I could not force the first part of this chapter out and so stalled out on it. Writing some of Eragon's family issues for another fic of mine helped inspire this, and the last parts just flowed out of me :D

With the sun overhead Eragon was able to determine they flew westward. He hoped it was back in the direction of the mainland, but he had no idea how far the weredragons had dragged them from Vroengard since their capture. Their flight carried them only over ocean. In the distance he sometimes sighted land masses too small to be anything but islands. Always their captors angled the course of their wings to steer them away from land. Behind him the woman tensed until the islands once more dipped out of sight.

Quickly tiring of the wind and waves, Eragon fearlessly studied the weredragons instead for they openly stared right back at him. He wondered what conversation flowed between their minds for outwardly they were silent, thoughts and feelings firmly locked behind mental barriers.

Saphira's guards displayed a wide range of ages. The red dragon was young and restless, for his temper burned bright as his scales. Smoke poured from his nostrils with every huffing breath. At times he strained ahead of the group until a growl from a superior made him fall back into formation. The stone-gray male's hide was marred with scars and his face weathered from a hard, long life, eyes set deep in their hollows. Despite the obvious gap in their ages there was no great size disparity between young and old. The weredragons lacked the unrestrained growth of Saphira's race. From signs of such aging in their elders Eragon figured they eventually grew old and died, but had no idea of their lifespan beyond that.

Eragon's mind burned with a thousand unasked questions. His curiosity was heightened by boredom.

Hold back, little one, Saphira gently chided him. Our dignity is all we have left.

He knew he his dragon was just as curious as he was. Only her stubborn defiance to admitting their captors any access to her mind held back her need to interrogate them.

"Brede Standa." Eragon jolted before he craned his head around. They were the first and only words the woman had spoken to him in hours. "My name is Brede Standa."

"Why tell this to me now?"

Brede Standa averted her gaze and spoke no more. Her face was inscrutable.

The sun was flying low when yet another island appeared on the horizon. Beneath him the black dragon shifted his course directly for it.

Their party was not alone anymore. More dragons bearing the silver and red bands flew into formation as Brede roared orders at them. Some bore riders in human shape. Others flew ahead to push the fishermen from their path. The ships were small and wooden. In the dying sunlight the fish upon their decks shimmered silver. Two dragons with a single net between them deftly dove down and hauled up a writhing pile to dump upon a ship.

As the island neared Eragon discovered there were in fact two, the much larger one several leagues back. The smaller one resembled their prison, a mount of stone that jutted up from the sea, though gentler in its sides and crowned with real grass instead of lichen and bird shit. Beneath the shadow of their shepherds flocks of scraggly-furred sheep bleated as they scaled the treacherous slopes from the stony beach to the stone-walled paddocks on the grassy plateau.

Weredragons did not live on the mountain. They lived within it. Archways and balconies and snarling dragons had been hewn into the gray edifice. Dragons buzzed in and out like bees from their hive. Braziers and beacons were already being lit against the growing gloom. Dragon-fire blazed high and bright in every color of the rainbow.

Rather than aim for the obvious entrances Brede's mount flew straight for a snarling dragon's head carved into the heart of the mountain. Red braziers made its carved sockets glow hellish red. Standing astride the head was the carved form of an armored man. His massive blade, not made of stone but from something else entirely, shone in the sunset. Both almost looked ready to come alive and strike down any intruder that dared enter without their leave.

As their party neared the stone between the dragon's fangs shimmered and vanished like an illusion. The weredragons and Saphira easily swooped down to land within its maw.

Brede's iron hand once more clamped down upon his shoulder. He followed her down from the black dragon's back without complaint. Eragon watched in horrified fascination as the dragon's form shook and shivered, scales giving way to pale flesh and leather armor that formed almost as an afterthought. The black-haired man seized his other shoulder, his claws just shrinking down into nails and the last of his scales smoothing into skin. The hallway dwarfed them all.

While the mountain's exterior was slate gray its interior walls were black as night. Realizing the walls were not smooth but undulated Eragon squinted for a closer look. He immensely regretted it. The Stygian shapes upon the walls were not snakes. Some had a multitude of mouths or others a thousand eyes running down their coils but he had no other name for them.

Despite his circumstances Eragon could not tear his gaze away from the walls as he was ushered onward. The serpentine abominations were not unopposed. Gray dragons sometimes arose from the darkness to defy them but they were always swiftly snuffed out, enveloped in obsidian coils or engulfed by maws like the void. It was battle, furious and futile.

Then came the new dragon, so massive neither wall could contain him. His wings were the walls but his body enveloped the ceiling for countless steps forward. He was not stone gray but the black of deepest night. He should have blended into the endless tangle of serpents but did not. Only then did Eragon understand the difference between darkness and oblivion. Even a moonless night was illuminated by stars, like how the dragon's black hide was broken by the bright silver of his lone eye. The snakes were not black, but swallowed all light and color in their wake.

In his wake came in an army. The two dragons at his flanks each took up a wall on their own. The one on his right shone silver like the moon. At his left burned one red as the fiery dawn. Behind them flew dragons of every color, all limned in silver.

Beside them the stone-gray dragons fought on, now joined by men and women in the same dull shade. They fell as before. Their luminous comrades offered helping hands and paws. Now the fallen rose, bright and blazing, to continue the fight anew. Even their surroundings grew brighter as they drove back the darkness coil by coil.

When it grew too bright Eragon closed his eyes and blinked rapidly. As he adjusted to the brilliance he realized the flame in every brazier burned white-hot. The passage had widened into a massive chamber. On every wall men and dragons were twined so closely it was hard to tell where one ended and another began. Their eyes looked down to the last serpent in the room, a coiled behemoth carved from stone.

Brede and her companion sank to their knees, dragging him with them. Both let him go to raise their right hands to their hearts and expose their necks toward the stone serpent. Brede shot him a purposeful glare. Eragon mimicked her only to have an excuse to glance back at Saphira.

He had expected her to at least growl in protest. Instead she quailed in earnest submission. Across their link a deep and primal instinct, the same impulse that kept young and foolish wild dragons from running afoul a temperamental elder, urged them both to yield.

Only then did Eragon gaze up at the stone serpent and realize it a throne. In its uppermost coils perched the storm incarnate. His hide was the dark gray of thunderheads and marred with the scars of a thousand battles. Not all looked to have been dealt by dragons. Smoke billowed from his nostrils to wreathe his head like storm clouds. Through them shimmered the thin silver chains twined around his gnarled horns. His flashing silver eyes reminded Eragon of lightning. His rumbling voice was like thunder, too deep and bone-rattling for him to decipher the words.

Brede answered, her eyes avoiding the Righ's. "Mo Righ, mi taisbean a' marcaiche agus a callaidh-arach. Ur Aigne is mo."

The Righ descended from his throne, his terrible gaze never leaving Eragon's. The Rider watched in horrified rapture as the weredragon started to shift. Most transformations he had previously witnessed had been relatively swift, more fascinating than revolting. The Righ's transformation was slow and agonizing to watch as if his body bent only due to his sheer, stubborn will.

Ruthlessly the Righ tore through his formidable defenses as if they were paper. Perhaps he meant to punish Eragon for staring. The Rider choked back a scream and did his best to shove Saphira out of harm's way. But the Righ ignored their bond entirely, wrenching deep into his earliest and most intimate memories.

When Eragon was dragged back to reality, gasping and shuddering, an iron hand had grabbed his chin and forced him to peer upward. Set in a craggy human face with an unkempt human beard, framed by a shining crown definitely not made of silver or any metal Eragon had ever seen before, the Righ's eyes had not lessened in their fury.

"Swear to me in this damned tongue that you'll obey every order given by me or your bonded will pay the price of your defiance."

Ice chilled his blood at the ironclad certainty of the ancient language. Eragon swore. He expected Saphira to try and stop him. Instead she made her oath in the same breath as his. After all, the Righ had never specified which of them would pay the price, and his claws were digging into Eragon's flesh.

Yet the Righ did not release him. Blazing eyes never leaving Eragon's, he snarled. "Damain an t-siursach! An tacharan a suilean ann! Tha an rabhadh ann! Tha mo daimheach ann, gu ruige Triath Luan riaghail!"

The Righ glared at his audience, as if daring them to give him good reason to strike them down. None breathed a word. He disdainfully withdrew his hand from Eragon's chin.

"You and your beast are to follow Brede Standa to your chambers. There you shall remain until I deign otherwise. You are not to use your damned Rider magic or even speak the ancient language without my leave."

Though Brede was outwardly calm she tugged on his arm with incessant force. He eagerly followed her out with Saphira dutifully at his side.

Her guards rose to follow. Their Righ's growl stopped them where they stood. Brede and her 'guests' continued unabated.

I suppose that makes us honored guests now, Saphira joked darkly. What a privilege.

Eragon flashed his teeth in something that could not be called a smile. Oh, aye. Just like Murtah was.

Caedmon was the Righ's grandson and heir apparent, gods dammit. He suspected his grandfather kept himself alive through snarling in the face of death whenever the inevitable possibility raised its head. Anyone that had inherited a fraction of such utter willpower should have better control of their own damned body.

Brede must have suspected his time was near when he had ordered her off to Vroengard but not even she could have known he had been clinging to his humanity by the fingertips. Caedmon had only intended to delay a few days more, so he would be capable of dealing with the Knoths on his own once the rogues had been delivered to justice. Instead he had lost his control altogether mere hours after her departure.

Myrna butted her head against his, her exasperation dulled by empathy and earnest love. Sulking never helped anyone, dearest.

Their bond was purest this way, shared between souls without physical words to disturb their utter understanding. It still did not erase his irritation at not actually being able to form any actual damn words for the time being.

Caedmon huffed smoke. You didn't have to burn my entire store of dragonbane. Especially since the patrol to Vroengard turned up-

Myrna growled, all humor lost. So the Righ insists on a public execution. Who cares if it's a Rider rather than a rogue this time? The Rider's dead all the same. With the Lord Moon tiring once again, do you really wish to have painfully drawn out your arachtide just to see the bloodshed firsthand? And certainly be stuck like this when you're needed most?

Caedmon scarcely bit back his retort the crown prince could not have been at his weakest with a Dragon Rider alive and facing his own grandfather. A dragon's pride morphed into shameful arrogance without human reason to temper it. A duine-arach avoided others for good reason during their most shameful times of the year. He could still not force out the apology propriety demanded. The insult still burned too fresh.

His mate took it in stride. She glanced wistfully out the window and to the growing gloom beyond. Almost dark enough for our little nighttime flight. Gods forbid anyone but me openly look upon our prince in all of his primal magnificence.

He rumbled at the compliment and the suggestiveness behind it. But also to help disguise the growl of his belly. His appetite, so disturbed by his dawning arachtide, had asserted itself with a vengeance. He could really go for another damned cow. The entire one.

The black dragon upon their balcony put all such thoughts on hold. Their archway was Willed in such a way that provided a clear view of the outside without allowing anyone to peer in and disturb their privacy.

I'm sure Ciar just comes to report the Rider and his pet were executed, Myrna said gently. Let me send him away.

Caedmon growled and shook his head. He could scent the black dragon's anxiety from here and saw it in the tense lines of his stance. If that were the case it would have been Brede before us. Something's wrong.

He padded past his mate to Will Ciar inside. Nothing happened. Only then did he remember a dragon's wild magic was utterly unreliable without human intent to narrow and focus it. With he huffed he slunk aside for Myrna to work her Will instead.

"Ciar," she greeted smoothly as the black dragon bowed to them both. "What news do you bring?"

"Mixed tidings, my prince and princess," Ciar said carefully.

Caedmon snarled. Oh, get on it with it!

Ciar blinked bemusedly at him and then answered with the blatant honesty a dragon could at least respect. "Very well, my prince. When we faced the Rider on Vroengard Brede stayed her hand because the boy had the eyes of Marit Standa. She returned her suspicions to the Righ who in turn ordered the boy and his beast brought before him. He has just recognized the Rider, Eragon, as his blood and claimed him for your clan. Brede is seeing him and his dragon to their chambers now."

If Caedmon had not already lost his self-control he would have done so then and submitted to arachtide. Instead he turned his rage and disbelief and betrayal upon his room. His flames guttered out on furniture warded against such fire. The furniture and tapestries had no such protection from his whipping tail and slashing claws.

As soon as his temper was spent Caedmon felt like collapsing in shame from such a lapse in judgement. Myrna padded to his side to nuzzle him regardless. Ciar, the picture of propriety, averted his gaze and stood like nothing had happened.

"My mother," Caedmon wanted to keen. "How could she?"

Fortunately his words failed him and nothing came out but a rasping moan. The Righ had stripped Be- his mot- the half-heart of half her soul and declared her dead to them all long ago. The last, pitiful part of her had died not that long after. Caedmon had felt her final death, one that would forever deny her a place in the stars. He should have exhausted his rage and grief decades realization she had survived to whelp a human bastard had torn the scabs open anew.

"We all know how this is likely to end," Myrna murmured.

Caedmon silently agreed. Merciful his grandfather was not. The boy was not duine-arach in truth. The Righ had denied his own daughter an easy death in favor of the most slow and humiliating manner their kind could devise. No doubt he meant one last grasp at vengeance at the lost living proof of such treachery, a human Rider that dared claim royal blood.

Brede did not escort them back through the grand hallway of warring serpents and weredragons. Instead she led them up a winding staircase. The center stair was dragon-sized, wide and high-stepped. On either side were those for human-shaped climbers, far narrower with far more steps. It took Eragon six steps for every one Saphira scaled.

Eragon wished he could just climb upon Saphira's back and save her the effort of slowing down for him. Surely Brede could cover more ground if she shifted to her own dragon body, especially if she had just led them out an archway and flown them to their destination.

There were no true doors in the fortress but there were stone doorways that operated much like those in the prison had. Eragon's hope of escape diminished even further. He had no idea what sort of magic the weredragons used to control them. Without his magic he could not force his way through solid stone without a chisel and years of unerring patience.

Their chambers were not sparse by any stretch of the imagination. The walls were adorned with lavish tapestries; dun-colored stallions galloping beside the sea, dolphins racing each other on the surf, a peregrine falcon in full dive. There was an oaken shelf of books that dominated one wall and a matching wardrobe for the other. Off to one side was a dragon-sized bed set into the floor. Eragon took an experimental step upon it and found it like walking upon a cloud. A quick peek into the washroom revealed neither he nor Saphira had to worry about choosing a corner for their new gilded cell.

Brede strode past them to the stone set within an archway. She raised a hand and frowned. The barrier thinned until nothing remained. She inhaled the fresh sea air with satisfaction.

"No one sees in," she told them carefully. "Let servants know if you want change. The... damain, a leabaidh." She gestured to the bed without blankets. "Holds fire. Warm as you want. Servants come later with food."

Why? Saphira demanded, though the weredragon's mind was warded off. Why give us all this?

Brede sighed and muttered something in her language that was clearly a curse. Her blue eyes found Eragon's. "Because of you, Eragon."

"I'm a hostage he wants treated well?" he finished archly.

Brede cocked her head at the word 'hostage' before she growled and shook her head. "No. The Righ is... damain. Mo seann-seanair. The Righ is your seann-seanair."

She looked hopefully at him. Eragon blinked back in bemusement. When she requested access to his mind he granted it to her. At least she had asked for permission when she could easily burned through whatever defenses he had.

Of all the visions she could have sent, she sent one of a tree. He stood at its roots. She attached mathair and athair to the two low-lying branches above his head.

"Mother and father," he whispered in horror. Had the Righ encountered Morzan before and bear a special grudge against his offspring?

But Brede only added these translations beneath her own language before traveling up the maternal side of the tree. His contribution of 'grandfather' was swiftly added to seanair and otherwise ignored. He did not have time to ponder the oddly familiar word before Brede moved on to seanmhair. Above 'grandmother' appeared a name - Beline Ruadhluan. Eragon's eyebrows rose when Brede even supplied an image of her, that a of young woman with fierce features, pale hair, and his eyes.

Eragon knew Selena's mother had been named Beline, daughter of none, and that he and his mother shared her eyes. She had died long before his birth. Uncle Garrow had never spoke of his own mother beyond that. When Eragon was a little boy some of the village children used to sneer she was a witch that had eaten her family's hearts and taken them all as thralls. They had called Eragon a witch boy too until Roran and his friends, already big and strapping boys for their age, had put an end to things.

Above Beline's head appeared two more branches. His great-grandmother, his sinn-seanmhair, became Marit Standa. Eragon blinked at the name and the image's obvious similarities to Brede Standa. Beline shared her mother's eyes, his eyes.

His seann-seanair, his great-grandfather, was Ardanach Ruadhluan. His face was the Righ's.

Eragon sharply wrenched his mind away from Brede's, building his defenses denial by denial. Brede weathered his spluttered protests with gentle pity that only inflamed him further.

His fucking oath prevented his magic so he funneled his fury into his fists and wordless screams. Brede quietly took her leave and he shouted impotently after her, for his fucking oaths chained him and Saphira to the very room. The furniture proved damn durable to even a Rider's enhanced strength.

When his anger at the gods fucking him over once again had burned itself out, Eragon collapsed on the feather-bed in a numb heap. He did not stir when Saphira padded over to curl around him and envelop him within her wings.

And now we know where Eragon and his family get their existential angst from :D Ah, the era of relying upon half-assed translations from Google Translate and other websites is almost at an end, because he and Saphira are getting dragged into this shit kicking and screaming.

Go and look up Vantablack, one of the darkest, light-absorbing materials humanity has created it. It's not black, it's a shard of black hole that somehow seems to swallow the light around it. That's the difference between the serpentine creatures in the mural and the one-eyed black dragon. Yes, surely this huge and intricate mural means nothing to the daonna-arach whatsoever beyond artistic appeal :p

As seen as from Caedmon's little... predicament, this weredragon shit isn't going to be as straightforward as shifting back and forth whenever you damn well please. Overtime we'll be seeing more reasons why Ardanach might have been willing to give Eragon the smallest ghost of a chance instead of executing him on the spot. After all, beggars can't be choosers...