Little one, there was nothing we could do, said Saphira, watching Eragon throw a stick angrily into the fire.

Yes there was! We could have grabbed Brom and Murtagh before they fell! Eragon shouted mentally at her.

What about Durza? asked Saphira calmly.

"What about him?"

He is much stronger than you, maybe even more than you, Murtagh, and Brom together, and he can use magic. Do you remember how he held me in the air so easily? Do you think you could defeat him?

"Alright, Murtagh wasn't your fault," Eragon admitted grudgingly. "But Brom was. If you hadn't suddenly turned around like that, he wouldn't have lost his grip."

I thought he would be able to hold on. After all, you managed.

"What does me holding on have to do with Brom falling off?"

...Nothing. It must have been me. She curled up and feigned sleep and steadfastly ignored all of Eragon's attempts to talk to her.


Murtagh woke up.

He was in a dark cell, lit only by torches outside. Three sides of the cell were walls of black rock, and the fourth was metal bars with a barred door set in it.

"Brom?" he asked.

There was a groan from the cell across from his, and he saw Brom lying in a corner of it.

"I hate being drugged," the old man complained.

"Hey!" came a rough voice from down the passage. "Shut up back there!"

"Make us!" Brom shouted back.

"Aren't you even slightly worried?" Murtagh asked.

"I know Galbatorix. He's good at killing things, but intelligence and imagination were never his strong points. I always got better scores on tests than him," said Brom.

From the end where the voice had come from came footsteps. A man with sunny blonde hair and a white robe decorated with intricate designs of a thread that matched his hair came to a stop in front of Brom's cell. Murtagh shrank back.

"Galbatorix," Brom said, looking like he would like nothing better than to have his hands around the king's throat.

Galbatorix let out a maniacal cackle that made Murtagh cover his ears and wince. "I'm glad you haven't forgotten me, Brom!" he boomed. Then he frowned and waved at some unseen thing, as if swatting a fly. In a normal voice, he continued, "How's your son doing?"

"Fine. If you're going to kill me-" began Brom, but Galbatorix cut him off.

"Kill you?" he asked, looking genuinely puzzled. "Why would we do that? We mean, we had you brought all the way over here. If we'd wanted you dead, you'd already be dead."

Murtagh wondered why he always said "we" instead of "I". He'd heard of third-person speaking, but this was new.

Galbatorix then turned to Murtagh. He beckoned, and a servant ran over and proffered a purple silk cushion with a large red stone resting on it.

"Hello, Murtagh. Do you mind holding this for me?" Without waiting for an answer, Galbatorix pushed the door open – a door, incidentally, that had been locked half a second before – and took the stone carelessly from the servant, then tossed it to Murtagh.

Galbatorix winced as the rock hit Murtagh's head with a dull clunk and an angry squeak came from it. The servant hurried away as Galbatorix said, seemingly to himself, "Alright, alright! I won't do that again."

Murtagh lay on the ground, stunned. He slowly sat up and rubbed his head, then looked at the stone, which was rolling around on the floor. A long crack had appeared in it.

The king frowned. "Did that crack come from when it hit your head or because you're his Rider? No matter! We'll find that out soon enough."

"What do you mean, its- Oh." A piece of the eggshell had fallen off, and a little red head was poking through. There was a scrabbling noise from inside the egg.

Murtagh had nearly fallen asleep by the time the dragon finally tumbled out of its shell three hours later.

The baby dragon trundled over to Murtagh, who blinked at it slowly, came back to his sense, and quickly backed away from it.

Galbatorix had already gotten the servant to bring a lot of raw meat down, and he threw it over to Murtagh. The dragon squeaked and stumbled over to it.

"Go on, feed him," said Galbatorix encouragingly.

Not wanting to get on the wrong side of the king, Murtagh took up one of the pieces of meat and gave it to the dragon. It was awfully cute, he thought. Not very dragonish.

When all the meat was gone, Murtagh tried petting it. He promptly fell unconscious. Brom groaned despairingly.

"Guards!" the king shouted at nobody in particular. About thirty guards seemingly appeared from thin air next to him. "Take them upstairs, to the room next to the dragonhold, and guard the window and the door." He paused, and then said, "Actually, forget the door. Just lock it. Shruikan says nobody ever escapes by the door, and it kind of makes sense. Not really."

The guards nodded frantically. They filed in, picked up Murtagh and the baby dragon (who snorted and climbed over all the guards' hands onto Murtagh, where it fell asleep) and carried them out.


Murtagh regained consciousness in a humongous white bed. Strangely, the rest of the big room he was in and all the other furniture was black. The window was open and there was a cool breeze blowing through it. There was also a warm something on his stomach, and his palm was tingling. When he looked, he saw that there was a large silver blob on it.

He raised his head and saw the red dragon curled up on his stomach, snoring peacefully. He poked it, and it wriggled and blew a few puffs of smoke. Murtagh felt annoyed, although he didn't know why, and prodded it again. The dragon snorted irritably and opened its red eyes. It stood up, stretched, and yawned, showing lots of little white fangs, before it leaped gracefully off the bed.

Someone knocked, there was the sound of a key turning in a lock, and the door opened before Murtagh could say "Enter".

Murtagh hastily grabbed the lizard off the ground and hid it under the blankets. The dragon gave a little peep, but otherwise didn't protest against being stuffed unceremoniously under the covers.

Murtagh could only stare. The girl looked to be maybe a few years younger than him, and she was stunningly beautiful. She had gone a bit heavy on the make-up, but she had done it so skillfully that it made her look even more attractive. Her eyes were like polished sapphires; her silky raven hair fell in ripples down to her waist. Her clothes were made of the same purple fabric as Dusk's clothes, but the two girls' styles were drastically different. The girl had on a knee-length skirt and a shirt that showed some of her middle, and Murtagh would have blushed and turned away had he not been so entranced by her appearance. A silver necklace adorned her neck, with the amethysts set in it sparkling brightly despite the fact that it was evening and the room's window faced east. A star amethyst, larger than the other jewels, was in the center of the jewelery. Her body physique was just as perfect as the rest of her. Two violet wings peeked out coyly from behind the girl's back.

If Murtagh had been a normal American teenager from twenty-first century Earth, his first thought would have been, Oh. My. God. Dang, she is hot.

If Murtagh had been a writer from twenty-first century Earth, his first thought would have been, MARY SUE! Or something like that, anyways.

However, he was neither of these. He was the only son of Galbatorix's chief assistant, and therefore his first thought was, Urg.

That was his first word, too.

The girl plopped herself down next to him. "Hello," she said, giving him a winning smile. Her voice sounded like a wonderfully tuned harp, and a nightingale, and every other gorgeous-sounding thing that Murtagh had ever heard or fantasized about hearing.

"Who're you?" Murtagh finally managed to get out.

"Nuanen," the girl told him cheerfully. "What are you called?"

"Nuanen. No, uh, wait, I meant, uh, Murtagh!" he stuttered. He found he couldn't take his eyes off Nuanen.

"That's a nice name," said Nuanen sincerely.

"Thank you," said Murtagh.

"I hear you're a Dragon Rider now. Congratulations!"

Murtagh caught a whiff of the girl's scent. He didn't know whether it was perfume or not, but it didn't matter. It smelled like a mixture of all the nice-smelling flowers in the world mixed with cake and sugar and honey and morning dew and everything else Murtagh liked. It was intoxicating. "Umm, thanks." He felt as if he were missing something.

"Your dragon is red, isn't it?" Nuanen asked.

"Oh, right!" Murtagh pulled the dragon out from under the blankets. He felt uneasiness and a small bit of dislike for some odd reason, and even more strange, it was directed at Nuanan. Murtagh shrugged it off. He must be going mad. "Yes, it is red," said the Rider stupidly.

"It's gorgeous," gasped Nuanen. "Not to be mean to Shruikan, but red scales are much prettier than his black ones." The dislike immediately vanished and changed to content and pleasure. Murtagh realized that it must have been the dragon's thoughts he was feeling. "Have you given it a name yet?"

"Err, uh, no, not yet," said Murtagh. Then, not wanting to disappoint Nuanen, he added, "I was thinking maybe Thorn."

"Thorn? I don't think it fits," Nuanen said, and the dragon squeaked in agreement.

"Oh, then, uh." Murtagh began wracking his mind for a suitable name, which was made harder because Nuanen was looking at him the whole time. Finally, he found one that he thought fit. "Talos." He had heard it before from somewhere, but he wasn't sure where.

"Talos is a type of cactus," stated Nuanen, staring strangely at him. Then she smiled again. "But it does have a nice ring to it. And at least this is the entire cactus and not just one thorn."

The newly-named Talos purred.

Nuanen stood. "I just came to see the two of you," she said brightly, walking over to the door. "His Majesty told me that you don't like him, Murtagh, and that he had to send Durza out to capture you. But I'm sure that you'll soon find that this is the good side, and that the Varden rabble are just a large group of angry people who don't like the way the King and Shruikan run the Empire. King Galbatorix doesn't want to force you to do anything, really, but he will if he has to."

She opened the door and slipped out, saying, "Good-bye, Murtagh. We'll see each other again soon, I'm sure." Then she gave him another smile before the door was closed and locked, leaving behind a very confused Murtagh and a little red dragon named after a cactus.

A day after his meeting with Nuanen, the door was unlocked.

That in itself was nothing remarkable. After all, it could just be a servant taking out the food tray. Murtagh glanced back at the platters piled high with all sorts of good food. He had barely finished half. Talos had been eating just as well, and he had already grown to Murtagh's waist. What were they putting in there?

A servant did indeed come and take away the tray. But the door was not locked behind him, and that was strange. In the evening, when a huge dinner had been set down on the large table in the center of the room, the door was still not locked.

Murtagh was unable to eat any more than a single plate, but Talos ate just as much as he had had for lunch. The dragon was going to be taller than him in the morning, Murtagh thought.

Finally, when the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon and the plates had been taken down to the kitchen, Murtagh stood and declared, "I'm going to explore."

He had been to Galbatorix's castle before, of course, but he hadn't explored back then. Anyways, the door hadn't been locked for half the day already, and that meant that either all the soldiers and servants had suddenly decided to play a game of poker down in the dungeons (which Galbatorix would of course kill all of them for) or Galbatorix wanted him to leave the room. The latter was more likely.

Talos stood and stretched, yawning, then followed Murtagh out of the room. All the rooms and hallways and doors were designed for beings slightly larger than Shruikan, so that dragons of nearly any size could wander through the castle with ease. Relatively, anyways. There were bound to have been dragons bigger than Shruikan before he went and killed all of them.

The first place the two checked out was the room directly to the right of their own. The circular door was stone, and after a lot of grunting and heaving, Murtagh finally managed to roll it into a cavity in the wall designed specifically for it.

The room was huge. Absolutely huge. There was no ceiling, but panes of glass attached to the tops of the walls were folded in a corner. A lever underneath them showed that they could be extended to cover the room in bad weather. Dragon-sized moss- and cloth-lined hollows dotted the room. A large bin near the door had a few haunches of fresh meat in it. Lots of large windows were set into the walls. Obviously, the place was the dragonhold.

I was wondering when you would leave your room. Murtagh and Talos both jumped at the voice.

"Who's there?" Murtagh called.

A huge black dragon rose up from the shadows in the back corner. How he had managed to hide was a complete mystery. Shruikan stretched his wings, which weren't even close to spanning the width of the hold, then folded them close against his body. He walked over and hooked his claws around a small iron ring in the side of the door, then easily pulled it closed again.

Murtagh, Talos, said Shruikan, inclining his head to each of them in turn.

Talos bumbled over to the other dragon, ignoring Murtagh's cry of, "Careful!"

Shruikan said, sounding amused, Did you think I would hurt him? Talos curled up next to the older dragon.

After a moment of hesitation, Murtagh admitted, "Yes."

Really? Goodness, Murtagh, I wouldn't hurt a hatchling. Talos is a terrible name, by the way. It's like calling him Cactus, except worse, because it's only one type of cactus.

"He liked it," Murtagh muttered.

He's less than a week old, said Shruikan, rolling his eyes. He likes everything. You could put a rhinoceros in front of him and he would go to sleep.

"A what?"

It's like a large grey pig, except with a horn and a temper, Shruikan said. Anyways, Galbatorix is in the throne room. You know where it is. Talos will stay here with me.

He didn't know, actually, but Shruikan said it in that tone of voice that said that was a fact and he had better not argue with it, so Murtagh didn't.


We landed on the shore. By we, I mean Pigeon and me.

"What do we do now?" asked Pigeon.

"We wait," I responded, looking out at the waves. There was that familiar salty smell. I'd been to the ocean before, I just couldn't remember when.

"Why're we waiting?"

"Dunno. It just sounds cool."

"Huh?"

"Also, something unexpected is going to happen tonight," I told him.

"What? And how do you know?"

"Not sure what, but I just know. Whenever we the important characters decide to wait while on some dangerous and epic journey, something will happen in the middle of the night. Read fanfiction much?"

"No, I like Youtube more."

"You suck."

After a long pause, I said, "Hiz. Youz wannaz practize magicz?"

"Sure."

"Mez firstz. Deloiz reizaz!" As expected, nothing happened.

"I think you should get rid of the Z's," commented Pigeon.

"Oh, shut up. Deloi reisa!" I broke through the glass orb at the back of my mind, and black light burst out. A clump of sand in front of me rose up into the air. With a flick of my hand, I sent the floating sand out into the ocean.

"Deloi reisa," said Pigeon, his face screwed up in concentration. When nothing happened, he repeated it, and an almost invisible grain of sand slowly wobbled into the air, then dropped back down.

"Is this all we can do with magic?" I asked, frowning. "A bit useless, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Hey, I know! Let's experiment! Deloi!" A small patch of sand began glowing black. How does something glow black?

"Deloi is something to do with sand and dirt," Pigeon stated, in the same way one might declare that they had managed to build a rocket that could travel at the speed of light.

I rolled my eyes. "Nah, of course it doesn't. And that means reisa's rise or something. And I know another word, slither or something, and then there was deja vu. No, wait, it was slytha and deyja. Oh, and there was letta too."

"Do you know what they mean?" Pigeon questioned.

"Not really. But slytha's got something to do with fainting or something, because right after Durza said that, Saphira and I both kinda collapsed. And deyja, well, after Fritos said it, some random guy died. And everyone uses letta on me! I've heard it enough to know that it means stop."

"Deloi, reisa, slytha, deyja, and letta," muttered Pigeon. "Sand and dirt, rise, faint, die, and stop."

"That's about it," I said, nodding. "Still rather useless, but maybe we can play around with them."

To put a rather long story short, we experimented all the way until nightfall. Turns out that I can do virtually anything with just those five words. Pigeon can't though; he can only make random things die and sleep and fly and stop and he can make sand and dirt glow. We figured out that slytha actually means sleep and deloi is earth, and that made everything a lot easier.

I managed to start a fire with reisa, but I nearly blacked out from it, which sucked. But at least I had figured out how to bend the rules properly. See, as long as something is related, however remotely, to the word you're using, it works. I could probably made a diamond with slytha if I tried. Ooh, I just figured out how to make oil with deyja! There goes our energy problem.

We slept early that night, tired as we were from our little experiments.

As predicted, something vaguely exciting happened at exactly midnight. Actually, I'm not sure what time of night it was, but it was probably midnight.

Anyways, Pigeon and I were woken up by the sound of someone repeatedly farting.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

I jumped to my feet and shouted at the sky, "Kindly refrain from passing gas on this side of the mountains, will you!"

An incredulous voice called back, "Dusk?"

I groaned. "Not you again! I wanted an Eragon-free trip."

Saphira landed with a thud next to us. Pigeon sat up groggily, rubbed his eyes, blinked a few times, then shrieked and tried to fly away. I grabbed him before he could do anything stupid.

"Hi, you two. What're you doing here by this stupid little beach?" I asked them. Then I looked back at the charred pile of driftwood that had been our fire and, just to show off, said, "Reisa." The wood caught on fire, and I staggered slightly from the sudden loss of energy.

When I turned back, I saw that Eragon had dismounted and was gaping at me in disbelief. "I'm not going to ask you why you're here," Eragon finally recovered enough to say in a strangled voice, "or who the other person is. All I want to know is, where did you learn to use magic and how did you just light a fire with reisa?"

"Oh, an elf with anger issues taught me to use magic," I said brightly, "and lighting a fire with rise is actually pretty easy, but since you don't have awesome hacker skills, you can't do it. I'm actually pretty sure that I'm the only person in Alexander who can do it."

"Alexander," Eragon said flatly.

"Yeah, here."

What do you mean, 'elf with anger issues'? asked Saphira.

"I meant an elf with anger issues. And Pigeon, will you stop trying to fly away already? Saphira's perfectly harmless, she wouldn't hurt a fly," I told him, receiving a warning growl and a glare from Saphira. "Well, you wouldn't," I said to the glowering dragon. "You don't hurt flies; you only go for the deer and the soldiers."

"What. Is. That. Thing?" Pigeon demanded, pointing at Saphira with the hand I wasn't holding on to.

I rolled my eyes. "'That thing' is a dragon, dear little Pigeon. And you really shouldn't insult her either, I think she's a bit touchy at the moment."

That I am, said Saphira, curling her lip at me slightly. Pigeon jumped and tried to take off again, but I gripped his hand tighter.

"Knock it off," I snapped. Then I turned back to the two of them and asked, "So, what're you doing here? We're going to Bone Guard."

"So are we," said Eragon, looking surprised.

"Great, why're you two going there then?"

He flinched when I said "you two". "Ajihad...told us to," he muttered hesitantly, looking down. He was obviously looking for chances to angst. I wasn't going to let him.

"When're we leaving?"

"What? Oh, umm, we were planning on tomorrow morning," said Eragon, startled. Ha, try angsting now, Eragon.

"Alright. G'night." I promptly fell onto the ground and started snoring.

Morning came way too quickly. Eragon shook me awake, and I sat up, grumbling. Pigeon was swimming, and I couldn't see Saphira. Then her head appeared right next to Pigeon, and he gave a frightened shriek and leaped into the air.

I yawned, then slurred, "We leaving?"

"Yes," said Eragon. Saphira trotted over to us and crouched down so Eragon could climb onto her back.

"Great. Hey, breakfast?" I asked hopefully.

"Err, we have fish," he said. He rummaged around in his near-empty supply pack and pulled out a little pouch of dried fish, then tossed it to me. I dumped it all into my mouth almost at the same time I caught it and handed the pouch back before Eragon had even registered that I'd eaten the fish. He took it uncertainly and stowed it into his pack.

"Let's go then." And we took off.

The first half of the day went fine, if it was a bit boring. We could already see the island as a little dot on the horizon, and I figured that we should be able to get there around the next morning, really early. And when I figure something, it's always right.

Evening was when things started going wrong. Well, for them anyways. Nothing ever goes wrong for me.

A really strong wind suddenly came from the direction of the island and blasted all of us back. All I could hear was the roar of the wind (or it might have been Saphira), and then the wind was gone. I flipped onto my back, still flying forwards, and checked out whether Pigeon and Saphira and Eragon were all right.

Turned out they weren't. Strangely enough, the wind around me had vanished, but it was still pushing the other three back. Weird island. I guess it liked me.

Then there was another blast of wind, and it sent them hurtling back towards the mainland. I seemed to be the only one that had figured out that the island didn't like them, so I called with my mind, Mainland! Now! Shove it! I'll see you guys later!

I was pretty sure that they all wanted to protest, but trying to resist the wind was draining all their concentration. Despite their efforts, they were all blown back.

I snorted, turned, and continued on my merry little way.