eragon rider 2

<p>”Did you hear? King Jellal’s holding the national holiday early this year!” one of the field girls squealed.”Today’s the last work day and we get three days to head to the capitol, and then a whole month off for them!”</p>
<p>”He’s starting them early? And such short notice? You sure you’re telling the truth?” Another asked.</p>
<p>A few girls muttered agreements. They didn’t believe this little gossip.</p>
<p>”Just ask one of the adults.” She replied with a wink.</p>
<p>The second girl called over one of the older women who was also working in the field. The entire time, Lumina remained silent and stayed to her work. This would probably turn out to be one of the common field girl lies that this girl had overheard.</p>
<p>”Is it true? About the games coming early this year?” the second girl asked when the woman was close enough, eyeing the first girl the entire time.</p>
<p>”Why yes. It’s out of celebration about that dragon rider who came through here.” the woman replied and went back to her work.</p>
<p>”See, I told you!” the first girl cried out.</p>
<p>”Weren’t you suppose to be on that scouting group that first spotted the strangers, Lumina?” another girl who was listening like me whispered softly.</p>
<p>”Yeah, but I’d been behind on my work. The field master would’ve gotten terribly angry with me if I hadn’t stayed and worked over.” I answered her back softly.</p>
<p>”That’s too bad. Hey, wasn’t that girl,” the girl who was talking with me nodded her head off to the first.”apart of that scout group?”</p>
<p>”She was and even accompanied the strangers to the capitol, but was ordered to return home since she was only a girl.” I told her as I did my field work.</p>
<p>”That’s how she would know about the festival.” the girl murmered absent-mindedly to herself and returned her full attention to her work.</p>
<p>”Hey Lumina! Are you going to the capitol games?” the first girl asked me.</p>
<p>I was forced to look up from my work and reply to her.</p>
<p>”Yes, I plan to this year.” I answered.</p>
<p>Four years ago I hadn’t because my grandfather, who even though I call him grandfather he only looks in his fourties, because he had insisted that I was still too young. I was thirteen then, but now I was seventeen and he couldn’t refuse me.</p>
<p>”Are you going to take part?” She asked, and I felt the gaze of everyone on me.</p>
<p>”I might, but I’m not the greatest fighter and I’ll probably be kicked out in the first round.” I said.</p>
<p>The games were for anyone eligible to participate in to test their skills against fellow contestants. There were several categories you could enter yourself into. Each category held their own tournament on different weeks in the month. So in all there were four categories to enter in which were magic, close combat (using your fists only), swordplay (using any kind of sword you want), and archery. You can only enter into two tournaments so that you don’t wear yourself out too badly, because they are brutal.</p>
<p>Since more than half the population always enter into the games, the first round is where everyone who entered is thrown into a huge arena to duel it out. The only rule is that you can’t kill your opponet, you can only wear them out until they can no longer stand. The fighting continues until there are only one hundred left standing. The first round is always completed in one day because it starts at the first light of dawn to the evening light of sunset.</p>
<p>”Yeah, I probably won’t last long either.” The first girl said and laughed.”So what are you planning on entering?”</p>
<p>”Magic or maybe archery. Possibly both.” I say.</p>
<p>The archery tournament is the only exception to the first round. Instead of fighting your opponets until they can no longer stand, the first round is a race to see whose mount is faster. You see, speed is important in the second round if you’re to beat your opponets. You can enter on any animal that can carry you. People have tames wild horses to use in the games and some have captured the wild birds with long necks and bald heads that live at the edge of the mountains to the South. They live in the tallest of the grass fields and are very hard to trap.</p>
<p>”Archery? So what are you planning on for your mount? You don’t own one.” The first girl states.</p>
<p>”I want to keep it a mystery.” I reply.</p>
<p><br /> “So you’ll be traveling seperate from the group?” She leads on, figuring that I’ll have to take my mount from here to the capitol alone if I want to keep people guessing.</p> </div>
<div class=”textbody” id=”storyText” style=”-webkit-user-select: none; opacity: 1;”><p>”MmHm.” I hum as I work with my hands to get a rather tough piece of cotton out of its shell.</p>
<p>She doesn’t press me with further questions and I’m glad. I usually don’t talk with people for that long or hardly at all. Only when I’m up to speaking to I share words with people. Today isn’t one of those days. I want to work silently in these cotton fields and return home by myself to rest.</p>
<p><br> Ever since the day a idiotic boy from our village thought it would be cool to check out the lava fields to the North by himself, I’ve been this way. It was only when I was a child, so that boy would be a man by now probably. But he was the cause of my pain and suffering. One of the monsters from the desolate plains had seen him and given chase. The elders always tell us now that if we’re as stupid as him and go up to the plains to have a beast chasing us, we’re to lead it away from our cities.</p>
<p><br> This boy hadn’t had the common sense to do that. He lead the monster straight through one of our cities to the North, the closest to the plains. The monster had set the entire town aflame. But the boy hadn’d stopped running. Once one of those monsters gets their pupiless eyes on you, they track you until the end of your days. It followed him South then, he had been attempting to return home to my city. Luckily, the monster had seemed afraid of the river that splits our forest in two and sets the capitol on the opposite side of us. In fustration, it attempted to attack the capitol.</p>
<p>With warriors from the capitol, men from the city to the far East on the coast, and my city from the South, we forced the beast West and into Mirior lake. The lake hadn’t been so shallow back then. It was the heat that radiated off the monster’s skin that had evaporate most of the water from the lake. The water did eventually kill it completely, leaving the lake in a sorrowful state. Though the problem had been taken care of quickly, it was not without deaths.</p>
<p>Two of which had been my parents.</p>
<p>That had left my grandfather with the task of raising his grandaughter who was only five years old. Old enough to realize that mommy and daddy weren’t coming back from their trip, but not old enough to understand why they couldn’t. The events had been so distant from my city, and everything had been peaceful here. I had only caught a glimpse of the burning forest when I had ran away from him. I hadn’t been a strong flier then, so I couldn’t cross the river but I had seen the flames that had consumed my parents with my own eyes.</p>
<p>Someone, I forget who exactly, returned me to my grandfather where I lived in a trance-like state. The flames burning in the back of my mind. Eventually I slipped out of the daydream, when I was nine, but the damage had already been done. Other girls considered me strange and wierd and wouldn’t even come near me during my years of schooling. It wasn’t until we were forced to work together on the fields that they begun to understand my position and accept me. Even now I barely speak to them and I’m hardly the first person anyone comes to when they have problems.</p>
<p>The trance-like state had also taken another thing from me that could never be replaced—the memories of my parents. They had been washed away from me to a point I couldn’t even remember their faces. I had tried asking my grandfather to tell me what they were like, but he never answered me. Best to stay in the present, he would say. But my mind was always on the past about the parents I never remembered.</p>
<p>When the sun began to approach the highest point in the sky, everyone saught shade under the trees on the outskirts of the cotton fields, and sat down to eat their lunch. Mine comprised of a loaf of bread and a small bit of cheese that I had dared to bring with me. My grandfather would notice the chunk missing as he sat to eat his lunch back at our house on the edge of the city. I would be scolded for it, but most likely he would just give me another bit to take with me to the tournament.</p>
<p>I resumed my work as the sun was passed its highest point with the other girls. The same gossip went around again about the games and who was participating, which was most of the girls in the field. Only women who were trained in the arts of war, the warriors of our city, ever entered the close combat or swordfighting.