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Eragon sighed as he leaned against the gnarled trunk of a great oak tree. The cool mountain breeze washing over his skin and the sound of water lapping upon a shore soothing his sense of sound. He sat on the shore of a pristine lake, nestled in the twisted roots of the large tree. The water of the lake was clear and blue, with tinges of emerald shooting down into its depths highlighted by the sunlight piercing its surface. Saphira swam gracefully, somewhere in its deep depths, performing amazing underwater acrobatics and scaring the life out of all of the unsuspecting fish. Eragon smiled as he caught a glimpse of her snapping at the terrified aquatic creatures through their mental connection. The lake lay at the foot of a large mountain cliff, and a picturesque waterfall fell gently into one end. Luscious trees surrounded the lake, their trunks covered in moss and vines hung down from their expansive branches to dip into the water. From above it looked as though a picture circle had been punched through the trees, as if some giant had stuck its enormous finger down into the land and filled the hole with water as Eragon had once done in the Hadarac Desert so many years ago.

His eyes twitted against the back of his eyelids as he imagined a scene that he had often visited in his waking thoughts and sleeping dreams. It was Carvahall, about 25 years ago. It had been rebuilt to far surpass the shell of its former self. Roran was there, he had long white hair that hung down to his shoulders in thick curtains, and a full white beard and lines of years past creased his face. He stood in the courtyard of a great keep, it was circular and filled with luscious grass and was encircled by cherry blossom trees in full bloom. He was spinning in circles while holding a beautiful young girl in his hands. The girl was laughing madly as she was twirled around in the air. Katrina stood close by laughing and shaking her head as she watched her hulking figure of a husband and her daughter enjoying a moment of pure bliss together. Eragon was there as well watching his cousin with a smile, and on his arm lay the hand of a beautiful, elven princess..

Do not go there.. He thought to himself as he shook his head, trying to shake the image out of his minds eye. This was a scene he often visited in his dreams and waking memories. Roran had since passed and Eragon often beat himself up for not being there for his cousin more throughout the years. He had scryed him through a mirror he had set up by one of Queen Nasuadas' magicians in the keep of Carvahall while Roran was on his deathbed. He had asked Roran the details of the funeral, his cousin had told him, 'No Eragon, you made a promise never to come back here and I won't have you breaking promises on my account. Besides, what you are doing now is bigger than all of us. I never would have had this life without you, and that is more than enough payment on your account. Just promise you will keep an eye on Ismira for me, okay? And use your position to scare away any unworthy suitors if you wouldn't mind..'. Eragon had smiled at his cousin and gave him his word, that no one but the best man in Alagaesia would have his blessing to be with Ismira. As heartfelt as he knew Roran had been when he said he didn't want Eragon to come back to attend his funeral, the guilt at not showing up had eaten at him ever since. Thousands had shown up to mourn the passing of Roran Stronghammer, one of the foremost heroes of The Great War. Humans, Elves and Dwarves had shown up, and even more Urgals than would have been expected for they had not forgotten the legendary tale of Roran besting a Kull in a wrestling match. Eragon had viewed the ceremony through the scrying mirror, but had been hard to forgive himself for not bothering to show up.

"Here," said a gruff voice from over his shoulder. He turned his head to see Murtagh standing beside him, a tankard of frothing beer in his hand extended toward Eragon. Eragon noticed the beads of sweat dripping down the glass and the bubbles of carbonation spiral up from the bottom of the glass through the amber liquid. Murtagh had his long black hair pulled back into a loose ponytail that hung between his shoulder blades and a light stubble of hair growing across his face. He rarely took the time to keep up grooming and seemed less than concerned about his overall appearances, but the female elves seemed to find it appealing which had surprised dragon as elves typically didn't find humans attractive. He wore a black tunic, black felt trousers and calf-high polished black boots. A red, velvet cape was clasped over his shoulders and held to the front of his tunic by his collarbone black two roses carved out of gold that were pinned there and connected together by a silver chain.

"I'm not really in the mood", Eragon replied with a wave of his hand and turned his gaze back toward to lake taking in how the sunlight played across its surface like liquid silver. As he did he saw a streak of red that resembled a meteor fallen straight from the heavens, crash into the lake at amazing speed. Thorn had come to join Saphira in her aquatic dance, his impact sent up a huge splash and pushed large waves crashing toward the shore. Saphira and Thorn had grown to be close friends since Murtagh and him had joined them roughly 25 years ago. It had taken sometime for them to warm up to each other, the main obstacle being that they had been forced to fight and hurt each other. Thorn had shown that his behavior those years ago was not an accurate reflection of his character through his actions. Saphira had slowly come to have sympathy for him. Although she could never fully understand what it had been like for Thorn to be enslaved and forced to do things he didn't want to do, she could comprehend what that must have felt like and eventually forgave him, realizing that he hadn't wanted to hurt her. More than anything he had wanted to be her friend since she was the only other dragon besides Shruikan alive at the time, but the circumstances had not allowed such a thing.

"Oh, shut up and drink the damn beer." Muratgh replied. Eragon grunted a thanks and accepted the beer that his older half-brother had brought him. He took a gulp and his eyes slightly watered at the stinging in his throat as the first wave went down. He had never been a big drinker for he had seen what it did to men whose appetite for alcohol was larger than their brain, but he did enjoy having one with Murtagh once in a while. It had become a sort of tradition that they would enjoy one, or a few with each other, after a long and stressful day of teaching the new riders. Not that there were many stressful days, they both thoroughly enjoyed teaching the new riders and had found that they learn just as much if not more than their students did. It was a relief when Murtagh had shown up, for he had taken on some pupils of his own after he had settled in and that relieved some of the constant effort that Eragon had faced after years of having to teach them all on his own. He preferred to do one-on-one lessons and it had been hard to fit them all in when it was only himself.

"So what is my little brother doing out by the lake on a beautiful day like this, all alone hm? Brooding in his ever charming melancholy I presume?" he stated as he settled down to sit next to Eragon amongst the knotted roots.

"It seems you know me better than I know myself", he replied with a grin. He and Murtagh had grown close over the years, and were more like brothers now than ever before. Eragon cherished his companionship even more so than he had before they were pitted against against each other, especially since he was one of the only living relatives Eragon had left. After he and Thorn had spent their years after the war in isolation, recovering from the trauma of their slavery, they had joined him at the home of the new riders. They both had healed a lot during that time, and when he arrived he offered Eragon more than just relief from his duties as Lead Rider. He had a sarcastic sense of humor that Eragon appreciated and a carefree attitude that broke the tedious formality the Eragon often had to portray when around the Junior Riders and other inhabitants of their new home.

Their new home was far away from Alagaesia. After the Elda River had cross the borders of the Hadarac Desert, it had wound through rolling plains of high grass that stretched as far as the eye could see. There it had many tributaries which stemmed away from it, that themselves had branched off that had created the appearance of a tree carves into the grass when seen from above. Saphira had much enjoyed hunting the deer and other hooved and antlered creatures that abounded there. Their were agile and quick, even though they posed no serious challenge to Saphira, she enjoyed chasing them. She had also encountered some creatures that they had never seen before. Large packs of cats with long daggers of canine teeth that overlapped their lower jaw, with green fur and darker stripes which rendered them almost invisible while they were stalking prey through the thick grass. There were enormous snakes there, some reaching upwards of 40 feet long, that swam in the rivers and killed their prey by enveloping them with their muscular coils and squeezing them tighter and tighter for every exhale until they died from suffocation. The in a macabre display of domination, they would swallow their prey whole, and how they achieved this Eragon could not figured out but he was fascinated. There were also large, water dwelling lizard type creatures. Their backs were covered in plated armor and they had long pointed mouths lined with an impressive amount of sharp teeth. They were ambush predators and laid under the water at the edge on the river and its tributaries, waiting for the grass dwelling creatures to come for a drink. They would then explode out of the water, snapping their immense jaws down on the surprised creature and drag them back into the water never to be seen again. Eragon had become immensely intrigued by all these new animals and when he observe their minds he found them to be almost completely survival oriented. The predators had a singular drive for killing that Eragon had found interesting, but both predators and prey alike had one thing that Eragon found most surprising; they learned. They learned where was safe and where wasn't, which animals were easiest to kill, the best places to hide from threats, and so on.

They followed the river through the plains for many miles, until it approached a large canyon cut in between two of the most massive mountains he had ever seen. The river sliced through the crack, and its walls were a straight thousand vertical feet of sandstone. They curved like waves of orange blood all the way up until the sky was just a ribbon of blue in a sea of red. Eragon had often laid down on the deck of the ship and looked up at the walls. There was a sense of vertigo and claustrophobia in being completely surrounded by stone in such a narrow corridor, which was probably 300 feet at its widest. Throughout the canyon there were arches scattered throughout, connecting the walls to each other. Eragon had guessed that these mountains were some western extension of the Beor range. One of the elves who had left with them had introduced him to a new form of exercise that he thoroughly enjoyed. They would climb the walls of the canyon connected together by a elvish rope. This exercise was fulfilling to Eragon because it was physically strenuous, required teamwork and took problem solving when they often had to cross overhanging lips or expanses of seemingly blank rock.

When the river neared the end of the canyon two weeks later, it spewed out into a brilliant waterfall that was illuminated with all of the colors of the rainbow by the bright sunlight that had been devoid from inside the walls of the canyon except for an hour or two at noon. The sight there had taken his breath away; the ocean. It was like a rolling blanket had been laid out with a million of Saphiras' most brilliant scales strewn across it. He had remembered Roran talking about it when he recalled his seafaring adventure so long ago but nothing could have prepared him for its vastness and untamed beauty. They sailed across the ocean for another two weeks before the saw a mass of land. At first Eragon had thought it was the start of a whole other continent, for it was easily 4 to 5 times as big as Vroengard. Upon arriving however, he had found that it was in fact a large island. It was covered with dense, lush forest with giant trees hundreds of feet tall and dozens of feet thick. Moss covered everything here and dense webs of vines hung tangled among the trees. There were strange exotic plants covering the ground here, some of them even predatory plants. In the middle of the island were 5 granite towers that each rose perpendicularly, 10,000 vertical feet straight up into the clouds, and he had named the cluster of pinnacles Stellazia, or Heaven's Fence, for they resembled a fenced in circle that shot straight up into the heavens.

Upon the crowning plateau of the tallest of these towers did he build the city of the new Riders. He had named the city Tseringma after an old dwarfish folktale that Orik had once told him. Before the creation of man, dwarf, or the arrival of elves in Alagaesia there were only the gods, goddesses, and dragons. One of the goddesses had created the plants and the beasts, inciting the anger of the other gods for making her own creation. They banished her from their council and it was so that she mounted a teal dragon, the largest dragon to ever live, and ascended to the highest peak in all the Beors. Her name was Tseringma, and she resided on the peak of a mountain so tall that it was thought to be unreachable by the dwarves and that its top must lie in heaven itself. Eragon had thought this a fitting name for the city, not just because of its location at the top of a large mountain tower but because of the involvement of a dragon in the legend.

"Well, I am your blood so I should know you better than anyone else. So what has got you down today? Same old shit?" Murtagh questioned, gazing over at Eragon with his keen, dark eyes.

Eragon shrugged, "More or less" he said vaguely, hoping to avoid the topic all together but he knew Murtagh wouldn't let him down that easy.

"Listen brother, I know this is hard for you. Having to leave behind the things you love and fought so hard to save. I get it, I really do, but this can't go on forever, you being miserable like this. Those things are in the past and that is where they belong. If you believe in fate like i know you do, than do you really believe that you survived taking that bastard king off his throne just to be miserable for the rest of eternity?"

He watched as Saphira and Thorn came to the surface, sending droplets of water spraying all around them like strands of sapphire and ruby showered in beads of silver. "I don't know what I believe anymore", he answered after a moment.

"Well here is on thing you can believe: Change is the blood of life and those who are stuck in the past are condemned to repeat it. One thing I've learned is that men don't learn much from the lessons of history, and that it the most important of the all lessons history had to teach. In order to move forward you have to accept the past as it is, not how you wish it would be. We can't change the past. We can't change the fact that people act in a certain way, and that is inevitable. Forgiving what happened doesn't erase what happened. A healed memory is not an erased memory, but in forgiving what you can't forget gives you a new way to remember."

He looked up into the sky to see two bird fly by, "For the past 75 years, I have woken up everyday to look in the mirror and ask myself one question; 'If today were my last day of life, would I be happy with my life exactly the way it is right now? The answer has been no, because I don't feel complete. Everything I have tried has evaded my grasp, like a wisp of vapor that the harder I try to grasp onto it slips from my grasp..". He held up his hand as if trying to grab smoke.

"I don't know much but I do know this, life is divided into three categories: that which was, that which is, and that which will be. Focusing on that which was will either allowed you to live in the pain to be forever paralyzed by the weight of your hurt, or to rise out of that and embrace that which is and that which will be. Our trials aren't what makes us, it is how we react to them that defines our character and the quality of our lives."

He heaved a sigh before answering, "I'm not a child anymore. I know all of this. My head knows this. My heart however, sings a different tune. I am at a constant war of the head and the heart. I just don't seem to know how to move forward. How do I move forward, when I feel as though a piece of me has been left behind?"

"The first step is to forgive. She did what she did for a reason, and Roran told you not to come. He would be happy that you stuck by your word. As important as it is for you to forgive Arya, it is more important to forgive yourself. For the things you could have done or things you could have said. I once heard an old archivist in tell my father something. He said, 'If you love someone, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were'. That has stuck with me since then and i didn't know why until now. It stuck with me so that I could tell you that, because its what you need to hear."

"Since when did you get so damn wise?"

"It must have rubbed off on me from trying to counsel you for so long" he replied with a grin. "Just promise me you will try, okay?"

"Alright, I promise. Only because I wouldn't want to break your precious little heart though, he gripped his breast in mock drama.

"Shut the fuck up", Murtagh said smiling as he punched his little brother on the shoulder, sending him toppling over and laughing. "Besides, I know for a fact that there are many women here that would just love to have your affections."

"Oh, you don't say? Like who?" he asked cautiously.

"You know who", Murtagh grinned even wider.

"Violet?" He questioned.

"The one and only", Murtagh answered with a nod.

He frowned. Violet was a female rider who was the second to arrive on Stellazia. She was from the town of Bullridge, and came from a rather poor family. She had 2 older, and 3 younger brothers and 1 older, and 1 younger sister. Her father was a subsistence farmer, growing only what their family needed to survive with a little extra to trade for supplies. Eragon had to admit to himself, for he would never admit to Murtagh for fear that it would reach her ears, that she was a beautiful woman. She was slightly taller than the average human woman. She had golden blonde hair that resembled flowing honey as it hung down to below her chin but a few inches above her shoulders. Her body was tight and toned, from the years of manual labor working the fields with her father, and her skin was a shining bronze for the exposure to the sun. Her face was soft and warm. Freckles sprinkled across her cheek bones and nose. She had bright, grey eyes that resembled polished marble that lay in the soft folds of her face. Her voice was calm but confident, and she was never afraid to speak her mind. Only when he thought about it did he realize just how much he had admired her from afar. She was a quick learner and one of his best students, and she had grown a lot during their time together. She had become and excellent swords-woman and magician. While her skills with the blade were impressive, she was truly a sight to behold wielding a bow, for she had the uncanny ability to wield the ranged weapon more like an elf than a human.

A purple egg had hatch for her about 20 years ago. A purple dragon named Felina. Saphira and her had taken to each other extremely well, much like a mother would take to a daughter. Saphira had taken her under her wing and they had formed a close bond. Felina held her in the highest regard, even compared to the other dragons, which was saying a lot. To her, Sapphires' words were law, and when she spoke it was like god was speaking.

Eragon had long suspected that she harbored feelings for him. Suggesting words a lingering glances, here and there. He worried at the integrity of their lessons, however, because if she did have serious feelings for him then the teacher-student dynamic could be in danger.

"Don't worry little brother, unless she is anything like you, she has probably given up by now. Let's go back to the city, what do you think?" and he drained the last of his beer. Eragon followed suit and tilted his mug back until it was drained dry.

"Lets go," and at that Murtagh stood up and extended his hand down. Eragon grabbed his forearm and was yanked to his feet. Eragon knew that Violet wasn't one to give up on anything, but was confused by the pang of fear that shot through him when it was suggested that she had given up on him. Murtagh clasped a hand on his back and they began to walk off toward the cliffs, and he sent a mental communication to Saphira asking to meet them there. She responded with a mental equivalent of a nod. As he walked away though one memory stuck out in his mind. Him standing on a ship that slowly rocked in the water, and watching a green dragon fly off into the distance, becoming smaller and eventually disappearing all together. Looking up into those emerald eyes as she disappeared out of his hands. Arya...