Red's Ten - Elared - E'red

Elared / Ered

Age 17, archer/hunter

The Little Bastard Lordling, as his stepfather called him, was a force to be reckoned with anywhere but that man's presence. Elared would have been a great inheritor of the Hold. He was bright, pretty well educated and could read better than most in the Hold. He was good with numbers as well, balancing payments and tithes by the age of ten sitting on his mother's lap. However he was sent outside often enough that he learned quickly where to hide if his stepfather was on a rage. Soon enough he learned how to hunt, watching and then following, and finally participating in the hunts for the Hold led by another family's men. His skills with archery were strong from the start, and would continue to serve him in the years to come.

As he grew up, and gained a reputation for being the hot-headed first-born of the Lady Ealura, he had to defend himself from the taunts not just from his own stepfather, but the others who would come to the Hold. But at the very least, he thought, let the taunts fall onto him and not his mother. She deserved none of it, and whenever Lord Rukun began one of his tirades, Elared would step in and distract him. It generally worked, and gave him a workout dodging fists or thrown items. He intercepted one aimed at his mother - a small vase that had been made for her by the then-youngest girl in her pottery class - and while staring at his stepfather intently, simply put the vase back on the mantle where it belonged. It was the first time he'd stared down the man - it wouldn't be the last.

As long as Lord Rukun had something to keep him occupied, he would not harm his wife or his own children. And as long as Elared continued to bring in wild wherry and small prey on his hunts, no one would harm Elared either. Occasionally Elared would fire an arrow into a bush and come out with a pheasant shot through the eye. If his stepfather got out of hand, he would present such a thing to the table and diffuse the situation silently. That went on for several years, but it was more recently when he grew more vocal about the Lord's actions.

The death of Lady Ealura while she birthed her fifth child came as a sudden shock to everyone. She would have had a boy, but he was lost as well in the weeks after his birth. Rukun almost literally drove away the wet-nurses who attempted to intervene, he seemed intent on losing this child as well as his wife. Things went downhill rapidly after that. Elared spent his fifteenth turnday blotting blood off his brother's lip.

When Rukun broke his little sister's arm yanking her away from her studies to get her out of the way before another Lord visited, Elared's patience - already thin - vanished. "If you want to abuse your drunken friends that way," he had growled, "that's fine - but you harm anyone in this house again, and I will kill you," Elared's hand had moved over the ever-present gutting knife he had at his hip, and tightened. Through the wails of the girl as her older sister and brother attempted to calm her enough to bring her to a healer, Elared could almost hear his stepfather's blood rising.

But he was always faster than the Lordling, never one to waste movement or project his attacks. And the fight was over quickly - Rukun nearly lost a hand, and hadn't touched Elared. The visitor was told nothing of this, the next day, though there was yet blood on the table.

So it was with great relief that the call went out for the scattered children of Ayred to come to Dragonhope Weyr. Since they didn't dare let the other children alone with him, and thankfully Rukun couldn't come along due to business pursuits, Elared and his two half sisters and surviving half brother all came to the Weyr. Even though they had what could easily be called a "good life" - it was only seen thus from the outside. And though it terrifed them all being on dragonback and thrust into a Weyr suddenly, the thought of returning was worse.

Elared begged the Weyrleader to have his half-siblings live in the Weyr. Briefly, a very strange sensation came to Elared's mind as he did so. It was fleeting, probing, it was Bhavyatath, S'xon's bronze dragon. Momentarily, S'xon turned his yellow-green eyes on the youth and nodded slowly. "I have no objection to this. I'm sure that they will be fit in with one of the other families. We have plenty of fosterlings here."

The relief that Elared gave off was quite palpable, and even S'xon had to resist pulling the red-eyed boy close to assure him he was safe now. He guessed, after hearing what the dragon had pulled from Elared's mind, that any movement toward him might spur the lad into gutting him by accident.

Though Bhavyatath hadn't searched Elared, he shortly was announced by another rider, F'stan, as being appropriate for the sands. He spent as much time with his siblings as possible before leaving for Talis. It was obvious to some that he was scoping out the potential families for his half-siblings, when he found them it was in the form of a lower-caverns man and his wife, whose own children had already grown. Since the children didn't need special care physically, they were all old enough to fend for themselves and learn more and more, the only thing that they needed now was love and comfort. Once Elared was sure they'd get it, he was ready to face the world.

At Talis, he faced no challenges about his birth, nothing about his protective nature, no one even thought twice about asking him why he was jumpy and flinched when a loud voice could be heard. But what he did face, right up close, was something unexpectedly challenging indeed. For it was on the sands, where two of his red-headed half-siblings had already Impressed, that he came face to face with ...

It couldn't be. It was a blue, or a brown... certainly big enough to be a brown dragon, by the looks of some of the others on the sands. Theurth announced he was hungry, demanded food, demanded to be led around and introduced to E'red's family... He was a black dragon. Of course, while this was quite unusual, it was hardly a stretch considering that the parents were a blue and another black dragon!

Never alone, never abandoned, though he'd surely be in danger up in the skies, there was always that threat... E'red now felt as though he could face the world down. A world of Rukuns. When they had learned to fly - the first thing that E'red did was visit his old home. The sight of a black dragon was enough to get almost everyone out of their chambers. Rukun recognized the mop of hair and careful stride as his stepson's. E'red let the man approach. It'd been more than half a turn since he and his siblings left the Hold, and he was furious at the discovery that they'd gone to the Weyr without his permission.

"We never needed permission, you filthy tunnel snake," E'red spat at the man's feet, "you broke your toys and now they've been taken away. You'll have to live with that." E'red was about to turn and head back to the Weyr, when he shot over his shoulder, "be sure to pay your tithes on time and properly, father, because you know, these dragons can be very precise about what they choose to fry."

They all knew that no dragon would harm a human, but... this black behemoth standing proudly before them didn't look like any dragon they'd ever seen.

On arriving to Dragonhope, and settling in with his big dragon, E'red celebrated with his siblings - all of them. They had different roles, both the dragon riders and his trio of much closer half-siblings. But E'red would continue to hunt and protect. And now, with his skill at archery and a spectacular dragon, he had been accepted into the Taum Pun wing, the next-generation wing led by Z'zi and his fine brown. He would fight Thread bravely, but also would be trusted to scout if they heard about any thieves or bandits in the areas near the Weyr. For who would ever see a black dragon in a night-time search?

NAME: Theurth
COLOR: Black (male)
SIZE: Large brown
PERSONALITY: Outspoken, driven, secretive
PARENTS: Blue Usharith x Black Peranth