Glorious Warrior

Chapter 1

Marley jerks awake, sweat streaming down her body which wets her T-shirt. A small breeze blows past her wet clothing, causing her to sit up, clattering. Lazily, she rubs the sleep from her eyes and tries to forget her dream. A nightmare would be even easier to forget than the memory that keeps haunting her dreams. Every time she closes her eyes, it seems like the image of her father is burned into her retina, and as if that were not enough, she swears the wind carries his voice over the years. Anyone would call her crazy, yet she is quite sure. He has continued to haunt her for years, and yet she is very sure he is not dead. She would know and feel that. It may sound more logical than disappeared or kidnapped, but Marley stands her ground.

She tries to repress the memories to the back of her mind and takes her time to see where she has ended up next. The place does not seem unfamiliar, and she is sure she has ended up here before. The gray-brown stones, fairly familiar to her, run across the swift river in a kind of arc, like a bridge. She feels a large wet drop fall on her head and looks up. There she sees the rain and ditch water seeping down along the grooves of the baking stakes. Shivers shoot down her spine again as a gust of fresh wind hits her right in the face, blowing her hair bulbously back.
T-Bridge is the name of the small bridge. T as in the famous "Tower Bridge. The T-Bridge is a much smaller but similarly built bridge. Unlike the original bridge, which still holds up valiantly (despite pieces crumbling off the sides), the T-Bridge was built only 63 years ago. The replica is also not built over a famous and wide river like the Thames, but merely over a small insignificant stream, which over the years has managed to carve out a lane in the ground. Totally insignificant and useless, yet the British had decided after the devastating war to build a small replica of their beloved bridge in a meaningless place. In fact, the T-Bridge is located in the poor part of Yorkshire, where the rich inhabitants do not give it a glance. For them, the bridge has no meaning, but for the poor who live there, there is a whole story behind it. Among other things, the bridge represents the phenomenon that everything originates from something small and trivial, and thus grows into something beloved and important. Many mothers compare the bridge to their children lost in the devastating war. Everything has a beginning, a culmination, but everything must also end eventually.
But anyway, what on earth did she do here last night? After a few seconds, it dawned on her; and now that she thought back on it, the anger returned as well. She had had an appointment with Lorre, and famous very good, but dangerous tattooist, whom she had met years ago. From an early age she had learned how to handle him and how he was easiest to wind around her little finger. Of course, it also helped that he had been friends with her father and had taken on the role of parenting after his disappearance. He had had another job for her which she performed neatly as always. She had gone there the previous evening for her reward when she was ambushed by two men, each armed with a knife, to rob her. After all, only people with money normally visit a tattooist. Clearly, the two had not thought she would offer any kind of resistance, so they proceeded carelessly and imprudently to attack the seemingly innocent girl. But they had counted beyond her.
Marie-Louise Rebecca Rosalinda Carpenter or simply Marley Carpenter (which also meant glorious warrior) is named after her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She has grown into a beautiful young lady and clearly has the feminine genes on her side? Not only has her ash-blonde hair been in the family for generations, but the fighting spirit and fierceness is also a family trait. She herself does not know much about her family; only that her great-grandmother Rebecca was herself a Chosen One a very long time ago. She survived the battle and 8 months after the final battle she gave birth to a beautiful daughter, dying herself from her unhealed wounds in childbirth. Although circumstances were certainly not ideal, with the races recovering after the Devastating War, a war so strong and evil they had never experienced before, her daughter survived (Marley's grandmother).Marie, her daughter, could absolutely compete with her mother. Without her parents, she grew up an orphan with an old general, who raised her into what she was later, and with him as an advisor, she became a general herself. Countless wars are to her credit. After losing her arm in what became her last battle, she stayed home in her small village and met a boy. After a few years, she also gave birth to a beautiful daughter, Rosalinda (Marley's mother).