Chapter One: Price of Failure

In ancient times, the legends say, Tyrold was ruled by an immortal Demon Lord of vast cruelty. In time the Lord grew tired of the boredom of never-ending life and so - the legends proclaim - the Challenge was announced. The rules were quite simple - on the dawn of every year one female child must be presented to the Lord's keep. If this child should succeed in killing the Lord, then Tyrold should have that year free from harm. If the child should die without killing the Lord, however, Tyrold would be punished for an entire year. However, even should the Lord and his minions be killed they should rise again on the dawn of the new year, fresh for the next Challenge. Out of necessity, Tyrold picks its challengers from the orphaned - and after a failure there are many such children to choose from. Should the Challenger survive - something that happens very rarely these days, as most die in killing or attempting to kill the Lord - she will become the next year's Challenger. These laws keep the inhabitants to Tyrold safe or doom them to misery. It is the Challenger's fate to bear the burden of the people. So saith the legends and so saith our laws.

- Excerpt from Our Past and Future - The Schoolchild's Guide

The Demon Lord had won. The news, borne on wings of desperation and terror, raced through the chilly pre-dawn streets. Everywhere people were trying to barricade their homes and safeguard their families, cursing the name of the poor child who had failed them. A few, more compassionate than their fellows, felt a wave of sorrow for the poor doomed girl who lay shattered in a pool of blood and grime in the cold keep above. Most, however, cared only for the safety of themselves and their families. It would be a miracle if even a fraction of the citizens of Tyrold survived the Demon Lord's wrath. The oldest, so wrinkled with age that they had the foggy gaze of seers and mystics instead of true eyes, comforted their offspring with horrific tales of past failures that did nothing to lighten the spirit. One did not need a prophet to see the doom hovering over the land.

In one small hovel, occupied by a carpenter and his family, a small girl named Mikka watched all with crystal eyes. Amethyst-colored, they seemed to swallow up her face in pools of deepest purple. As her father boarded up the windows and her mother and brother's wife lay in stores of food she said nothing, just sat on a worn cot and stared at the bustle around her. Her mind was aged at least a hundred years old, but her body was only about six, and she knew that something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

That night, the demons hit. Shrieking winged ones ripped the tops off houses and grabbed children out of loft-beds. The earth-bound rampaged through streets and homes alike, killing and looting. The streets were filled with throngs of desperate people - easy targets for even the most near-sighted demon. The screams went on throughout the night. Mikka's family was one of the last homes invaded that night. It was a night etched in her memory - the screams and fire were nothing compared to what happened when they actually hit.

Mikka was hunched on her trundle bed, her eyes so wide that her face appeared to vanish completely when the door and half the wall was shredded by a gruesome member of the demonic horde. As she watched in amazement, her own kindly father tried to offer her mum for his own life. His screams lasted even longer than his wife's. Next to go down was her older brother - the one who had pushed her on swings and taught her how to run. He died protecting his wife and their child. She watched wide-eyed as droplets of blood made their way down her face and into her eyes like burning-hot tears. The girl let no scream escape her lips, however. Only her eyes betrayed her mingled emotions. Finally bored with its dead prey, the demon grinned at the little child with its coal-bright eyes and saluted once. Then it took off into the night. She heard the Gringle's - who lived one house down from hers - begin to scream. The last to quiet was the familiar voice of her best friend. The shouts and cries went on until daybreak summoned the demons back to their mountainous lair.

The little girl named Mikka - in what seemed like a past life to her- finally moved as the last of the screams died away into the rising sun. With a deliberation that belied her tender age she began to gather up the few unspoiled possessions left in what once had been a cheerful home. Stepping sightlessly over loved one's bodies, she made haste and soon the little hovel was deserted. No one would ever know or care of the passing of the little family amid so many others but that one little child, all alone. Thus began Mikka's second life.

Mikka's second life lasted no longer than her first one had, but to the child it seemed to last forever. She hid in the ruins of abandoned houses and sewers by night, playing a deadly game of keep-away with the fiends who hunted at nightfall. She stole enough food to keep herself going and used pillaged knives to persuade the hungry rats who lurked in every shadow not to mess with her. She never quite grew used to the screams, though she learned to ignore them. She buried all thoughts beneath a layer of determination and will, creating a wall around her emotions made of stuff stronger than stone. When pestilence struck her hometown, she made the perilous daytime trek though the open and abandoned fields to another town. Here there were new warrens to learn, new hiding-holes to discover, and new people to learn to avoid. She soon became adept at town-jumping, learning exactly the best ways to sneak in and out of towns unnoticed. Pestilence was a sure thing in every town she visited - there were too many bodies to bury, and too few survivors to do it. The people left generally tried to go about their lives in whatever ways they could, finding safety in the usual and familiar, and holing up in homes by night. Those with families, that is. With so many deaths there were many other orphans such as Mikka, and her skills with a knife were sharpened as she learned to defend herself from predators of her own kind. She was a shadow, lonely and alone, and only her eyes of the deepest purple could not be schooled into passive blankness. She gave aid where she could, but had very little to give. A grease stain on a wall, a shadow in the night. She was alone.

By the end of the ordeal, Mikka no longer resembled the little child she had once - so long ago - been. She was short - would probably always be, due to malnutrition - and skinny. Her face had become haggard and worn, her once curious eyes mirrored horrors and shadow. Once a short and silky midnight, her hair had grown to become a wild halo of silver-white, stained with mud to prevent demonic eyes from spotting its shimmer. Gone was the trusting child who had watched her parents prepare for a night of horror. That child had been killed long ago. In its place was the quiet and silent watcher, ever on the lookout for danger.

When the news came of the new Challenger's victory, the decimated towns at last were able to breathe a sigh of relief. The survivors quickly began to rebuild their shattered lives - though some wounds could not be fixed with stone and mortar. The orphanages gathered up all the strays that had hounded the streets. Everything seemed to settle back to normal. Mikka evaded capture for quite awhile - she would not, could not by now, trust those who came to help her. By the time they had convinced her to allow them to place her in an orphanage, the elders had already decided that she might make a worth challenger. After all, she had taught herself all the skills she needed to survive in the streets. Mikka was eight when she abandoned her life as a streetrat. She was only ten when her training for the Challenge began. Her teachers found her to be quiet, capable, and totally out of reach. She focused on her goal almost to the point of the exclusion of all else, with a determination that won the respect of even the most grueling professors.

She showed kindness where she could - stopping bullying, helping in the infirmary - but never could quiet grasp the talent for making friends. She was viewed as cold and somber, a silent ghost who flitted through the halls and outshone everyone in practices. She kept to herself, and when she was announced as the next Chosen there was no one to mourn what was almost guaranteed to be her death.

That year, the fourteen-year-old Mikka climbed the lonely road to the Demon Lord's keep. As the stone doors clanged behind her, she was the only one who cared.