Gauntlet

prologue

Rieka's POV:

My family has always been the talk of my village, whether it was my mother who was an 'outsider' as my village liked to call the people who weren't in our village. They never trusted her and i suppose they were right not to, after all my mother was a spy for Caspian.

Caspian was the fourth born son of King Ronan, there was no chance he would never inherit the throne.

When the Goblin Rebellion first started the king's second and third oldest sons were killed. Later it was revealed that Caspian was the cause of the rebellion and therefore the cause of his brothers deaths.

With a heavy heart the king sentenced his youngest son to death  but by the time he had decided the fate of the young power hungry prince, Caspian had already left the continent.

When it was discovered my mother was a spy she was arrested and executed before the king after they failed to get information from her. I was only four years old.

Not long after her death my father remarried a woman in our village and adopting her son and daughter,  hoping by doing this he could make others in the village happy. When I was eight my father was recruited for the army fighting in the front lines.

I remember one day the people in my village talking about how my father was a deserter, that he ran from the battle field. A few days later he came back to the village heavily wounded and with a crazed look in his eyes yelling "SHADOWS, TEETH AND DEATH!"

The people called him a mad man.

Now my father just sits and stares out the window unmoving but sometimes he has good days where he will get up and act as if nothing happened and he didn't leave.

My step-mother is a loving and caring woman who despite everything never left my father's side, at least that's what she has everyone believing.

To me she is rude and takes any chance to insult me and my mother. Of course she would never say any of this on one of my father's good day's.

Her children are just as bad as their mother if not worse, they take pleasure in seeing me suffer and while their mother is discrete in her hatred towards me they make it very obvious.

My step-brother Xander likes making fun of me with his friends and my step-sister Cirila teamed up with another one of my bullies Larissa.

Larissa was perfect with her beautiful long golden, silvery hair that always fell in perfect ringlets down her back to her greenish blue eyes that always seemed to catch the sun's light. She was tall but not too tall that it was awkward and her lightly tanned skin that never had any blemishes.

She was like a porcelain doll the exact opposite of me. I had dark brown almost black hair that never seemed to cooperate, paired with dull brown eyes and I was tall, taller than all the girls my age in the village.

Another thing different about us was that I enjoyed hunting and fighting and she probably had never even touched dirt. All the boy's would probably fall on their swords if she asked, but if it was me most wouldn't even spare me a glance.

I wasn't jealous though...

Ok that was a lie I was a little jealous of her but who wasn't she was perfect and had the perfect little life.

I could think of a few more differences between us. I was loud, she was quiet, I liked rough housing in the mud, she wouldn't even touch mud, I liked dragon's I dreamed about riding the majestic beasts, she didn't and when anyone mentioned dragon's she would immediately try and change the subject you could also see the fear in her eyes it was hidden but I could see it.

If I was being honest I hated this village but it wouldn't matter I would be leaving soon, I was finally fourteen the age where I was eligible for the ceremony that determined the next generation of dragon riders and I was confident that I would be part of that generation.

The bearers are the dragon riders responsible for making sure the ceremony goes according to plan. They are also responsible for protecting their shard of the dragon's eye, a sacred stone that senses the magic that allows humans to bond with and ride dragons.

Long ago before dragons and humans frst bonded. The dragon's eye was one gem, the King of Sirelia at the time was gifted the gem on his wedding day. The gem resembled the eye of a dragon hence the name. It was said to grant strength like that of a dragon.

When the king was studying the gem he noticed a crack in it. When he touched the crack it grew until the gem broke into several shards.

When the gem broke it released a wave of magic throughout the land and beyond, of course it was only years later that they discovered the magic that was released created dragon riders and the shards could detect the magic in a rider.

That was how the first dragon riders came to be. Now bearers would travel to all the villages with a shard and look for riders.

Tomorrow was the ceremony and I couldn't wait to leave this village behind.