Isabel Albright stared at the red-hot metal on the anvil like she was trying to bore holes in it with just the power of her gaze. When that didn't work, she used the hammer instead. Sparks flew off of the silversteel on the anvil as she pounded it again and again into the shape she wanted.

As she pounded it. The magic of the forge kept trying to guide her and take over her motions, but she wasn't letting it this time. She'd spent enough time here in the past few days to get a feel for how it was supposed to go, and she'd spent enough time under the power of the forge to have an understanding of the methods used to get what she wanted.

Which was kinda weird, admittedly, because wasn't this kind of thing supposed to take years to learn? And here she was making a sword that was actually turning out pretty darn good after only a few days.

Not that she was complaining, mind. It was kinda cool, actually.

And it gave her a good outlet for what was going on inside her head right now.

The hammer and anvil faded into background noise as she replayed the last hour or so in her mind. Seriously, what the hell kind of world had they been zapped into here? Okay, the giant monsters, that was fine. Standard fantasy stuff. She kinda expected it, now that she'd had a couple weeks to get used to the idea. And she'd be lying if she said she didn't kinda relish the rush she got when she was charging into battle with a new monster, ready to hack it to bits.

And okay, having to survive in a hostile environment, that was fine too. Mom and Dad were surprisingly good at getting things together and keeping them all from not dying. And her sibs were pulling their weight. Even Lucas. And it still sucked that Dinah had gotten dragged along with them all, but she seemed to be settling in just fine too.

But the people of this world?

Toraline had basically been part of the Fantasy Waffen SS. And now the cute little bubblegum fairies had just talked about genocide as a form of justice. Yeah, it had been against people who had genocided them first, but like… What was that stupid saying Dad used to use all the time? 'An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind'?

Seeker Tempest didn't seem so bad, admittedly. Oh wait, except for the fact that her city had exiled her into a monster infested wasteland because she'd stolen some bread to feed her hungry family.

Sparks flew, and in between one hammerblow and the next she was back in the Hall Of Doors, and her fists slammed into the stone wall, cracking off pieces of rock and sending dust into the air with each hit.

The people of this world sucked.

But maybe that's what happened after thousands of years of people from other worlds showing up at random and declaring world wars just for kicks.

The hammer in her hand slammed into the stone wall–now the end of a stone corridor, she supposed. After all, she was almost ten feet deep into the rock now. She'd already made almost a dozen piles of gravel out in the hallway. It was a good thing this place was abandoned, or someone would probably be screaming at her to clean up her mess right about now.

Maybe she shouldn't be passing judgement. Face it, Earth had a metric buttload of assholes in its history too. Genghis Kahn, Attila the Hun, Vikings, Romans, African Warlords and middle-eastern jihadists, to say nothing of the American ones. Confederate states, Andrew Jackson, the Indian Treaties…

Isabel rammed her knuckles into the rock wall, because sometimes you just needed to hit something with your own self instead of a hammer.

And the worst part? the worst part, was that this whole world expected her and her family to just take up the reins and keep the whole show a-rollin' on. "Raise the banner" and go out to conquer the whole world. Just like every other Sojourner before. Toraline had expected them to take up the mantle of that Caesar prick. Seeker Tempest had expected them to kill her. And the fairies had come to offer fealty to them, all because they expected the Albrights to be the next bastards in the conga line, destined to wreck the world until the world said 'okay that's enough' and kicked them all right in the nuts.

Isabel snarled and slammed the hammer down. Sparks flew, and the steel on the anvil twisted like something alive as it took blow after blow.

But that wasn't really the worst part. No no. The worst part was that this insane damned world was trying to turn them into those creeps. It had given them all power, and told them to Go Nuts. And then it just kept shoving dangers at them, day in and day out, forcing them to learn to fight, forcing them to kill. And they were getting good at it.

It had started with giant bugs, then graduated to stone men and weird monsters. Now it was throwing six-footed iron alligators with acid breath at them. Which, okay, sure, was par for the course when it came to fantasy worlds… And so far everyone they'd met had either been friendly or too pants-soakingly-scared to do anything other than bow and scrape until they figured out that Isabel's family wasn't into that.

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But she could see the writing on the wall. She'd seen the fairies in the water, running from the slades. And she'd noticed some of the Tribute Fairies firing off spells and hitting the young slades with little blades that they very conspicuously hadn't been holding beforehand. Clennais and his people had been ready for things to go south. And they'd been sneaky about it. If things had gone differently… If Mom and Dad hadn't been Mom and Dad, there would have been a fight.

And that was the thing. Sooner or later, they were going to run into someone, an actual People and not just some weird monster thing, that didn't want to be friends and wasn't scared of them. And on that day, they'd probably wind up having to kill real people.

Mom was a soldier. She already had a bodycount on her. And Dad… Well, Dad was Dad. If he had to kill someone, he'd be okay.

But Lucas? Olivia? Heck, even Dinah would probably have trouble with it. Her adopted sister came across tough as nails and twice pokey, but at least some of that was an act. When it came down to it, Isabel was pretty sure she'd choke too. At least a little.

But that was the thing, wasn't it. This world had summoned them here. It ripped them from home, plopped them on the beach, and then just started throwing bigger and bigger monsters at them, forcing them to fight. Forcing them to kill. And sooner or later, it was going to force them to murder.

It was doing its damndest to turn them into that Caesar asshole. And Isabel didn't like it.

The hammer slammed into stone. The hammer slammed into steel. Back and forth she went, or maybe she didn't move at all. She didn't know. Didn't care either. For the first time since coming here, she was thinking.

It wasn't the fact that she was probably eventually going to have to kill someone. That… Probably should have bothered her more than it did. But it was just the plain truth. Maybe it was her class, maybe it was the fact that she'd already fought and won several large battles against scary creatures. But the thought of graduating from killing non-sentient critters to sapient people wasn't that much of a problem in her mind.

A memory popped up amid the sparks, of a roiling storm and flashes of lightning illuminating an old tramp steamer packed with armed men chasing her family across the high seas. She remembered Mom's face as she set up with her rifle, ready to put herself and as much lead as she could carry in between the pirates and her children.

Choosing to fight.

The hammer paused and Isabel looked up into the darkening sky. How long had she been at this? She'd lost track.

Choosing to fight. That was what was bugging her, wasn't it. Up to now, they'd just been reacting. Running from the pirates, defending from the crabs, and the bugs, and now the slades. Admittedly they had chosen to fight Onesie when the poor guy had been taken over by that Matriarch thing.

And you know what? It had felt good.

Sparks started to fly again, lighting her footsteps down the dark new paths in her own mind. When the Mosquito had stabbed her in the shoulder, she had fought back out of anger. When she had taken their beaks for her blades, it had been out of vengeance. When she had stepped up to fight, it had been for her family. Every single one, a choice she had made. Every single choice, a step down this road. But those choices had been forced upon her.

Forced upon her, and her family.

The sparks billowed suddenly, and in front of her she could almost see two different paths splitting off and disappearing into the darkness. They weren't real, not like the Hall of Doors. But she could picture them.

She wondered if other Sojourners had stood at this intersection, staring off into the darkness, looking down the choices before them. She wondered if that was why this world was awash in blood and wars. What would she have done in their shoes, teleported to a strange world filled to the brim with enemies, told your destiny was to raise a banner and unite the world… And then forced, constantly, into life and death situations. Forced to react. Forced to make choices.

Isabel Albright stood at that same intersection, and wondered which path she would have chosen to walk in their shoes.

Sparks were replaced by a gout of steam, and she looked down to see a sword blade on her anvil, placed there after its final quenching in the oil. She stared at it in confusion, because it was decidedly not the blade she had intended to make.

She'd planned to make two short blades, like the mosquito beaks she'd lost to the slades. Only these would have been purpose-built, with a slight curve to them and a single edge to lend them greater cutting power as she swung them. Maybe with a basket hilt, to offer her a way to punch her enemies when they got close enough and not split her knuckles open.

What was on her anvil now, waiting for the tempering process, was decidedly not that.

Instead of a short cutting blade, like a cutlass, the blade on the anvil was at least three fingers wide, double-edged and straight, tapering down to a needle point on the last foot. The other five feet were broad and thick, and she knew instinctively when she tempered the edges that they would take a hammerblow without breaking and would be able to cut like a razor.

She lifted the blade and held it out in front of her, testing the balance. It was full tang and strong. The hilt would wind up being almost a foot long, making the whole thing taller than she was. She snorted at the thought.

Dear god, I've become an Anime protagonist.

But it was the style of the blade that held her gaze. Straight and double-sided, like a larger version of the broadswords the European knights used to carry. And with that memory came another. The knights of old had been romanticized in a lot of ways, not the least of which by their own writings at the time. And one of the biggest ways they'd romanticized their existence was through the blades they carried. The cruciform sword, straight with a crossguard to signify the knight's devotion to christianity. And the double blades, to remind the knight that it was just as much his job to protect those under his care as it was to dispense justice to those deserving of it.

One edge to protect the innocent, one edge to slay the wicked.

She stared at the two edges, and saw again the two paths in her mind. She understood why the other Sojourners had chosen what they did. Forced to choose by a world that fought to destroy them at every step. It was no wonder they'd raised their flags as conquerors.

But flags weren't only carried by invading armies.

Sometimes they flew over fortress walls, too.

Isabel Albright, first Berserke of Seroco, raised her hammer and began working to temper her new blade. And when she was done, she had something she needed to talk to her parents about.

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