the log, and it was massive to begin with. She had literally no clue of what she should be doing, and in the absence of direction she had decided to generally just make it thinner. Mostly to make the constant burden of dipping it in the swamp a bit less annoying.

She had gotten far enough by now that she had begun eating into the core of the log, distinctly visible by its darker colour and increased durability. Unless Anders stopped her, it would soon be thin enough that she could hold it with one hand, at least if it was about half as long. The second that she considered decreasing its length, the idea was stuck in her head. She really wanted to snap this fucker in half. It would make dealing with it a lot less annoying and picturing the sound of it breaking apart put an itch in her hands, reminding her of when she popped bubble wrap as a kid.

A quick glance at her stoic teacher showed that he was still endlessly cycling through the same motions with his spear. He hadn’t bothered explaining them to her, so she had labelled them herself. Stab, slash and check was what she called them. Anders constantly shifted between the three, intricate variations turning it into some weirdly flowing version of a dance. She probably ought to check with him before she chopped the log in two. It would suck so hard if he made her start over from scratch.

“Hey buddy”, She shouted, knowing full well that he disliked anything less than his proper name. He frowned at her and ceased his dance.

“I was thinking of snapping this in two, any thoughts on that?”

The large man looked at her for second, and she thought she saw the hint of smile.

“Keep on whittling”, he said with a grunt and got back to waving his spear around. Hanna interpreted it as an approval but couldn’t help herself from worrying that it meant “lol, don’t care”. There was no way she would do this from scratch again.

Moving on with her plan, she jumped on top of the log and began chopping with great gusto, striking between her feet like a Basque aizkolari. She wasn’t that proficient with an axe so it probably wasn’t very safe, but shrugging of risks like that was in her opinion the main perk of her weird body. She wasn’t exactly making quick progress but compared to how tedious her work had been until now she almost felt exhilarated.

As the hours passed by the log got thinner. When she felt that her weight was making it flex a bit she doubled down on it, longing for the sweet satisfaction promised in that future snap. When it finally arrived it was all that she had wanted, but the real reward came when she picked up one of the pieces and epiphany struck her. A spear, she thought. She was supposed to craft her own spear. It really was the only logical explanation. It didn’t make any sense why she had to start with a huge fucking tree instead of branch or maybe a thinner tree, but that could probably just be Anders’ lovely version of a lesson.

When she experimentally moved the piece around in a poor attempt at Anders’ graceful movements, it felt clumsy in her hands. Hanna realized that she was onto something, inspiration guiding her as she made some quick chops with the axe. A few practice swings told her that it was better, but nowhere near good enough. She got back to whittling away at the log, but this time with an elated feeling in her chest. Her focus on the task distracted her from the view of her teacher as he watched her work with a complex frown on his face.

It was with annoyance that she accepted defeat a while later. Apparently, a day only had so many hours of light in it, and the darkness made future progress with her spear impossible. That night she gorged herself on dinner and slept like a log, and morning came quickly. She was eager to get back to working on her spear, but Anders informed her that it was time to go hunting once again. Considering the amounts she ate, Hanna had no business complaining about it. That didn’t mean she was looking forward to it. It couldn’t rightly be called boring, even if it was that to at times. Mostly it was a study in frustration, that really had to be seen to be believed.

She made sure to grab her sword before she joined Anders on his way towards their hunting grounds. She had been told over and over by her stickler of a teacher that it wasn’t necessary to bring it along and that it hindered her training. Hanna wasn’t buying it. Every single occasion of hunting until now had proven otherwise, and she seriously doubted today would be any different.

The hunting grounds that they used wasn’t a very defined area, it was simply any nearby part of the forest that was suitably open. The area around the swamp was absolutely swamped by one animal in particular. Anders called them boars, but they really weren’t. They had the general shape of them, but they were usually almost a meter and a half tall, and all of them spouted a single horn in addition to a pair of massive tusks. Hanna had obviously dubbed them uniboars. The cute name didn’t do much for their image though. They were still raging freight-trains of death that steamrolled everything foolish enough to stand in their way, and Hanna wouldn’t miss them for a second if they went extinct. Their meat didn’t even taste well.

Her first attempt at killing one of them had been a harrowing experience. Armed with Anders’ spear and virtually zero knowledge on how to use it, she had hesitantly followed his directions and approached one of the boars. It had given her a single grunt as warning, staring at her for a second before it decided that time was up. The creature’s mad charge accelerated unbelievably fast, and when you stood in its way and saw its approach, it had a chilling effect that scared Hanna to the bone every time she saw it. It was as if you just had to stand there for one more second, to see the results of its awesome power. If not for Anders shoving her out of the way she would definitely have been hit, and she wasn’t sure her healing could have saved her from that.

The rest of that first hunt had been her clumsily trying to stay alive until Anders stepped in and saved her ass. Stuck up as he was, he refused to contribute to the hunt. Any kill that wasn’t hers was butchered and preserved and then they had to go out hunting once again. At her second attempt she actually managed to kill a boar, but only by a hairs-width and not with her spear. It had been a grisly affair, and she had really only managed because the boar was awfully bad at healing from sword-cuts, whereas she was taking her tusk-cuts in stride. Kind of. She had been lucky with where she got hit, mostly raking up cuts on the outside of her arms and legs. She did not want to think about what would happen if it spilled her guts or something.

Every attempt after that one had ended with Anders stepping in before things got out of hand. Now that she thought about it, that was probably because he didn’t want a repletion of what happened earlier. How kind of him.

Hanna grabbed the spear from Anders and prepared for the coming hunt. Today would be different, she would make sure. The inspiration that she found as she was carving away at her spear had made things click together. All she had been doing with Anders so far was related to spears, just in a needlessly roundabout way. Pulling the log out of the water had thought her footwork and how to shift weights around without losing balance, and crafting the beginnings of a spear from that huge log had made her think really hard about the properties of the spear. Hell, Anders had even made sure to hammer in the point by constantly showing her the proper forms for battle. The central theme of his teachings seemed to be that she had to discover insight on her own. Hanna was sure that it wasn’t a very effective method.

That aside, she was beginning to feel that she was actually learning something now, and she was eager to try out her new insights against any uniboar that was lurking around. They found one without too much hassle, possible due to the fact that they feared nothing and was the size of a small cow. She begun approaching the freakish animal, gripping her spear tight with sweaty palms. She still hadn’t practiced any of Anders’ movements, but she could picture them clearly in her mind. They weren’t entirely unlike what Birgitta had taught her, so she figured she had a chance at pulling this off anyway.

Hanna begun to visualize the coming fight. The uniboar would charge her, anything else were unthinkable. And she would jump out of the way, obviously. Then what, what would Anders do? She could think of several smart choices and felt the odds of this succeeding becoming better and better. A threatening Oink told her that prep time was over, and her pulse began to skyrocket. As the beast charged at her, she got the same chilling effect as always, where she just stood there and awaited the charge’s inevitable conclusion. But she had learnt how to snap out of it by the last couple of tries. The trick was to force her head to study her surroundings, breaking the tunnel-vision like they taught her in the army. The sideways head movement didn’t reveal anything shocking, it just snapped her out of the daze with enough time to barely throw herself away from the boar’s path.

Her plan had been to stab it after jumping away from the charge, but she realized now that it wasn’t feasible. By the time she had gotten back to her feet, the uniboar was already ten meters or so away from her and desperately decelerating lest it collide with a tree. Hanna got her hopes up, but it was in vain. It stopped just fine and was now neatly turning itself around with tripping movements. Hanna decided that she had had enough of its charges and decided to get in close and personal.

For a short moment their roles were reversed as she dashed towards the giant pig, but she couldn’t really produce the same awesome effect. It all seemed promising until she arrived, lacking inspiration for her next move. She was like a dog that chased a car. What would she do if she ever caught up with it?

The boar eyed her warily, giving her time to focus on the task at hand. She slashed at its side, unwilling to get too close and repeat the bloody battle from earlier. Her slash made the boar squeal and left a deep gash at its side. It also made it dash straight at her. The close distance meant that it was barely more than a tackle, but the 400 kilos in weight difference tossed her mercilessly to the ground, and she felt her body break under the pressure of the beast's sharp hooves.

Her failure brought the fight out of her, and she just laid there, hoping that her healing included broken bones. In the background, the frantic sounds of battle told her that Anders was finishing the animal off, and his success was confirmed with a final, weak squeal.

“Are you okay?” he asked as he bent over her to look her in the eyes. He seemed stressed and nervous.

Hanna was about to frown at the silly question but decided to first check the facts. She had learned that with Anders, you had to be careful with the sarcasm. She tried patting her ribs, but even the slightest movement of her arm told her that she wasn’t healed yet. That was disheartening. She winced as she brought her head up to look at her chest, only to find a piece of bone grotesquely poking out of her ribcage.

Fuck.