Vahraine grumbled to herself, irritated at her fiery attitude. It always got her in way too deep. She shuffled her feet as she walked down the run-down market street on the edge of Ibica, a port town on the shore’s of a kingdom whose name Vahraine didn’t even bother to discover.

Godammit, she thought. It’s just like me to agree to something stupid like that.

It had been a bad night for her, even before she'd gotten herself in trouble. Aimlessly wandering and searching for self-purpose was not necessarily a prime tactic, and it provided plenty of frustration. In search of some good old ale to stifle her frustration, she ended up at the Titan’s Fist, a tavern that had seemed quite homey at first. It turned out to be a mistake.

An obnoxious young man, approximately her own age, was disrupting the entire atmosphere. He seemed to be already sated with plenty of beer, which was probably the entire problem. Dugan, which turned out to be his name, had stirred up a storm as soon as he set eyes upon her.

“Whoa there!” he had shouted, chuckling unevenly. She remembered him stand up from his barstool and lope over towards her, moments before she dropped quite the rude comment. Disgusting smells of horse turd, days without washing, beer-breath, and grime practically made him a present of nasty all wrapped up and ready to go. So, she said exactly what came to her mind: “You smell like shit.”

His friends, who weren’t much better than Dugan, burst out in laughter and shoved him. “Ooh, Dugan!” they hooted. They attempted quite a few times to explain that he had just been completely and utterly burned, but their laughter nearly made that impossible. Nevertheless, it was passively understood.

Moments later, Dugan’s half-angry half-retarded drunk self had shut his friends up with a few sloppy punches. He released a growl…or at least, she thought he meant it to be a growl. It was really an unintelligible groan. “’The hell’s yur problim?” His words pretty much fell out of his mouth. Vahraine simply shrugged, and took a swig of her own drink. “You.”

Dugan took a swipe at her head with his arm, which looked like a chicken’s wing trying to fly. She swiftly ducked her head and kneed him hard, right where it would hurt the most. There wasn’t any point in not laughing, so she laughed. After all, it was pretty funny. He doubled over.

“Imma…Imma keeeel you!” he roared, and jumped on her. Vahraine definitely wasn’t expecting that. The tables had turned on her at that point. She was thrown to the ground and his friends began to jump on her and kick her, while Dugan hit at her head. She yelped helplessly, hating herself for letting these fools do this to her. They didn’t let up until she managed to scramble backwards against a wall. Spectators, who were of course more drunken males, laughed and hooted and cheered on Dugan’s gang.

“Get her, that’s right! A girl can’t do nuttin’ against you! Worthless piece o’ crap, she is,” cheered a tubby old fat man from the back. She did her best to ignore them, but she wasn’t necessarily skilled at dealing with bruises to her ego.

Growling and shoving Dugan backwards, Vahraine tried to stomp on his foot, but missed. More bruises.

“No way in hell am I weaker than you.”

Dugan giggled. It was very strange.

“Like hell you are,” he said with his high pitched laugh, and swung a punch. This time, it didn’t miss, and hit her square on the jaw.

She gritted her teeth and held back the pain.

“Oh yeah? Make me do anything, anything! I’ll prove it to you; I’ll do something you could never do!”

Dugan laughed. “Hmm!” And then, his little gang chimed in. “The tower, the tower!” Laughter erupted once again. Vahraine was confused…what tower?

The same man from the peanut gallery in the back chimed in. “They want you to climb the tower, on the eastern edge!”

“Can’t get caught,” chimed in another.

“Bring proof from the top. A flag,” continued yet another.

“Fine!” spat Vahraine, pushing her way through the crowd. “You be here, each one of you, tomorrow at the same time. I’ll have your damn flag.” And with that, she stormed out and slammed the door to the Titan’s Fist, with Dugan laughing in her dust.

She groaned again. How the helldid I let that happen?

The tower was in her vision now. It was tall, maybe three or four stories high. Standing outside the entrance were two guards, standing with intense stoicism. Their armor was plated and looked brand new. She could see at least two more men standing at the top, but she couldn’t necessarily make out if they were both guards. But what did it matter? Because of the bar’s reaction, she guessed that this task really was going to be virtually impossible.

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

__________________
[These Guys Will Show You Inescapable Doom]

"Maybe it's the sum of a million coincidences we don't quite control that brings us to a particular place
at a particular time, or maybe it's the choices we make, the actions we take. If there's one thing I've learned in 85 years, it's
that what we want doesn't always matter. But then again, sometimes it's all that does." - Mick St. John