FIRST ENCOUNTER

Inside his magically enlarged trunk, David paced in his apartment's floor, Fleur burning calmly as her jar was hanging from the ceiling, doing a good enough job to light the blackboards over which the one-eyed wizards was busy writing.

"The good news are that I know in which world we are, the bad are that we are, frankly, ridiculously incapable of defending ourselves." he spoke loud enough to be heard by both his flaming companion and his white-feathered familiar.

Fleur churned a bit inside of her jar, while raven hopped off the armchair in order to fly and land over David's shoulder, croaking: "Learn!" with insistence.

"That's the thing, magic here doesn't really make sense. From what I remember, there are magic words that are 'True Names' of everything, but knowing them and understanding them isn't remotely enough, whatever changes one applies comes at the price of 'energy'." he spoke quickly, chalking on the blackboard his hazy memories. Occlumency had as a side effect an increased memory, but he had started with the discipline only in the Potter-verse, and his memories of his first lfe had never been a great focus while he could learn how o manipulate reality itself. So, the memories that could have very well given him a leg up now that he was stranded in Alagaësia were less useful than he hoped.

From the way the fire flickered, he believed that Fleur was burning with questions. He snorted at the private pun, before trying to imagine what questions she could be posing. "Fleur, I know that you're likely a bit overwhelmed by the situation, but... I kind of am too, so I'll try to figure out a way for us to communicate, but for now pay attention, maybe you'll gleam something that can solve your situation."

"I am reticent in calling it so but..." he took a deep breath, "apparently magic works off 'life energy'." he grimaced as he spoke, ignoring the croaking laugh of what could appear to be disbelief in Raven's behaviour and the furious brightening of Fleur's fire.

"Yeah I know, life energy doesn't make a lick of sense, is it bioelectricity? Thermal energy? The amount of Joules one can exercise to move something? I have no idea, like I said, I don't know everything about this place." he went ahead: "So," he started to make out points on the blackboard: "Life energy and magic words are the first point that needs to be figured out. Second: who can or cannot help. Since I remember that here everyone is either a telepath or capable of becoming one, we're not going around until I'm sure that occlumency works out against mental intrusions here. That means kidnapping someone and trying to enter his mind before and after having thought him occlumency, to see if it works."

David took a step back and drank a full glass of water that he had left on the nearest workbench: "Third, the most powerful things that we could eventually encounter, but only if we are unlucky, are Shades, which are strange spectres capable of magic and that are basically a walking legilimens battering ram, elves, which are faster and stronger than they should be, all capable of this... nonsensical way of doing magic, and, unless I'm greatly mistaken on the kind of timeline we're working with, Riders, in particular, this Black King that the people of the caravan spoke in hushed tones about. Which are either humans or elves bonded with a sapient fire breathing lizard which instead is capable of magic that actually breaks the previous rules of magic that I've stated."

"Fucked up!" croaked Raven: "You fucked up!"

David sighed, ignoring the particularly witty familiar in order to walk towards the second blackboard, which had been cleaned up from the abandoned projects that had remained there: "What do we have to work with:" he started preparing another point.

"Well, this trunk is the best kind of mobile base that could be dreamed about, and not something this world would ever think possible. So we have food and shelter wherever we go. Our second resource is... well, you Fleur." he spoke confidently, making a surrendering like gesture when the fire threatened to jump over the edge of the glass jar: "Meaning that somehow you're a self-sustaining flame that gives off heat, if we can figure out that 'life energy' thing, you are practically an infinite amount of it, even if with limited output. Third, if the trunk hasn't collapsed yet, it's because Runes still work, and the enchantments that I built back home are apparently self-sustaining, so, while I don't think that I can replicate my previous works, if I figure out this life energy thing I can set up traps powered by my 'life force', I have no idea if the Philosopher Stone that I kept in a constant working cycle inside my empty orbit has changed my 'life force' or not, but it would make some sort of sense." If I squint at look at it with the corner of my eye at least.

The one-eyed wizard took another step back from the blackboard, scratching his own head pensively: "Another advantage is that there shouldn't be an apocalypse-like scenario incoming, so we can take our time once we find a sufficiently secluded place."

Raven flapped her wings, sticking her feathers briefly in David's hear: "I can sizzle like bacon,

I am made with an egg,

I have plenty of backbone,

but lack a good leg,

I peel layers like onions,

but still remain whole,

I can be long, like a flagpole,

yet fit in a hole. What am I?"

That made the one-eyed wizard stop for a couple of seconds: "A snake?... Why would..?" then the spark of intuition that had allowed the man to rise from muggleborn to the most terrifying magic-user of his world entered the fray: "Parseltongue! And Caninetongue too!" he turned on himself, grabbing Raven despite her squawking protests and squeezing delicately with his hands, before letting his fingers trail along her feathers: "I swear, if you weren't so damn annoying you would be the perfect familiar!"

He then added quickly the points to the blackboard: "In theory, the True Tongue can be used to communicate with the animals too, but the advantages of our brand of animal-talking are that I can impart a measure of intelligence upon the beasts that I talk to, and also that they obey my orders."

After having said that, he took a deep breath, steeling himself now that he had stated what was necessary to make known, he moved towards the brazier, eyeing briefly the ever-burning embers that kept the room at a comfortable temperature. "I don't remember the exact mechanics, nor if I'll be one of the people capable of actually using magic," David stated somberly, "Since one either can or cannot turn his own life-force into the energy necessary for actually make magic work. The same goes for you too Fleur, to be completely honest, even if given your heritage and that you're... well, living fire for now, once we figure out a way to return you to a body you'll hopefully be able to."

The one-eyed wizard sighed, dragging his hands among his unruly hair, he was working on assumptions and blurry memories, and he didn't really know how to be sure without actually trying out a spell. "I'm guessing that enough meditation upon an object could make me discover its True Name, or at least I hope so..."

Raven flapped briefly her wings in a careless manner, she had already given her more than useful input to the situation, the rest was up to the actual wizard.

"The problem is that, if by some miracle I'm capable of the local kind of magic, I'm pretty sure that been the simplest spell could consume all of my 'life force and kill me, since I have no idea of how to actually control it.'" he murmured, grimacing as he remembered that he still didn't remember a single magic word of the True Tongue, no... there had been one, the movie had somewhat butchered it along with everything else, effectively condemning the whole series to never be heard of.

What was it? What was it? He thought with a frown as he left the room an walked upstairs, not stopping to check either the chickens the orchard or the vegetable garden, knowing that the runic clusters he had placed in proximity of each plant kept the environment in its optimal condition, he kept walking upwards, out of the already open lid and into the fox den he had taken over when he met another vulpine mammal, a week or two after his realization over the world that he was living in. "The word for fire... Brush? Burn? Something with a lot of bite to it, Eragon basically used only that spell to fight..."

But maybe he was working on it backwards, what better occasion to figure out if understanding was enough to figure out if a Name could be learned through simple understanding? Besides, given how long the True Tongue had been around, or was it the Ancient Tongue? Yeah, that sounded more familiar. David closed the lid of the Iron Trunk and secured it to his neck while he was belly down on the dirt floor of the den, quickly turning into a fox in order to have some more space to move around in.

He sniffed the air thoughtfully as he moved towards one of the two entrances of the den, not perceiving anything foul in the air, and with his ears picking out the usual sounds of the small forest he had been living in. He settled down in his den, meditation came easily to him, after an unholy amount of years of either straight occlumency or this and that magic experiment that required him to be in 'tune' with the world around him.

Falling into himself, he started by visualizing a tiny ember. He went with his mind to the unstoppable heat of the deserts: the heavy heat of a sun that didn't now mercy. The sheer dryness of the air, the scorching heat of a fireball tearing through the air in his past duels with Fleur, the reassuring warmth of a campfire. The stones turned cherry red into the fire that he had once dropped in a pot of water to make stew during one of his badly gone attempts at cooking for myself something not 'microwaveable'. The hunger he had felt when he had fallen into a trance lasting more than a week. The need to grow. The rage at the sheer violence that he had been forced to use magic for, the warmth of an honest smile.

In his mind's eye, he saw fyendfire, remembering its almost uncontrollable thundering fury, he remembered the Eternal Flame, he visualized Fleur's fire melting rock as it passed near to her, with such clarity that he could have reached out and touched it. He remembered the fire in Fleur's eyes, and with a gut-wrenching effort he forced himself to think about Fire, and Fire only, refusing to lose himself among regrets and feelings that he wasn't sure Fleur still had for him.

Keeping in mind the feel of fire, wich was an amalgamation of all the thoughts that still surrounded and kept circulating in his mind, he knew, with some sort of detached certainty, that he was close, and kept coming closer with the image of flames growing clearer and clearer in his head...

Still lost in his trance, he changed his form, with his eye closed, in the dark of a moonless night, he breathed in, and as the air rushed out of his lungs he opened his mouth, feeling Fire roll off his tongue with the cracking of wood bark exploding under the assault of heat, with the whooshing of air being consumed: "Brisingr."

As David spoke, he could see Fire clearly withing his mind, and his muscles relaxed minimally under an imagined ripple of warm air wishing around him. His own startled laugh brought him outside of his meditation: "Words can be discovered with enough understanding." he summarized, "Now I need to figure out this life-force turned into spell mechanism and I'm set."

With a content smile and a deep satisfaction rumbling in his bones, he dropped on all fours, reddish fur covering him as his face lengthened and a fluffy-looking tail sprouted from his tailbone as he started running in the night.

a month later

Three white horses with riders cantered through the woods, their heads held high and proud, their coats rippling in the moonlight like liquid silver.

On the first horse was an elf with pointed ears and elegantly slanted eyebrows. His build was slim but strong, like a rapier. A powerful bow was slung on his back. A sword pressed against his side opposite a quiver of arrows fletched with swan feathers.

The last rider had the same fair face and angled features as the other. He carried a long spear in his right hand and a white dagger at his belt. A helm of extraordinary craftsmanship, wrought with amber and gold, rested on his head.

Between these two rode a raven-haired elven lady, who surveyed her surroundings with poise. Framed by long black locks, her deep eyes shone with a driving force. Her clothes were unadorned, yet her beauty was undiminished. At her side was a sword, and on her back a longbow with a quiver. She carried in her lap a pouch that she frequently looked at as if to reassure herself that it was still there.

Suddenly, the first elf raised an open hand, causing the other two to leave the trail and direct the horses in two wide arches around it. They proceeded pulling lightly on the bridles, guiding their horses more with their knees than with their arms, after few hundreds of meters, the two male elves switched places, leaving the one armed with a spear to lead the vanguard on the trail, and making it possible for the second to embrace his powerful bow, his eyes scanning the undergrowth, almost completely ignoring the darkness.

Having at least two members of the party constantly off the trail forced the group to slow down significantly, the dull sounds caused by the steps of the horses against the dirt almost completely drowning in the inky blackness that made hairs stand up un warning on each of the three elves' arms.

Half an hour later, the song of a nightingale caused the two male elves to stop their horses, their eyes leaving the undergrowth to look toward the direction their third companion had sung from.

In the nightly silence, the two directed their horses toward the she-elf, raised eyebrows on both of their faces a clear picture of surprise and curiosity.

Before they could utter questions, their eyes quickly found the reason of her call. Almost a three hundred of meters off one of the less known trails of one of the thickest forests outside of their home country, there was an oval-shaped clearing where almost ten tree stumps marked the ground, barely large enough to allow the canopy to form a hole through which they could spy the sky. The real object of their curiosity, however, was undoubtedly the trio of foxes which kept yapping in her direction with glee, going as far as running circles around her mount before returning towards one end of the clearing.

"What happened?" whispered one of the elves. And when his word left his lips, they resounded with a sharpness that transcended mere sound, they travelled with the certainty of the mountains and the thrill of the first leaves sprouting after the winter.

"We passed here less than three years ago, and there are no settlements in the area, we would have spotted the signs. Is it prudent to stay around when we know they've been used by someone around here?" The other male answered in the same musical, heavenly tongue.

"We are tired and have been travelling for days, the foxes are free from any influence, and only after I spoke to them they seemed to be willing me to follow them." the female elf answered.

"Maybe they've been raised to lure us in a trap?" but even as he spoke, the spear-wielding elf seemed to be unbelieving of what he was witnessing.

"You think a mage asked the foxes to look for help? Or someone who knows the Ancient Tongue?" the other male speculated, even if curiosity was clear in his eyes.

After a brief back and forth, the elves directed their horses to follow the three foxes, which looked overjoyed by their choice and fell one over another in order to show to the elves a way through the undergrowth that would have been easy to miss even during the day. Soon enough, the three elves reached the mouth of a big hole in the ground that looked like a fox's den, only an order of magnitude bigger.

It seemed almost a natural curve of the ground, which followed the shape of the oak tree' roots under which it was hidden. Even so, the tilt of the ground towards said hole was almost gentle, and unless one knew where to look, the undergrowth and the fallen branches both managed, with a startling demonstration of cunning and wariness, to mask the den.

Several steps to the side, where the conspicuously absent trail would have led, there was a section of a trunk cut in half with the central section dug out and filled with clear water that a few words of choice in the ancient tongue confirmed that was as fresh and pure as it looked. Taking the hint, and looking once more in the minds of the unsettlingly intelligent foxes just to be sure, the elf holding the spear dismounted in order to take a look and make sure this wasn't an extremely elaborated and improbable ambush.

The tallest of the elves had to duck a bit in order to enter the fox's den and so he stopped briefly in order to question once more the wisdom of their choice.

"Even if it's filled to the brim with Urugali, which I doubt, since their smell and tracks are completely missing, we could easily overcome such a small number, especially in the closed spaces where they lack mobility." the raven-haired she-elf answered, gracefully descending from her mount, her green eyes taking returning to the dark forest around them, ready to bold at the first sign of a problem.

"And if they're Imperial soldiers we'll have an easy time removing their outpost." concluded the first elf, finding wisdom in their superior's choice.

"I'm the only one absolutely perplexed by this situation?" asked the first, with a corked eyebrow, only to witness a small curling up of the female' lips.

"Whatever is happening, is not malicious in nature." she replied with a face that managed to convey that she felt more at ease than she had since a long time past. "These foxes are as smart as our own horses, and they hold the same purity."

The animals in question chose that moment to trot inside of their den, yipping joyfully as they nuzzled each other. The three elves exchanged glances that went from amused by the jumpy reaction of their companion, to fascinated by the turn of the events, to enthralled by the sheer absurdity of the situation.

The elf with the spear dismounted silently and walked forward, his eyes scanning the part of the ground that he could glimpse from the outside before walking in with the control and cautious attitude of a veteran.

His two companions exchanged a glance when they didn't receive an answer for a handful of seconds. Really, how long could it take to take stock of a safe den that a group of foxes had apparently offered to rest in?

The spear-wielding elf shook his head lightly, once he followed the curve of the burrowed 'cave' his eyes boggling out when he witnessed a minute amount of sunlight coming out from a rectangular section of the floor where a wooden staircase spiralled downward. His discipline was the only thing that allowed him to replicate the chirping song of a nightingale in answer to his concerned companions before his eyes returned to what was quickly growing up to be one of the strangest moment he had ever lived since he left his home.

He looked over at the trio of foxes, that seemed unconcerned with his reluctance and scampered down the stairs with reckless abandon before his eyes fixed themselves on the hatch that led somewhere where artificial light kept the day from dying and waited until his companions reached him.

Once more opening the way, he walked in first, and if not for his discipline, he would have stopped dead as soon as his head was completely under the hatch, his acute ayes taking in something impossible.

As far as his eyes could go, there were trees ripe with fruits over a carpet of lush green grass. His ears picked up immediately over the chuckling of chickens in a henhouse he immediately spotted before cataloguing also the light breeze that ran through the branches and the gentle trickle of a course of water.

As he kept walking down the spiral staircase, he noticed that it kept going beyond the impossible pocket of summer that he had just walked past.

Wrenching himself away from the dozens of questions that wanted him to understand how so much impossible magic could exist, he pocked his head in the following floor, and if possible, he was even more mindblown.

The room was twelve meters wide and roughly ten long, with a ceiling that sat comfortably at three meters of height. There was a single armchair in front of a fireplace that clearly spoke of human presence. It was made of simple wood and wicker, with cushions randomly covering it. There was a table in a sturdy looking, light brown wood that ran almost all the way from a wall to the next. Confirming that it was indeed the home of a powerful mage there were several aisles of books that hurt his eyes when he tried to see what there was at the end of them. On the other side of the room, next to another door that the elf assumed led to yet another floor, there was a metallic looking tube from which water fell quietly into a wooden bucket encased in a marble-like shelf.

After having confirmed that there was nobody in the room, he returned to the even more impossible forest-floor, where he was quickly joined by his two wide-eyed companions.

They walked towards what looked like the centre of the orchard, their senses immediately picking up on a human talking, not longer before, while remaining hidden among the trees and ready to either attack or run away, their eyes picked up on the owner of said voice.

The man didn't seem to have noticed them, and was missing an eye, a silvery patch covering his empty orbit. He had a wild-looking mane of dirty blond hair that didn't reach his shoulders, while the rest of his face was clean of either beard or moustache. He had thin lips and a straight, if slightly longer than usual, nose. He wore a strange form-fitting black shirt that covered his arms only to half of his bicep, while his linen trousers reached only halfway through his calves. His build was... lean, and he had something different from other humans that they managed to observe in the several years they spent travelling across the land. It was subtle, but it was there. The people of the desert would have called him 'a child grown with too much water' while the villagers near the spine would have pointed out his absolute cluelessness to the environment surrounding him.

He reminded the elves the son of a rich noble, only one that had managed to keep his body in its peak working condition. It was in the fluid and effortless way in which he paced in front of the black wood-like board where he was muttering, in the way the muscles of his forearm twitched along with the movement of his fingers, intent on tapping rhythmically against his leg.

His words, however, carried the accent topical of the itinerant caravans that crossed the land, which inflexions that he couldn't have picked up anywhere else.

The elves' eyes fell on the firepit, where white flames seemed to be ready to jump around openly ignoring every rule human-made fires were usually subjected to. More mindblowing that the appearances of the man, which coupled with the surrounding environment set the bar quite high, were the words and the logical speech that he seemed to be keeping.

"A name can be discovered with enough understanding, but it grants no advantage over a name learned when told by someone else." David's voice sounded clearly in the clearing of the orchard he had on the first floor of his Iron Trunk, while his hand cleaned up a blackboard he had set up against a tree where he was going to write down the small vocabulary he had been slowly building leveraging his previous experience with the True Nature of All Things.

Since he had abandoned the assaulted human caravan, David had forced himself to use as much as he could the human-tongue he had picked up thanks to his Allspeak cluster, falling back to English when his vocabulary fell short.

Fleur, who had been moved inside a big and newly dug firepit in order to give her some more breathing room to express herself, rolled back and forth, which was her equivalent of a dismissive shrug coupled with an invitation to go ahead with the explanation.

"Yes, Fleur, I'm going on, don't be pushy." he shot a scathing glare at the firepit that was completely ignored by the flames before returning to his reasoning: "The fact that there is a hard-set vocabulary for all that exists, apparently, even if I'm suspecting that the Words that describe the Four Fundamental Forces are not expressible with this True Tongue, means that an object is its Word and the Word is the object it describes, knowing one means knowing the other." as he spoke, his hand quickly wrote 'Brisingr' with chalk: "I don't know if here they have magic characters too to write Truth, but I'd think so, don't you agree?"

Once more, the white flames in the wide fireplace moved in a pattern they had previously agreed upon, and David went on: "The real question is if this tongue has always existed, and so it's one aspect of the Fundamental Force of Magic as well, or if it has been crafted at some point."

"Latter!" croaked the white raven from her perch on a branch of a peach tree: "The Latter!"

The three elves snapped their eyes towards the bird that they had previously dismissed as inconsequential, only then noticing the silvery and unnatural glint of one of his eyes.

The one-eyed man nodded thoughtfully as the second word found its way over the blackboard: "I'd tend to agree, but that opens other two questions. One: who are the ones responsible? Two: is it a complete language? With prepositions and adverbs? Or only one built with nouns?" he finished writing 'Kveykva' which meant lightning.

"Guliä" he said out loud as he wrote it down, his experiences with the Felix Felicis being enough for him to figure out the word for 'Luck'. As the white flames in the firepit rose of a couple of meters for a second before returning to their usual behaviour, David shook himself out of his reverie in order to return to his self-imposed task: "I'd guess that the amount of things that someone can actually 'do' with a magic word depends instead on the understanding that one has of said Word."

The three elves where stumped. What they were witnessing went beyond even their most outlandish idea: a one-eyed human in a hidden forest where it was day while outside it wasn't, apparently busy discussing the merits of the Ancient Tongue with a strange imitation of Bladgen, their Queen's companion, and a... semi-sentient lump of white fire named Fleur.

David shook his head as 'Hugr' was added to the growing list, meaning 'mind'. Again, his decades of experience with dealing with the World-Soul back in the Potterverse granted him a way to find Names regarding elements he had interacted with pretty quickly: "When we actually figure out the magic here, the stuff that I'll be able to do with Brisingr will likely be nothing compared to what you will be capable of." he said looking into the firepit, where Fleur churned on herself in a pleased manner.

I guess it's rare enough for her to outclass me in something that she feels extremely good about it. David sighed to himself. She's even almost stopping giving me the cold shoulder when we try to figure out this place's magic.

"I'd exclude a bunch of gods from the list of possible creators of the True Tongue." David turned to a piece of paper where he had jotted down some words he hadn't expect to find again, much less in the context he was into: "Hügin and Manin, Thought and Memory. Which were the odds that Odin's crows kept their names and memories in this world? Or does this push us towards the Norse Pantheon to look for our answers?" he considered while the chalk snapped and rapped against the blackboard. The real question that I can't make out loud is if the Author of Eragon is also its Creator, or if all the authors of my first life were simply able to catch a glimpse of these places and mistook their intuition for imagination.

Before he could return to writing down Names and use Fleur as a bouncing board for his speculation, Raven croaked out: "I move all the time,

I'm worth more than a dime,

I have both face and hands,

and I move before your eyes.

Yet when I go, my body stands,

and if I stand still, I lie."

David frowned at that, and not only because it was a bitchy one (he could tell from the way she had ruffled her breast feathers and the extremely annoying glint in her normal eye), but because of her apparent delusion that her riddles were somehow helping with figuring out the Names of the things around them: "For the last Time Raven, your riddles aren't helping me with guessing the Names!".

He tossed the piece of chalk at his familiar while the white flames in the firepit climbed a meter or so in the air before falling back in a staggering pattern, translating Fleur's laughter,and only with his movement his eyes fell upon an elf that was staring him down holding a powerful-looking bow with an arrow ready to fly, thankfully not pointed at him just yet.

"When I planned to meet someone, I imagined that a random hunter would have followed the foxes, and I made sure they understood to trust their noses, but..." the one-eyed man stopped talking and gestured a small circle with his hand, as to say that whatever he had planned no longer mattered: "I sure as hell didn't expect an elf."

The three foxes that had led the three immortals there came tipping inside of the clearing, attracting briefly the eyes of everyone, which became even more wide in surprise when the one-eyed mage actually barked somehitng back, which caused the foxes to quiet down and go huddle near the firepit, trying to jump in the air and bite on the white raven' tail feathers, who made sure to fly well out of their range.

"Sorry, the one-eyed man turned back towards the elf: "Three elves."

At that point, the other two elves left the cover of the woods eyeing him with guarded curiosity and concern. David only hoped that his first interaction with the mages of Alagaësia wouldn't be his last.

AN

I'm still deciding on what's going to happen in the next chapter, and by extension, the rest of the story, one one hand, having Saphira hatch for David would be some author omnipotence thrown inside of the game pretty heavily, since she hatched for Earong in the books, I'm working on the idea that she can get a 'feel' of the one touching the egg.

And let's be honest, no matter how much the MC has changed after finding himself mortal again, a Ravenclaw at heart isn't exact the kind of character that works well as a straight-up hero.

The mentality of Eragon, when he found the Egg at least, was something along the lines of take-care-of-the-family become-a-farmer-one-day (being humble = not becoming corrupt with power) curiosity-recklessness (a normal kid grown in the ass-end of nowhere in the equivalent of magic-middle-ages would run the fuck away from a shining blue stone appearing out of thin air). But...

David instead is more a curiosity let's-try-to-not-be-assholes (not experimenting on innocents, and since I'm walking around, might as well lend a hand) If-I-begin-something-I-end-it need-for-freedom Not-caring-about-commanding-others (power over people and wealth is useless to him)

Fleur is more of a person actively seeking spotlight out of her own merits in canon Potterverse (hence why I guess she signed up for the Triwizard), that 'look-at-me' part of her personality was pretty much stomped out by David in The Bigger Picture, leaving her with the ambition of being the best because she simply knew that she could, which is the main point of connection between her and the MC. She is prideful and doesn't shy away from a fight, while the MC prefers to work around one if he can, or simply overwhelm the opponent.

Having Saphira hatch for either of them would be a stretch, but only if the blue dragon's personality is already there since the beginning. Which is something that doesn't work well with the Lore of the Inheritance Cycle, since True Names can change, either they start doing so like for normal humans, with the building of experience (that is which forges us) only after the proper hatching, or they wold be always the same.

In the Inheritance Cycle, dragons are dynamic characters too, so I'm guessing that Saphira chose Eragon because he had no thoughts whatsoever reserved to power or glory, and that he would be amenable to fight against Galbatorix (Paolini wrote (or said in an interview) that Saphira knew that she was a prisoner in her egg, and that she waited for years before hatching only because she feared everything was a trick of the king). After being teleported, she figured out that she was actually out of the clutches of the king, and actually started considering a Rider. (That she landed in front of Eragon is plot building at its finest) So she needs some kind of buildup of magic to realize she's no longer in the hands of Galbatorix.

If I leave Eragon as a Rider, I would still need a way to make David invested in the fight against Galbatorix, and I'd need him capable of the local kind of magic, because otherwise he would resort to sheer science, and given enough time, he could pretty easily synthesize dynamite (it's actually relatively simple). How would I be able to make this story engaging if I put a rail gun in his hands (magic shields are powered through magic, and given that the noble with the eldunari in his armour was overwhelmed in Inheritance by catapults and whatnot, I can estimate that enough modern-age weaponry would be able to erase even Galbatorix (he survived the equivalent of an atomic bomb on Vroengard because he likely had magic protection placed against heat-radiation, which I'm guessing is more effective than the protection against blunt force)).

Making him a Techno-Mage would make him able to erase everyone but Galbatorix right off the bat, and it would make for an extremely boring story.

It all comes down to some contained nerfing. In societies that share their existence with magic users, sheer science doesn't cut it. If only because in the middle ages, a particularly smart person is lucky if he grows up while learning how to read.

One can be the greatest genius ever, but without a solid 'knowledge' as a starting block, there won't be gunpowder anytime soon. Also, given the fact that oil is the result of fossilized stuff, I'm going out a limb and say that there is very little of it in a world where giant flying immortal lizards eat everything that moves.

So... I need legitimate reasons to make sure the MC is actually invested in the plot, that he doesn't resort to overwhelming scientific knowledge (nerve gas and chemical warfare), and that he's not overpowered in regards to magic.

The parts of Eragon's personality that Saphira found acceptable after realizing that she actually wasn't ensnared in one of Galbatorix' tricks are curiosity lack-of-attraction-for-power-and-glory protectiveness-of-his-family and eventually some sort of goodwill (let's be honest, a 15 y.o. kid living in the middle ages as a farmer-hunter is far less complex than any adult grown up in modern times). All those characteristics and more are found in the MC now that his madness and detachment caused by his soul falling further and further away from reality and into the World-Soul are gone.

ps

the Names I used in this chapter are actually present in the Inheritance Cycle, but given that Hugin and Manin are taken from the Norse Mythology, coupled with the generally Tolkien-elven-tongue characteristics of the Ancient Language, I'll figure out a way to approximate Paolini' magic words for when the MC starts going all out with magic.

pps

This chapter originally was to be a copy-paste of the oneshot that inspired this story, but it didn't quite fit with how I've built up this story, so I had to start from scratch.

Review and let me know if this chapter works!

ppps

since it's starting to get complicated, a brief summary of the format:

"Normal Speaking."

"English Speaking."

Thoughts

"Parseltongue or Caninetongue"

"Ancient Language"

pppps

is the POV working?