The Alagaësian Mosaic
By Rey

Rating: Soft-R
Warnings: implied character death, sensitive topics related to death and revenge
Genres: Action, Character Study, Family, Horror, Tragedy
Timeline: the first year of the Dragon Wars
Location: outside of Teirm
Characters: Anurin, Beleth, Blödhgarm (by other name: Mírden), Eragon I, Erisdar, Gilderien, Kuthien, OCs, Rhûnön, Vándil, Wyrden (by other name: Aelfen), Yaela
Point of View: First-Person Limited: Eragon I
Prompt: Black

Author's Notes: There is too little information about the Dragon Wars and the life (and possible death) of Eragon I and Bid'Daum. You may consider this AU, but I would rather consider it my version of gapfiller for canon, myself.

1. The Dead Land

The land before me is no longer recogniseable: charred and black and dead and smelling both like brimstone and ashes.

Or perhaps, I am just smelling all the bodies that were burnt by the dragons here.

The living bodies – and one of those defenders was my mother.

The ground is still hot beneath the thin soles of my leather shoes. The black, ashy land before me is still steaming with greyish fume.

My mother was here, is here still, unrecognisable and inseparable from the other billions of charcoal particles.

She and many other mothers – and some of the fathers – chose to be here, in our old encampment, to head off a major attack from the dragons, to save the children – me – us – and to ensure that the rest of our people could flee to a better, more defendable, more hidden place.

They are all dead now: just patches of black, smoking dust spread on this black, smoking – no-longer-vertile – soil.

Anurin, Alesa, Solion, Devonid, Argeceila, Eilas, Yaela, Aelfen, Mírden, Sifrea, Sélys, Edrien, Erisdar, Kiamordí, Eldanvír, Izlaerin, Vinnás, Visíra, Vándil, Yuviel – they are all keening silently, they are all little children like me, they are all by my side, we are all here.

My throat vibrates. My own keening voice joins the chorus.

Wrapped and clinging round my left leg, Aya – Ervaya, my little sister – is for once silent; just five years old, a baby, and already without her mother.

I would prefer chasing her up and down the hilly forests and in and out of the caves and hollows than enduring such a solemn silence, such a deep grief, from such a small child.

And it was all because of the dragons.

I ball my fists, wish to be angry, wish to take revenge –

But I cannot.

We have not been entirely faultless. And what use will it be, returning violence with violence – returning fire with fire?

Only ashes on the ground, on the dead land, on the land of the dead.

Eyes on me: sharp eyes, heavy gazes: from my either side, from my back – my remaining family aside from Second-Sister Ervaya: Father, Second-Aunt Rhûnön, First-Brother Kuthien, Second-Brother Lethion, First-Sister Alenya, and her mate Not-Brother Beleth.

"This must be stopped." First-Brother Kuthien: hissing, venomous, intense: like mixing fire with water.

"They shall regret it. None of them shall be alive by the end of this season." Second-Brother Lethion: growling, vowing, spitting: like a hungry, crackling flame.

"Weapons. We need weapons to defeat them. We need to defeat them. Mere spears cannot contest with their unnatural abilities." Second-Aunt Rhûnön: passionate, but too calm, unnerving: like an inferno ready to blow up.

First-Sister Alenya is panting, choking, gagging, unable to say anything; and even Not-Brother Beleth is in a similar state. (But of course, Mother loved him as though he were her own son, and he adored her with just as much fervour.) But words are indeed not sufficient to describe the roiling heat of incinerating emotions that I can feel – that I am feeling – coming out of their presences.

I imagine that it might be similar to what Mother and her fellow 'decoys' were experiencing where I am standing now.

I gag and choke, but nobody seems to notice.

Not even Father, and he stands right behind me, with his arms wrapped round himself as if he were chilled, and I can sense nothing from him, as if he were a void – the point after implosion from extreme heat, colourless and smelling of burnt things, like one of First-Brother Kuthien's experiments.

Void and black and exhausted by burning, like the land here now.

The dead land.