The sword had no name in tongues that speak words. The most powerful ones never do, and you never know that until you pick one up. That was, in fact, only the start of a very long list of things she hadn’t known about swords. The _real_ problem with magical swords is that they are nothing without a wielder, and they know it. Even the most inept swordsman is better than none at all – as a result they are not particularly picky. That is how girls like Annabelle end up holding swords that have levelled cities.

In her Grandfather’s basement was a large wooden box she had always thought of as a trunk, but that was in truth more of a chest. She had loved it as a child – the wood, warm and wrinkled under her touch, had reminded her of her Grandfather’s hands. She had tried to open it at least as many times as she had been warned against precisely that and, despite there being no visible catch, it had always been locked.

On the day her Grandfather died, Annabelle had been his only living family on the same continent. Her Mother and Father were in Zambia or Zamibia or one of those, on safari beyond the range of running water or SMS. She had of course been invited along again, but since graduating she had been disinclined to leave the comfort of the groove she had worn in her life and her little corner of London. When the police called, her brain had stalled the impact by asking ‘Why are you calling _me_? Surely someone else… surely my parents?’ But there had been no-one else, not even her parents right now. And besides, it was her on the forms. Not her mother, nor even her father. Just her. Next of kin: Annabelle Citrine Umberland.

So the hospital, and the funeral, and the house, and then at last the basement and the chest that had sprung open with the lightest touch of her hand. As though it remembered her. As though it had never been locked at all.