Jordan Mitchell's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Jordan Mitchell pinned the trial entry slip to the town board and heard the laughter start before they turned around. The reigning champion stood by the well with a crowd of farmers and smiths, holding Jordan's slip up like a joke everyone was in on. He read the entry aloud: Jordan Mitchell, age nineteen, weapon of choice, one lizard. The crowd laughed harder. Jordan's palms went damp against the small wooden box in their coat pocket. Every year, RedWoodGlen named one protector through the trial of champions, and every year the winner ate at the long table while the rest hauled water and buried their dead. Jordan had trained two years for this. But no entrant could step onto the trial field without three townsfolk sponsors, and right now not one hand was raised. Jordan walked to the well and opened the box on the stone rim. The lizard inside blinked once, climbed onto Jordan's wrist, and stayed still. Jordan pointed at a copper coin on the champion's belt. The lizard shot forward, snatched the coin in its jaw, and returned to Jordan's palm before the champion's hand reached his hip. The crowd went quiet. Jordan set the coin on the well stone and said the creature could take an eye just as fast, and it would do it on command. An old woman with flour on her sleeves raised her hand. A blacksmith raised his. A boy holding a bucket raised his. Three sponsors. The champion stopped smiling. He told Jordan the field opened at dawn in six days, and if Jordan showed up with a lizard, he would kill it first and Jordan second. Jordan closed the box and walked home, sponsored and marked and more thing too.