Hello again! This chapter picks up more or less when the actual spellcasting starts, and while it's dialogue-heavy, I had a ton of fun writing this and I hope it's an enjoyable read! As always, I appreciate every comment, so please feel free to send me any constructive criticism or consistency errors that you notice.
Dusk fell like a gauzy curtain as the sun sank behind the mountains and the sky above darkened. Leah had summoned a double handful of pale flames to float above the stone pavers, and the flickering light glinted off the blade as Corrin avoided stabbing himself by a very narrow margin.
I think you're still holding it wrong, Kiera offered, as Corrin glared at the whittling knife that Leah had loaned him.
"It might also help if you worked with the grain instead of across it," Varog advised without looking up from his own woodworking.
"I thought I was!" Corrin protested, holding up the lump of wood as proof. Leah snickered.
Varog sighed and set his own project aside, gesturing for Corrin to toss him the offending object. When it landed in his hands Varog turned it over with a delicacy at odds with his bulky knuckles and let the firelight play over its edges. Galzra lifted his head so that he could watch over Varog's shoulder with one plate-sized eye.
"Use the tip of the blade less," the Urgal offered finally, and having delivered that verdict lobbed the victim of Corrin's inexperienced ministrations back to him. Corrin, with the whittling knife still in his good hand, reached out with the other and managed to bobble the chunk of wood for all of two seconds before it clattered to the ground. Kiera hummed with amusement that was rather less sympathetic than Corrin liked.
It is very good for a first try, Galzra told him kindly, and the knife is a little short anyways.
Leah looked up, affronted. "I gave him my better one!"
Varog snorted. "Better by human standards, maybe."
"Yes, well, we all know what design specifications your tools are built to," Leah sniffed.
Corrin held his tongue, not wanting to look clueless, despite the familiar state of confusion which assaulted him whenever Leah and Varog's three-year acquaintance started to show in their conversation. Kiera was less restrained.
Perhaps you'd care to share the joke with the rest of us? she asked tartly.
Thuviel, who had been ignoring the lot of them, piped in gleefully. No, we would not care to. Mind your own business.
Kiera, not remotely in a forgiving mood after the mockery earlier, snarled audibly, but Galzra forestalled an altercation with a strategic swipe of his tail across Thuviel's nose. Enough, the grey dragon growled, and anyway there is no we, as you weren't part of the conversation.
Corrin felt very, very lost, and it must have showed because Leah took pity on both Kiera and him. "Varog's whittling knives have a particularly unusual backstory."
Varog twirled one of said knives absently. "Is not that unusual."
"Tell it to them, though, I really want to see their faces," Leah said, grinning in a way that made Corrin decidedly apprehensive.
Varog gave Leah a narrow-eyed look, but nodded to Corrin, returning to whittling as he talked. "Well, my initiation is the beginning. When a young Urgal comes of age, they must needs defeat another creature in combat before they are inducted into tribe Bolvek as adults. For my trial, I was to kill a Nagra, but… I made mistakes in my hunting, and when given the choice between escaping or risking my life in a battle that I was unlikely to win, I ran." The Urgal's voice went very flat, but the muscles in his shoulders and neck were tense. "To fail in your trial is a very shameful thing among my people, little brother. So much so that when my father led our tribe to war, I was the only horned ram left behind."
"I'm sorry," Corrin said softly.
Varog shrugged with what Corrin suspected was feigned nonchalance. "It was my own doing. But, because of my shame, I was the only ram of fighting age left in the village. A company of soldiers discovered us while the rams were gone. I was standing watch with my sister when they tried to sneak up by night." The young Kull looked up at Corrin and bared his teeth, which could have been a smile or a snarl. "I killed twenty-seven men barehanded while my sister roused the village. Afterwards the Herndall ruled that I had undone the shame of my retreat and earned my horns after all."
Corrin nodded slowly, impressed. "It's quite a feat. But how is that related to the whittling knife?"
By way of answer, Varog held up the whittling knife so the odd yellowish handle was visible. "It is also tradition that the Urgal takes the creature from their trial to make something useful from."
Corrin didn't understand for a moment, and then he did and could not keep from staring at the yellow hilt of the blade; bone, he now knew, that had once resided in one of his own race.
Leah snickered. "Priceless."
Beside him, Kiera lifted her head from the ground. Corrin had only that much warning before Shruikan stalked out of the night, Blodhgarm by his side. Even with the firelight glinting off scales and fur, the black dragon and the black-furred elf were difficult to see. "Blodhgarm-elda," Varog growled in greeting.
Blodhgarm returned the greeting. "Still terrifying people with that story, I see."
Leah laughed, and tossed her head in Shruikan's direction. "I was wondering where you'd gone off to," she said. "I haven't seen you around Court this evening."
Flying, Shruikan explained curtly, but Corrin was surprised to feel an undercurrent of anger and frustration in the dragon's thoughts. It didn't seem to be directed at them, but it was viscerally present all the same.
Leah lowered her whittling, exchanging a frown with Varog. "What's wrong, Shruikan?"
Blodhgarm answered instead. "We went to Eragon again about the wild dragon eggs," he explained. "No luck."
"Oh, no," Leah groaned. Varog snarled in displeasure, and Galzra and Thuviel echoed him.
Kiera shifted minutely as Shruikan walked past them, one eye on his lashing tail, but the black dragon gave her a wide berth as he made his way around the perimeter of the firelight. "He claims that he's concerned," Blodhgarm continued, "about adding more strain to the resources of the area so soon after Kiera's arrival."
Ridiculous, Galzra proclaimed firmly.
"Oh, of course," Blodhgarm agreed, "and I told him so, that the area around the lake could support three more dragons at least, but he's already convinced himself that it can't be done safely."
"Would he listen to you if we all went to him as a group?" Corrin suggested before he could talk himself out of contributing. Kiera had gone very still and he could tell she was listening intently.
Leah shook her head. "Tried it last year. Same answer."
If the problem is resource management, Kiera offered in a strained but reasonable tone, why not simply have the wild dragons hunt somewhere farther away from the Court? Surely this cannot be the only place in this side of the continent where dragons can live.
Leah paused before replying. "I would assume that Eragon and Saphira are worried they won't be able to control the wild hatchlings in an emergency if they lived that far away."
We, Shruikan stressed, are wild dragons. Neither has the right to control. So saying, the black dragon threw himself down on the far side of the fire with such force that the ground trembled.
What say the Eldunari? Galzra directed the question at Blodhgarm.
"They are split," Blodhgarm said, "but Umaroth and Glaedr insist that it is the Head Rider's prerogative to decide how to allocate the resources available to the Riders. If Eragon has decided our resources are too limited, well, what he says goes."
But that's stupid! Kiera declared passionately, and Corrin realized abruptly that she was far more upset than she had let on. The dragons are still on the brink of extinction, and except for Shruikan right now there aren't any wild dragons at all! We should be pushing our resources as far as they can stretch, when we are so few, and the wild dragons still in the shell shouldn't be forced to remain trapped just because Corrin and I are here, that isn't right! Had she been a human girl rather than a dragon, Corrin might have thought her tone tearful, and the depths of her upset were clear to everyone.
Corrin didn't blame her: the thought that he and Kiera might be preventing more dragons from being born because they lived at Court and not in Ellesmera made him more than a little upset himself.
No, Shruikan agreed, but his tone was already leaching away from rage and into resignation. Not right. But not your doing.
"Certainly not," Leah agreed firmly. "Don't let that bother you; he's been saying the same thing for three years without you and Corrin around as an excuse."
"The worst," Blodhgarm continued abruptly, "is that he keeps throwing my own arguments about the importance of Dashelgr back at me."
He does so because your arguments are sound, offered Galzra, who had shifted until he sat next to Shruikan, even if he does twist your intentions a bit.
"Perhaps," Blodhgarm growled, "but that doesn't make me any happier about it, and I, for one, would like a distraction." He flung himself down to sit next to Varog. "How's the whittling going?"
Varog, by way of answer, demonstrated a remarkably detailed statuette of a wolf, complete with tiny jagged clumps of fur. Leah offered a much rougher but still recognizable wolf-dog-thing, which looked promising save for its rounded ears. Corrin grimaced, but lifted up his own work in turn, of which the best that could be said was that it had four legs.
"Excellent," Blodhgarm proclaimed. "I declare, I think you three are the best whittlers within a hundred miles."
But there aren't any other people within a hundred miles, Kiera said in confusion.
Corrin tried to put his head in his hands and narrowly avoided stabbing his cheekbone with the knife.
This is Blodhgarm's very poor idea of a joke, Galzra explained kindly.
Oh. Like the faelnirv from Alastr?
Exactly.
"I'm very funny," Blodhgarm said, solemn in his dry way. "It isn't my fault none of you appreciate me."
For brief clarification, my headcanon is that one of the effects of Dashelgr that cannot be blocked by the wards is the general magnification of emotional states, and that even with wards the spellwork basically acts like a mild intoxicant.