A/N: READ FIRST BEFORE CONTINUING!
Hey people! If you may have noticed (most likely not), I changed my penname to a more Inheritance oriented theme.
This isn't truly a chapter of a story, but just a quick little intro to set things straight:
My original book4, Du Gata abr du Shur'tugal, is on a little break, partly from confusion after the release of the actual book 4, but mostly from the accursed Writer's Block. If there's enough interest, I could post what I've mangled together so far, but if not, then it shall reside in the dusty vaults of MS Word indefinitely.
This fic… I hope to be a continuation/rewrite of Book 4. SOOO many people hated the ending, but in my personal opinion I thought it to be a correct, but unsatisfying, way to end the series. I wanted ExA just as badly as the rest of you, but I understood what CP was trying to do with Arya being queen and a Rider (I understand, but I hate it :P). You all know her; she could never immediately like Eragon after her mother died, and a dragon hatching and being pestered by annoying elf royalty, etc. I think the ExA is what I'll focus more on, because the rest was brilliant, even if it was a bit of deus ex machina.
I also have ideas of an Inheritance-in-real-life sort of thing, where the characters go to high school, etc. etc.
AND/OR
A fic where a reader such as myself ends up inside the story, perhaps from a random point in the book. This is mostly to cure writer's block, just as SimplySupreme had done (shameful plug, sorry, go check out her fics!)
What do you think? Please please let me know in the reviews/PM it would be greatly appreciated.
And now to keep this reading worthwhile, a random (Urû'baen? Dras Leona?) battle scene:
Roran snarled, ducking behind his shield as the soldier lunged at him with a spear. In the corner of his eye, he saw an elf armed with a thin, silvery sword leap and, in midair, cut an Empire soldier's throat open, who toppled to the ground with a low gurgle. Roran's attention snapped back to his skirmish with the soldier. Still taking cover behind his leather-padded shield, he suddenly charged, catching the soldier by surprise, and managed to knock the spear out of the soldier's hands, and crushed the man's wrist with his hammer. The soldier's face flashed with pain, but he merely grunted and drew a short sword with his good arm.
In a way, his toughness impressed Roran, especially since this wasn't one of the painless men he had gradually come accustomed to fighting.
The short sword flashed in a whirl before Roran, and he flinched and instinctively raised his shield, where the sword crashed with a solid thunk. Roran twisted his shield, hoping to knock the sword out of the soldier's hand, but to no avail, instead receiving a blow to his wrist, which would have severed it had it not been for his mail gauntlets. Eragon's wards had been depleted long ago, when a group of archers poured volley after volley at Roran, who was at the time preoccupied with a man wielding a vicious curved scimitar. Now Roran and the soldier were evenly matched, both having injured wrists and down to their close range weapons.
Roran, realizing his shield would only hinder his movements, tried to surprise the soldier by throwing his shield at him. The man jumped back as the shield crashed to the ground, and instead caught Roran off guard by kicking the shield, causing it to slide under Roran's feet as he charged, causing him to slip and fall onto his chest.
Roran gasped for breath, and he knew that in a few moments it would all be over. Not wanting to die cowering like a fool, he spun onto his back, and then rolled over again just as the soldier's blade swung downward where his neck used to be. Roran tried swinging at the soldier's ankles, but the soldier dodged the swing and leaped back. Roran rolled back on his belly and pushed up with his arms as hard as could, bringing his legs out underneath him. He managed to half crouch in time before the soldier swung at him again, almost causing Roran to toppled backwards. Almost. At the very last moment before his inertia would send him falling to his doom, Roran reached out and grabbed the closest thing he could: the soldier's hand.
The man flinched in surprise; neither he nor Roran expected this to happen. This gave Roran enough time to regain his balance, and he swung his hammer onto the soldier's blade, shattering it at the tip. In that instant Roran could see the sword in detail; it was a shortsword, plainly built with a straight crossguard and a stained black leather grip. The only decoration was an exquisitely crafted brass rose pommel.
Roran, renewing his attack, swung his hammer in flurry of blows, most of which the man evaded, after seeing his blade broken with such impunity. Frustrated that the fight was lasting so long, Roran tried a tactic that had worked several times before.
"Bah!" cried Roran.
The man hesitated in surprise for only a second, but that was all Roran needed. He jabbed the soldier in the throat with his hammer, causing the man to splutter and choke. Then with a mighty swing, he broke the man's helm as if it were dried parchment. Heaving a sigh of relief that the ordeal was over, Roran gained a brief respite as he glanced to what else had occurred in the battle.
Carnage was everywhere, from a group of twenty soldiers surrounding a Kull with their spears, to a small band of elves annihilating whole scores of men with a blinding whirl of their curved blades, in a deadly storm of steel. Roran noticed that the city was in ruins; many buildings were alight or had crumbled under the barrage of the Varden's war machines.
Roran was heartened by the success of the Varden, but he was still concerned with how much they still had to go. He cast aside these thoughts with a single burning image he was sure would never leave, even unto death.
Katrina. My child.
So whaddya think? :) I'd love some reviews on this, but feedback for the future is most appreciated.
Fanks! 8)
Argetsverd (formerly KuldrOroAurum)
