Rise of the Dragon Sovereign

Chapter 2: Growing Up Fast

After their fateful meeting that night just outside the village, Scarlet took a keen interest in Ward, and the two of them ended up becoming best friends. Scarlet was quite popular among the older younglings of the tribe, even at 13 years of age, she had already made a name for herself as a great apprentice hunter and accomplished fighter, and her beauty was so bewitching, many young males had already approached her about becoming their wife after her proving, only to be soundly rejected. It still threw Ward how similar she looked to the goddess Idris he had encountered before reincarnating. Not just her face, but even her figure and mannerisms, she was a near exact match to the being he remembered. It couldn't just be pure coincidence, could it?

Anyway, Scarlet suddenly spending time with a scrawny kid like Ward quickly became hot gossip among the youths, earning him envious glares and jealous sneers from his male peers.

When Scarlet and Ward were together, they'd go exploring outside the village. He felt completely comfortable around her, enough so that the naïve youngling act he had developed over the years so he didn't stand out too much fell away when she was around. He could finally just be himself, without fear of scaring her off with how advanced he was mentally, and she took the discovery of his true self in stride. He never told her he had reincarnated from another world, but she somehow just understood he was fundamentally different to all other kyn. The two of them would usually spend hours together every day, where she'd teach him about fighting and hunting, and she'd show her the really extreme idea and plans he had come up with.

She was lively and vibrant, and wild as any of the beasts she hunted. Always smiling and laughing, and she was smarter than most would probably give her credit for, and they would often wax philosophy, which she was surprisingly conversant in. Being six years older, he knew that she'd be starting her proving soon, although she seemed so confident in the outcome and never seemed to train for it.

What was the proving? It was a rite of passage for younglings at the age of 13, where they climbed the mountain, following the instinctual call all younglings had. They'd be gone for days, sometimes, even weeks, but once they came back down they were officially recognized as adults and full members of the tribe.

"Aren't you scared?" He once asked her once as they gazed at the sunset, from a treetop

"About?"

"The proving is a few months away," Ward said, "the other younglings from your generation are all busy training and practicing."

"It's basically a trial of survival," She shrugged, "And no one's better at surviving than me. I even have the scars to prove it,"

"But what if you're not ready when it comes?"

"Then I'll be dead and we'll know I wasn't as ready as I thought I was," she smirked, "the thing all these other younglings don't get is that no amount of training and practice is going to prepare us for what we are going to face, our fate is in the hands of the ancients; only they decide whether we're worthy to live or not."

That was a pretty bleak outlook, but upon further thought, Ward decided it suited her to a T, she wasn't the kind of person who would fret over the future, she liked to let things fall where they may, in other words; she was lackadaisical... she was also a huge tease, but he digresses.

Months later, Scarlet, along with a few dozen other younglings of her generation, began their proving and left for the mountain. Ward remembered seeing her off, the confident and unworried look in her eyes as she blew him a kiss before she and her peers disappeared into the forest.

It wasn't for another four days that the first of them returned, and as time went on, more and more of them came back. There was always a certain amount of risk to kyn during the proving, they could get injured, go missing or even die, that was why it was usually preferred that each youngling spends at least a year to prepare for whatever they would face.