At the dawn of the world there was a battle between the gods ... oh, never mind. Nobody cares. There's this artifact that was sundered and the pieces hidden across the world and reassembling it will trigger the second coming of whoever. Or maybe the second coming will trigger reassembling it. Anyway, Lakshmi, huntress of a barbarian tribe, is the second coming -- we know because the narrator tells us at the start. For now, though, she's just a young huntress, daughter of the King. Her brother comes of age tonight at which time he'll become King, Kings being big on early retirement in this tribe, apparently. Unfortunately, the coming of age/coronation ceremony is interrupted by an attack by a rival tribe of barbarians, who kill most of the townsfolk and steal the sacred artifact (did I mention that the tribe is protector of one of the pieces of the sundered artifact? well, they are). The new King vows to take his warriors to hunt down the rival barbarians, recover the artifact, unite the shards, and revenge themselves upon their enemies. However, the village Elders forbid this, demanding that the King and his few surviving warriors stay to protect the few surviving villagers. In typical petulant teenage fashion, the King renounces his throne so that he's no longer bound to listen to the Elders and takes Lakshmi and the warriors off on his quest. Luckily for them, it turns out the other pieces of the artifact -- lost for generations -- are actually about half a day's walk from the village and easily recoverable. This doesn't prevent the King and his warriors from getting horribly massacred by the rival barbarians, but it does mean Lakshmi can reassemble the artifact and realize her destiny ... whatever that actually is.