POWER AND DIRECTION
Leaving the Spine after four months hidden in it, after four months spent learning, sweating, and remaining on the move, since they couldn't be sure that they weren't still being hunted by the winged counterparts of the Ra'zac, was almost wistful.
David sighed, far above the treetops, as Saphira flew south.
I am tired of hiding.
I can feel that, Saphira. David replied affectionately. He had made his feelings known in more than one occasion, there was little point in repeating them again.
Am I not a dragon? I shall not hide from the Oathbreaker!
Even the mightiest may fall to the lowest of vermin, we have confirmed that much when I used an owl to help bring one of the Ra'zac to die by Brom's hand. But I won't deny that there is little that Brom is willing to teach me about actual magic, and Arya is unsettlingly reticent about taking over, she seems to find the idea of being my teacher outrageous.
Don't you mean upsettingly reticent? Saphira snorted a small measure of black smoke in amusement, taking a gleeful satisfaction when David found himself coughing it out from his lungs.
That too.
His annoyance echoed across his more recent memories, quickly finding his other source of deep irritation.
And you're upset because you can't seem to overcome Brom with the sword. Saphira knowingly laughed in the safe confines of their shared mind.
David shrugged, not bothering justifying himself. Brom is crafty, but as soon as I figure out how to give power to my spells, I'll outstrip him immediately, I have no idea why he refuses to teach me anything but Names and small tricks.
But you have an idea, or even more than so, it's obvious is it not? To be taught more about magic, he expects you to learn more about battle.
I still don't think that I have a need to learn such trivial things. David retorted. Between you, my animagus talent, magic and my trunk, everything that he knows about tactics is far less useful and important than wielding a weapon. And even that practice's usefulness is debatable.
What will happen when you're cornered by people protected from magic? Saphira retorted to the old argument she used to spurn her Rider towards learning properly about those 'more trivial matters' as he disdainfully called them.
David snorted. How likely is it that someone can get past you?
The dragon under him shivered with joy, preening under her Rider's praise, and they flew for a while sharing a quiet companionship.
I want to save them. Saphira stated out of the blue, projecting David's memory of the two elves that got captured by the Shade.
David froze for a moment, disregarding his immediate answer and reaction in order to explore the jumbled mess of reasoning and blurred images that his dragon had poured in his mind. Amidst the gratefulness towards those that carried her egg, the rage towards anything that would harm those that helped her, even if for their own reasons, and a simple outrage at the idea of allowing a Shade to roam the land, there was a quiet determination that the Rider was far too familiar with.
You do realize that they acted for their own selfish interests, do you not? They hope that with your presence they'll finally have a chance. David did nothing to hide his scorn at the idea. Elves were immortal sorcerers that had preferred retreating into their domain and letting Glabatorix do as he pleased for the better part of a century, just so that they would be left alone for the time being.
There is no shame in recognizing that a Rider should face another one. Saphira reminded him.
If they wanted to free the land from him, they could have acted, if they didn't find within themselves to fight, they could have left, nobody forced them to remain. David replied.
And go West? Like the Elves from your stories? Saphira did nothing to hide her annoyance about his apathetic attitude towards the land's plight.
David shrugged, again, that was an argument they already had in more than one occasion. His dragon, who was ready to admit that David had come a long way since his first days on Alagaësia, as he had finally admitted that the people around were as real as he was, mostly because there was little that could oppose Spahira's incessant nagging when she put her mind to it, but he still had difficulties about thinking that it was his problem.
I do not nag! A ball of dark smoke invested David's face, making his lone eye sting with unshed tears. The end of my kin has been brought forward by the Oath Breaker! I will not leave them unavenged!
What do the dead care about the livings' plights? David retorted. Wouldn't they wish you a long life of peace instead?
And what about the two eggs still in his possess? Saphira snarled, like always finding herself almost driven to madness by her Rider's lack of an investment in the future of her race.
Saphira, with only two other eggs, your race won't be able to return to their ancient glory, unless you reassign yourself to be bred for the rest of the next millennium, and even then, the world would be filled by your children only.
I quite remember your explanation about the 'Genetic Pool', thank you very much. She snarked back.
It's of no consequence in any case, the Black King won't leave us alone, killing him is necessary.
You truly feel nothing for my plight, do you? A vast moment of vulnerability stretched between the two, filled with silence.
I am saddened that you're hurt. David opened himself to his mind's companion, don't you see that what hurts you hurts me too, that your rage echoes in my mind with the same heat that burns your heart?
Without any sign of her intentions appearing in his mind, David found himself almost slipping off Saphira's back when she dived, uncaring for his discomfort. He clung for dear life as Saphira tore through the air with a sky-shattering roar, and clenched his teeth as he saw the ground skyrocket towards them because of his skewed perspective.
A few instants before crashing against the ground and being reduced to a splatter of blood, bone and gore, the dragon threw open her wings, causing David to crash hard against her back, slamming his forehead painfully over the deep blue scales.
While David was busy sprouting a veritable fountain of obscenities that wouldn't have made sense in Alagaësia, Saphira landed roughly in a clearing among the tall pines of the west side of the Spine, shaking him off without hesitation.
I'm going to hunt. She stated uncompromisingly before setting off once more
"I'll do what I need to." David stated, both with his voice and with his mind, only to be ignored. He didn't feel burning of self-righteous anger towards the Black King, and why should he? Galbatorix was the product of a time over which the one-eyed Rider had no influence over, and damaged (even that was open to debate) people that he didn't care for. Eventually, the people would go for a Revolution, and the problem would solve itself.
Oh, sure, Arya had explained that Riders were effectively immortal, but David was much aware that harder one pushed humans, sturdier they tended to become. Eventually, the problem would resolve itself. Also, in David's opinion, Galbatorix would grow tired of wearing the crown sooner rather than later. Evil tyrants seeking power over others rarely stopped to consider the sheer amount of bureaucracy involved.
With an annoyed growl that travelled across his throat, David dropped his necklace among a bunch of bushes, returning it to its original dimensions before entering it. He walked down the spiral staircase feeling the beginning of a stabbing headache, and he quickly strode across the lush green glass towards the large clearing inside of his orchard, where he immediately spotted Brom busy smoking with his back resting against a peach-tree, one of his scrolls opened in front of him.
As the one-eyed Rider neared, Brom rose his gaze, meeting David's thunderous expression, and he nodded towards his sword, as if mockingly asking if he was there to try and learn how to fight, holding knowledge about magic hostage until David progressed enough.
David eyed him briefly, knowing that if he wished to learn more about magic from the crafty old man, he needed to get better at fighting, at least enough to land a hit against his teacher.
A slight sneer covered his expression before his lone eye landed upon the Desert Ironwood Tree from which he had once crafted his masterpiece, and he stilled, an outrageous idea taking root in his mind.
"No sword today, Brom." he stated as he walked towards the tree, his fingers running over its bark briefly. He let his mind lower its grade of focus, and the candles that were the mammals and birds that were both in his trunk and in the immediate area around it in the Spine dimmed a bit, falling back, as it were, in the 'white noise' that David had been struggling with for the past months.
To his mind's eye, the world was like a rippling water surface made of light. Every living being was there, present, and a part of the infinite canvas that stretched itself as far as David's mind could reach. He could spot immediately Brom and Arya' consciousnesses, closed off and wary, Fleur's burning presence, closed off and unreachable as she had been since her last display od displeasure at him, Raven's mind, which was akin to a small fish quickly moving among rocks, with her thoughts like disconnected scales that captured and refracted light in impossible patterns. He could fell the dim and idiotic presences of his chickens in their henhouse, the wolves not too far on the Spine, their minds almost touching each other, united as that were by the pack-mentality, David could feel the squirrels among the pine trees and beavers east of their position, busy with building their dam against the spring torrents that were soon to come. A shade paler, there was a multitude of insects, sealed off in their burrows underground or inside rotting trees, for it was still to cold for them to attempt to brave the world.
Even fainter, there was a shimmer. Less than floating sparks, and more than a first impression could suggest, there were plants. Trees whose branches rustled in the dying winter's breeze, roots that simply were, passively digging into the ground. Lichens, moss and even snowdrop flowers across the Spine, brighter and more aware lush grass inside of his trunk, trees that were positively brimming with life, vegetables that almost shone with promise.
Slowly, he reduced the scope and range of his perception until he could only perceive the inside of his trunk. Then, once again, he refined his focus, bringing it over the plants inside of his home. Feeling them... aware was not the correct term, not really, but there was a shade of difference in their 'light' from the plants outside that he couldn't quite point his finger at.
David disentangled his mind from the lives around his, feeling that he got closer to understand exactly was this famed 'life force' was. Brom, in order for David to try and learn how to fight with the sword, had been forced to explain the basics, along with the 'absolute rules' of magic.
The first rule Brom had hammered into him was that energy came from the body of the caster, if the caster hadn't enough strength to perform a take that he appointed his magic to complete, he would die, full stop. In David's mind, there were at least 2 inconsistencies in that rule: one how could the strength of a body be related to something that was accomplished through magic? After all, while he couldn't lift half a ton with the strength of his body, with a simple system of pulleys and levers, he could, and easily at that. Secondly: if he shaped the magic with a hard switch that made it possible for him to cut it off at any point, he would be fine.
The second rule had been that bringing back the dead was not possible, period. As well as divining the future, and apparently, the past. While the first part of the rule did make a modicum of sense in his mind, mostly because he was convinced that the magical approach that was being used in Alagaësia, while undoubtedly enough for a myriad of applications, left very little room for experimentation upon those 'fundamental rules'. Divining the past and the future was a wobbly procedure at the best of times, and that was true in the potterverse, where magical pulled upon concepts and ideas that were self-powering, to say it in a way that an Alagaësian mage could understand, David was pretty sure that he could apply some divination leveraging some natural magic, that Arya had let slip the existence of.
The third rule had been that distance made every kind of magic exponentially more costly in terms of energy. It was something implicit in how the 'life force' actually worked, in David's opinion. After all, Arya had been in contact with her people through magical puddles of water since day one, and clearly, distance hadn't influenced that.
That neither Brom nor Arya had spotted that contradiction had given David a lot to think about.
Slowly, he fell into himself, like he had attempted dozens of times before, trying to keep in mind what he knew of what he was looking for, and the vague references he had been explained by Brom.
"Boy, you can't force it." the aged Rider's voice was summarily discarded as David continued with his introspective meditation.
How could make sense that there were two forms of magic completely unrelated one from another? Mind Arts and what was properly named Magic on Alagaësia? In David knowledgable opinion, it was more likely that the magic was a single one that found expression in the two branches everyone recognized in the strange land he had landed in.
It would have been easier to understand if either Brom or Arya had been even remotely open about the origins and mechanics of the Shade, but David was adept at solving problems without all of the pieces.
From the way Brom had stiffened during one of their first days together at David's mention of 'souls and spirits', the one-eyed man strongly suspected that there was something behind it, and that it was a closely guarded secret because of the inherent dangers, after all, Brom had little reason to keep a potentially useful tool from David' hands, given the role everybody was so eager to thrust on him.
The lack of an answer regarding spirits and souls had left David with a bad taste on his tongue, and the first connection he had achieved to that enquiry was his dragon reaction to the names he had offered her. Instincts, he could understand, but feelings tied to names? That was not how biological memory worked.
Saphira had been waiting for the name of another dragon, and a specific one at that. David was confused, animals run from smoke because instinctively they associate it with fire, which they always know is dangerous. Saphira had honestly no idea, after all, most of her instinctive answers came to her through 'feelings', and those were impossible to track back to their origin.
Was Saphira fated to that name? If she was, why did she hatch for him instead than for Eragon? That particular question was neatly tied with the one that he had been asking himself since his first meeting with the elves: What were the odds that he would meet the trio of elves before anyone else? And just in time to thwart an ambush from a Shade.
There is too much that makes too little sense when taken together. David thought bitterly.
The inner energy, the 'life force', what his mind could perceive as the light just beyond his reach in the beings that he could feel with his mind. That was the fuel to power spells, at least if David were to take Brom' words as if they were absolutely incontrovertible. But that explanation didn't quite make sense enough, it failed to tie the magic with the Mind Arts, and that was the main element that gave David some doubt about what had been explained of magic.
The one-eyed Rider knew that there was something still escaping him. From the aged Rider and Arya' reactions, spirits were a thing, and given the lack of scepticism in Arya when David had offered to dine the future, the fox-man suspected that it was something possible. Even if then Brom had explained that using magic to witness past or future was impossible.
It was clear, by then, that magic was the use of Ancient Language coupled with the use of the energy coming from the 'Inner Light'.
That left David with another question: 'how did Saphira manage to fly?' her wings were not even remotely vast enough to sustain her immense weight after all.
The answer, given his own development in the Mind Arts since Saphira marked his brow, was that magic, or better yet, the ability to perform Magic, and with Magic David referred to Mind Arts, use of the Ancient Tongue, and whatever the hell was the deal with spirits and souls, came, at least in part, from the dragons.
That would have been true if only Riders were able to perform Magic. But there were people that learned it naturally. So, that Magic existed onto itself made far more sense, and that there were rare persons were born with the ability to tap into Magic, in one form or another.
The inner light assumed an entirely different meaning then, since Brom explained that the energy of each mage came from the strength of their body, which was plain nonsense: Arya was a slip of an elf, and capable of throwing David across the orchard with barely a twitch of her forearm' muscles. It was clear to see that magic had given an impossible strength to her kind.
Curiously, her kind had been bonded with dragons the longest. Coincidences were unlikely, in David's not humble experience.
So, to recap, I have access to magic because I have been marked by Saphira. David frowned, trying to keep on the forefront of his mind his whole reasoning, looking for a small measure of sense that could tie everything together.
Elves have bodies biologically incapable of the feats of strength they display. He nodded to himself, because of their ancient tie with dragons. And... and...
Dragons themselves fly using a form of innate magic. The man clenched his lone eye shut, trying to tie everything together.
Spirits-Souls exist on their own in some form, and there is a branch of magic capable of harnessing them, likely related to the creation of Shades.
So, there is Mind, which is the instrument used for the Mind Arts, the Soul, that is somehow related with the Shade business, and the 'Inner Light-Force' which can accomplish what is usually called magic in this land.
Dragons have the first in their way of communicating, the second aspect justifies loosely Saphira's impossible instinct about her chosen name, and there is likely an application of the third for her flight, and one day, firebreathing.
David fell into himself, looking for those same elements within himself, knowing that, since he knew he had gained the first and the third when he was marked, it was likely that he had gained even the second, even if he had no clear idea of what it was.
Metaphorically moving 'around' his bond with Saphira, he tried to perceive what was part of him without being him, he slid into a meditative stance without realizing it, his breathing lowering to almost a standstill as his heart started beating slower and slower, with the intervals between a beat and the following stretching longer and longer.
Time lost meaning, as did the feelings coming from his body, his senses were useless for what he wanted to accomplish, and he needed all of his attention for his own inner searching.
At some point, David's attention churned on one single point, attracted by a... an imperfection in the smoothness of his being. No, a paper-thin shield that nevertheless pretended to belong. Something that was there without being a part of the rest of him, something new, like a new muscle discovered just beneath his ribcage, even if it wasn't something that had a physical representation.
Slowly but surely, David's mind shivered against the barrier-that-was-not-a-barrier, and his will pushed lightly against it, feeling it pose a resistance.
But David knew that every resistance inside of himself was simply a manifestation of something, be it his self-preservation or his instinctive enjoying of a difficult challenge.
The one-eyed man did not wait, did not hesitate, he pushed.
He knew what he wanted, and he knew that it was just beyond that flimsy barrier-that-had-no-reason-to-be-a-barrier.
He pushed, and the barrier broke, drowning him in a flash of Light and Life and Warmth and Pure Bliss and...
As his consciousness took stock of the happenings, and his body restarted its normal patterns of breathing, his heart pumping strongly in his chest, as if to remind him that it was important, David found himself on his knees, panting heavily as he clung to the memory of that feeling, a rictus grin cutting his face like a crack over marble.
His mind, while he was busy regaining his bearings, found two words that expressed with precision what he had just perceived, what he had just understood.
"Glore Wyrden." he whispered to himself, tasting the words that did not translate exactly in any tongue he knew.
David laughed breathless as he rolled on his back and slid into unconsciousness.
David came to a few hours later, distractedly hearing Brom mumble to himself inside the hut that had been built in the trunk's first floor.
Apparently, his discovery had gone unnoticed by Brom, who had left him on the grass without bothering checking up on him.
With a twinge of mischief in his lone eye, David turned into a fox and quietly scampered outside from his home, his mind already tacking stock of the wild animal' senses in order to determine if there was a danger of any kind around.
Thankfully there was none, and he spotted Arya up on a tree, her eyes roaming over the rest of the Spine and more often than not landing over the Western Ocean as the sun was halfway across his descending arc.
The one-eyed fox ignored the elf, focusing instead on his bond with the dragon, who, while she hadn't forgotten their previous spat, was calmer and more focused, and even a tiny bit proud for having hunted successfully a bear.
With a swirl of scales glittering against the afternoon's sunlight, and a heavy displacement of air that ruffled David's fur, she landed heavily in the reasonably large clearing.
So, you've found power. Saphira stated, eyeing him curiously and running across his memories of the Glore Wyrden and what led to his discovery. But power is inert without direction and choice, is it not? she mocked him with words he had undoubtedly repeated to her at some point while reading his stories to his dragon.
Saphira...
Am I wrong?
No, I can't say that you are.
Without any more words, the dragon's consciousness swirled alongside his, nudging him in a specific direction. Look then, and find a direction, then, we'll make our choices.
Without need for further words, David lost himself to the thrill that he felt every time he threw his mind as far as he could, latching here and there, upon this or that animal, carefully tiptoeing around the consciousnesses of the humans he encountered, further and further from his location.
He was like a needle carried by a sweeping wave, a cascade of impressions falling over him as his mind interfaced with others without leaving him time to properly taking stock of what the images meant.
The minds capable of protecting themselves were far and few in between, and easy to spot as their existence was muted, cut off from the rest of the world.
So, David went ahead, carrying Saphira with him, as she was still too inexperienced and young to project her mind that far without assistance, and they flew over the wings of thought and instinct, with animals suddenly stopping what they were doing in order to gaze in a specific direction, helping David to pinpoint the next element of the chain, and with the speed of thought, Rider and Dragon soared across the land, occasionally stopping in order to witness something curious, from a pack of wolves hunting to a story whispered around a small campfire in the vast planes east of the Spine.
Cities gleamed like hives to David and Saphira' senses, but they avoided those carefully, since neither had an idea of how mental battle over such a great distance would progress, and so avoiding places where someone instructed in the Mind Arts could be was a must.
After moving across the Spine a couple of times, they roamed south and east, until Saphira stilled them both, their consciousness taking over an hawk as if witnessed an execution. In the reddish tinge of the light given by the dying sun, David witnessed what Saphira had been looking for, as a bunch of people was forced to walk towards an old looking oak, where nooses were waiting for their guests.
David tried to simply go on with their exploration, it wasn't like executions were anything new, but his dragon forced him to stay, the hawk they took control over following the air currents under Saphira watchful presence until he landed, somewhat clumsily, over a branch that allowed both of them to look over the bizarre execution.
They were just outside a village north of Dras-Leona, even if 'village' could have been a far too generous term.
The hawks' head twitched on one side, its keen eye roaming over the men leading the trio of prisoners towards the tree.
There was no fight, no defiance, only tiredness and surrender in their movements, and despite his own declared disinterest in the event, Saphira nudged them both forward, and when a girl's eye meets with the hawk's, even over a distance that would make impossible recognizing the eyes from the res of the face, David slips in...
It's a thunderous cough that shakes her father's body, rattling in his lungs, permeated by desperate gasps for air. The flu that her father caught while doing the tailoring for some prominent lord, which insisted for providing the cloth himself, spreads to her mother within hours, maybe days, and they need her to work with them behind the scenes, forcing her small fingers to perform stitches that require years of experience to pull off, following drawings and schemes that she had never the chance to properly learn. Gone are the games in the back of her parents' shop, and gone are the mornings that she could spend walking at the side of one of her parents as he or she performed commissions. Just for a few days.
But it doesn't pass. Favours are called in and half of the money that her brother has sent back from his pay as a soldier for the Black King is spent: a shady looking man that claims to be able of healing tells her that it's deadly for her parents' weak constitutions. Weak? They've always been healthy, fit, and strong. But yes, their civilian, not-noble systems can't handle the magic of the shady-looking man.
Their parents' room becomes their grave, as she tries to help her withering parents. Nobody tells her anything anymore, no friends come to her to play in the back, no adult that had always been all smiles and kindness shows up at their tailor's. Even the shady man that had promised magic and hopes, doesn't tell her anything anymore, but Sonia listens anyway. What drifts to her through her quiet hiccups are whispers are breaths of "too little time" and "can't afford it" and "it would take a medical miracle" and sometimes, very rarely, a mention that "only the Helgrind could save you, but it's not known to be helpful to people like you" followed by bitter, sarcastic laughs.
The Helgrind, Sonia learns, is an icon and a legend and a joke and a promise of fear and agony told in hushed whispers when nothing else can be taken. The looming, black rock is exalted and at the same time, it's regarded as a nightmare because it is so much beyond everybody's understanding while remaining close enough to strike fear when its shade drapes over the walls of Dras-Leona. What flies to Sonia on silent wings drives her back in her parents' tailor's, where she tries to figure out a way to keep together what little her parents had prepared to be sold.
She tries, because not all hope is lost and "something like this" can still be fixed, if only, and maybe be sold o keep enough money in her hands to keep her parents healthy through her cooking, which costs. Every ingredient she wastes because she doesn't know how to use, every time she cannot reach to the pan that awaits to be lifted from the hook over the mantlepiece in her small but of quality home, forcing her to cook on flat stones amassed over the fire. A fire that necessitates wood, wood that costs more money.
But she lacks the knowledge to cook everything, the skill to barter effectively. But between days and hours and days that blur together, something gives. It passes too quickly, as a child's rushed storytelling, as a catnap dream, as death's swift flight often does. . Sonia is repeating to herself the words that she heard whispered from the shady man when he tried to do something to heal her parents. She repeats them to herself all the time now that there is no longer cloth assigned to her parents' tailors', now that her hands have nothing to work on, after that thieves in the night have taken what was left, along with the embroidery she had once made for her father.
There is no thunder, no herald, no sign, she is outside the room watching them sleep and then she is watching her father's corpse. Her mother's, soon afterwards. No, instead, clammy and pale and emaciated, her mother pushes through, and two days after her father is dead, and the stink in the room has grown unbearable, Sonia's mother manages to stand, crying and hiccuping along with her daughter as she ushered them both out from the room, asking Sonia to go to the well and take back as much water as she can.
It is sunny, and Sonia, despite knowing that her father is gone, cries in relief, because now her mother is there, and they can make it. The funeral is a quiet, private affair. Her mother stumbles at her side, smelling of alcohol, and flowers arrive from the lord that had had someone give the accursed, Surdan cloth that caused her father's death. Sonia's mother thanks the priest with gleaming eyes through tears as her parents' "closest friends" dissipate without a word and her mother drags her to back home.
Sonia, daughter of Thera, is six when death destroys her life.
On her good days, her mother wallows in pensive misery. On those days, few and far in between, she sits under skies with too many clouds with Sonia and only a couple empty bottles and talks. Her mother lives in the past, in the golden bygone days of her youth when the heavens were accessible and the future open and the world, while heavy on her shoulders, still utterly beautiful. On those good days, she relives first her little brother's apprenticeship to Yuri, the weekly visits to and from the rest of her family, and her first dance with Sonia's father. But those halcyon days are tainted, and her tears and words always slur swift at first with half-remembered happiness when she speaks of Before. On those good days, Sonia's mother is simply broken, petting her daughter's hair and braiding it, thin hands trembling, and her eyes, so often cast to imaginary places, reflect only Sonia. In those moments, Sonia is her mother's best friend, and Thera confides everything with equal measures of love and care, her words weaving stories in the sky. In those moments, Thera loves Sonia as much as she can still love. And on those good days, Sonia listens and learns.
Thera's parents died in a mining accident shortly after the birth of Horace, Sonia's father. They lived in a quarry village two days' walk from Dras-Leona, and their grandparents looked after them for a while there. But Thera had always been smart and independent, and her grandparents were old and tired and barely capable of supporting themselves, so she herself raised her brother. When she was seventeen, she found herself lauded for her deft fingers, which allowed her to stitch the best embroideries, and she brought her seven-year-old brother with her. Life was good. Thera rose up in the ranks; she was intelligent, reliable, and pretty, if not stunning.
Her little brother one day didn't return home. Her brother, witty and joyful, had turned fourteen, and became a soldier, a messenger at first, she had been assured of that, but he couldn't come back, because he had dutifully pledged the sword he had been given to the service of the Black King, while her nimble hands secured her an important role in the small tailor shop, and later, Sonia's father had arrived with enough money and bought the whole thing. There was food on the table, a roof over their heads, and plenty of love.
Thera never talks long about the good times. It breaks her down. It ruins her. Remembering the days when hope was a given and not something irretrievably lost crushes her more than the later, harder years. Remembering hope is what drives her on her bad days beyond the first couple of glasses, beyond the point when she can stand to see Sonia or talk at all. Those good times began to burn when Thera fell in love. She says love like it is the name of her worst enemy; as if, should emotions live and breathe, she would murder it with her bare hands. She says it with malice and loathing in her face but in the set of her eyes and the lilt of her voice, something still yearns. Hate is, after all, its neighbour, and there is no picket fence between their lawns. Love.
She was twenty-nine and Horace, who owned the shop, promised her the world. He was a hard-worker, creative, and incredibly handsome. He made her heart falter and her blood rush and her world revolve entirely around him. He had learned her craft so that they could never be separated, renouncing to the rest of his inheritance, spiting his father, who was never nominated in their lives. That he saw her, that he even noticed her at all seemed a dream so wonderful she never wanted to wake up from it. That he loved her was unfathomable, and yet somehow, wonderfully, miraculously true.
With flowers, with words, and with clothes that he stiched himself, showing the worthiness of the skills she had shared with him. Those late nights, they would talk and drink and sing together, with not a care in the world except for the pleasure of the beating of their young, living hearts thrumming like music in their very bones. He lived life on the edge, and though she'd always been so careful, Misaki rushed to join him there because she couldn't bear to be apart. On their first year anniversary, he cooked her a spectacular dinner, and some friends came over to their small house, where the first floor, usually the tailor's floor, had been converted to a cheap ballroom for the brilliant, witty and free people that Sonia' parents had been surrounded by.
He proposed on one knee with a silver heirloom ring. When she talks about him, her voice becomes softer. Her eyes seek the sky and her hands clutch at Sonia. Tremors shake her body and voice. Inside her breathe fury, longing, devastation, and a thousand more emotions without names. When she talks about him, Thera's heart becomes a battlefield.
Unavoidably, Thera gets around to talk about the more recent times, during which Horace had grown distant and started drinking, and this time it was Thera that learned something from him. Thera does not tell Sakura much about the late nights Horace spent at the tavern, about the withdrawals and the sores all over and the lovebites left by wenches at the tavern. Sonia sees all these for herself, for Thera has never been good at letting things go, only at being left behind, because Thera lives in the past, and Sonia an't help.
Sakura only hears of his death once, when Thera does not mourn him but rather rages at him. She was a fool, she says, and she was used, and he ruined her life so he could live his to the end happily. He was a bastard, an asshole, a multitude of cuss words, and, when those run out, horrible keening noises that describe pain far better than any human language. Thera loathes Horace with the passing fervour of a summer thunderstorm, but what she ends up with are tears and grief and the desire to escape to where he is. To be with him. Love. Thera loves him still, and it kills her slowly.
Thera one days drags her away from their home, dropping both of them in a small room near a tavern and tells her that it is home. A fairytale love. Thera was equal parts proud, jealous, and hurt. Proud because she was still able to use her deft fingers, and not only those, to stay alive in the great city of Dras-Leona, jealous because she did no longer have the life that she had once enjoyed, and hurt, hurt because now she's one of the wenches that tells her daughter to stay on the cold roof of the tavern at night, out of sight and out of mind while she works.
Between her 38th and 39th birthdays, Thera lost everything to love. On the good days, her tired eyes close and she falls asleep in her chair. Her spider thin arms folded across her stomach, clutching what little warmth she can produce to her chest. Her lank and sparse hair wafts in the wind, and her tears drop quietly. On the bad days, there is no sleep, only a drunk escape. Sonia becomes adept at listening to the doors, carefully considering all the signs and deciding whether or not to leave for the roof to return home later. She cleans up the mountains of cracked glass bottles, the torn dresses and the bloodied sheets, and the smoke that clings to the walls. On the bad days, Sakura escapes to the roofs, repeating the words that the shady man that had once promised to heal her parents said, until her mother goes quiet, and then she breathes quietly until she thinks it's safe.
Some days, she finds Misaki passed out. Others, Sonia is not so lucky. On the good days, Thera loves her with what is left of her heart, but on the bad days, she hates her with the full force of the weight of her world. Sonia is the knife that cut Horace from her and a reminder of the love and dreams she can never have. On the good days, Thera is merely broken, but on the bad days, she also wants to break the world.
At first, it is with her hands. Open-palmed slaps, and then fists. Then her elbows and knees and feet. Weak blows, compared to what she receives from the more violent customers. Not directed. Not filled by the intent to harm Sonia, specifically. Not malicious. Instead, a childish fit against the world, of which Sonia happened to be a part. More dangerous are the hits of surprising strength when Thera struggles in a drunken haze, knocking furniture over onto them. Most hazardous are the broken pieces of glass that litter the floors when Sonia loses her balance, and she learns to shift herself to stay upright. She learns the art of never falling, always moving, and staying just out of reach. The storms come sparsely and then more often. Sonia learns to hide.
One night, after she managed to escape on the roofs, she cries.
She cries quietly, because she has learnt that not being quiet is dangerous and more painful than screaming to let her pain out.
One night, quietly, and slowly, repeating to herself the words that the shady man had muttered once, she finds a light within herself, something bright and joyful and undeniable, something that can't be taken from her, a light that those words channel into her own body. Words that she doesn't understand, but that have always sang with life and hope she could scarcely remember.
So, quietly, alone, beaten, hurt, and hopeless, she learns how to heal. She learns to heal, and when the words falter and fail, she learns that she can sink her own light into her skin to feel around. Sometimes the nerves move in the wrong ways, and her skin changes into terrifying simulacrums of normality. The light isn't difficult to generate, but it is finicky. It is life, and alive in its own way. It requires immovable direction and steel-boned control to guide its rampancy. Too frightened to experiment on herself and cause permanent damage, Sonia traps insects, then birds, then small rats, and figures out how to use their light to help her own. Rats and cats and flies pass under her hand. She feels with her light the way things are supposed to be, and then viciously disrupts it until it is all wrong. Then she tries to fix it. The meat disappears in the terrible stews of the tavern, but nobody complains, meat is meat, and the more there is, the better.
For Thera, in between decent days of grieving aloud, there are days of unmitigated anger at everything, at the world, and at Sonia. Thera is not strong enough to break the world in her grief, but there are things she can break still. Another day, and another night, finally the rainbow under her clothes overwhelms Sonia's fear of messing up. Sonia attacks the bruises and cuts with the light she steals from rats every night.
Just before the dawn, she tends to the burns and the deformations that come from messing up. Before she learns to heal each bruise, Sonia suffers for every mistake. She learns quickly not to mess up. There are no words to help control it, no techniques or instructions. But, there is Sonia's iron will to survive. She doesn't have the confidence to run away or the bravery to do something, but somewhere between the thunderous coughs and the empty bottles, Sonia learns, as thoroughly as she learns anything, the will to survive.
And then it happens. Thera loses strength. She doesn't paint her face and the clients slow down to a trickle before disappearing, instead, she curls in on herself and crawls around on hand and knee desperately seeking something, a bottle, or those herbs that soothe pain, burning them in a small, wooden pipe. One day she asks Sonia if she loves her. "I've been good to you haven't I?" Thera murmurs, gathering Sonia into her arms. "Not always, but I've tried. I've loved you, haven't I?" And then, in a harsh, guttural cry, "You love me, don't you Sonia! You love me too!" In the night Thera's cries of pain wake Sonia. When she feels with her light, afraid death is coming, she finds wrongness in her lungs, and what she cannot recognize. She tries and fails, because life always finds a way, and the cells in her mother' lungs grow further than she can control them before she's forced to will them into nothingness, willing into existence the only thing she knows that can destroy what. Sonia doesn't know the words, but her mother's liver is hanging on by a thread, and her entire body is spasming and shaking. She vomits intermittently all night, even on an empty stomach. There is no shady man with mysterious words now, instead, she asks for the herbs, scrambling to a corner near the tavern, rambling loud enough that another man, one with yellow-tinted teeth, can hear.
She asks: "Yes. I want… I need more." A desperate sob. "No, please, I don't, but I'll make it up to you, please. Mercy, please. I can't…" She sounds so broken that Sonia instinctively reaches out for her. Their eyes meet, and for a moment they are both still. A heartbeat later, something distorts in Thera's face. "Wait! I have… There is a girl." She laughs, a harsh and ugly sound. "She's nine. Pretty enough... yes..." The vague dislike that has always tainted Thera's voice when she talks about Horace sharpens. "Now. No, that's too little. Of course, she's a virgin! Yes." And then, with sudden strength, she hasn't possessed in days, Thera clutches Sonia's hand and pulls her to her feet. "What are you doing!" Sonia screams. It's not a question, but a cry, for deep in her heart, Sonia knows already.
She struggles, trying to tear herself from Misaki's iron-boned grasp. Somehow, in a moment, all her hold-breaking training slips her mind. In that moment there is nothing in Sakura but the panicked wish that this is all a mistake, a misunderstanding, that it will smooth over like green light over broken flesh and leave something blemishless. "No, stop!" She feels neglected glass shards tear into her feet, breaking hours new flesh yet again. Desperation rushes up to her lungs, a mix of angry loathing and weakness and bitter old love and there is only one thing left in her mind, so Sonia does something she has never done before to a human being. She finds the door that is not a door, and opens it, light travels between their connected skin, so quickly and suddenly that Thera loses her grip. But Sonia persists, she knows what to do with rats, with flies, with cats.
Light like airwaves and the magnitude and the will, and jumps the air in thin strands, connecting will and body through a brief distance. She Tears, and the light burns her mother, that falls to the ground in front of the man with yellowed teeth, who stumbles back in shock.
A second later the hand belonging to the nine years old lands upon the man with yellowed teeth, and light twists and burns once more, extinguishing the man's light in an instant of perfect agony.
Sonia stumbles across the small alley between buildings, until she collapses against the wall, and sleep as heavy as iron is poured over her because she used so much light that her own dimmed.
David's mind snapped back to his body, tearing through the distance within the blink of an eye as he feels the girl's neck snap against the hard rope they used to fashion a noose.
He rolled to his feet, dry heaving for a few seconds against a tree trunk, trying to smooth over his instinctive reaction after his more recent mind-screening of the land.
She has then been made a slave, but she killed her owner with the same ease she erased his mother, and then escaped. The voice of Saphira washed over his consciousness, completing the pieces of Sonia's life he hadn't been able to witness.
He dry heaved once more, feebly attempting to ward off Spahira's recollection of what he hadn't seen.
She stole to eat, as she was branded as a slave and would have been hunted if she were spotted.
He turned towards Saphira, who was regarding him, her sapphire eyes conveying weight and seriousness, granting the blue dragon a solemnity that was difficult to ignore. She seemed to be demanding attention and respect for what she was and wanted.
She was captured this morning, when her body gave out.
After a deep breath, David spoke: "Do you realize that no matter what I do, there will always be agony and misery around? Even giving it my all, I wouldn't be able to make the whole land thrive and peacefully stride together in the future."
Is that excuse enough for you to not try?
The question hung in the air, heavy despite having been posed telepathically, and brought the one-eyed Rider up short. His knee jerk reaction was to say 'yes', because he had always been a results-justify-the-means kind of man, and it was even an acceptable thing when all he did was experimenting on scum and playing with magic.
He'd need to kill Galbatorix eventually, that was dictated by necessity, nothing more, and it was something that already left him with his plate full.
Alagaësia is much smaller than your previous worlds. Saphira spoke to him, this time with a kind tone permeating their bond. What did you tell me once? Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.
David sighed heavily, eyeing the companion of his mind with a critical eye: "Voltaire? Really?"
Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do. Saphira sang in David's mind, letting him witness the conviction that permeated that thought.
"We're lucky that you're a dragon and not a man, then."
Saphira simply stared at him, seeing that like he often did, David tried to hide behind a thick curtain of quick logic and disinterest.
Allow yourself to try. Allow yourself to suffer for your failures, make them yours. She spoke to him. But as long as you try, I'll be there.
AN
I didn't want to drag myself through four months of unoriginal training for David. The plan was to keep moving across the Spine and then turn south when they realized that there wouldn't be many occasions for David to learn while Saphra grew enough to be able to defend herself. Besides, I find training-arcs to be extremely boring, and I tend to get lost while writing them, often bringing the character to understand everything about everything before the story starts again.
The part with David mind-walking across Alagaësia
About magic, well, I hope his reasoning is clear enough, and yes, he immediately found the words necessary to describe the Inner Energy, even if his understanding of how exactly it works is still a work in progress that undoubtedly will grow with his practising.
David also explores with his mind. In Brisingr, somewhere around the Helgrind, Arya tells Eragon that she could speak clearly to him even if she was at Vroengard, while Oromis manages to shield him from pain from Ellesmera into the Farthen-Dur: someone like David, with his personality and a great sense of self, isn't going to not explore a form of magic that he has access to, and so he looks around: the elf-forest is closed from outside influences, while the Shade hovers around Gil'ead, and David is careful about that, leaving him with exploring the Spine first, then moving south.
I'm guessing that Oromis threw his mind into Eragon's one at the end of the first book, and so that's how David goes on, from mind to mind, even if he prefers foxes because of an unconscious pulsion, he jumps from bird to rat to whatever not human, since those minds are easy to subjugate if needed.
Saphira' actions
In canon, Saphira is all noble and idealistic, even if she has very little remorse about extermination of armies and whatnot, given that she's a fucking dragon, and if her race was subject to feelings like pity or mercy toward an opponent, the war against the elves would have gone vastly differently.
Anyway, my point is that even when bonded to Eragon, which is as naive and submissive as they come at the start of the first book (along with being an uncultured, reckless dumbass), Saphira does what could be expected from a dragon and kills without much remorse.
Taking David's nature into account, it's easy to see how Saphira would be more cunning than her canon counterpart, and far more jaded than she would have been otherwise.
The problem she faces in this chapter is that she doesn't simply want to have David apply himself to Glabatorix's death because of necessity. No, she wants him dedicated because he wants to, she doesn't wish only for his mind to recognize the danger and to act accordingly, but she wants him to embrace the cause with his heart and give his all, soul and mind.
And given the shifts in mentality and perspective she had grown into under the care of David, she finds a solution that none could have foretold. If he truly cares not about the sheer wrongness of some lives, she finds a way to make them feel like they're his own, she forces him between a rock and a hard place.
And for those that read The Bigger Picture, the little characterization present for David clearly draws him as someone that goes either 'full in' or 'nothing'. So, while in the previous chapter we had David realize that he is as real as the others around him, here we have (along with his discovery of magic) his finding a direction in which he finds worthy investing himself.
Saphira forces him to witness the life in a certain Sonia, and to experience her misery in order to make David realize that he is, in fact, responsible for how he does or does not apply his power. I know that 3k words for a character that dies immediately are a bit much, but I tried to express what David feels on his own skin in order to turn from a 'ok everything is real but I don't really want to do anything more than the strictly necessary to survive' to 'let's revolutionize this backward nation'.
Having said that, he'll remain a big ass headache to both his teachers and the politicians of the land.
Brom's ability with magic
In the book is stated that every time he uses it, it's more difficult, and that much of what he could once do was out of his grasp. So minor stuff, from lighting a campfire to using a parlour trick in order to limit the focus of the opponent, he can do. Doing other stuff is progressively more difficult.
Disclaimer:
Sonia's life is largely inspired by 'A casket full of victory' by Liffae (a Naruto fic). And I want to point you all to try it out, since it's a different style of writing that manages to break my heart every time I read it. So, I warmly and humbly suggest it.
cloud9stories dot net is the name of my site, you can find the complete caption on my profile if googling it isn't enough (for whatever reason ff doesn't let me copy-past the URL here).
If you have the means and the wish to support me through a donation, you can do so there, as well as downloading the .pdf format of my fics.
Thank you!