The Earth's End

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Lacey

 “Niko?”

 The butcher waved at Lacey and smiled as she made her way through the city square. She nodded, gagging slightly at the sight of the cooked bodies of innocent animals.

Odd. If she knew Niko well, her friend would still be examining everything he had, searching for the perfect cut of meat to have for supper that night. And even if she had already selected her own meal, she would be buying herbs for them to make into a soup.

But she wasn’t at the traveling shaman’s tent either. Very odd.

“Niko?” Lacey slowly made her way back through the square. “Niko! Where are you?”

 She found herself back at the butcher’s tent. “Pardon me, sir, but did my good friend Niko Euria happen to purchase some meat from you today? Her hair is short and black, and her right eye is covered by an embroidered patch.”

He shook his head. “I’m terribly sorry, miss, but no one who fits your description has even passed by here…”

Niko hadn’t bought meat? This called for desperate measures.

Lacey asked the same question of the shaman, the jeweler, the tailor, the countless farmers, and all the other merchants in the square. But from each one, she received the same gloomy (and admittedly quite rude) responses.

  “Nobody like that has been here today. I would have noticed her.”

 “My, what strange friends you have, sweetheart.”

 “A lady with an eye patch? Is this friend of yours a female mercenary? But you’re so young and innocent, to converse with such taboo people!”

 “Was she born blind in one eye? Haven’t they taken her to a doctor, to see if she can be fixed up?”

“How terribly odd!”

Finally, exhausted and starving, Lacey bought a large loaf of bread at the baker’s and chewed it as she left the square and walked to her home on the outskirts of the town.

By the time she entered her room and threw herself into the soft, warm comfort of her bed, nothing remained of it.

She already knew what she had to do.

***

Her life’s savings of gold were in a small sack underneath her bed. Hundreds and hundreds of shining coins, engraved with nothing but the number ten.

 If left in her face, her hair would be intrusive. She tied it back carefully and stared at her reflection in the looking glass. It was better this way. But there was no reason to look pretty today. She had other things to accomplish.

 A quick breakfast of porridge and herbs, wolfed down in thirty seconds, and she was gone.

 “Mother, I’m going out,” Lacey called from the door. “I may not be back for several days.”

  “All right, darling,” a doting voice answered. “Take care!”

A typical suit of armor, she noted as she strode briskly into the square, is around one thousand gold. A finely crafted sword can be up to five thousand. That leaves me with one thousand to spare. Money would be no problem, then. It would only take a simple stop at the blacksmith and a piercing wit.

***

The armor created and sold by the blacksmith was often mere chain mail or heavy, shapeless iron plates, but the swords were absolutely beautiful.

Lacey gazed longingly at the one with the long, glinting white blade and the onyx hilt, the silver grip that looped ostentatiously before meeting on either side. It almost looked like the type of sword Terence would wield courageously in battle, charging at an entire dark army without glancing away once, his blue eyes shining with so much depth and beauty…

She was overcome by a fit of giggles, but thankfully the blacksmith, who was relentlessly pounding on a half-formed mace that rested on his anvil, didn’t seem to notice. Was this sword the one she would find and rescue Niko alongside? Would this weapon make her a renowned hero, the first femaleknight?

No, Lacey decided after a moment of thought. Now that she took another look, it was clearly something designed to hang on the wall of a wealthy, privileged family. Almost everything about it was ridiculously impractical; it’d only get in the way were she to fight.

 Her eyes quickly rested on another with a pommel set with a large, round, polished ruby. The hilt was clearly wrapped with meticulous attention; not a single white strip slighted a direction other than the ones parallel to it. The rain guard appeared to be made of pure gold, set with another, smaller, oval-shaped ruby and curving up on both sides while another tassel of the metal snaked down diagonally to the right. The pristine blade reflected every ray of radiant sun that landed on it, creating an elegant dance of light that was a sight to behold. A flawlessly crafted sword.

But then she saw the price and almost keeled over.

 “Six thousand gold?!” Lacey demanded.

 “It was crafted of my finest jewels and gold, ma’am. Seven days of work were put into this blade.”

“But can’t you lower the price?!”

 “Not significantly, I’m afraid. Terribly sorry.”

 “…Tell me, sir, how much can you lower it?”

“Only about five hundred gold, for the body of the sword.”

 Lacey gritted her teeth, digging her nails into the tender flesh of her palms. Was there no place to find a proper weapon in this little market town of hers?

  Hope would have slipped from her reach, had she not laid her eyes on the perfect brand.

At first, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Like the others, this one had a blade of pristine, shining white, but its rain guard, unlike the others, was painstakingly detailed; carved in the shape of the heads of two horses with obvious unfathomable attention. The hilt was jet black, lined with glittering silver on every side. In the middle of it, a sapphire flashed in the sunlight, bestowing upon the weapon a sort of foreboding glory.  A hero was not meant to wield something with so dark an outward appearance.

 But it was only four thousand gold. It looked powerful and just as well crafted as the golden one. Not to mention it was one of the prettier swords in the blacksmith’s arsenal.

“Um…I think I’d like this one, sir,” Lacey quipped with much less rage, gesturing towards it shyly and as politely as possible.

She was genuinely surprised when he nodded, smiling.