Mmkay. So, I apologize to my Eragon readers but I had a sudden inspiration for this oneshot. It's mainly about the Mage origin (which I am obsessed with) and the troubles the warden mage, and to an extent all the wardens, experience. I'm also concerned about the rating. I don't want to be scarring young children because of the disturbing description. It may change to M. I'd be happy to take suggestions about that.
This has no purpose, no plot, but I hope everyone still likes it. R&R please. Now, if you excuse me I'm going to retreat to a bag of oreos and a pile of unread books.
From the moment that blood touched my lips everything went dark. A dark, dark purple bruise clouded my vision. The bruise was me. I couldn't move without feeling a numb, aching pain. My head throbbed to a pulsing beat. I tried to remember where I was, but could not grasp a thread of remembrance inside my clouded mind. The beat pulsed ever louder in my ears.
thump. thump. thump.
The heavy thud was coming from behind my eyelids, through my skull. It shivered its way down my spine and along my ribs. The steady pulse settled there, pushing the air out of my lungs slowly...slowly...slower...stop.
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't gasp for the life giving air to fill my lungs. I expected to faint, or to die. I waited for the violet swirls of my vision to turn black, only they didn't. The swirls solidified into a cave; a real tangible cave. More shapes came into sight and the last shreds of air were pushed out of my lungs in a bloodcurdling screech.
Hard, pointy hands grabbed my arms. I looked down to see they weren't hands, but the bones of one. I was crying and screaming. A thick, nauseating smell hit me, the smell of dying flesh. Demons, disfigured and twisted, whispered to me. They never reached for me, instead they waited for me to come to them. Faces of the reaped hovered around me, taunting me with their grins. My family, their pale white flesh reeked and their mouths were torn open into toothy smiles. Even him, he was the worst. He jumped around me in circles as the others carried me, maniacally laughing and dancing. His eyes had turned milky and he talked to me in a gleeful voice.
"How's Lily? Is she well? I love her so veeerrrrryyy much, I do." His face came within inches of mine and he smiled through shredded lips. "I love you too."
I cried out and raked my fingers across his face, but where my fingers should have met flesh they met air. No skeletal hands held me anymore; instead I was suspended in mid-air over a huge gaping chasm. Hundreds of thousands corrupted hands reached out towards me. The pulsing was back and now it was accompanied by a whispering song. Thousands of hushed voices sang, they sang to something. I looked up just into time to see that something. It was a colossal winged serpent, a dragon. Its fangs glistened with a lacquer of blood and shone in the lighting of flames that streaked from its throat. It was singing to me, telling me to jump into its flames. I was reaching, reaching eagerly for the lick of orange that seemed so close to my finger. I strained and stretched as far as I could, unwilling and willing at the same time-
Then the horror was gone, replaced by the damp canvas of my tent. My skin was clammy I could feel the tears on my cheeks and the cold sweat coat my body. I scrambled out of my tent on shaking legs into the open air. Taking in huge gasps of air I tried to rid myself of my nightmare, but to no avail. Finally I decided to get a fire started. With my thin cloak pulled tightly around my narrow shoulders I walked stiffly over to the smoking remains of the campfire. One word and the fire leaped to life, reclaiming its old niches inside the heavy, dark wood. The fire, however, brought me no warmth. I was chilled to the bone, lost in some horrid fantasy that has become the reality of my hours, awake and asleep. I leaned in close to the fire and was rewarded with a flood of heat to my face and a slight smell of burning wool.
A figure materialized from the shadowy forest, Alistair. My back stiffened and I flinched at the sound of his voice. His face was softly lit by firelight and the glow was very kind to his features. All the same it reminded me of a different face, long lost in memories.
"Wow, you're awake. I thought you'd be out for a little while longer." He said with a bit of a laugh. When I didn't respond he continued "I've been checking up on you as much as possible but...well, duty calls."
My only reply to his words was to hunch over the fire more, blocking everything from my view with cleansing, bright flames. After a long pause he walked closer to me and sat down on the opposite end of my log. I inched away from his warm body, embracing the searing heat of the flames on my face and the bite of the cold air whipping against my neck.
"It was the nightmares wasn't it?" He said with something that might have been real empathy "I had awful nightmares in the beginning, they said I would scream in my sleep. You learn how to manage them eventually though, if it's any consolation."
No, it isn't. I thought as I stared back into the fire. The crackle of the fire was the only sound, yet all the same it reminded of my dream.
Why was I so eager to obey the dragon's commands? I don't care what that Templar says, this is not normal. Then again I wasn't a normal person. After all I just ingested a near lethal dose of darkspawn blood and that will slowly kill me over the next twenty-five years. Duncan had clearly outlined the physical effects being a Grey Warden would have on me, the possible death of initiation, the coma I would fall into afterwards, the spreading corruption, the eventual suicide; but no one ever mentioned this. This is worse than all of that combined, a living hell on earth to haunt me for the rest of my waking days, perhaps even beyond.
I sighed and looked longingly up at the sky. I had spent every night since I left the tower gazing up at the stars. For fifteen years I was starved of them, and now that I could finally see them they only showed me faces. They were the faces I saw in inferno of flames, the faces that haunted shadows of the forest and smiled in the ripples of water.
After all a person doesn't have to be dead to haunt you, nor do they make themselves apparent to the world. The only way to tell is to look at their eyes. My mother once said that a person's eyes are a looking glass into their soul. The rest of them is irrelevant. Their clothes, skin, voice, the coins in their pocket, it makes no difference. Their eyes are shards of their soul placed on their faces by the Maker so that he can be reminded of the good in them. And, although I may have lost my faith in the Maker and my mother, I still hold fast to that saying murmured to me long ago on a cold winter night.
In the flicker of the firelight I could see my reflection, like a fleeting picture in the rippling pond. I was a bony, thin girl with hair like heavy gold and a fine cheekbones painted with tattoos. My ears were a graceful point, considered very elegant by many elves, but my eyes were my lasting feature. They were dead. My body was healthy and whole, for the most part anyway. It had survived the worst test one can be given, but my soul was dead. As I looked into my dead, hollow eyes for the first time in fifteen years. My eyes were like none I had seen before. Hard and fractured like broken glass, they stared unflinchingly into the faces that plagued them. I've never seen that look in anyone before. I'd never known somebody who has no fear. Then again perhaps I still didn't. That face was not my own, the heart inside was not familiar. I was broken. I was not strong or weak anymore, just broken. I've heard sayings about how bows will break if they are not flexible enough. If they cannot bend to an impact. They are too rigid, too strong. That was me. I didn't even wish to pick up the pieces.
The liars have tricked me, the thieves have stolen everything, and I was haunted. My dreams were hunted by ghosts, my ears poisoned with inaudible whispers. I have no purpose, nothing. Now, I guard what I know is lost and fight the losing battle. Why? Because that is my lot. It is the only thing I can do because, in the end, I have no other choice.