Thanks to @armoury for the beta!

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My gaze panned over the crowd, and I couldn’t help but be surprised at the sheer variety of the people present within it. Plenty of the rich types around, like those I saw in the one area of London I visited previously, but mixed around them in their own sections are a decidedly more working-class sort, those who wore their overalls for work, and just about everywhere else they could get away with it except for church. No farmers though, that much I could have guessed without looking. Frankly, I still wasn’t sure what I was doing myself, several hundred miles away from home, on the back of a giant scaled beast, ready to fly faster than god ever intended for the amusement of a roaring crowd and the chance of prize money.

I could have rightly been considered insane, but at the moment all I cared about was making placement to the more important events so that I could actually make the money to rebuild my farm. Then, Beithir could do whatever the hell she wanted, and I could get the hell out of London as fast as a train, or possibly Beithir, could take me. But at the moment I was here, I had a wyvern as quick as a whip, and I had roughly two months of training at Morrigan’s considerable expense to back me up. Why the woman was so hellbent on lodging me I couldn’t say, but I wasn’t going to question her charity, even if I was more than a little curious about it at this point. Maybe she just hated rich Londoners?

My thoughts however, were interrupted by a very loud man with a metal megaphone held up to his lips, the same kind I’d seen travelling carnival men use in the past. His voice is joined by several others around the arena as they start to speak in sync to the crowd.

“Ladies and gentleman!” the voices echo. “Welcome to the Southern London Racing Preliminaries!” The announcer nearest to me, a crazily dressed man with a glittering gold-colored vest and equally ugly tophat, gestures to the line of wyvern riders. “The rules are simple! Our brave contestants must take their wyverns and fly through these rings in order one at a time.”

It’s all the same rules that were explained to me prior so I tuned it out. One rider at a time, go in order, if the rider hits a ring they lose a second of time, if they fall off the wyvern they are fully disqualified and they will probably be marched through the city and pelted with rotten tomatoes. Admittedly none of the people who explained the rules to me mentioned that, but with the level of importance people in this town seem to place upon these events, I would not honestly have been surprised if that was somehow part of it.

Either way, I knew the rules, and the announcers weren’t giving me any new information. So instead I just lightly rubbed Beithir’s scales and waited for the first race to begin. The wyvern riders around me were all unknown, mostly because from the moment I saw them they were all wearing their helmets, and nobody bothered giving out names beforehand either. Still, they were all impressive, colors of reds, blues, and all others on the spectrum making a dazzling display in the arena. And each had wyverns a good half-again the size of Beithir. Beithir was a small but quick beast, but where I had the speed advantage these blokes probably actually knew what they were doing.

I glanced at them, then at the rings. Each was standing on a tall pole and each ring itself was identically sized to the rest, they should fit Beithir quite easily from what I could tell from here. But the true difficulty is making some of the sharper turns around the edge of the arena. I breathed in deeply to calm down, as there was little to do but… just do it. That, and I tended to notice Beithir responded to my moods, so if I got anxious at all, she got anxious. Which was a rather poor thing for a wyvern to be when I was about to lead her through an obstacle course.

A loud cheer sounds out, and I turn my head to see that they have unveiled the timeboard over the four sides of the arena. On it are a list of names of all the wyvern riders, their times, and the order going from top to bottom that they will race in… and I was dead last, somehow that didn’t surprise me. At the very least I could watch and see what others were doing and adjust accordingly. My eyes passed over the list once more, and went wide as I read the first name, my lips moving to mirror what the announcers shout out through their megaphones.

“Crawford Bailey!”

I turn my head slowly to see a large wyvern walk forward towards the starting posts. It was bedecked in blue barding, with green trimming along the edges and a symbol printed along the side that looked rather suspiciously like a coat of arms. A green shield with a blue wyvern wing stretched across it, it billowed as the wyvern moved. Atop it was a man fully bedecked in plate to the point I couldn’t actually make out any features. But unless there are two Crawford Bailey’s running around, the man on the wyvern was the same one who helped me take care of Beithir all those months ago. Though admittedly, unless he saw my name up there he probably wouldn’t recognize me either. Beyond just the plate I myself was wearing, Morrigan had actually made me shave for the day's event.

The brief bit of annoyance I was feeling was wiped away however as a loud whistle sounded throughout the arena, and Crawford took off like a bullet. The wyvern, despite its size, was a fast one, a red streak tearing through the air as it cleared the first, second, and third rings with what seemed like nothing more than one giant leap. I studied its movements as Crawford led it through the first turn, the beast tilted slightly and pulled its wings inward, allowing momentum to pull it around and through the ring at the edge and continue on around the corner in a tight arc over the crowd that had them all cheering. Then, once it had a relatively straight path once more the wings shot back out, slamming hard against the air as it rapidly regained the speed it lost from the turn. Whenever it approached a ring it tucked the wings in, using the speed it gained to sail through it quickly, then flexed the wings out again to regain control. Over and over again as he made one complete lap through the arena. No faults, no touching the rings, the man knew how to control his beast, that much was certain.

With a loud thud the red wyvern landed back down onto the crowd, and Crawford raised his hand to wave at the crowd as his time was announced. Twenty-five point four seconds, or, in layman's terms, very fast. The question running through my mind was whether someone could get a better time by continually flying instead of tucking while diving through the rings. Beithir may have been just small enough to pull it off.

The thought ran through my head repeatedly as the next wyvern rider took off, then the next.

Twenty-seven.

Forty,

Twenty-six,

The times vary, none beating Crawford, and two riders out of the original twelve were disqualified along the way. One poor unfortunate fell off the wyvern as it tried to correct its altitude to get through a ring, the man being only narrowly saved as it came back around to catch him. The other, far more amusingly, was a case of the wyvern deciding the rings would make a good perch, and it got up on the first one then just sort of… sat there until the man was disqualified.

Which means, once all is said and done, to qualify for the actual race, I would need to get through the rings in at least thirty five seconds. Right. I could do that. My heart hammered in my chest as I got Beithir standing besides the starting posts, and I gently ran my hands down her side as I tried to calm my breathing. “Right girl, we’ve got this aye?”

Beithir softly grunted, and she turned her head to look at me. I smiled down at her, not that she could see it, and we both looked ahead. The crowd was silent except for faint chatter as I leaned forward with the reins. I couldn’t match the maneuvers of any of the previous riders, not by a longshot, I was far too new for this and trying anything too fancy was as likely to get me killed as anything else. But I had speed on my side.

Then, with a kick against her side.

We flew.

Beithir had been watching the other wyverns as much as I had been. And the moment my foot hit her side her wings slammed against the air. The takeoff was more like being thrown by an angry giant, but the speed was rocket-like as she cleared the first ring, then the second, and the third, her wings pumping through the air as she let out a happy roar. My back slammed back against the saddle, the reins going taught in my hands from the force. Beithir pulled up into the air, her training overtaking her so that when I pulled back on the reins she lifted into the air. It also meant she was hovering, and I threw myself forward and kicked my legs against her sides, forcing her forward once more as she desperately started flapping to regain the speed she lost.

I leaned forward as far as I could on Beithir, pressed my knees against her sides, and stretched my arms out to the sides holding the reins. The more air that hit me, the slower we go, and at the moment I couldn’t afford that. I pulled against them as we hit the first turn. The world went sideways as the crowd screamed in delight below us.

I tightened my grip on the reins, then let them fall slack as we rounded the corner. Beithir letting out another roar as my right foot nudged her in the side to speed up once more. Her wings, flapping wildly, only narrowly missed clipping the rings as we sailed through them. But I was grinning from ear to ear as the world blurred around us.

“Thattaway girl!” I cried out, but the wind was so loud I couldn’t even hear myself as we tore through the arena.

As we approached the second curve I yanked back on the reins once more, pulling her into a sharp turn without losing much in the way of speed. I still had to make up for the first stop, my eyes glanced towards the scoreboard, just a bit mo-

The only warning I got that I was out of position was the sudden jerk of my body as my left shoulder slammed into a ring. The second was the blinding flash of pain that erupted across my entire body, and the sudden blacking of my vision. My left arm flew widely back, letting go of the reins as I slammed back bodily against the saddle. Beithir roared once more, and I fought through my blackened vision to see her straightening out again past the curve. I reached desperately for the reins, grabbing ahold of them with one arm. The other, my left wasn’t responding to my commands to move it at all. It hung limply at my side, flopping with the winds. I ignored it, and the pain as Beithir flew through the last series of rings, and I pressed down against the stirrups to force her down onto the ground.

I didn’t start screaming until she actually landed, my working arm moving to grasp my limp one. My vision was still swimming from the impact, and I could just barely make out my time on the board as men came running up to help me off the wyvern. I had gotten middle place.

And I had just shattered my left shoulder, and I couldn't feel anything below it any longer.