Battle of Burning Plains
Blood arched high above Alice's head as she sliced through a man's chest and whirled around slashing and stabbing, blindly killing anyone in her path. Her face and hair were drenched with blood that dripped into her mouth, leaving a salty burning taste. Rage at Murtagh's death burst out of her, forcing her blade onwards into the bodies of nameless soldiers.
She stopped. The soldiers encircling Alice looked at her stunned. Blood dripped from her sword and her hair was also damp. She screamed and launched blindly into the soldiers turning into a wolf; ripping off a man's arm with her teeth and slicing a man's throat with her claws, watching the blood pour onto her fur as he gasped for air. Alice screamed again as memories of Murtagh flooded into her mind, floating in front of her eyes until she was blind to all but the red of the soldiers' blood and the lost face of her friend. Alice heard someone shout her name but she didn't care, she kept slashing and closed her jaws around the back of a man's neck, snapping his spine. She felt someone grab her around the middle and pull her away from the battle back into the Varden's lines.
"If you keep that up you will kill yourself!" she heard a familiar voice shout over the noise of the battle.
Alice screamed, blood running out of her mouth. Punching the man in the stomach she ran in human form towards the Empire's ranks. Dodging the pikes that jabbed blindly at her, she embedded her sword into the skull of a magician who barely had time to turn around before the cold metal crashed through his helmet. As soon as she had done that, fifty men collapsed around her as she pulled her sword out of the mangled corpse.
"Thanks!" she shouted to Eragon who was on top of Saphira behind her
Alice ran and jumped over the numerous bodies scattered over the parched earth, picking up a shield on the way, which she threw at a man who was about to decapitate a Varden flag-boy who was too busy battling with another solider to notice. The man fell to his knees blood pouring from the wound in his head and then lay down dead still clutching his sword.
After half an hours more fighting Alice's strength had still not vanished. The Dwarves had arrived to bolster the Varden defences and the battle was going well, although now her armour was dyed red and Alice's mouth was filled with the blood of Empire soldiers. In the heart of the battlefield, Alice turned into a wolf and roared so loudly that many soldiers fled from her, and she effortlessly batted an attacking solider away, digging her claws between his ribs. Suddenly out of the corner of her eye she saw a flash of red light. Alice was distracted long enough for a solider to jab a pike into her shoulder. She howled, tore the man's head off with her teeth and spat it back out onto his lifeless corpse as her own blood began to stain her clothes. She noticed the Empire's soldiers cheering and banging their swords on their shields and following their gaze she looked up at a man on the hill from which the red flash had come from. She gasped and turned back into a human. On the hill surveying the battlefield stood a huge red dragon, it's scales glinting through the smoke that rose from burning plains, and in the distance the Dwarves carried Hrothgar away from the battle, all in shock not knowing the fate of their king.
She saw Eragon and Saphira launch into the sky and then shortly after that the red dragon and it's rider did the same. Alice had to help and so decided that the best place to kill more troops, was at the heart of the Empire's lines. She turned into a wolf and started to sprint through the lines of troops but she was slowed by the bleeding wound on her shoulder however there was no way she could get the tip of the pike out now, so it remained imbedded in her flesh. She reached the back of the Empire's lines and began to cut down men mercilessly, slashing her sword so fast that it was just a silver blur followed by a flying trail of blood. People fell everywhere whether bitten by her blade or their skin torn by her claws, but again Alice's attention wavered when the red and blue dragons flew down and came to rest not two hundred meters away from where she stood fighting.
She killed the solider she was battling and started to run up the hill, the dust and smoke coming out of the ground made her cough and droplets of blood from her wounded shoulder stood out against the desert-like terrain. She got to the top and saw Eragon and the other rider dueling fiercely under the watchful eye of both dragons. Every time the Empire's rider would try to land a blow Eragon in his new elfish form would be quick enough to parry the blow. The contest went on and on and neither could get the upper hand. Eragon managed to get a hand on the other Rider's helm and yank it off. Silence.
The world seemed to suddenly get smaller, the pressure was compressing her lungs and chest, her head felt like bursting and she felt her skull throb as she gazed in shock at the scene. Alice kept looking, her eyes transfixed as if she had died with her eyes open, yet she was dimly aware of standing and breathing. She could see Murtagh and yet it could not be him. It wasn't possible yet here he was. Had I died? Was I dead? She could see his dragon gazing at me and she was dimly aware of her mouth hanging open yet she didn't care. All she could do was absorb this impossible fact, this contradiction of death. Eragon and Murtagh were talking although Alice couldn't hear what they said over the roaring noise in her ears. She saw how Murtagh took Zar'roc and turned to leave, Alice took a step forward gazing at him and the dragon. His dragon continued to stare and then a second later Murtagh looked up, shocked, right at her. In that moment the battle vanished as the world tipped and she screamed as the cold metal of a sword made contact with the back of her left shoulder. She saw Murtagh say something and heard a solider fall behind her but even before the solider had hit the ground she had fallen to her knees, still gazing at Murtagh as her vision began to darken. She made to get up but fell face down, landing on the hard dusty earth. She felt Murtagh trying to heal her wounds with magic but rejected his attempts while simply gazing at him and the dragon. Then Alice saw him get onto the dragon and her sight started to darken. The last thing she heard was Murtagh's voice echoing in her head. I'm sorry. Quieter. Sorry. Quieter. Sorry. Silence.
She awoke in the dark, staring at the inside of a tent. Images flashed before her eyes, Murtagh when she had first met him, the red dragon, her escape from entraebaen, seeing the light in Tergar's eyes die as one of the twins stood and laughed over him, Murtagh being taken away for refusing to let his mind be inspected, Eragon yanking off his helm at the battle and Angela bending over her shaking her shoulders…
"Alice! Wake up! Alice!"
Alice groaned and rolled over onto her front so she couldn't see. But to her dismay Angela persisted.
"What? What is it Angela?" She said weakly, pain shooting down the gash on her left shoulder as she lifted herself into a sitting position.
"Oh thank goodness…" Angela said, relief washing over her face. "…You were tossing and turning so badly I was scared you might break the scab…" Angela made to smear an oily, vile-looking ointment onto Alice's shoulder but she quickly jumped away from her.
"No!" Alice said loudly and scrambled away from Angela and before she could stop her, she raced out of the tent.
She didn't know where she was going she just ran, weaving through tents that housed weeping women and dying men. Stretchers lay everywhere, bloodstained and straining under the weight of their injured burdens. She kept running, the edge of the Varden's camp fast approaching. Alice ran past the shouting guards that tried to stop her and dodged one who tried to tackle her. She ran, dust gathering around her feet as she made her way swiftly onto the Burning plains, the pungent smell of the gas that seeped through cracks in the earth filling her nose. She caught her foot in one of the cracks and fell on her knees, grazing them. She staggered up again and continued on her way, falling a few more times before she finally got to the hill. She crawled to the top following the now dark red stains of dried blood… her blood…Dust stung her eyes and burnt her throat. She stared at the spot where Eragon and Murtagh had battled and a lump formed in her throat. She staggered to the place were Eragon had unmasked Murtagh; the foot prints were still in the dust along with the occasional slash were a sword had hit the ground. It struck her that as Saphira had a name so must the red dragon that Murtagh rode but although it was an exciting thought she kept being cruelly reminded that Murtagh and his dragon were slaves to the Empire. Alice knew they would never have sworn allegiance willingly. Galbatorix must have guessed Murtagh's true name and using this knowledge enslaved them to do his will.
She wasn't sure how long she stood there watching the sun sink beneath the horizon, silently crying as the pain in her shoulder accumulated until it became too much and she passed out where she was kneeling, dust swirling around her in a storm.