Hellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Earth!

I am SO, SO sorry for the sabbatical! Needed to clear my head after the exams. Ok, admittedly, I took my sweet, sweet time doing it, but I'M BACK, BABY!

Ok, first off, this is a relatively short chapter, compared to what you're used to from this story. I'm trying to organise my thoughts for what's coming up, as well as way off stuff that affecting the story. Suffice to say, there are a lot of surprises in store!

Oh, and second? Thank you so much for all the support! You guys do realise this is my second story, right? I'm not sure you're looking in the right place for a seasoned author.

But joking aside, thank you for supporting and putting up with my incessant impulse to make half of the story unreadable. And yes, I am talking about the paragraphs of death.

Onwards!

'Is it safe?'

'It is the safest place in these parts. We will be well guarded.'

'For Eragon's sake, I hope you are right, Gandalf. He has not woken yet. I fear whatever foul spirit put him under this curse, its desires have not been fully thwarted.'

Leaving the conversation there, Saphira glanced back, examining his limp body.
Same pale face, same unseeing eyes, shivering in the cold night air. It had been days since the battle with Azog, and he was not getting any better.

And worse still, just as she could feel the remnants of that blackened demon festering in the back of her mind, it was growing in his, like a parasite. It just stayed there, like tar, coating her mind, muddling her thoughts, clouding memories, twisting her emotions. She was only glad that its growth in Eragon was more subdued. She had her suspicions, but nothing certain; Naergongyl, as the spirit had named himself, had spoken of a protector, a guardian.

But now wasn't the time for that. Below her, the short two-legs-round-ears and tall-grey-spirit-Gandalf were running. She shook her head. Were they running? Gandalf had sounded his usual self, unhurried if exhausted. Why was he running now? What was chasing him?
As if aware of her thoughts, a massive bear broke from the underbrush, fur ragged, and a manacle on its left forepaw. Manacle?

Snapping back, she saw the dwarves fleeing behind the oaken doors, as the bear roared at the wood, pounding, scratching, furious. Watching impassively from above, Saphira circled amidst the clouds, waiting for the creature to leave. It disappeared into the forest, blending with the black boughs.
Settling in the large garden, she glanced back, gazing at her partner's limp frame. Naergongyl had healed the cut in his neck, but it was painfully obvious how weak his body was. Pale, bruised, still. The old fear flickered in the darker corners of her mind. She dismissed it.

Staring up longingly at the sky, she watched the sun pour gently through the rustling trees, painting the green of the garden in orange, like gentle fire.
Against the silence of the evening, voices whispered on the wind, suffusing the air with memories. Memories she had forgotten to the dangers of this new land.
'You don't know? Ha! There's a fine jest. It's not because of you. It's because of her.'
'You have grown to a fine adulthood. Do you remember this place?'

She shook herself from those thoughts, ridding the memory of the men that had spoken them. If they even could be called such anymore. Quietly, the oaken door shut, drawing her attention. There, between the pillars, four of the Halflings were cowering, peeking out from behind the beams that supported the lengthy porch.
'I will not harm you, friends. If you wish to speak, you may speak in the open air.'

The four slowly sidled from behind the wooden obscurance. Fíli, Kili, Balin, and Bilbo, she noted, staring at each in turn. Quietly, the blonde of the group piped up.
"We just want to say thank you… on behalf of everyone. Thank you for saving us."
She paused, examining them again, drilling deep through their eyes. She relaxed her gaze.
'It is of no consequence. Like many we knew, you fight for what should be. I wish to thank you, also.'

Fíli was rendered speechless. Indeed, they all were, as none could understand the reason. Bilbo's voice was heard against the silence.
"But…why? What did we do for you, for Eragon?"
'You accepted us. That, in itself, is truth to our existence.' She said, before continuing. 'It proves that we are still needed, whether it is here or elsewhere.' She fell silent, gazing at the soft sky, scarred with white clouds, burning away slowly in the sun's last shreds of light. The four fell silent also, ruminating in the chill air, knowing there was more they wanted to say, but they did not know the words to express it. Finally, Balin found his tongue.
"Will he be well?"
She glanced over solemnly, gaze downcast.
'I can only hope so, Balin. But it seems that there are unseen hands at work in our favour. I have faith that he will heal in time.'

If he will ever, she added privately.

They nodded, mulling over the new information with no little curiosity. Who was Saphira referring to? The spirit that had possessed her rider's body? Balin made a note to himself to question Gandalf on the matter.
"Is there nothing we can do? Surely there is some cure."

Saphira snorted at that, the ridge over her left eye rising slightly before her expression returned to something more sincere.
'You heard Gandalf as clearly as I did, Balin. The physical injuries have been healed. It is the wounds upon the mind and the soul that have yet to close.'
An involuntary shiver ran up her back, rattling her scales like a wind chime in the gale. She was scared, yes; she feared for Eragon's safety, for his health, for the soundness of his mind.
But this was a more primal fear. This was something else entirely.
Already, she could feel the cold encroaching on her lungs. It burned cold, raging in a feverish heat against her own spirit.
The fear of corruption. The one thing Saphira thought she would never feel.

It terrified her.
'It will seem like nothing at first, a mere presence in the darker confines of your mind. But it will spread. Slowly and surely, it will gather pace. And if too late, you will be overcome. Sauron seeks your strength as his own, a weapon in the war to come. I can save you, but it must be in person. You know wherein I dwell.'

Deep down, she knew the spirit's words to be true. The darkness in her mind crept ever closer to her mind, to the seat of her soul, minute by minute. A part of her, the rational part, wanted to fly away, to seek Naergongyl's aid, to purge herself of the corrupting tar. But she couldn't bear the thought of Eragon waking, finding her gone, left to assume the worst.

'Enough! You know full well he wouldn't think that. He would be worried, undoubtedly, but he would never believe you abandoned him.'
Even so, as she repeated that mantra to herself, the tiniest seed of doubt wormed its way into her mind.
"Saphira?"

Shaken from her internal argument, she regarded the four Halflings, banishing the fear from her mind. It was best for them not to see it; With Eragon in such a condition, and the revelation of Azog's survival, they needed all the morale they could get.

'Tell Thorin I am thankful for putting aside his animosity. Also remind him that if he means to attempt anything against us, my offer to hang him over Mount Doom and drop him into lava still stands.'
Baling simply stood there, an unreadable tightening of the lips the only indication of humour, while the two brothers were somewhere between side-splitting laughter and wide-eyed terror.

'They so easily forget the obvious; I am still a dragon, after all.'
All too soon, though, the humour bled from the air, leaving the five in a silent garden, with nought but the rustling of the leaves and the moaning of the wind to remind them that it was the dead of night.

One by one, the halflings crept back inside, Fíli and Kíli shivering in the cold night air, despite the thick clothes that covered them. Eventually, only Balin remained.

'Are you not cold?'
It isn't so bad when you get to be my age. Things like heat and cold…they remind you that you still live, and you can still act." A drawn look impressed itself on his features. "I only hope to see the day we can live in Erebor once more."
In her chest, the flame that burnt within her leapt in sympathy.
'We still owe you an explanation.'

Balin's only response to that was laughter.
"That is unneeded. I always had a feeling about Eragon, anyhow. There was something about him I couldn't quite understand. Still don't, in honesty."
He could almost feel the raised eyebrow at that statement.
'And our little encounter in the Trollshaws?'

"I knew then that something was afoot between you two." He replied, notes of humour still threading their way through his voice. "Something didn't sit right about the way he acted, put against the way he talked about dragons." Baling shrugged. "Forgive the ramblings of an old dwarf; the night air always makes me reminisce."
Saphira accepted the apology without further reply, her focus already turned inwards, back to the raging flames of her internal struggle with the infection of that which had once been Mairon.

/

"Why must we part, beloved? The shadow is gone: Arda is safe once more. Stay with me, and watch the world grow and flourish. We will live in the great trees of Lindórinand, and remember the splendour of the forests of Valinor."

"I cannot, dear one. I love you dearly, more than the light of the two Trees, and their memory. But I cannot. I cannot linger with you. Though I know, even if you were to die, you would return, but I cannot bear the thought."

"So stay with me, and make our lives well-lived, so that we are regretless when Mandos finds us in his halls."

"Urusulu, please. Stay with me."

"I cannot, Altáriel. You are still young and rash, by the standards of your kind. I know you always loved Teleporno. Stay with him, live out your days in those golden woods."

"Altáriel…"

"Please…Urusulu…"

"Peace. I weep also, Altáriel. But I must begone, to undo the wrong of Melkor. The creatures he warped, they are what I must kill and save."

"What creatures? The Balrogs are dead, the orcs cower in the tunnels, filth that they are. What else must you do?"

"Mandënya mauyasan. Varyanye nossénya."

"And who is it you consider your kin, Urusulu?"

"You should know well, for what in form did you find me?"

"I löcéi."

"Lá. Sí mecin, Altáriel, á auta. Veluvarngwe nan. Namárië."

/

Soft morning light filtered through the wooden slats, picking the dust and pollen out in the air in little specks. Faint noises ran around the barn, jumping in the beams and walls, echoes of noisy and unmannered eating. Sprawled on a hay mound, the last sleeping member of their little group opened his eyes slowly, squinting in the bright sunrise.

Across the hall, Thorin watched with concealed interest, pretending to engage in the conversations that were running circles around the wooden table.
Scowling to himself, the dwarven prince raised the tankard of milk to his mouth, still observing the half-elf over the rim of his cup.

Although he would never admit to a living soul, Thorin… held a modicum of respect for their wood-folk guardian. Despite the way he had acted, as the days after they had left that little town in the Shire, he had found a small part of him warming up to the elf.
He certainly hadn't guessed things went this deep, though.

Sighing internally, he set down the tankard, watching him stumble gracefully (how the elves managed their gracefulness, that was beyond him), onto the table in the barn, sitting down, eyes vacant.
Watching carefully as his nephew passed over a tankard, Thorin cast an appraising eye over this mysterious member of their group.
He had found the elf's claim of killing dragons frankly absurd, but there was something that stopped him shy of declaring the elf a fraud.

The eyes.

They were the eyes of a being haunted by ghosts of their past, something Thorin knew all too well. In his younger days, he had had little motivation to fight. He enjoyed sparring against the guard, but that was it. He certainly didn't think he would have been fighting for his life against Azog outside the gates of Moria, his grandfather's head thrown at his feet.
But, if that was something the elf before him had seen… he couldn't well label him a coward.

So he had said nothing, merely watching to see how the elf acted; how he interacted with dwarves, how he fought.
He had been pleasantly surprised by the elf's fighting abilities, being able to hold off both Fíli and Kíli, at once, with only a dagger.

The vision still amused him immensely; his two blood-kin, piled on the ground in Rivendell, sporting bruises all over, and stripped of all weapons, daggers of many makes scattered around the training ground, evidently useless against the superior Elda.

After they had left, he hadn't honestly given Eragon much thought, and the chaos in the goblin tunnels didn't help.
But between the encounter in the Trollshaws and the battle on the cliffs, he knew Eragon was more than he appeared. That was no act of his ring; that dragon had understood him, listened to him. From that moment forward, he'd known there was something more about the elf, and he was determined to find it out.

And with the displays against Azog, with the flaming sword and the tree roots, Thorin was ever more convinced. As it stood, he had half a mind to demand the truth from the elf then and there, courtesy be damned.

If it wasn't for the dragon.

He refused, on principle, to use the beast's name (the fact that it was female made the situation worse; A female drake? As far as he knew, Smaug was the last dragon alive. He didn't need drakelings all over the land, swarming the Blue Mountains.).

But, he had to admit to himself… she was certainly a fierce one. She had threatened to toss him into Mount Doom, by Aulë's beard! The nerve!
'Stop this foolishness at once, Thorin! She is a dragon!'

And yet, a part of him respected her strength. Though he thought Gandalf a fool, (a senile old coot, to quote his original comment), for trusting the drake, it was glaringly obvious that she had no love of treasure.

'A dragon without gold-lust…' he shook his head, banishing the thought from his mind. She had to be lying. She was playing them. Drakes were manipulative; he knew that.
His brewing thoughts were interrupted by a firm hand on his shoulder. He already could guess who it was.

"Do you not have an elf to be attending, Master Wizard?"
"There are more pressing matters at hand, Thorin." Gandalf replied darkly, in tones barely above a whisper.
"How so?"
"Saphira has left. She is heading for the Withered Heath."

His eyes widened momentarily before the unruffled mask slid back into place.
"And this concerns me why, exactly?"

"Because there is something far worse coming."
Something about the way Gandalf said that sent chills up Thorin's spine. Gandalf stooped, his cracked lips just beside the prince's ear.

"The Necromancer desires her. He is coming out of hiding, but by fleeing, Saphira has set his sights upon us. We must leave, and quickly."
A sudden crash drew their attention. There, at the end of the barn, the doors stood wide open, and a lone figure sprinted out the gates, framed by the overhanging branches.

None of the dwarves needed to look to see who had fled.
There was an empty tankard on the table, next to Fíli, who was currently on the floor, the bench he had been sitting on broken.
Gandalf's heart fell even more. Eragon had obviously taken off, in desperate pursuit of Saphira. But he was only putting himself in more danger by doing so.
He was wandering into Mirkwood, with nobody to guide him.

Umm...yikes.

Yeah, I kinda went overboard here. There's a lot you could glean from that italics passage, (like, for example, how Altáriel is another name for Galadriel... THE Galadriel... now doesn't that spike your interest?)

Also, on a completely separate note, who would be mad if I said I wanted Shadow of Mordor to make an appearance at some point in the far future? (Tolkien hardcore fans, I'm looking at you)

Anyway, I hoped you enjoyed this chapter! Next time, we get to see Eragon trying to not die in Mirkwood! Fun, right?

...Yeah, I need to work on sarcasm.

Have a good day!