Jeorr raised his mallet, carefully eyeing the chisel in his other hand. He adjusted the angle of how it lined up with the stone.

Then he swung. He swung as hard as he could.

Stupid.

WHAM.

Blazebrights.

WHAM.

And.

WHAM.

Their.

WHAM.

Stupid.

Wham.

Confirmations!

He was ruining the half-finished statue before him with every strike. Marble chips were flying everywhere, coating the whole studio in dust. It didn’t matter. It was all crap anyway.

What’s the big deal about Challengers, anyway? They’re— They’re-

Jeorr faltered, mid-swing. As mad as he was, he couldn’t lie. Not even to spare himself.

The truth was, he’d known it was coming. He’d known it for years. From the moment Carnelia’s mother, Diamme, had dropped the girl off in his lap, he’d known. After all, Diamme had done the same thing when she’d turned fifteen, and there was no way his copper-haired girl wasn’t going to follow in her footsteps. Even he’d tried his hand at the Confirmation, once. He understood all too well why a person would want to become a Challenger.

Of all the organizations with which a person could gain privileged membership, none could compete with the Challenger Guild. There was a reason you capitalized it. Being a Challenger meant you represented the greatest this world had to offer. If there was a mountain unclimbed, they ascended it. If there was a disease uncured, they healed it. If there was a record unbroken, they smashed it. There was no greater glory or honor than to be a renowned Challenger. No military decorations, championship trophies, or scientific awards could compete. Who didn’t dream of becoming a Challenger? No one!

—which was exactly why Jeorr couldn’t just roll over and let Carnelia take the Challenger’s Confirmation.

Jeorr knew firsthand that what his ward faced was no simple paper test. The Confirmation was a recruitment free-for-all, a trial by competition and fire, designed to inject only the best, new blood into the Guild’s elite membership. Anyone, any being could join, four limbs or not, as long as they provided merit to the Guild. But there were no protections for each and every wayward soul that took a gander at passing, no protections ensuring her health or safety. It wasn’t uncommon to hear of people returning scarred, mentally and physically, from the ordeals they endured during their attempts.

Those were just the things they said about the Confirmation back in his day. Things were different now. Worse. Back when he’d tried his hand at that terrible affair some thirty to forty years ago, the competition had attracted a measly hundred thousand candidates. Nowadays, the number of people drawn in by the allure of a Challenger contract was so staggering that the Guild often lied in their official communiqués to lead away as many prospective candidates as they could. One had to find the time and location of the Confirmation on their own, and even after they did, they would still find themselves amongst a crowd of equally clever and ambitious candidates that had managed the same. The odds of passing were terrifically low.

The moment he’d chickened out as a young man was when he realized some of his competition were openly carrying weapons. He’d been in his physical prime, as an artist of some renown, but what was he going to do against a man with a sword? Carnelia faced an even more harrowing ordeal, despite being markedly younger than he had been, smaller, and absolutely no accomplishments to her name.

You heard of it at times, young geniuses that passed the Confirmation on their first try. But that was madness. And she was being lured by the same song that Diamme had been.

Yes, Jeorr assured himself as he returned to chiseling stone. I was right to test her before I let her go.

Only…

The old man glanced out of his workshop window, worry weighing his heart. Dozens of narrow stone pillars towered in the distance, their peaks higher than the tallest buildings in Downtown.

…I hope she doesn’t get too badly hurt.

Carnelia’s legs trembled as she strained to hold on. This was the hard part. This jump.

She sucked in a deep breath, tensed, then—

“Gah!”

Her right foot slipped. Her left foot buckled.

Carnelia lunged forward and threw her arms around the pillar, but it was too wide to lock her arms around. So she hung there, arms burning, as her legs scrabbled around in search of a bump or crack. Anything to hold her weight.

No such luck.

Carnelia’s grip began to slip. Inch by inch, she slid down the pillar like it was a particularly wide and rough fireman’s pole. Eventually, she thudded on the ground with an impact that made her tailbone buzz with pain—

—Ow—!

—then, after her already rough landing, the thick slab of rubber strapped to her back kept going and yanked her mercilessly onto the ground.

“Blegh!”

Carnelia sprawled against the dummy weight’s less-than-yielding form and made a very ungraceful sound from the bottom of her stomach. She lay there, swallowing her pain, as she forced the air that had been driven from her lungs back into them. She curled her neck and glared at the innocent piece of vulcanized rubber that lay beneath her. Though it was better than landing on the real deal, the practice namestone made for an awful cushion.

“Why are you so darn heavy?” Carnelia demanded it with a thump of her fist.

Thonk. The rubber disc vibrated in silent indifference. Rubbing her now-smarting hand, Carnelia looked upwards at the other culprit of her troubles.

“And why are you so darn tall and slippery?”

Carnelia was railing at the pillar of stacked namestones that was the Brightburn family totem. It too stood there, towering over her in imperious silence.

As the forest of totems surrounding her bounced back her complaint in mocking irreverence, Carnelia sighed and slapped a chalky hand against the ground in frustration. She left a bloom of white powder and a handprint in her wake. It was the third such mark she’d left that day.

This was the challenge Jeorr had given Carnelia in exchange for his blessing to take the Confirmation. The traditional Downtownian rite of passage: to place one’s namestone atop one’s family totem.

Supposedly, the rite taught newly emancipated youths an appreciation for their ancestors by literally having them climb to new heights on their shoulders. Typical of primeval logic, the whole thing probably made a lot more sense when family lines were only a few generations tall. It made a whole lot less when one had to climb a hundred-plus feet of ancestral namestones with a thirty-pound rock strapped on their back.

The truth was, hardly anyone bothered with the rite these days. Not only had Downtown long since lost most of its native families that might’ve still carried on the tradition —it was mostly populated by kooky, eccentric retirees nowadays— but even before that, it hadn’t taken long for ancient Downtownians to realize that sending the next generation of their tiny, remote community to haul heavy stones up dangerous heights was not a good idea. A few untimely demises to some family lines had made that very clear.

Unfortunately for Carnelia, the Blazebrights were one of those dumb families that refused to change with the times. At this point, the Blazebright family totem was the tallest in town, with the names of her predecessors stacked so high they could be straight across the other side of the cavern.

It was a problem. Whilst laying on her back and staring up at row after row of her predecessors’ names, Carnelia wiped her brow and frowned.

Height alone would not have been a problem for Carnelia, not even while carrying a load as heavy as her namestone. She was a good climber. A great one, even. With it being one of the few things she could do for fun around Downtown, she had a lot of practice. But unlike the rough and jagged formations she was used to, the namestones of her family totem had been grouted together so perfectly that finding each and every handhold was a struggle. She was practically having to climb the thing with nothing but grip strength and hope.

If that wasn’t bad enough, about halfway up the pillar—between the names Agata and Emérr—there was a meter-long patch where the pillar just went bone-smooth. That was the real knuckle-breaker. There, she had no choice but to jump for the next handhold. With a heavy stone strapped onto her back, that was no easy feat.

Climb the pillar. Place the namestone. Defeat her grandfather’s challenge. All by the end of the week. She really did have her work cut out for her.

For a split second, the aches and pains she felt from a day’s climbing made Carnelia gaze temptingly to her side, where her true namestone lay. It was feet away, the same size and dimension as the rubber one on her back, but made of pure limestone. Her name was carved pure and clear along its perimeter.

Beside it was an inconspicuous burlap sack. Her surefire Plan B. Oh, how tempting it was; how easy it would make things go.

…but Carnelia shook her head. She chose instead to focus on the name at the very top of the pillar.

Diamme. From this distance, she could barely make her ‘mother’s’ name out, but it called out to her like a challenge. Her hand strayed to the leather harness around her shoulders.

This was how she had done it. Without any tricks, without any help. Proven, without a doubt, that she was strong. It seemed impossible, but if that was how she’d done it, that was how Carnelia wanted to do it too.

With a grunt, Carnelia re-tightened the straps and hoisted herself back up to her feet. Then, with a chalked hand pressed against the pillar, she took a deep breath and regarded the goal high above her. A whistle of stray current wound its way through the forest of totems.

Lo, the pillar was too tall.

Lo, the namestone was unwieldy.

Lo, the hero was weak and green.

…but wasn’t that always the case with the best stories? The struggle made the prize all the better. Heck, it was the whole reason why the story was even told! A hero wasn’t a hero if they didn’t do the impossible.

The thought sparked a fire in Carnelia’s heart. Here she was, facing a challenge no normal person would do, at an age no one would believe, and it was only the first step in facing an even greater challenge that lay ahead. What a brilliant start to the saga of Carnelia Blazebright, and there was only more and better ahead. Little children like Opal would one day sit around campfires listening with wide-eyed wonder to her legend. They would beg for more, even as their parents tucked them into bed and returned volume one of her fourteen-part biography bookset back onto the shelf!

…Okay, Carnelia giggled to herself as her fingers brushed against a familiar rut in the stone. Maybe fourteen books was a bit much. Nine sounded more reasonable. Or six.

And regardless of how many books, it all started with her facing down this challenge. If she didn’t defeat this, nothing would start. Nothing could. So with her heart full of determination and hope, Carnelia Blazebright grasped the totem and steeled herself for yet another tumble.

And she began to climb.