Thank you to everyone who reviewed!!


Shaeldryn - your review made me an amazingly happy person, thank you! I hope that you continue to enjoy it. And thank you for the add to your favourites!

Hot4Garrett - thank you for your review! I'm glad that there seems to be a general consensus that the pacing is alright.

Siren Of The Rose - Thank you once again! It was an absolute pleasure to receive your review, I only hope that I can continue to convert you to a Murtagh/Tornac fan ;)

Bananasquash - Thank you for the review.

I'm so sorry it's taken such a long time, I'm going to aim at writing one chapter a week in future and posting on the Friday or Saturday evening. UK time

I had one of, if not THE best night of my life just the other month. I saw Sonata Arctica! (21st) I actually went to see Sonata Arctica, THE Sonata Arctica! The inspirations for so much of my writing, and I got to see them live! And Tony Kakko, I saw Tony Kakko! He was so much more amazing on stage than on recording! And he's just gorgeous too!! (3 3 3 in case you didn't know I'm somewhat of a Tony Kakko fan girl. Also Elias is damn hot and talented, and Marko is nice too, "the amazing invisible Marko" got a great view of him and he played just brilliantly, I could feel it because of how good the bass was at the venue … Henkka is too cool, that guy can seriously rock a keyboard, and Tommy was just great!) If you've never been I really suggest you jump at every chance you see to get to see these guys live. It's an incomparable experience!! Can't wait till they visit the UK again already…

The title of this chapter is, coincidentally, the very first song they played of the set and it was just amazing. I still have wonderful memories of it and I know I will for some time!

It's such a lovely day today that I thought my laptop might like to see the sunlight for the first time and I've taken it for a little daytrip to see the big wild outdoors, so this is written from a camping chair with my computer on my lap. Nothing nicer than a to sit listening to metal doing a bit of writing outside!

I've also discovered a night wish obsession that was, frankly, just waiting to happen. The song "Beauty and The Beast" - this one makes me smile the most, not only because it is so beautiful - not to mention dark romantic - but because there was an occasion where, for a live concert, the male part was sung by the one and only Tony Kakko! What can I say, I'm a total Kakko addict…

Once again I go to show my utter disrespect for Paolini -mutters apology- by discarding his ever-popular scrolls for my preferred books. Apologies.

VERY LASTLY (a long forenote today, I know…) A very happy birthday to dear Tony Kakko who was 33 on the 16th! I've said it through the radio, I've said it through the website, and finally through my fan fiction. ;)

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Chapter 8: In Black And White

Murtagh stood by the window watching the stars travel across the sky, their light reflecting as bright glimmers in his dark hazel brown eyes. From the next room, the haunting sound of Tornac's violin was soaring on the air, an odd tune that made the hair stand up along the back of his neck, chilling the blood coursing cold through his veins, beating from a heart that was beginning to devote itself. The song was almost as beautiful as Tornac's image in his mind, a perfect picture of deadly dark lustre, of something so fatally wonderful, the black perfection of the most lovely romanticide, a black swan crying wanted misfortune. Death and love in the most beautiful contradiction he had ever experienced, and it was there before him, captured as flashing images in his mind, images of silver eyes and a pretty smile and a twirling mist of somebody who laughed so wonderfully even in the violence of swords. There was something unfathomable about the entrancing melody that reached his ears, about the person it fitted so absolutely, about the way the notes carried his soul away, how it touched his mind beyond what he had ever before considered to be possibility.

His eyes moved to fix on the moon, a sharp scythe crescent riding the ocean of sky gracefully, a swan swimming on dark waters. Tornac's violin continued, the rhythm mirrored in the quiet feel of his own heart beat in his ears, touching something inside of Murtagh that he had not even been aware existed, as he leaned on the window sill, looking out into the dark world in front of him, mind idly painting images of the most beautiful man he had ever known, an absent happy smile on his face. A shadowy silhouette of a bird swooped down onto the darkened landscape, and he watched it, still smiling even as the violin ceased to play and the night was opened into emptiness. The memory of Tornac's kiss on his neck still burned beautifully in memory, a warm wonderful feeling that made a small shiver tickle at his spine. A lie perhaps; but the most beautiful lie and the most perfect notion of love to pretend for. Just one moment to capture false in memories to feed a longing for something just the slightest bit more real.

Turning away from the window, Murtagh began to loosen his shirt, brushing his dark hair back tiredly. Sparring with Tornac was undoubtedly turning to an experience he enjoyed, but it was more vigorous than any training regime he had known to take part in and it was starting to take its toll. His body ached from being constantly caught with the fire of Tornac's thin sword, and although he could not find it in him to hate such a person, there was a little smoking twinge of irritation building towards Tornac's relentless beating. There was a cruel fate in the way he was beginning to find himself aching to see his trainer more often: to talk to him and say something of interest or eloquence that he knew he did not really possess; to do something that would make Tornac laugh or smile in the mesmerising way he conducted so beautifully; to long for Tornac just to find him interesting as company; and yet at the same time every meeting resulted in a blaze of fire that streaked through him for hours into the night.

Tiredly, he collapsed onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling and tracing the patterns with his eyes. There was a small, tickling sensation along his spine that, in normal circumstance, he would have attentively taken as meaning something was not quite right. With images of Tornac fixed beautifully in his mind, Murtagh chose instead to lie awake absently dreaming of a man who was so beautiful as to be an angel, and so dangerous as to be his perfect undoing. Dreaming things that he knew that he shouldn't but that were simply too wonderful to resist the powerful ensnaring temptation of.

So enraptured was he with his thoughts of Tornac, that he went unaware of the sound of his trainer's door opening and the soft sound of footsteps down the stairs.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Tornac cautiously pressed his hands against the cooled wood of the library door, allowing the hinges to creak a small way apart so that he could see inside. He never had liked to spend so much of his time sleeping, and it seemed that the oldest habits were the most determined to remain; along with old fascinations, of a man too long obsessed with the idea of reading. A curious night wolf, Tornac knew, he would forever be. As he carefully stepped out into the cold, fire-less comforts of the room, his silver grey eyes adjusting quickly to the darkness, a smile lit up his face.

The library was a large ageing room, that possessed a reassuring musty smell that Tornac thought was simply wonderful, as he stared around it, childish immaturity starting to take over any natural attempt at behavioural restraint, his heart beating a little faster in his chest with happy elation. In the cold moonlight streaming through the shutter-less window, this room was something magical to his eyes. His perfect wonderful dream captured before him. What he had spent hours whiled away imagining when he was younger, and here it was in front of him.

He had carefully taken a watch around the palace for any sign of a library; and it had not been in vain. Persistence, a gift Tornac had always possessed almost beyond his fair due, had in his case often been his key to unlocking the world ahead of him, with enough time, and so had been the case in this instance. One hand absently moved to tangle in his hair, the other moving to his mouth so that he could chew at his nails in childish amazement at the room surrounding him, grey eyes on fire with delight, a shy smile beginning to creep onto his face as he looked around him, a little shiver of complete wonderful joy running through him.

He was overwhelmed by the sheer size of it, of the sheer wonderful quantity of beautiful books lining the walls. With shy amazement, he reached out to brush the tips of his fingers across the spines, peering at the words on the spines in a hopeless attempt at comprehension. As hard as he had struggled as a child to learn to read, with the single dirtied page of scrawled text that he had found stuffed into a nook in the wall of a tavern by a previous occupant, it never had been a particularly successful venture, and had soon enough been pushed aside to allow more time for his sparring.

His body starting to tingle with excitement, Tornac methodically chose an old fat book that to him seemed amiable, and hugged it close to his chest to carry it over to the window, where the light could pour out onto the pages and illuminate his heaven in streaming pools of silver. Pressing his back into the edge of the window, he stood cradling the object he was so utterly fascinated with in his arms as though it were his child. Respectfully, he turned the page with complete care, staring at the words that were meaningless to him and yet said so many things to his mind. Instead of reading, which was some large stretch beyond his capability, he simply stared at the words with the same inner pride that he would have felt had he understood.

Subconsciously, he began to hum quietly to himself, an absent act to break the silence he had not even noticed was so thick until he attempted to crack into it. It was akin to the way that he had never really been conscious of how lonely he could find himself to be until he had experienced the emotions of love and how wonderfully sweet it had felt to be wrapped so comfortably into somebody's arms, how wonderfully beautiful. Sometimes the absence of something could not ever truly be felt until its presence had been appreciated fully, a notion that Tornac had come to fully understand with patience and time. Sometimes it needed black to be shown to a person for it to be proven that white did indeed exist.

The words meant absolutely nothing to his mind, but still he loved them, making up so many different stories in his mind that he could imagine they might have told to a more literate reader. Some were beautiful romances, others almost painfully tragic to his heart, some simply explorations into the mind of a scholar who was expressing his view on something wonderfully complicated, some the worn out tales of dragons long since faded from the memories of those who might have held their legend burning. He always had been interested in the idea of dragons -though not from the notion of warfare but simply to discuss the world with a powerfully sentient being that had existed so much longer than he, had seen so many more things, had seen how the world changed. Perhaps to see if they saw love the way that he did, a way that nobody he had ever met seemed to share, to see if they considered the love of another man as beautiful as he did or whether it was merely a hope that was to be shattered.

Turning the page, he ghosted his fingers over the scripted letters, longing to know what they meant whilst simultaneously filled with a small pleasure at the secrets he could imagine for them, secrets that were, he knew sadly, probably by far more exciting than the reality. There was a cruelty in the way life always played out that way. Things had a tendency not to be quite as exciting as an individual wandering of all the wonderful things it might have been.

Tornac frowned as clouds veiled the moon and dimmed his life, pressing closer to the empty window to see better. The sound of humming continued, a tune he remembered as his favourite to play with his violin. It was a beautiful, lamenting tune, a sorrowful song, a lachrymosa for a life he had never known could have been so-

Tornac froze with a sickening realisation. His senses flared with painful over awareness. The book was suddenly weightless in his arms, but everything else about him felt heavy. He was not humming. And yet the sound was still there. Someone - no, something. Something else was humming. Something that he couldn't see. Something large, and powerful, from the depth of the growling hum. Tornac slowly closed the book, barely daring to make a sound. Carefully he placed it onto the window ledge and stepped into the shadows of bookshelves, alert, searching for the source of the sound.

He stopped as he reached the far wall of the library. There the sound seemed loudest somehow, echoing through his thoughts in a song that was somehow attracting him to it so powerfully that he could barely resist its charm. He pressed against the wall to hear better, to see if that truly was where this wonderful tune was coming from.

Tornac jumped back with a startled yelp, holding his hand to the side of his face and the out to the wall in frightened amazement. The wall was stone, and yet despite the cold of the night it was alarmingly warm. More than warm, a deep loud heat that blazed from it, a rumbling fire that crashed into the brickwork, streaming through it.

He peered back to the door, mind calculating. The library was hidden right in the very roots of the palace, a thick wooden door set into moss battled stones in the quietened north wing of the place. The heat of the warmth was most certainly coming from one particular wall, one that seemed to imply that the source was hidden away in the corner of a west wing. Curiosity aroused, Tornac reached out to the wall again, stroking lightly against it with his fingertips, withdrawing them as the heat became too much.

A determined expression of fascination took over his normally childishly innocent face as he made for the door, excitement building inside of his chest. As he closed it, he no longer even heard the sound as it creaked back to rest, mind too fascinated with the prospect of discovering what lay behind the wall, books almost forgotten in light of this new discovery. He reached out to trace the wall, mind frantically trying to work out where about the source was in relation to the library.

He needn't have worried. There was only a single other door. Tornac frowned slightly. Whatever the room was it was certainly bigger than he had ever imagined it possible for a room to be. The frown was soon replaced by a smile as he noticed that the sound was clearer, louder, more beautiful. He pressed against the door hopefully, and sighed as it refused to budge. The contents had been firmly locked out of his reach. Far from turning him to sorry defeat, this merely made him more determined, as he stared at the lock with interest. Slowly, he pressed his fingers to it, trying to feel it better in the dim light, to feel the shape, the mechanism, any slight hint to granting him access to his newfound curiosity.

He looked around for anything to employ to help him. There was nothing in the surrounding corridor save for a tall metal torch long gone out that from its appearance had not been lit in some time. He tangled his fingers into his hair pensively, glancing around for inspiration, now desperate to see whatever was making such a beautiful humming tune into the night. He tried to hum back himself, an echo to a twisting song he was already in love with. The sound paused for a second, a vague surprised pause, before slowly resuming the song. Tornac smiled as he hummed to it again, and listened whilst there was again a moment of confusion. He tried to continue the song on his own, shyly at first, but with the fascination of a parent awaiting their baby to respond, or of somebody awaiting for the return of a kind word of conversation from a lover. There was a vague, foreign emotion of delight that did not come from his own mind but from something larger, a presence that he felt but could neither place nor describe, as it hummed along with him.

Tornac started to laugh, happy at its happiness, happy at the wonder of it all. Carefully, he pulled a tiny knife from his pocket and began to twist at the lock, still humming. To himself? To whatever lay beyond the door? He no longer cared, such was his enrapture with the mystifying attraction of this song and what lay waiting for him behind the door. The lock strained but refused to break, and he tried a little harder.

The mechanism popped out of place with a sound that might have been audible had he not been so very hypnotised by the singing sound. Clenching his hands once in anticipation, he slowly turned to door open and stepped in cautiously.

Nothing could ever have prepared him for what wonders lay there waiting. He felt his breath hitch up in his throat as his eyes took in the shining lustre of black scales, of mournful green eyes, of something bigger than he could ever have imagined. Tornac stared, mind unable to cope with the comprehension of such a thing.

It was beautiful; there simply lay no other words to describe it. Innocent and lovely, and yet so very sad at the same time. A mournful bleak ancient loneliness in its eyes that was disturbing because he recalled seeing it in somebody else's eyes too, though the dragon could not hide it as the person had done. A loneliness that he knew was the product of long years of solitude, of long years without the love its heart needed so very desperately, in both the dragon and the person. A loneliness that was quickly shrouded by an arrogant ignorance as the huge black dragon turned its head to blink at him slowly, never once allowing him to move from its sight.

The humming stopped, and Tornac stood in silence. With the music gone, the loneliness did not look so very innocent any longer. It was a feral beauty, something too long pushed beyond pain into a bitter resenting creature that destroyed anything it could simply to ease the hurt inside its own heart. The dragon got to its feet, never once letting its gaze leave the man who stood in blank shocked amazement staring at it. Slowly, he moved out to touch its snout, amazed and at the same time wanting to offer comfort. Looking so close into its eyes he realised where he had seen such a look of loneliness before. In a man, a man who was so wonderful to his heart. Somebody he only wished he could comfort just as he tried to the dragon. Somebody he only wished he could hold and steal every shard of loneliness away.

The dragon quivered softly under his fingers, as an image came into his mind, strong and clear. An image tied to such a rush of emotion, emotion that felt somehow foreign and not his own. He glanced down to the emerald glimmers of eyes, and began to comprehend, as the dragon's trails of thoughts melded into his own, a flowing run of steady comprehension between the two, Tornac's imagination opening up to the beast next to him as it tried to feed a hungry emptiness. The image was beautiful, and of one person alone. A person who was wonderful and who smiled in a way that made him smile himself, a person who Tornac thought was all he would ever need.

The dragon lifted its eyes, staring into his, a little pang of contentment touching into the back of Tornac's mind. An acceptance, a thankfulness, a gratitude for the image it had received, as if slunk back into shadows, eyes still sparkling brightly. Mirroring the sparkling excitement of his own silver grey eyes that stared back.

Slowly, he backed away, out into the corridor, heart beating in excitement. Not from the sight of the black dragon that began again to hum in solitude. But of the wonderful shivering pleasure of the person that, for just one moment, was powerfully clear in memories. Someone that, Tornac knew, the dragon had not considered it a sin to love.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I'm so sorry this took so long. I edited it time and time again, and only now am I satisfied with it. So thankyou if you're still reading.

x