The door opened without a sound. The Royal Assassin, Dora Guerrefido, had oiled the joints carefully. Slowly, she advanced into the room, step by step, to the bed. Under the sheets, a small form, asleep. The open window was letting in the scent of flowering tilliae, like in a fairy tale. She let herself draw in the scent, hesitating, but her hesitation moments were short and few. She snatched the sheet away... and froze. Underneath, only pillows arranged to look like a body.

“Morning, Mum!” resounded a voice behind. It belonged to a girl with pale olive skin and short, black hair. “Already awake, no need for the circus. It’s annoying!”

Before her mother had the time to react, she sprinted out of the room towards the kitchen. She was already fourteen but not yet looking like a teenager. Small, skinny, green eyes always on the move. She reached the kitchen very fast, shutting off the gas lamp while entering; the daylight was already strong.

“Morning Dad!”

“Morning, sweetheart!” replied the Royal Master of Arms, Diago Guerrefido.

The girl hugged him from behind, scratching her chin on his two days beard.

“Ah… so practical… I got a mosquito bite tonight.”

The tall and strong man kissed her on the nose then pushed her aside, continuing reading the newspaper. She sat on a chair across the table and announced proudly.

“I’ve beaten Mum at sneaking. Finally!”

„Go make your bed!” asked Dora arriving.

„No way! You’ve said if I beat you, no more chores for all month. And this means cooking too. Some pancakes, please!” she asked, pushing forward her plate.

Although with obvious reprehension, the woman served her.

„Where were you?” she asked.

„Just behind you.”

„No way! I would have felt you!”

„Well... yes and no. All is in the preparation. I slept in your room tonight, under the bed, so you get accustomed to my presence, scent, and all. Dad, by the way, you snore terribly. As soon as you woke up, I just followed you. You were so concentrated on what was in front of you that you disregarded what was behind.”

„Never do that again!” her father admonished her. „It’s not polite, sleeping in our room unannounced. What if...”

„What if what?” she asked innocently.

„Nevermind...”

„I guess you deserve your victory,” admitted Dora. „Congratulations, Vellantina, I’m proud of you.”

„I’m a better sneaker than you!” the girl gloated. „You’re more the type of arriving on some street with two dozens of shock troops and shooting everyone who runs, stuff.”

„They don’t run unless guilty,” she replied. „Diago, you’re not eating?”

„Sure, Darling. As long you are on duty, please put me some pancakes.”

She threw a second plate with pancakes on the table, with all the scorn in the world on her face.

“Be ready in fifteen minutes, dressed and all!” she commanded.

Fifteen minutes minus five seconds later, the father and daughter arrived in the lobby, dressing on the go.

„Tsk!” Dora disapproved. She would have like to disapprove more, but it was not the day for a scolding. “Are you ready for the match?” she asked, putting her hands on the girl’s shoulders.

„Sure, Mum. Piece of pancake.”

„That’s my girl!” Dora said, kissing her on the forehead. “You can drive if you want.”

They went out, and soon, the small motorized vehicle of the Guerrefido family was running at full speed towards the High City. On the back seat, Diago elbowed Dora.

“Is it safe to let her drive?” he whispered.

“Be calm, or you’ll distract her! It’s important to put her in a good mood for the game. And it’s nice to be afraid of something from time to time; it keeps us sharp, no?”

“Sweet Providence!” gasped Diago while his daughter passed only two inches away from killing a cyclist, making him crash into a garbage bin.

In twenty minutes, they arrived safely, although shaken, at the Grand Stadium. The parents went to the official lodge, and Vella went to the cabins.

She started with five minutes of meditation, breathing deep and slow and emptying her mind, as her zsen teacher had taught her. Then she dressed in light gear, chosen to be able to move fast. The helmet was the only bulkier item. It was made from a light but strong metal and had a transparent visor, made from a rock oil polymer, which meant it was costly.

After gearing up, she opened the envelope on the table. It contained a detailed analysis of the adverse team and a personal task: stick to the enemy leader and not let him reach their gate. Her school's motto was imprinted in three languages at the top of the paper: Victory through teamwork.

In elven, it sounds the best, she thought.

A bell rang. She grabbed a paper bag filled with glass balls, a three-foot-long ironwood bat and hurried towards their team exit gate. All her class was there. With her, they were ten. Only two girls among them, she and her best friend.

In time, there will be more, she thought.

All eyes turned to her. She was their Valedictorian, they were expecting her to give them some wise advice, yet the time was too short for a full speech.

“Listen!” she shouted. “I’ll take the point. Boldan, Turk, and Frida, tank in the middle. Dreve and Jorge wings, Shindiriel… - she looked at her BFF and grimaced because she had picked the worst gear possible – stay in our gate, you’re the libero. The rest range them as soon as possible.”

The bell rang again, and the doors opened. She jumped out and ran at full speed towards the opposite gate. Ninety yards, eight seconds, that was her usual time; she did eleven with the gear on. No one from the others was out yet. She threw the paper bag violently in front of the gate. The paper tore apart, and all the glass bubbles broke, releasing thick black smoke. She stuck to the left gate door, waiting. Finally, the first enemy got out, coughing, covering his eyes with his arm, a strong man in his late twenties. For a second, their eyes met, and he looked surprised.

Better his mother cries than mine, thought Vella, an adage from the harbor streets. Fast as lighting, she thrust forward her iron-wood stick with both hands into the other’s ribs. They cracked, and his heart stopped. Hers too, for a second. It was her first kill.

Carrying shields, more adversaries appeared. She ran to the left, and the arrows arrived one second later. Tack… meeting the wood of the shields. Pfff… meeting dirt. Thump... meeting meat. Schrack... meeting bone.

The arrows stopped, their numbers were limited by the rules. The enemies advanced slowly, grouping and trying to protect themselves as well as they could. They were a mixed bunch: unfortunate soldiers of fortune, brigands, common criminals. Convicts, useless people for whom the Law of Osht founded the last use: the final exam of the Special Military School's first cycle.

She was only twenty yards apart, and one of them dashed at her, meeting his end, with the skull crushed from a reverse hit from the ironwood bat. She recognized this one from the paper before.

He killed two people in a bar fight, unprovoked.

She ran back to her team.

The attack came improvised, unorganized. The petty criminals attacked on the center, unknowing the halberds' deadliness, the unfortunate fortune soldiers, knowing better, tried to run around and take them from behind. Some met the last arrows of the archers, some spears or javelins. In two minutes, all enemies were down.

Safe one. Towering, hulking, the giant stepped forward. With his left hand, an iron fist, he snatched the gate door as a shield; in the right hand, light enough for his strength, he had a two-handed sword. All over him, an exoskeleton, an array of tubes and pistons.

Donarl, the last of the Nanoc Follower’s sect. Vella remembered the note about her target. Norse bandits, modified their bodies with machine parts. They were attracted to an ambush and destroyed by Merciless Dora and her 1st platoon.

It was time to do her job.

“Hey, tin can! Yes, mechanical monkey, you. Where are your cymbals?”

The nine feet high half man half machine looked incredulously at the little thing insulting him. In the end, he just raised his shoulders, turning his back at her and walking towards the leading group.

“You know who killed Nanoc?” she started again. My pa’. I’m Vellantina Guerrefido, and I’m here to kill you.”

No more incredulous looks, a direct swing with the zweihander, so close that she had to jump back to not to be cut in half. Now all she had to do was run around until one of the tubes would clog, or one of the pistons blocks or the rock oil engine overheats – they always did – then dispatch the monster little by little. That worked fine for a while.

Suddenly, she caught something in the corner of the eye. An elf and a beauhemian from the adverse team were still alive. Pretending to be shot by arrows, they kept underarm; they had crawled tediously until they've reached Vella’s team gate. The two were, she remembered, a pair of blimp pilots who had crushed their flight inadvertently, killing some of the passengers in the accident.

Now all that was between them and liberty was Shindiriel. Vella’s best friend had a lot of romantic ideas about a warrior job, and that showed. She was armed with a long staff, dressed in a long gown, and had woven flowers in her hair.

It was one of those moments in which the good you do turns bad. Vella instantly regretted all the times she had helped the elf pass the tests, run the runs, menaced the boys to lose some fights, or else, and dragged Shindiriel on, and pushed her up all these years, just for the sake of their friendship and the sake to have another girl with her in a mainly manly world.

And now she was to be killed. The beauhemian, an invalid with both hands amputated at the elbows, was no menace, but the elf had a long knife and an intent to kill in his eyes. Oh, Providence, Vella gasped for the hopelessness of the situation. A few seconds to act, twenty yards distance, the monster between them and no other team member aware.

Before she thought what to do, her body, her conditioning, moved by themselves. She ran forward, directly towards Donarl. The brute welcomed her with a reverse swing, but she was too fast. She entered the inside of the move, grabbed the giant’s hand, and let herself carried by the movement and thrown in the air.

She landed two yards away from the gate, enough to lounge and thrust the pointy end of her stick in the elf’s spine, just in time to stop his thrust towards Shindiriel’s heart. As the elf collapsed, she turned towards the beauhemian. He was petrified. Somehow, she read in his eyes not only fear but something else, a look you give to someone you know. Her gaze made the other take a step back over the gate's threshold.

Shindiriel, meanwhile, though she was denied her heroic moment through Vella’s intervention. Decided to score a kill independently, she raised her staff and rushed it towards the beautician's head. Vella jumped in front just in time to take the hit on her helmet. The bang rose the beauhemian from his stupor, and he ran inside the building as fast as he could.

“He was in a safe zone; what are you doing?” Vella shouted.

Hatred is not something you often see in your friend’s eyes. The elf was all scorn and fury.

“You… You… You are not my friend anymore! He was mine! MINE! MY POINT!”

She tried to hit Vella again, and Vella did the only thing she could do: disarmed her, restrained her while crying. The elf was disqualified but alive; their friendship was for sure dead.

In the field, the fight was over. One of the wings, Jorge, had entered melée range with Donarl, cutting a lot of the pipes and tubes with his halberd. He had paid the price, his foot was crushed, and he was now carried away by medics who had appeared there like from nowhere. His heroism had permitted the archers to use their last of the last arrows, the incendiary ones, on the rock oil sipping from the wounds. As his master had met his end in a smoldering pile of metal and meat fifteen years before, so did Donarl. The smell was awful, the burden even worse. Vella cried and cried, her knee on Shindariel’s back, her arms restraining her, until Dora and Diago came, pulled her up, and hugged her.