On a little known path leading towards the woods, not far from Olbrand village, walked a pair of young girls. Although they both looked particularly malnourished, their footsteps were steady; it could be seen that they had walked this path often.
The two girls kept an eye on their surroundings as they walked. They had encountered beasts on this trail before, and their vigilance had never left them since.
The two girls Isla and Sila were born into one of the poor hunting families of the village. Their mother, an outsider of the village had been saved by their father. They don't know how he saved their mother, but they knew it had crippled him for life. Perhaps if the injury was treated at the time, it could've healed; however their father was poor, and their mother's background was never mentioned.
Their mother seemed to feel guilty for the injury their father sustained, and chose to pay the debt off with herself, doing odd jobs and embroidery work to take care of him, and deciding to settle down in this isolated village as his wife.
Their mother's choice has been questioned by both Sila and Isla countless times. They can't fathom what kind of saint their mother was to even bother staying with a man like their father, or wanting to stay in that rotten village, but they came to the conclusion that their mother was probably hiding, and what she was hiding from must've been far worse than the life she had in Olbrand.
Isla and Sila had mourned for their mother's hardships many times, but thinking that she brought them into this world, stuck in this place, they held a little resentment towards the mother they never met.
Their father, Rodgar, was the epitome of patriarchal. Believing in the superiority of men, and didn't find the birth of twin daughters to be a blessing, but a downright burden, and he treated the two of them as such.
Adding onto that his crumbling self esteem after losing complete mobility of his legs, and suffering from the goading of his fellow villagers, he soon fell into a heavy alcohol dependance. This naturally didn't bode well for Isla and Sila, his two little burdens.
When the two of them were young, he would beat them whenever his mood dropped, which made the young girls wish to stay as far waya from him as they could, and that's exactly what they did.
However the two found that the villagers were no better, they looked at them with contempt, disgust, or even more atrocious emotions. Bearing the negative identities, being blamed for their mothers death and their fathers disability. The malice of the villagers was never hidden from them.
The worst part was not the odd beating from their father, nor the rumours from the unhappy women of the village, it was simply the disgusting looks that the men of the village gave them, even from a young age.
Isla and Sila had inherited their mother's beauty and they knew very early on that it wasn't a blessing for a woman to be too beautiful in this world, in fact if they were too weak to protect themselves, then it would be nothing more than a curse.
Luckily there must be a God looking down at them at their moment of need. When they were twelve, one of the old widowers seemed to not be able to hold himself back any longer, and attacked them when they were on their way back from foraging in the mountains.
The two had expected this day to come, and had tried their best to prepare for it, but even with their plans in place, they were rudely awakened by the sheer strength difference between themselves and a full grown man.
It wasn't until he had beaten them both to the ground and began tearing their clothes off, that the unwillingness in their eyes seemed to unlock something deep within them. Like rabbid beasts they attacked him, their strength far greater than even the old widower. With no mercy, they tore him to pieces with their bare hands. It took until he was a mangled corpse for them to calm down their anger driven attack.
On that day; half naked, beaten and covered in blood, the two of them realised they had another option.
Even in the isolated Olbrand, there would still be people from the village who travelled to the town for work. They brought stories of powerful knights, and mages. Humans that had become so powerful that entire countries could be flattened by them alone.
Isla and Sila had longed for that world. Be it their childhood innocence or just their longing to change their fate, they had hoped to become like those people in the stories.
However it was on that terrible day, that they looked into each other's eyes and laughed, tears of happiness streaming down their faces, for at that moment they knew, the power they had just shown was not something a normal person could muster.
From that day forward, the two of them would rush to the mountains at dawn, testing their capabilities. They didn't dare to fight the beasts in the mountains, first they started to train with each other, learning from the mistakes they made when they fought.
The process was slow and sometimes gruelling, but they never let up. This was their chance, and they knew they had to take it. Year after year they grew closer to the age of marriage, and they could guarantee their father would happily sell them to the highest bidders. They didn't want to marry some wretched man, and they didn't want to be separated, so although the two loved each other completely, they were ruthless in their training.
They came to the conclusion that the harder they fought one another, the better off they'd both be in the long term. So Isla and Sila would both be battered and bruised underneath their clothes by the end of the day, but they didn't hesitate to smile at each other, heading back home feeling more satisfied than when they set off from home.