Author's notes: THE STORY HAS MORE THAN 100,000 WORDS! WOOOO! To celebrate: DOUBLE UPLOAD! As a quick warning, I have work experience coming soon, which might interfere with my writing, so there could be a lack of an update for two weeks, starting around the 23rd of March. Can I get some reviews please? (They're like sweets to us writers. We always want more.)

With thanks to my patrons:
Regal Eagle

In response to reviews:
dragonauthor: No if he's just a cameo appearance, but yes if you want to make him a recurring character like Spanners, who isn't part of the Bluepeak Riftwalkers (since they're all creatures). Ideally, go for the same format what we have on the Dis-cord (damn you, FanFiction) roleplay server. (Yeah, we have a RP server for the Locostral multiverse, which someone dubbed the Riftiverse, so we're calling it that. Guess forgot to mention that. If anyone is interested, it's a partner server for the link I have in my profile. You can get to it through that.) You need to have:
-Name
-Age when they died
-Form
-About (Personality, history, summary of their death)
-Abilities
-Strengths (what they're good at)
-Weaknesses (what they're bad at)
Man4God: Hello again, and thanks so much! I don't pretend to know anything professional about writing, but thanks for your compliment!
MoosHeadFamLit: Yes there are. That's why there's so much security.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Inheritance Cycle

Thanks to Wizz from the Dis-cord server for beta reading. I liked the part where we had a 5 minute discussion and a lot of internet searches about whether Deathwing had thumbs.


Chapter 23: Armour… and the bear.

After shrinking our new blade back down to the size of a knife, we sheathed it in the claw shield and followed Spanners back through the complex. We said a quick goodbye to Riley and hopped on the teleporter, going back to Locostral city. Then we headed to the 'Garage'.

As it turned out, there was a trend in Locostral of giving really cool places really crappy names. The Garage was one of them. It was a gigantic cavern carved out of the rock underneath the city, with massive, metal columns rising through it to support the roof. Docked to these columns were aircraft and spaceships of all shapes, but they were mostly on the small side. We didn't see anything much bigger than a space shuttle. Quickly glancing around the room, we saw that all the ships were (predictably) from different realms.

However, we didn't use any of them. Spanners pulled us down a large, rocky tunnel that lead to another cavern. This cave was much smaller than the last one, only housing about a dozen ships. The floor was a metal mesh, with various pipes and ducts running under it and connecting to the assorted crafts.

"So why are we taking one of these ships?" Driscol asked.

Spanners pulled out a set of car keys and clicked the 'unlock' button. From the back of the hangar, lights activated, and an engine that sounded like it should have been in a muscle car fired up.

"Because one of them is mine." The quartermaster said. "Come on. You're lucky I have a ship that seats two."

We followed her to the back of the room, smelling something resembling diesel, but much more potent. Spanners jogged ahead to a small console and started pressing buttons as we looked over the ship. It looked a lot like an X-Wing Starfighter, but it had space in the cockpit for two people, and it has seven engines instead of the usual four. Flapping to land on top of it, we saw that instead of an astromech unit in the small space for a droid, there was a closed hatch.

"What is this thing?" Kevin asked.

Spanners didn't bother to look up. "It's a Tandem X-Wing. You'll be surprised to find that its actually a canon vehicle. I just replaced where you're supposed to put a droid with extra cargo space for my tools and made a few other changes."

"Then how are you supposed to go to light speed if you have no droid?" Sparta said, confused.

"Microscopic supercomputers."

"Naturally."

"Now get in. I don't know how your tails will cope with a chair, but you'll have to deal with it."

"So why aren't we taking a bigger ship?" Driscol asked. "Or whatever regularly takes people places around here."

"Because those ships are for losers. Now get in and stop your whining."

We grudgingly did as she asked and clambered into the cockpit's rear seat. Almost instantly, our tails became a problem. Seats were now our new worst enemy. Still, the issue was solved by shrinking down so we were small enough to curl up on the soft, leather version of a flight seat.

Spanners climbed into the front seat, slipping a white and red rebel helmet over her head. "You still got the sword and claw shield?"

"Where our feet should go, yes."

"Good. There's a screen built into my headrest and headphones in the seat pocket if you want to watch a movie or listen to some music. And don't you dare make me stop so you can pee. This trip isn't going to have stops."

"Jeez." Sparta said. "You're worse than our mom."

"Are there snacks?" Kevin asked.

"No."

"Aww."

"Now shut up so I can take off without you yammering on inside my head. And be careful you don't hit the eject button instead of the seat warmer. You can fly, but it'd eject me too, and I'd rather not have to ride you back to the city."

We did as we were told, Sparta and Kevin looking out the windows as Driscol retrieved the headphones and flicked the screen on. We weren't brave enough to find and press the seat warmer button though. The ship started to rise off the ground, gaining a good amount of height before the landing gear retracted and we accelerated down a long shaft, rings of light flicking past us.

Then we shot out of the tunnel, which turned out to be concealed behind a waterfall. While cool, that must have made it a pain to pilot ships back in. You'd have to be very careful not to crash. Still, we were away, and that was all that mattered. We were away, and going to visit a bear. All three of us shuddered. Hopefully he'd understand.

As heavy rock blasted through Driscol's headphones, we tried to relax and sit back and enjoy the ride in our first spaceship. But we failed miserably.

At first, we distracted ourselves by admiring our new weapon. The Sword of Omens was beautiful, even in its sheathed form. The Claw Shield was pretty cool too, but we idly wondered if we could somehow incorporate it into our armour. That would be cool. However, we barely fended off our boredom and anxiety for fifteen minutes before they struck again.

"Should we check what the responses to our announcement on the Discord server were?" Kevin asked.

Driscol hung his head. "I shouldn't have posted that."

Sparta growled at him. "We all know that, so we might as well check and do damage control."

Driscol sighed, but we used the screen in Spanners' headrest to connect to Locostral internet. Accessing our account, we logged in and surveyed the results of our dumbassery.

There had been a long debate between our five friends about whether our account had been hacked, or if we'd ever given our password out to one of them who was playing a prank on the rest of them. That was followed by a lot of swearing before Jack eventually got the server under control and told them to shut it and see what happened. Of course, that didn't happen, and there were a lot of wild theories being suggested, the most interesting being one where we were still alive and in some government lab, and that there had been a fake body lowered into a grave at our funeral.

"So what do we do?" Driscol asked. "The gang knows something's up."

"Do we have to do anything?" Sparta said. "Give it a few weeks and they'll pass this off as a weird occurrence."

"But it would cut off our last connection with Earth." Kevin argued. "We'd be isolated- alone."

"We'd have our clanmates." our right head snarled. "We need to accept that what's happened to us is permanent. We can't be human. We can't go to Earth. We need to accept that."

Driscol thought the problem over. "We do. But that doesn't mean we have to cut ourselves off. As long as we swear our friends to secrecy, nobody else will have to know."

"But… Mom and Dad?" Kevin said. "Should we…"

"We aren't listening to me!" Sparta shouted. "Think strategy! This is a stupid idea and we know it! We don't want to get reattached to our family and friends. We've already accepted that we've lost them. We've already let go. Reattaching ourselves to the situation is asking to have an emotional breakdown when they die. We're immortal. They aren't. It's only a matter of time before they go, and I don't want to be moping around for days afterwards."

Kevin glared at Sparta. "You cold-hearted *******."

Driscol shook his head. "No, Sparta's right. Remember what Angela said? We're dead to them, and we died saving their lives. Let them remember us like that. Telling them what really happened… bad idea."

Sparta nodded. "So… we make our decision permanent?"

"Yes." Driscol said. "We delete our accounts and use new ones for here in Locostral."

Kevin looked down in sadness. "I suppose it's… for the best."

"Yeah." Driscol said gently. "We remember how things used to be, and we cherish the memories we have of that time, but we have to accept facts and let go. We aren't meant to mix our two worlds."

"Fine." Kevin said. "But promise me that if we ever get back to Earth, we say one last goodbye. In person."

We glanced at each other and came to a decision. "We will."


Three hours and two movies later, we finally arrived. The X-Wing descended towards a large log cabin on the edge of a forest with an ice-covered lake nearby. The trees were snow-capped evergreens, proudly rising through a chilly mist. Next to the cabin was a large stone building, capped by a slate roof which protected it from the heavy snowfall.

"We're here." Spanners said as the craft lowered, touching down in the snow.

The cockpit opened, letting in a gust of cold air. Spanners shivered slightly, but we weren't bothered. Cold weather didn't really seem to affect us any more, but we could still sense it. It was similar for warmth, but not the same. Courtesy of Darius, we found that we could still get burnt, it was just that the temperature necessary for that to happen was now much higher than it used to be.

We hopped out, growing to about Jacob's size. If we were going to meet a bear, then we wanted to be on more than equal footing with it. Spanners pressed a button, and a ladder slid out of the ship's side and extended towards the snow-covered ground. The quartermaster slid down it, her boots crunching in the snow when she hit the ground.

"Follow me." She said while starting to walk towards the stone building.


The building turned out to be a forge. It was large enough for us to move around it unhindered, although that did make sense, given that it's owner was an armoured bear. Along one of the walls was a massive rack of tools, some of which we could identify, but most were a mystery. On the other side there were a few workbenches, an anvil, and a smouldering fire, along with a giant mass of white fur who was engraving designs into his armour.

We stood shock-still, fighting off the waves of panic that were rising higher and higher, threatening to flood our mind. Flashes of lights and sounds from our last human memories superimposed themselves over our view of the world. Claws, teeth, a roar that shook us to the core.

Sparta got us through it. He led us, mentally snarling at the memories as he forced them down until the real world resurfaced around us again. Our claws had stabbed through the floor, and our muscles had locked up, anchoring us in place as we fought with the rush of sensations. Relaxing slightly, we looked at the giant bear. He and Spanners were looking at us, concern on their respective face and muzzle.

"Sorry." we grunted, pulling our claws out of the floor. "Flashback."

"Of your death?" The bear asked. His voice was deep, but emanated a feeling of safety. He also had a vaguely Scandinavian accent, but we couldn't place it.

We nodded, trying not to meet his eye.

"And I presume from your reaction to me that it was a bear that did it, right?"

We nodded again.

"Hmm. That's a problem we'll have to resolve before we start our work."

"Our?" Driscol echoed.

"Yes." The bear said. "Do you know what my form is from?"

Sparta nodded. "You are Iorek Byrnison; a panserbjørn, or an armoured… an armoured… bear."

"Yes. You recall what my armour is to me, then?"

"It's your soul." Kevin said. "Just as we have Eldunarí that are our souls."

The bear nodded. "Your soul is not yours if someone else gives it to you. Neither is your armour. A sword or a gun, those are weapons. You can change which ones you wield, and how you wield them. But armour is sacred to you. It is unique, and is made specifically to fit you, and nobody else. You have to be the one to create it if you want to be the one to wear it."

"So you're going to teach us how to make armour?" Sparta asked. "Won't that take, like… forever?"

The bear shook his head. "You will be the one designing and making your armour, but I will help you to create it. For example, you will hold a hammer while I point at where you need to swing it at. This will not be beyond your abilities. Now, I believe that you will have specific requirements for this armour?"

"Yes." Driscol said. "We can change our size from that of a hatchling to the size of our form on the big screen, about 160 meters tall. We need our armour to resize itself with us. We also need it to be conductive of electricity and protect us from magic."

The bear glanced at Spanners. "You were right, this will be tricky."

Spanners nodded. "He somehow resizes himself by utilising a Riftheart-like ability. I don't know if we could lay something into the metal to detect the energy surge and use some bit of magic to grow and shrink accordingly, but something like that seems to be the simplest solution."

The bear shook his head. "There are certain alloys that, when forged properly, react to Rift energy on their own. I can lay seams of that into the metal, and it will react accordingly when he channels Rift energy."

"Are there any downsides to that?" Spanners asked.

The bear shrugged. "If glowing orange is a downside, then yes. As for conductivity, that's much simpler. It's the protection from magic that will be a problem."

"I'm not sure if you know, but there have been several tests on that sort of stuff." Spanners said. "Depleted uranium held up fairly well. It's used as tank armour back home, and golden boy here can absorb radiation like a sponge, and he's muscly enough to deal with its weight. There would need to be additional enchantments on it, but I don't think that would be much of a problem in the construction process."

"Agreed." The bear said, turning to us. "So, depleted uranium armour with inlays of Rift-sensitive alloys. Any objections?"

"You had me at depleted uranium." Sparta smiled.

The bear grinned and held out a paw. "Good. I'm Iorek."

We gingerly shook it. "Collectively, we're Cade."


It was a day later when we finally completed the design for our armour. It consisted of a lot of large, metallic red plates, each of them slightly overlapping the next from our heads to our tails. Every plate had a golden border to it which was made from the Rift-sensitive alloy. They covered everything except for our wings and the mace-like ends to our tails, and hindered our mobility as little as possible.

For our helmets, we'd taken inspiration from the mechanised counterpart of our form. Our headgear would have a green visor that could slide down over our eyes, giving us a heads-up display that we could use to survey a battlefield and see where our allies were, provided that they had special transponders that Spanners was now working on. Another handy thing was an altimeter, which would allow us to see exactly how far away we were from the ground while flying.

Iorek had said that my form made it impossible for us to wear the Claw Shield that acted as the Sword of Omen's sheath. Given the abilities I needed my armour to have, it would be exceedingly difficult for us to re-work the Claw Shield so we could wear it together with the armour. Still, we were going to keep hold of it anyway as the sword and the Claw Shield were a set, after all.

After we finished the design, it was time to use foam blocks to create a mockup of the armour. We stood still while Iorek cut out foam slabs and laid them over us. Soon, it just turned into a test to see how long we could hold still with the armoured bear in such close proximity without screaming like little girls and running for our lives. Spanners tried to keep us distracted, but it wasn't easy. Memories of our death kept surfacing. The pain of our stomach being ripped open. The dread of knowing the one inevitable outcome. The sense of hopelessness.

Still, we managed to survive until the metals arrived, which took a few days. Iorek superheated the forge, gave us a hammer, and literally said "Hit it when and where I say". So we basically just whaled on the glowing depleted uranium until he told us to stop, which was kind of fun. Before long, we had the first plate of armour done. Then Iorek showed us how to apply the Rift-sensitive alloy around the edge of the armour plate, and we merged the two metals together.

"Can we try it on?" We asked eagerly as Iorek quenched it in a metal dustbin full of icy water.

"Not yet. It still has to cool, and we need to create a framework to lock the plates together as armour. Wait for the finished result."

We were a little put out, but we followed his advice. We started to forge more plates. The constant contact with Iorek helped our nerves, and by the end of day four, we were completely at ease in his presence, the memories fading from a flood to a trickle. As it turned out, forging our armour wasn't just for our physical protection. By being around Iorek so much during the creation of it, we were recovering from our phobia too.

It took us another few days to finally have every plate done, and then we had to help Spanners with the electronics in the helmets as Iorek tinkered around with the framework to hold the plates together.

On a whim, we asked Spanners whether we could get a thermal imaging mode, allowing us to see targets at night. She nodded, and so we added some cameras into the helmets and inserted a system that would show the information on our visors when we engaged the mode. While we were human, we never really had much experience with circuits apart from taking the casing out of an X-Box and replacing the cooling fan, but we seemed to do okay, all things considered. The thing worked, and all we had to do to turn the system on was to pull one of the visors down.

After that was done, we helped Iorek figure out how to connect the armour pieces while Spanners made the signal transponders and the bug we'd asked for. Once again, we had to go through the process of standing still and letting Iorek mount the armour on us.

Wearing the full set felt amazing. Our helmets covered the tops and sides of our heads, with holes for our noses and eyes. We hadn't bothered with having armour on our lower jaws, as it would have got in the way when we wanted to use our gravity beams or just bite something. Small, scale-like plates flowed down our necks from behind our helmets. A large series of plates covered our chest and back, giving them protection, but leaving our wings free to move.

Our legs were fully armoured, plates covering them from every angle apart from our taloned feet. We had left them out so we could freely grapple with an opponent and sense what we were stepping on. There was a sheath for our blade on our upper left leg, allowing us to draw it with our clawed hand. That would hopefully help make the sword resize along with the armour too. Finally, the armour flowed down our tails until the mace-like ends, leaving them free to smash and bash our enemies.

Each component had a good range of motion to it and slightly overlapped the one behind it, allowing us to move around easily. It was obviously heavy, but we could easily deal with the extra weight, and when we asked Spanners to attack us with our sword, it held up without a dent, which we were rather pleased with.

Then came the real test; whether it would change sizes with us.

Stepping outside, we grew to our regular size. The edges of the plates glowed a Rift-like orange, and they expanded with us until we reached our preferred bulkiness. Our sword grew too, the armour forcing it to enlarge. Twisting around, we checked that everything was still in place, and seeing that there were no problems, we whooped in joy and punched the air.

"It freaking works!" we yelled happily.

Iorek smiled. It was a sight that we would have flinched away from a week ago, but now we were completely at ease with it.

"Yes, your armour is complete. Are you going to name it?"

"Name it?" Sparta asked.

Iorek nodded. "Your armour is part of your soul, just as mine is part of my soul. Like you, it deserves a name."

"And yours is?" Driscol asked.

"My armour is Brynja, which means armour in Icelandic."

Sparta grinned. "Naming your armour 'armour'. That's sooo Locostralian."

"He's onto something there though." Driscol said thoughtfully. "What's armour in the Ancient Language?"

"Err... hernskja, I think." Kevin said.

"Well that sounds terrible." Sparta said. "Shield is better. Skölir."

We nodded in unison. "Skölir it is."

"Good." Iorek said. "Now try flying in it. If that works, then I'll give you instructions on how to paint it and you can go."

We nodded, grinning. Beating our wings, we stood vertically and pushed off from the ground. Flying with our armour on wasn't much of an issue. The only real problem came with turning around since we weren't used to the extra weight, making us lose a little height while banking. Even so, we were happy with the result.


The next day, we were back in Locostral City, and there was a Gathering, which meant that everyone was in. We successfully got Skölir enchanted so that it would nullify any kind of magic coming at us, although it had been difficult because of the depleted uranium's natural resistance to magic. The barriers didn't function like Alagaësian wards. It didn't require any of our energy to be used, and it wasn't focused on blocking any particular spell. It stopped every spell that came into contact with it, but as we discovered with our sword, which we'd named Omen, magical objects could still get through. We'd then have to depend on Skölir to block them for us.

Getting back to Mount Bluepeak, we enlisted Gem and Darius's help to paint our new gear, as they were the only other ones with a proper thumb to grip a paintbrush. We applied four coats in total; the first being a primer, the second and third being a rich, metallic red, and the fourth being a smooth, transparent layer to protect the layers under it from everyday scratches. However, we left the golden, Rift-sensitive alloy as it was, only adding the protection layer.

Everyone thought it was cool, but the smell of the paint was god-levels of awful. If you think getting your room repainted smells bad, multiply your capacity for smelling by three and increase the sensitivity of your nose to maximum. That won't even come close to what we were smelling. Once it was fully dry thanks to Darius standing next to it for half an hour, a good wash got rid of most of the smell, although we could still detect traces of paint on it. We knew they would go away after a while, but meh. It still stank.

A very tired and grumpy Amara arrived at about midday, complaining at us not being around, and we promptly walked past her, our scarlet armour shining like gems. Our cousin's jaws dropped open in amazement.

"That's… amazing." She gasped.

"And we made it ourself." Sparta said smugly.

Driscol rolled his eyes. "With help."

Kevin smiled. "Yeah, but as Iorek said, our armour, our soul, our creation."

Sparta nodded. "Skölir is our handiwork. We needed help to make it, sure, but it was us who created this glorious example of metalwork."

Amara smiled. "That is undeniably awesome, but did you guys notice that you look like Iron Man?"

We glanced at ourself and shrugged. "That wasn't something we planned, but we'll take it. Red and gold is a good colour combo."

"I'm just wondering how Eragon, Saphira and Murtagh are gonna take this."

"How about we find out?"

"Won't they wonder where you got it from?"

"Do we look like we care about that? This is cool, and we want to show off."

Amara smirked. "And there are the cousins I know."


Snapshot #3:

A poke.

Blearily, we opened our eyes and looked around. Everything seemed to be normal. Saphira was watching Eragon, Amara was watching them, and Murtagh was cooking a meal. We were curled up, resting. Seeing everything was fine, we went back to sleep.

Two pokes.

Our six eyes flashed open, and we did a scan of the camp's perimeter. Everything was the same as before. We growled softly before settling back down and closing our eyes.

Three pokes.

There would have been a fourth and a fifth, but Sparta wound his neck around Amara's red head and caught her blue one in his jaws.

We stood, growling at our cousin, who squeaked nervously.

"One, two, three, four. We declare a head war."

"A what?"

We didn't give Amara time to understand what we said before Driscol and Kevin lunged at Amara's other heads in an attempt to immobilise them.