Bonus Short Story
The Wolf Girl’s Dream
“Mother Rún! Mother Rún! Please respond if you can hear me!” Hildegard shouted out at the top of her lungs as she brought her horse to a stop. Her throat was aching from the strain of her prolonged yelling. No matter how long she waited, however, there was no reply. Hildegard’s nose twitched as she sniffed the air, but there was no trace of Sigrún’s scent.
“Not here, either...” Hildegard murmured, her voice quivering as she struggled to contain her panic. It had been nearly an hour since Sigrún, her mentor, had been swept away by the flooding Körmt River. The entire Múspell Unit was currently out searching for Sigrún, but Hildegard had yet to receive word that any of them had found her.
“Could she already be...” Hildegard felt a chill run down her spine as her mind wandered to the possibility that Sigrún had been wholly engulfed by the flooding waters and was dead.
“No, she’s alive! Mother Rún has to be alive!” Hildegard shook her head violently from side to side, driving that possibility from her mind, and shouted as though to convince herself of the fact. “I’ll never forgive her if she leaves for Valhalla before I can beat her!”
While Hildegard had beaten Sigrún in sparring matches when she held back or was using her off-hand, Hildegard had yet to defeat Sigrún in a straight up clash of skill. Sigrún was still easily able to beat her when she wanted to do so. That said, Hildegard had no intention of letting that remain the case. She had sworn someday she would beat Sigrún so decisively that the outcome could not possibly be refuted.
Though it may have appeared so, Hildegard didn’t actually resent Sigrún. Well, perhaps a small amount of resentment existed, but that wasn’t what motivated her toward her goal. Okay, if she was being totally honest, there was a part of her that wanted to repay all the beatings she’d received in their previous matches with interest. In fact, a really big part of her that wanted to do exactly that, but that wasn’t the reason she wanted to overcome her mentor. It was, at most, a tiny part of her motivation.
If anything, Hildegard wanted to beat Sigrún as a gesture of appreciation. That was because Sigrún had once told her that a master’s greatest joy was to be surpassed by her student, and Hildegard, out of all of Sigrún’s students, was likely the sole person capable of accomplishing that feat.
“You’ve really grown, Hilda.” While Hildegard had heard Sigrún say those exact words as her superior, she wanted them directed at her as Sigrún’s equal, which was why she couldn’t possibly allow her to die here.
“Mother Rún! Where are you?!” Hildegard spurred her horse as she continued shouting, swearing to herself she would find Sigrún no matter what.
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