The Unwilling Chosen One
Being among the Chosen was an enormous hassle. Enormous. Was there a criterion for ‘Chosen-ness’? Or was it random? Being one of the elect, Viola initially thought it was random, but her innate ability to see monsters and shoot a bow was enough to invalidate her theory. It would have been random if she could see them but not kill them; the opposite was impossible, but it wasn’t, so however strange, there had to be some criterion. Besides, she had been clumsy as a child, as a teenager, as a young woman, and as an adult woman—clumsy in everything except archery. She could hit them right in the chest, at stomach level, if they had one, and she was infallible. Never took a lesson. She had killed almost all the monsters she encountered. Almost, because sometimes she didn’t have her bow with her; she couldn’t carry it everywhere. At first, she kept it in a cardboard tube, but extracting it quickly and easily was difficult, so she opted for a nylon bag. If she could carry it cros...
