Introduction: Helina Ashburn

I was born in the summer of 1509 or "the year of King Henry VIII", in the kingdom of Eloryis.

My mother and father raised me on a large farm, right on the outskirts of the kingdom. The closest village was titled Riverlilli, which was next to the castle walls, past the royal forest. Through the forest connects the queen's castle.

Our loyal rulers, Queen Priya and King Edward V lived atop their shining golden haven, it reminded me of where father said the gods lived, Valhalla. They and their daughter Princess Friya ran the kingdom with grace and poise. Living within reach of the castle almost every morning you could smell the kitchen cooking and baking all the treats and dinners for the royal family.

As a child, I would sit on our rooftop smelling that wonderful smell. It was a very vivid memory of my early life, something I remember fondly.

Shortly after those pleasant memories, when I was five years old, my mother died. Father had to take over raising me all by himself. He raised me to be unlike the normal women in the kingdom. My childhood was never filled with tea parties, posture, or dancing classes, never did I go shopping for new gowns or ribbons and pretty buttons. I only knew how to sew barley sacks to hold the wheat. Instead, my life was dedicated to our land and being able to survive off it, and learning how to survive on my own.

Every morning father taught me how to protect myself. We'd hit sacks of flour and climb the old trees out in the forest for hours. He would take me hunting, combat skills, and dagger throwing. I'd punch and kick the sidings of the wheelhouse until my knuckles were blue. I remember the day I looked in the reflection in the lake and saw how lean and strong I looked. "Built like an ox," my fathers' friends sons teased me one day. I laughed at them because I know that meant I was strong. Strong enough for my father to teach me how to weld weapons. Learn how to train with a sword, bow, and shield. But my fathers' knowledge came with a cost, knowing my mother wished me to be educated. My strength wouldn't guide me through life alone, "You need to be just as intelligent in a fight as in literature." father told me. Later in my child years, I would ride my horse into the heart of Eloryis, to the school where knights and dames were taught. Underneath the school was a small basement, father had built the school when he was young. That's how he met my mother, she was a teacher there and my uncle was a knight instructor. Father used the writings of his lessons to train me. Other than his writings I knew very little of my uncle.

I'd sit there in that basement for hours listening and learning just as the highest class of children of the kingdom did. I would come across some of my mother's old school books and notes, and sometimes she would write little romantic poems about love or fairytales.

I remember asking him to read them to me at night, father always struggled not to cry at her intimate words.

All of these things lead me to where I was today. My strength, my father's fight, and my mother's mind and love to guild me. The pain of growing up without her, seeing father wake up knowing she is gone.

-

Twenty-two years later father stepped down as head of our land and passed it to me. He would help grind the wheat into grain or to bake bread but he simply was too old to do much of the hard work anymore.

"Helina my child come sit," he set his broadsword he was sharpening next to him. I knelt next to where he sat. I was concerned for him, his knees and back were never the same after mom died. His brittle hands ran through my hair, "my sweet daughter you have brought me great strength in my old age."

"Oh father, you taught me how to survive, it is you who I have to thank." I looked over at the shined broadsword, the engravings that had bothered me for years as to their meaning.

"My child you and I know I am much too old to be the head of this land anymore." he inhaled deeply. "You have shown your intelligence and strength enough that I believe it is time for you to take responsibility. and I know your mother, may her soul rest, would want you to have our home in your hands." He reached over and grabbed the broadsword, bent down to me, and held it out as if it was a ceremony. "Take it, as it is a sign of the owner of the land."

It felt so heavy back then, the responsibility and the sword. My fingers traced the wooden handle carved with thousands of images, the engraving in the metal that looked like waves, and the unknown words beneath them.

That was one of the few times I shed a tear in front of him.

-

I remember the gasp of true shock back then. And I remember the sense of pride I felt that I now would be able to help my father even more. But most of all I remember missing my mother. She left the hole in our family, the land, and father.

The last day I saw mother she told me, "I'll be back in an hour my light." my name meant shining light and hope, that was what she always told me. But dad said it was just because of my bright hair.

I couldn't remember all that happened but one time a friend of my father's in the tavern told me the story, as he remembered visibly. "Your father sent out a search party when your mother never arrived after sunset." Bodil chugged a beer down, and he continued. "At the time I was running the watchmen tower in the center of the village. After two days I remember hearing a mans cry so loud. Your dad had found her dead, her throat cut open three times, they deemed it a wolf"

Father was never the same and I grew up knowing it was my newfound oath to care for him as mother did.

The two of them together created a legacy and with our supple land and fathers' praiseworthy blacksmithry, everyone in the kingdom knew where the right trade was at. But with taking over the last it would be my duty to go into Riverlilli and trade at the market.

So I would take my horse and ride her into town. With bread goods, bales of wheat, and a couple of small hunting knives father made. The people trusted me to produce for them, even with their judgments of the "town outcast" they still accepted my trades and goods.

High-class women with their petty coats, pearls, and powdered wigs donned the streets of Riverlillis market. Arm and arm with their husbands or children. Mothers take their daughters to shop for new dresses, fabrics, or buttons. On occasions, I would find myself feeling jealous of their beauty.

I was never one of those girls or had the embellishments to be one. But there was always one hero in my eyes, I longed to be like them as a child and even in my later age.

The queens' knights started training at a young age. They would be educated in ways of both books and fighting skills. And I would watch them from the corner of the small schoolhouse every day. Their shining metal armor glinted in the hot sun. It inspired a fight in me that I craved even to this day.

Deep down a single part of me lived outside of this town and with Eloryis and beyond out in the world. But the isolated child in me stayed, roots planted in the ground. Because I had a duty, to the people and to my family.

Now it is time for me to tell my story, and it started exactly here. At the roots of my hand and my home.