"No."

"What?! Why?!"

My parents looked at me with a mixture of displeasure and fear, flavoured by heavy skepticism.

"Do you really have to ask that question? You've just been bedridden for three months straight!" grumbled my father. A heavy scowl sat upon his brow. He was clearly whom I inherited my height from, and with his broad shoulders and bushy black beard he looked a little bit like a classic lumberjack.

"But that was different!! This is about becoming a squire! It's not dangerous, and it's good exercise!"

My mother sighed.

"Freya, this isn't a game. You know how difficult it is for commoners to be even considered for such a thing; you have to defeat every other noble child at the trial before you even get a chance."

"But if I train hard enough, isn’t it worth trying?"

"No." My father spoke abruptly and firmly, with no room for argument. "They only allow commoners to take part as a joke, a chance for nobles to beat up some untrained commoners. You might feel some obligation to Lady Violette for paying the doctor fees, but dedicating your life to her is not how you repay it."

My mother hoisted me up onto her lap, grunting slightly as she did so. I was a big child and she a small woman; I felt bad for the extra effort she always had to put in for me.

"Freya, you've always been clever for your age, but you still have your whole life ahead of you. Even if you somehow manage to pass the trials, you'll be dedicating your entire life to the Rhinestadt Family; you haven't thought this through properly."

I squirmed in her grip, frustrated. How could I explain to them that this was something I had to do? I knew the future, and if I didn't act to prevent it, then wasn't I partially at fault as well? Violette had saved my family. I couldn't just ignore her fate. But if I started blabbering about how I'd seen the future, they would have seen me straight back to the doctor.

Wriggling myself free, I glared at my parents.

"Fine then. If you won't help, then I'll do it on my own!" With that I turned on my heel and ran out of the tiny home my family shared.

Unfortunately my grand statement was slightly ruined by my mother muttering to my father, "Let her go. She'll grow tired of it in a week or so."

Stinging tears slipped out of my eyes as I ran down the street, my frustration threatening to overflow. Frustration at not being taken seriously; at being a helpless child indebted to her loving parents, unable to change the future.

Well, sod that.

I didn’t care if I was doomed for failure. I didn’t care if I had to be dragged away kicking and screaming, or if it was impossible to change Violette’s fate. I was going to hold on to this frustration, burying it deep inside me and using it as fuel to keep me going. Even if I had to burn this world to the ground and sacrifice life and limb to do so, I was going to save her. Because if there’s one thing I despised more than anything, it's a tragic ending for a character that deserved so much more.

As it turns out, ‘easier said than done’ is a very true saying. The next few weeks turned into a gruelling slog as I got up each morning at the crack of dawn and went for a run, forcing myself to go further and further everyday. By the time I got home my mother would be preparing breakfast, for which I would haul buckets of water from the local pump. After breakfast I would rush through my daily chores, then do muscle building exercises I remembered from my previous life. After lunch I played games with the local children, such as tag or mock sword fights. At first, to my parents I seemed like a very energetic child, but everything I did was in the name of improving my body for the squireship trials that would come when I turned twelve. I only had 2 years to make up for the personalized training the noble children that I would be competing against would receive. It was a daunting prospect; one that often left me feeling overwhelmed. Nonetheless, I kept telling myself that my competitors were slacking off, relying on their family’s money and connections to get in, and that I would be able to beat them on. True or not, it gave me hope and the confidence to keep pushing forwards.

Weeks turned into months, and the people around me gradually began to realize that I wasn’t just playing around. My friends began to stop playing with me as my single minded devotion to exercise and training turned them away, and my younger siblings grew bored of watching me ‘duel’ a strawman. My parents, however, began to take me more seriously as they realized I would not be “growing tired of it.”

The childish part of my mind felt a certain degree of smug glee when my father interrupted my training to tell me that I was doing it all wrong. He began to demonstrate his way of fighting, a brutal, dirty way of fighting that a city guard needed to know to survive. I don't know what exactly changed his mind; I'd like to say it was my unending determination, but I suspect he only intended to make my training even more difficult to discourage me.

Whatever the case, what I was doing before was child's play compared to what he put me through. The mock duels turned from playing to brutal fighting, and though he never truly hurt me, I learned to take a punch. But it didn’t stop there; on his days off he took me out of the city to teach wilderness survival techniques, and after his shifts I learned how to shoot a rifle at the guard barracks.

His captain was upset at first, but upon seeing my fiercely determined attitude he quickly joined in, teaching me all the things my father couldn't. Though a commoner, his job as Guard Captain gave him access to the world of nobility and he taught me how to deal with that world; what to say, what not to say, and how to convince an arrogant superior that your plan was his idea all along.

It was hard; outrageously hard. My father succeeded in making me consider quitting, many many times. But every time I was flung to the ground, everytime my shot went astray or my sword was knocked from my grasp, Violette's terrified and lonely face flashed through my mind and my deep, simmering anger at her future rose again.

Amongst the local community I became known as a weird girl obsessed with training and who picked a fight with some back alley gang members. That last part was untrue; they were only a couple of snotty kids a few years older than me. Nowadays I am ashamed to admit that I may have started that fight to prove myself against someone stronger. I certainly deserved the punishment I got: copying The Code of A Knight's Duties and Responsibilities out a hundred times. Not that that had any effect; Instead of becoming an honourable fellow, I spent the time hunting for loopholes in the document, in order to figure out ways I could get around the Knight's Oath.

At that time, I wasn't intending to become a knight in shining armour. I was going to become whatever Violette needed me to be, honor be damned. To me the code was a set of rules invented by arrogant nobles intending to keep their soldiers in line; something that could be used against me in future if I wasn't prepared. And so I studied, for hours and hours on end, until I was damn sure of what a knight could do, what she couldn't, and what I could do to navigate between them.

I wasn’t intending to become a corrupt criminal, but the code posed a problem to me. It was completely centered around the oath itself; who it was sworn to and how. Knights were practically paid slaves after their oath was sworn; their decisions and livelihoods completely controlled by their lord. Of course, there was also vague flowery language about "protecting the weak" and "acting in a just manner", but the core of the oath was to serve one's master and the duchey. Not even the Empire or the Empress; the duchey and its ruler. This was going to be a serious problem, because even then I knew Violette's father and I would never see eye to eye. Not if I wanted to protect Violette from her fate. But I couldn't ever let him figure that out.

And so, in this manner two years passed. Two years of fighting, training, scheming and growing as many muscles as I could, before the day finally came. Before I finally found myself standing in front of the gates of the Grand Duke, surrounded by a hubbub of potential candidates that I would have to fight my way through. Today… today was the first day of the rest of my life.