Winter was on its way. The last vestiges of autumn hung on the trees. Hunting would become sparse after the first snow. A large buck came into the clearing, nibbling on the remaining grass. The arrow found its mark, embedding into its side and piercing the heart.
The slim figure dropped from the trees, making her way to the carcass. Slinging it over her shoulders, she began the trek home. She was on alert as she moved quickly, not wanting to waste the last light and be unable to clean her kill. When her small cabin appeared in the distance, she let out a sigh of relief. It wasn't long before she had the buck strung up and cleaned. This would feed not only her, but her neighbors as well. They needed to salt the meat to preserve it for rationing during the winter. She knew they would help her with the process.
Stepping into her small cabin, she placed the meat onto clean cloth on the table and wrapped it up quickly. The cabin wouldn't look like much to most outside the Outer Ring, but she possessed one of the better living arrangements in her small village. She had a small bed in one corner, a table pressed to another wall and a fire place to cook and heat water. Most in her village had small shacks filled with couples and families. These people worked themselves to the bone to provide for themselves, but it was never enough. So they worked together as much as they could, helping to provide for one another. Serenity, being a master archer, was able to provide meat for her village, instead of having to travel into the Middle Ring to obtain small amounts for an extravagant price.
If the prices seemed extravagant in the Middle Ring, the Inner Ring was unobtainable. Only those of noble blood and the rulers of the Kingdom of Terra, lived there in the lap of extreme luxury. It was something she and her neighbors could only dream about. King Tynan, Queen Eglantine, and Prince Endymion could not begin to fathom what it was like to live in the Outer Ring.
Serenity was about to get the chance to catch a glimpse of that unobtainable ring soon though. Looking at a paper tacked onto the wall above her table, she smiled. A tournament was to take place in 2 weeks, in the Inner Ring, including archery, hand to hand combat with chosen weapons, and horsemanship. It was an open invitation. The prize, $100,000 for each section of the tournament. She and her village could do so much with that prize money. They could build better homes, set up irrigation systems, construct barns and purchase animals to fill them. There were so many possibilities.
They had managed to scrape together enough money from selling their meager wares to other villages in the Outer Ring to cover travel costs from the Middle Ring to the Inner Ring, as well as her stay in a tavern in the Middle Ring. She would travel to the Middle Ring on foot for 5 days, before completing her journey and having one day of rest before the tournament began. There was just one catch, only men were allowed to compete.
Serenity could hardly wait.