In the Wildlands, every village had to fend for itself be it from their neighbors or the beasts of the jungle. It was a dangerous, often short life out here, but the people worked hard to survive. Some villages had it easier with natural barriers to protect them or resources to defend themselves with. Others weren't so fortunate and had to take their survival into their own hands.
Cliffside was one such place. The nearby mountains blocked them from the east, but it also meant they had less farmland and were easy prey for the wyverns that nested there. They were a constant threat for years or at least they had been. Twelve decades ago the village had managed to steal wyvern eggs and after they grew the village learned to use them as mounts. From there everything changed; they were the mightiest village in the land and the borders of the town had expanded outwards and the population exploded. As long as they had their wyverns it seemed Cliffside would remain the power in the region.
Raising wyverns was a challenge and there were only a dozen riders. It had become easier as they had been bred but the few eggs they laid couldn't meet the demand for new riders. Since then aspiring wyvern riders had ventured up into the peaks, trying to steal eggs just as had been done all those years ago. None had been as lucky as their forebears though. The territorial wyverns didn't take kindly to trespassers, let alone those that sought their eggs, none who had attempted to steal one had returned.
The chieftain of the village had forbidden anyone else from even venturing up into the mountain. More than a dozen had died already and it didn't seem likely to change. Cliffside would simply have no more wyvern riders until the current cache of eggs hatched. It left the village in precarious balance where its position of strength was threatened for the first time in over a hundred years. The worry was clear from every face in the village, but no one dared to go against the chieftain's order, not to mention the risk of certain death that would be faced going up against the wyverns. Only one person had the nerve to disobey the order and to scale the mountain, and at the moment she was regretting her decision.
The chill was far worse up here than she had thought and the wind constantly blew her hood back, letting her long blonde whip around her head. Adria pulled the hood up again for the eighth time and again thought of turning back. She held her cloak tightly against herself with one hand and her spear in the other, constantly reaching back to right her hood. No one would know she had given up, no one even knew she had ventured out of the village for that matter. If they had she would have been stopped before even setting a foot up the mountain trails.
Even with all of her worries and fears, Adria pushed on instead of turning away. She had sworn that she would do this, for the village and herself. She wasn't sure which was more important to her at this point. Ever since she could walk Adria had wanted to be a wyvern rider, she wanted it more than anything. But there had never been a chance of that happening. Every wyvern egg had already been given to someone from the two headhouses and even if there were dozens to spare Adria would be far down the list to receive one.
Her mother would see her wed off to one of the lesser houses, maybe even one of the headhouses. If Mother had her way she'd be married within the year and to one of the chieftain's sons no less. Adria had done the best she could to ignore her mother's machinations, but she had still heard the details. Her mother cared little for what Adria wanted, and she was intent on leveraging Adria's beauty for the family's status. She had been told little else growing up, how she would be a fine match for one of the headhouse boys, how she should leave the fighting to the other men and women. Even at practice, it wasn't her skills with a spear that drew compliments, it was how her leather armor hugged her curves.
She continued further up the mountain. The uneven route she was taking couldn't even be called a path, far too few people ventured this high up to make it such. Fortunately, there was little risk of her getting lost, all she had to do was continue going up. It was a small consolation in the face of the challenge that was the mountain.
Adria steadied herself with the butt of her spear against the dirt as she crested shoulder of the mountain and she froze at the sight before her. She had never been into the mountains before, almost no one had. Even the foothills leading up to them had been forbidden. All she had known were the stories that had been passed down for generations. They were exaggerated, of course, tall-tellings of how the first eggs were stolen. None of the stories had spoken of just how many wyverns there were up here.
Adria was so taken aback by the number that she didn't even think to hide, instead, she was too busy tallying them up. There were dozens, she gave up counting at a hundred. Most of them were scattered further along the mountain, curled up on the rocky ground, alone or in pairs. Some of them were far larger than the ones Cliffside kept, at the upper end they seemed to top off at almost twenty feet tall and thirty across. One of them moved off of its perched and took to the sky. It was flying right over her and Adria finally came to her senses and stooped down onto the ground. It roared overhead and disappeared around the edge of the mountain.
Her heart was pounding away in her chest; more than ever her mission seemed like suicide, but Adria pushed herself forward. Crouching, she moved further towards the wyvern nests. She went deliberately, trying as hard as she could to remain unseen. If she was spotted she was as good as dead, fighting a wyvern alone with just a spear was a death sentence, as the enemies of Cliffside had learned years ago.
Either she was more cautious than her predecessors or she was just lucky. Adria managed to get in closer, hiding among boulders and rocky outcroppings. The sun was falling low over the peaks of the mountain and she knew she didn't have much more time. She would never be able to navigate her way down with no light, she had to be swift. There was a nest perhaps two hundred feet from her and she could see a trio of eggs surrounded by small rocks to keep them from moving. Looking about she couldn't spot any wyverns closeby, this had to be her chance. There was no cover from here to there though, she would have to be fast.
Steadying herself, Adria took a long breath in and then exhaled, then she darted out from her cover and raced forward. She moved as quickly as she could while staying low to the ground. She was halfway there, maybe even closer. An egg was almost in her grasp when she heard a cry from above. Her eyes darted skyward, there was a wyvern flying straight down towards her.
She cursed and desperately looked around for anywhere to hide. There was a cave mouth just beyond the eggs, so instead of running away, she broke into a full sprint. Adria completely ignored the eggs, racing for her life. She could hear the wings of the wyvern right above her. Adria ducked down low and swore she felt the talons on its feet just graze by her head.
