With thanks to my patrons:
Regal Eagle
In response to reviews:
Wizzer96: Thanks!
chris: Will do.
MoosHeadFamLit: Yup. Brom's passed on. Guess that you don't really have to worry about getting lung cancer when there's the Ra'zac around.
Jmchipo11: Thank you! I had to look at the form you suggested. Kinda creepy, but I think it's doable for a cameo rather than a main character if that's okay. Stargate would work, as there are similarities between the Zerg and the Goa'uld, but getting him around would be a pain, as the Overmind is technically a building. (I'm using the wiki btw.) Instead of having a humanoid form (because of my dislike for shapeshifting for Plainswalkers), how about moving around like The Blob?
XXxxxadisxxxXX: Okay. I get that not everyone's gonna like my stuff, but thanks for being civil about it.
Dragonauthor: Doomslayer/Doom Guy as a Plainswalker? I can cameo him fairly easily, and no, he isn't too over the top. And yeah, more rocking and rolling is to come!
Disclaimer: I do not own the Inheritance Cycle
Chapter 22: Arming up.
We didn't talk to anyone for the rest of that day. Brom had understood why we let him die, but we still felt guilty for allowing it to happen. We also missed him, even though we hadn't spent that much time with him. He was a good man, and a good teacher.
We buried Brom on the top of the hill, Eragon using magic to mould the sandstone into a tomb as Murtagh gently lowered Brom into it, placing his staff beside him and lying his sword on his chest, his hands holding the pommel. Amara had gone out to look for something to eat, so Saphira and I watched on as Eragon sealed the tomb and created a small spire of rock before setting runes into it.
The young Rider sank to his knees and wept there for a long time. Murtagh retreated back down to the cave after a while, leaving us free to shrink down to human size and give Eragon a hug. He clung to us as we rubbed his back comfortingly. We understood what this was like. We'd gone through it with our relatives. They were beyond our reach.
After a while, we gestured Saphira over and transferred Eragon to her. Even though we understood the overwhelming sense of loss Eragon was facing, she would know how to help him with it better than we ever could. Growing back to our regular size, we curled around the hilltop like a golden snake. We watched our charges and thought about what to do next.
"Do we just go along with the story then?" Kevin suggested.
"What else can we do?" Sparta replied. "We'll be fine with that. As for Murtagh, we need to decide what to do with him."
"Agreed." Driscol said. "The way I see it, he has to go to Galbatorix. Then he gets Thorn, and he knows the Name of Names, so he can help Eragon. We just need to decide how much we're willing to show him about us."
"The same we currently do for Eragon and Saphira." Sparta decided. "He'll see us showcase our powers, and besides we're still learning some of them. But he won't know that we're a Plainswalker."
"Do we have to let him go to Galbatorix?" Kevin asked. "I know that if we don't, then Thorn could hatch for someone else, but still. It's wrong of us to stand by and watch."
"We need Murtagh for the Name of Names and Thorn." Driscol said. "Those are the advantages he gives us. We're also going to have to train in our mental attacks and defence to be able to get through to him though. And when he gets the Eldunarí, it'll be even harder."
Sparta suddenly grinned, a glint in his eyes. "We can bug him."
"What?" Kevin asked.
Driscol's eyes widened as he realized the implications. "Sparta, you wonderful genius."
Sparta's smug grin of pride widened. "What can I say? Great minds and all that."
Driscol butted him good-naturedly. "We think alike because we're the same person, but yeah, it's a great idea."
"I don't follow." Kevin said.
"Well, young Padawan," Sparta smirked, "allow me to enlighten you. We need Murtagh, to get Thorn to hatch, and to get the Name of Names. After that, we can get him out. We won't be able to know when Murtagh gets the Name, as his mind will be heavily shielded, and every time we'll break into it-"
"Assuming we can do that." Driscol interjected.
"-Yes, that's true," Sparta acknowledged. "Anyway, as I was saying, the more times we break in to check if he knows the name, the more Eldunari Galbatorix will give Murtagh to increase his mental defense and spell strength. However, if we bug Murtagh, preferably in his sleep so he doesn't know, we can get the name from when either Murtagh or Galbatorix say it. The Eggbreaker doesn't know about electronic devices."
Kevin's eyes widened, and he smiled toothily. "Oh my God. That is utter brilliance. I guess we need to go back to Locostral then?"
"Back to Locostral." Driscol agreed.
"And can we get Jaffa Cakes?"
Driscol and Sparta stared at Kevin before we shrugged. "Why not?"
We hopped Realms the next day, leaving Amara 'on duty'. We had said to her that we had a plan, but we weren't going to share it to lessen the risk that someone could learn it through mind-hacking. She was more than a little grumpy because of that, but she eventually understood, agreeing to watch over Eragon and Saphira.
Islingr also requested to stay with Amara to oversee her breath abilities and help to fine-tune them. Honestly, with all the crap that had happened recently, we kinda forgot that she was still with us as she'd stayed pretty quiet. When we asked her why she hadn't said much recently, she replied that we had become our own best teachers, and that she knew very little of our abilities or strange biology, so she was unable to help. While that was a reasonable explanation, we were still a little miffed by her radio silence.
After we decided on bugging Murtagh the previous night, the three of us had started compiling a shopping list. We needed a bug, armour that was resistant to magic and could automatically resize to fit us, a sword for use while we were human-sized, and Kevin voted that we get a Thanos-like hovering chair, although Driscol and Sparta shot that idea down faster than we could blink. Where would we even put it?
Still, armed with our list and a lot of determination, we Rifted through to Locostral. Popping by Mount Bluepeak out of habit, we went into our room and emptied out our massive bag of stuff. The kid gloves were off, and this was war. We needed to dump some of this stuff.
In the end, we were left with our boom box, MultiForm, a couple of games, and three headsets. Those were all sorted into a small, fireproof bag marked 'Entertainment'. We didn't necessarily need this stuff, but we felt comfortable having it. Unfortunately, due to the 'Clash of the Titans', we were still on a jelly bean ban. Damn Regal and his stupid idea. Even Saphira, who didn't even know about our ban from the sweets, had refused to let us have any.
The rest of our stuff was mostly junk. There were a lot of sweet wrappers and things like that in there, but there were two or three items in there that we'd kept. The first was a small collection of golden scales that, for one reason or another, we'd lost. Then there were a few doodads that we'd found around the place, like an Alagaësian crown, which was basically a golden coin, a rusty helmet that we'd found by a long deserted campsite, and a few other things. Those all went on the shelves in our room.
There was also the infiltration robot that Spanners had built for us, as well as the transmitter/receiver for boosting the MultiForm's signal strength. We decided to take those with us to see if there were any improvements the Quartermaster could make to them.
On our way out of Bluepeak, we saw Gem and Paddles. Our Clan Leader seemed to be in more often than not these days, but seeing Paddles was a bit of a surprise. He was usually fairly diligent on protecting his Realm, only coming back to Locostral when he had to. However, he seemed severely freaked out by something, and was shaking nervously with Gem hugging him with one of her wings.
Our Clan leader looked at us and mentally said "Kraken."
"We didn't know you could speak telepathically!" Driscol said, shocked.
Our Clan Leader shrugged. "Islingr taught me every time you guys came by. I can do words and pictures now. It's more useful than I thought it would be."
Sparta smiled. "But can you defend yourself?"
"Not yet." Gem confessed. "But I'm working on it."
"Well, good luck." We said before we launched ourself out the window and into the sky.
We landed outside of Spanners' workshop and knocked on the large roller door. From inside, there was a loud clanging noise, a loud curse, and a cry of "Be there in a minute!"
We waited until Spanners rolled up the door before saying "Hi. Can we come in? We have a tech problem for you."
"Sure." Spanners said, waving us in.
At the back of the workshop was a large mass covered by a patchwork of cloth. It was surrounded by various ladders and platforms, and it smelled of oil and metal. Wondering what was under it, we slowly strolled in, careful to avoid any patches of oil or lubricant on the floor.
She closed the door behind us. "I heard that something weird happened to your brain. I honestly don't give a ****, so I'm not gonna act like anything's different. Unless you're so screwed up that my project for you won't work, that is."
"You have a project involving us?" Kevin asked, surprised.
"That wasn't why you came." Spanners said. "You're going to tell me what your problem is, and I'm going to listen while I make coffee and have a donut. I might share what I'm doing after that."
"Okay then." Sparta said. "We have three things we need."
"Shoot." Spanners said, putting a kettle on to boil.
"First off," Driscol announced, "we need to bug someone."
One of Spanner's eyebrows rose. "I'm interested. Who? Not another Plainswalker?"
Kevin shook his head. "Nope. Ever heard of Murtagh?"
"The Red Rider?"
"That's him, but he isn't under Galbatorix's influence yet. We need to plant a bug on him so we can get the name of magic in the Ancient Language."
Spanners grinned at us as she pulled a donut out of a bag and started to munch on it. "Well you're a sly dog, aren't you?"
"I aim to please." Sparta chuckled.
"That's certainly doable." The quartermaster said, returning her attention to the kettle. "How long of a range of time are we talking here for functionality?"
"About a year maximum just to be safe." Driscol said.
"And how far away would it have to transmit?"
"To us from wherever Murtagh is." Kevin said.
"So it would either have to have an excessively long battery life, or be powered by body heat or something… It would have to be on him at all times and evade detection, as well as have a powerful transmitter, and some kind of storage device on the other end to be updated with the information, and a search algorithm to look for the word. Hmm, I could get it to send out to the… yeah, that'd work. Could it be on the inside of his body?"
"What?"
"Could you inject him with it like microchipping a pet? Then it both hides the thing from detection, and he'd have it on him at all times."
"That'd work…" Sparta said. "But wouldn't the scale you'd have to work at be so small it would be impossible?"
Spanners fixed us a glare. "When speaking of engineering here, 'impossible' isn't a word in our vocabulary. There's 'inefficient' and 'impractical', but never 'impossible'. I can easily whip something up and shrink it down using Pym particles. No biggie."
"Coooooool." Kevin said, drawing out the word.
"So, item two on the list?" Spanners asked, pulling the kettle off it's heater and pouring the contents into a mug.
"Armour." Sparta said. "We want it to be able to resist magic, and to be able to resize with us wearing it."
Spanners clicked her tongue. "Can't help you there kid. That's magic- not my department."
"So who can we talk to about that?" Driscol said.
"I know a guy." Spanners said. "He's a personal friend, name's Iorek. He works as a smith, but he likes a quiet life. You'll have to travel north, out of the city if you want to find him."
"Iorek as in Iorek... Byrnison?" Kevin sputtered.
"Yup." Spanners said. "Problem?"
Kevin and Driscol shuddered, but Sparta stayed firm. "We were killed by a b… a bear, so meeting a giant one in armour made from a metal from a meteorite isn't going to go well."
Spanners sighed as she sipped her coffee. "Fine. I'll go with you. I need a break, really. And the last thing?"
"A sword." Driscol said.
The quartermaster spun around to face us. "You ever been to the Armoury?"
"What? We have an armoury?"
"Where?"
"I'm going to like this."
We followed Spanners through the streets of Locostral. The infiltration bot was back at her workshop, forgotten. Some people glared at us because of the damage we caused in our recent battle with Felix, but most went about their business as usual. They walked into restaurants, apartment buildings, parks, some of them arm in arm.
"What are relationships here like?" we asked as we saw a couple exchange a brief kiss.
"A lot more accepting and longer lasting than from back on Earth." Spanners said. "Appearance and whether you can make out or not doesn't matter to most of us, given that none of us look how we used to, and a good deal of us aren't human. Instead, it's a match of personalities that determines if two of us are compatible. At least, that's how I see it. I don't pretend to know how love works."
We nodded. "And do people have relationships with people in the Realms they guard?"
"Not nearly as often, but it does happen. Mortality is often a problem."
"Why?" Kevin asked. "We're immortal. So- Oh, you mean for the people who aren't Plainswalkers, don't you?"
Spanners nodded. "Yeah. Having them die leaves the Plainswalker heartbroken. Then they either mope around for eternity, or they get their **** together."
We smirked. This was why we liked Spanners. She was brutally honest and always got to the point.
A few minutes later, a black dragon and a red T-Rex with long arms and hands like a human tore past me, both of them laughing insanely as they tore around the corner in front of us. After them chased a tall figure that was wrapped in so much tape that he looked like an ancient Egyptian mummy. His sharky head still showed, and he was hopping after the scaly duo, cursing at them in a variety of languages as a human and a blue Pokemon of some kind followed after him.
"Gabe, slow down and we'll get you out!"
"Yeah! Well, I don't have hands, but stop and we'll free you!"
We decided to intervene by slicing a claw down the middle of the poor guy's bonds, liberating him from the tape.
He glanced at us, uncaring of our appearance. "Thanks. Now if you excuse me, I have some flying lizard brats to murder. No offence meant."
"None taken." We smiled. "Good luck."
He nodded, then charged off after the duo, who screamed and did the smart thing and took to the sky, the T-Rex flicking wings out of his back. The Pokemon flew after them in hot pursuit as the human stopped, panting. The sharky Plainswalker leapt into the air, grabbing hold of the black dragon's tail. There was an unmanly scream and a lot of shouting as the group disappeared behind a skyscraper.
The human looked up at us strangely. "You seem… familiar. Have we met?"
"I don't think so." Driscol said. "We're fairly new around here."
"Hmm. I just have this feeling. Anyway, if you want to talk sometime, call me. I'm Wolf."
"Kevin."
"Driscol."
"And I AM SPARTA!"
Driscol quickly stopped Sparta from kicking over a car, and we started to walk off as our right head scowled.
"Sorry Wolf, but we'd better go before we start fighting ourselves." Kevin said as Driscol and Sparta started headbutting each other.
Wolf smiled before dashing off. "See ya!"
Five minutes later, we were standing in front of a door as Spanners inserted her key into a slot and twisted. It was a door that had a first layer of titanium that slid upwards, into the ceiling. A door that had a second layer of adamantium, which split apart and drew back, into the walls. A door that had a third layer of vibranium, which separated into three triangular segments and folded away, revealing a tunnel flanked by row upon row of turrets.
"Come on." Spanners said as lights flared inside the tunnel.
We followed the quartermaster down the hallway, then stepped into a room with a large pad on the floor. It was brightly lit, with a lot of computers and flashing lights around the room.
"You might want to shrink down for this." Spanners said as she tapped a code into a pad. "The teleporter doesn't really like stuff that's too big for it. Bits tend to be left behind."
We gulped nervously and followed her advice, shrinking down to the size of a human and making sure we were in the middle of the pad.
Spanners stepped next to us and said "Energize", causing the thing to activate with a noise that was almost exactly the same as the one in the Star Trek movies. We felt a wrench in our stomach, and fought the urge to throw up as we were yanked out of existence.
We materialized in an almost identical room, and stumbled off the pad as our body tried to cope with what just happened.
"Why all the security?" Driscol asked as our heads slowly stopped spinning. "And why the teleporter?
"This is the Armoury, a vault where we keep all manner of gear." Spanners explained as she gave us time to recuperate. "Most of it is weaponry, although we do have some vehicles and utility equipment here like active camouflage units, energy orbs and elemental shields. We have to keep it locked and under strict watch to make sure that nobody breaks in and takes something. There are both technological and magical defenses here, as a lot of this stuff has the potential to destroy worlds. If a rogue Plainswalker got in here and started blasting, then we'd have a hard time stopping them."
Sparta was practically drooling at the idea of so much firepower. "Do you also store vehicles here?"
"No. They're locked up in the Garage. We'll swing by later and get a spaceship or something to go North. Now come on. I may have all day, but I'm not going to spend it standing around."
"You have a garage full of Spaceships?" Kevin asked. "That's awesome."
Spanners nodded as we started walking again. This hallway had a space-station like feel to it, with clean chrome walls and metal struts holding up the ceiling on either side of the corridor. It was big enough to easily drive two cars side by side down it, and there were windows in the left-hand wall.
Poking Kevin towards them, he looked out of it for us. It was fairly easy to see out of, and we could vaguely make out some kind of undersea world. Crabs scuttled over sand, colourful coral reefs provided home to multitudes of fish, and in the distance, we could make out a massive silhouette of an enormous shark.
"Is that…?" Sparta asked.
"Riley." Spanners said. "The poor girl watched The Meg before she died. Now she's restricted to the ocean, and we brought her here, which was quite the challenge, and required a telepath to talk to her and explain the situation. As you can probably gather, the Armoury is underwater, so we asked her if she wanted to guard it for us. She accepted, and she lives around here now."
"Can we…" Kevin asked.
"Go ahead." Spanners said. "She'll welcome the company."
We prodded our awareness out into the sea, and quickly connected to the mind of our fellow Plainswalker. Not entirely sure what to do, we tried the mental equivalent of knocking on a door and waiting for a response.
"Hello?" Came the almost immediate response.
"Hi." Kevin said. "How's it going?"
"Not bad." The dark shape replied. "I'm a little bored, but I'm surviving. I'm Riley by the way, but you probably already knew that."
"Yeah." Sparta said. "Spanners was just telling us about you, and we thought we'd introduce ourselves."
"There's more than one of you?" She said, surprised.
"Consciousness triplication." We said in unison.
"That feels really weird when you all speak at once…" Riley said.
"We've been told that a lot." Driscol groaned.
"So we'll try to speak one at a time." Sparta said.
"Thanks. So what's your name, where are you from, and what do you look like?"
"Collectively, we're Cade." Kevin explained, "But individually, I'm Kevin, and my… other selves are Driscol and Sparta. We're from Montana, USA, and we have the form of the Monsterverse King Ghidorah."
"Oh, that'd explain why you have three voices then. Mind if I just call you Cade since I can't see which of you is which?"
"Go for it." Driscol said.
"Thanks. So what realm do you patrol?"
"Well, we…"
Kevin took command of the conversation as we eventually reached a large airlock-like structure in the wall. Spanners put her hand on a panel next to it which scanned her palm and beeped happily. The airlock opened, revealing only darkness on the other side.
Spanners gestured us inside and flicked a switch. Floodlights from high above activated one by one, bathing the room in a warm glow. The space was about the size of an aircraft hangar, and it was filled to the brim with rack upon rack of melee weapons of every kind. There were swords, spears, whips, hammers, shields, axes, knives, gauntlets, pikes, staffs, and even more, all of them gleaming majestically.
"Woah." Driscol said.
Sparta had his mouth open. "I think I'm in heaven."
"Come on then," Spanners said, rubbing her hands together, "let's find something you like!"
The next hour or two consisted of us wandering around the sword section of the room, trying out and rejecting various swords. After a while, we got bored, and wandered off into the hammers section to see if there was a Mjolnir there and if we could lift it. Spanners dragged us back to the swords section after that.
"There isn't anything here that fits us!" Driscol said in exasperation. "None of them feel right when we hold them!"
Spanners was polishing a lightsaber hilt and didn't bother to look up at our outburst. "Have you tried mentally searching for the weapon? Like the wand choosing the wizard in Harry Potter, sometimes the weapon chooses the wielder, and some of these things are sentient. Some of them are the real deal too, as we recover them after their user no longer needs them, or they were left behind and never reclaimed. Seek out your weapon. One of them will choose you."
That kinda made sense. Focusing, we spread our awareness around the room, and came into contact with several… not exactly minds. They didn't have the level of sentience that we had. Most of them turned hostile and shielded themselves, but there were some of them that stayed neutral, not yet ready to decide if they wanted us to use them or not. However, among this throng of grumpy blades, there was one sword that stood out.
We followed it's call, passing by a rack of shurikens and turning right after a large lance. We then ambled up to where a katana was held up on a stand and turned left, stopping in front of a large, black box the size of a lower arm with a lock in it.
"Can you open this one for us?" Sparta asked Spanners. "It's calling us."
"Right."
The quartermaster quickly appeared beside us, slotted her Plainswalker key into the lock, and turned it. The lock fell away, and the box lid flipped open, revealing a golden gauntlet. Its fingers ended in claws, and a dagger was sheathed in it, near where an arm would go in it.
Spanners smiled at us. "I can see why this one wants you. You'll do well together."
"Is it a real one, or just a replica?" Kevin asked, breaking off from his conversation with Riley.
"It's a replica with the powers of the original." Spanners said, unsheathing the knife and handing it to us. "You won't be able to wear the claw shield, but it's part of the set, so we'll take it with us. Now this, you might be able to identify if you're a fan of 80s cartoons."
We looked at the dagger, and turned it over in our claws. It was just as clean as any of the other weapons here, and maybe twice as shiny. A red circle lay just above where the handle reached the crossguard. A small, orange ellipse lay in the centre of it, touching the top and bottom of the circle but not the sides, resembling an eye.
"Oh yes!" Sparta said gleefully, recognizing the weapon.
We changed our grip so we were holding the knife like a sword, and we slashed to the right. The knife extended a little, the guard curling. We swung to the left and the blade grew longer, the guard curling into its final position. We cut down the middle, and the blade grew to full length, the eye replaced by a snarling head of a lion.
Sparta laughed in joy. "This is perfect! The Sword of Omens! It can shoot lightning, make shields, do a more powerful version of scrying, and can come to the wielders hand when they call for it!"
"A sword that shoots lightning?" Driscol smiled. "We must have lucked out."
"And that's not all." Spanners said. "That thing will also allow you to call the rest of us if there's a Shadow attack. You know the command?"
"Thundercats, ho?" Kevin asked.
"Replace Thundercats with Plainswalkers." Spanners said. "But yes, essentially. Now come on! We've wasted enough time here already. Time to see about your armour!"
