While the seasons ebbed and flowed into their natural end and start, our hero Brina also became more mature. Still the same jolly fellow with the hopes of her adventure starting sooner rather than later. She still saw her friends from her old guard recruit days, but now she is a trainee knight in the last year of her apprenticeship as a squire, under a knight called Sir Deen the Lion.
She spent four years training under his watchful gaze, and she had learned a lot, not just on how to fight but on how to be a knight. Four years was indeed a lot of time to have passed.
She and Ren had bought a nice house as their money had become adequate to do so. It was a two-story house with two bedrooms and a large courtyard at the back, where both Brina and Ren trained regularly. She told her brother it was necessary, of course, because the roads aren't safe and anything could happen out there. This was just her small token of care for him, making sure he could defend himself when she wasn't around.
Speaking of which, Ren actually found a lover in the next town called Meerbrook, some fifty kilometers to the south of Helwind Valley. She hadn't met her yet but she had congratulated him warmly. As for Brina, well, let us just say it was complicated. But that's a story for another time.
Now let us talk about what has happened in the last four years.
After the internal turmoil that had nearly destroyed Helwind, things slowly recovered and returned to business as usual. Of course the first year was hard for everyone. But they managed. Lord Jouse pushed for reforms. There were losses in the guard ranks, so there was another recruitment effort, a gradual one this time, and those who had failed before were re-invited to try again.
Her old company also graduated, now under the newly formed Company Commander, a man named Evereth Harbringer. She unfortunately didn't get to meet him as she was already a squire by then, but her girls were particularly fond of the dashing man. She teased them about it endlessly on their occasional meetups.
Their current company was called Helwind's Rising Guard Company, and they had become the talk of the town. They aren't just merely guards but a specialized company formed from the lessons learned during the revolt. They are tasked with dealing with threats outside of the town itself, all eighty-five of them. They were given an additional year after graduating to train further, learning specifically how to deal with beasts. A training that even Brina witnessed as they brought in actual beasts to fight in a controlled setting. And their knight order was also asked to be there so obviously she would follow her master.
It was impressive. Her old friends had grown tremendously.
This company and Lord Jouse's knights had also formed a new specialized unit of threat hunters. They were called the Hunter Knights of Helwind, a new division within the Knight Order that her master Deen the Lion (Dandelion) was part of. So it was like she never really left her old company at all. She still saw them regularly, which she was grateful for.
She and Himdal were both part of it. That guy. Well, they had a love-hate relationship. More on that later.
The town itself had recovered well. It was now more bustling than before, and Lord Jouse's reforms were already being given priority to improve the lives of the people. Brina had heard there was a new financial advisor who was skilled at his job, and it showed. Brunswick had made sure the town's coffers were fat. And his too, just a little. A small bit of corruption wouldn't bankrupt them, and honestly they had far bigger problems to worry about. They had also managed to pay off the town's loans, and were now running at a ten percent increase over what they had previously.
Well, it was also a fact that there had been many losses in their military ranks, which meant fewer salaries to pay in the first two years. That helped the finances recover faster than expected.
Since they recovered, they managed to increase their overall funds. Their sales from the iron alone had brought substantial profit, which was evident in the guards' newer equipment, both old and new recruits alike.
With the guard ranks back to its former strength of five hundred soldiers and two new companies of recruits on the way, things were looking up.
The Knight Order though was still struggling. They now had three hundred and two knights left out of the roughly three hundred and fifty before, with only a few new ones joining over the past four years. But not to worry, because Brina was going to become a knight herself next month.
Her final test, which her master Knight Deen would give her, wasn't easy by any stretch. It was a mission to kill a beast without any help. Not just any beast either, but a Lywolf.
Her master had heard her story, the story of her parents and that terrible night in the forest, so he set this final test as a sort of revenge match. It wasn't cruelty on his part. He understood what it would mean for her to face the very type of beast that had taken her parents. To confront it, and win.
Though it seems her master had other thoughts on the matter beyond just the test itself. She'd asked him what he meant by that, but he told her he would tell her after she passed. That quiet confidence of his, as though her passing was simply a foregone conclusion, was one of the things she appreciated most about Sir Deen.
She hoped she could live up to it.
And so that was the last four years that had come to pass. From devastation to recovery, from recruit to squire, from a grieving girl running through a dark forest to a young woman standing on the edge of something new.
Brina Feldwyn, almost a knight, looked out at the world from her courtyard one evening and smiled.
The adventure she longed for was finally about to start.