A little bragging.

I am to some, most even, a legend.  Each story billowing larger in the retelling, and there are many stories.  Most of them are based on something true.  Most of them leave out the good parts.  I grew to fame as they say.  Killing a wyvern isn't actually that hard though.  Most of the men I grew up with would have come out alive.  Back in the blackened forests beasts like that don't deter the people who live with worse breathing down their neck.

No, wyverns are small creatures.  It was only one, not five or ten like some people say it was, not did I escape unharmed, barely breaking a sweat.  There was a long scratch running down my abdomen for a year or two afterwards because I was careless and didn't bring a real weapon.  I had to use a skinning knife, though it was sharpened exquisitely.  They storytellers never play up how fastidious I am with keeping things maintained, though honestly, I can't blame them.  It fits their style to make me out to be going from one thing to another without a care, and there is certainly no time to be sharpening swords or washing blood and ichor out of a shirt.

Anyway, the reason it went into the stories was the girl.  I figured she was just some farm girl who got lost out there in the woods.  Every so often one of them ignores her pa's warnings and comes flower picking or sees a glint of fireflies that seems quite inviting and mysterious.  At least, that was what my parents would say to me.  I hadn't actually seen one before.  I was only twelve at the time, and I hadn't been let to go roam around by myself for longer than around a year by then.  Turns out she was a princess.  Again, I stress that I wasn't really in on the outsider customs at that point, certainly not at the level I am now, or when I talked a duke into playing cards with me with his land at stake.  Don't tell anyone about that one by the way.  He wouldn't like it coming back around to embarrass him, and I like visiting in the summer time.  He has the most delightful gardens.

Anyway, I say this because it would be obvious to you that a girl in silk trappings and glittering with jewelry from ear to toe would not normally be mistaken for a farmer.  Also the reason the wyvern wanted to snatch her up and take her to his nest.  Large flying lizards are like crows in that respect; they really can't resist the shiny stuff.  There was this one time where I tricked on using a gold plated box and. . .ok, not so relevant, I admit.  Just ask for the tale of the twisted tree in the white forest some time if you want to hear it.  There's a lot more to it than you might think, and they get it pretty accurate.

Anyway, I'm walking through the woods, looking around for a deer my dad had sent me out to drag back to camp, and I hear this high pitched scream.  I look up.  Shiny, pink and white, and all flailing in a wyvern's claws.  Wasn't hard to track it to the nest, especially since we forest folk tend to make a point of knowing exactly where wyvern nests are.  It helps when you need some new steel or start losing metal objects.  The trick was getting there before it gets tired of dragging her back into the nest and just stabs her in the gut.  For her sake, it was a good thing I was a fast runner.  Her belly was mostly intact and her arms were only a little slashed up by the time I popped my head up over the edge of the nest sitting in one of the long-armed trees.