After near damn two weeks of waking up starving, Eragon awoke one morning... suspiciously not hungry. One whiff of breakfast had his stomach roiling.
Saphira rounded on the serving girls with a furious snarl. Did you fucking poison him again?
As the maids bleated desperate denials Erna caught her gaze evenly. "Tomorrow is the Long Night, child. With luck he will finally be set to rights."
Eragon snorted, smoke rising from his nostrils. How so? Erna gestured at her own human form, scales bubbling for a moment across her hands. His stomach plummeted. Oh.
Erna hummed sympathetically. "May I, my prince?"
Grudgingly Eragon knelt down, lowering his wing. Erna climbed just high enough for her hands to brush his back. Through thick scales he scarcely felt it, until she touched one area where a rider might sit. She leaped back as he involuntarily bucked, teeth snapping shut with an irate growl.
"The muscles are beginning to contract," she said soothingly. "This is unfortunately pleasant, but a step things are going as they should. At this stage I would avoid altogether, my prince, and drink only when you must. Your body wants to retract back to its birth state. Impeding the process is... not recommended."
Eragon agreed. He sulked on the balcony until Saphira wolfed down her meal and had it collected. As much as he had enjoyed flying he could not even trust himself with that now. The last thing he needed was another spasm sending him to impale himself on the sharp rocks below. Or lead a squadron of dragons down to swoop him up before he drowned in his idiocy.
When breakfast was gone Saphira padded cautiously over to him. She froze when he buried his snout in his paws, for she still reeked of food. How are you, dearest?
Better than last time, he answered sourly. For now, at least.
Saphira hovered anxiously nearby as he tried his damnedest to sleep while he could. They both snarled when Oisin butted his head in for their lesson.
No! she snapped.
Oisin heaved a long-suffering sigh, inhaling deeply as if whatever roiled off of Eragon's aching form was familiar. "So I see, my prince. In this you're right on time." He winced as Eragon jerked, claws gouging into the floor. "If it's any consolation, I find returning to my first form easier than the other way around."
Miracle of miracles, the poet left them their privacy.
Eragon braced for true misery, the agonizing fire that left him mindlessly screaming for death. In comparison bone-deep ache and the nausea were tolerable. Until they came to be downright boring, as he impatiently waited for the transformation to hit its peak.
The spasms came when they pleased. Every time he braced for the one to sweep him down into hell they receded. He lost himself inch by literal inch. Organs squeezed and squelched in ways he did not dwell on. The bones were the worse, as his wings ate themselves and his tail retracted in agonizing increments back into his spine.
Despite Erna's advice his stomach still clenched until his gut could take no more. He vomited up several dull red sparks and the remnants of last night's dinner.
Saphira?
Aye, Eragon?
He groaned, eyes purposefully shut. Am I small enough to call 'little one' yet?
...No.
Gods fucking dammit!
Reassuring warmth settled at his side as Saphira hunkered down on the beside him. She felt far closer to a peer than the sturdy bulk he wanted right now. Tentatively her mind opened wider to his.
Do you remember how Oisin sang to us, Eragon? Would it help if I tried the same?
Eragon snarled into the mattress, claws tearing at Will-enforced bedding. Absolutely no fucking weredragon stories!
Saphira rumbled. I have my own, thank you.
Oisin sang in verses of the daonna-arach. Saphira did not bother with words at all, in any tongue. She only hummed, a warmth that reverberated from his bones to his weary mind. In her mind's eye two dragons danced, one deep violet and the other cobalt blue. These were no ancestors of Eragon's, long dead. Here were her own parents, as Glaedr had sang of them.
Vervada Stormcleaver was proud and wild, mother to many and among the eldest in her clan. Her song was of storms defied and the mates she humiliated in challenge flights when they sought to best her. Her song was rage and sorrow, when her mate and many of their offspring were among the first stolen by Galbatorix. Her song was the spite that kept her alive past their deaths.
Iormungr's song was gentler, more ordered. He had been a Rider's dragon, his instincts tempered by the human Katalya. For decades they had served the Dragon Riders. Only later in his life had he thought of a family of his own.
Together their songs clashed, harsh and dissonant. Only the drone of grief kept them together, as the looming Fall forced unlikely alliances and attempts to recover from the damage already wrought.
In their sole egg did they find harmony at last, a child to love and protect. Their songs ended in blood and screams and fire, when Galbatorix came for Doru Araeba.
So many songs ended forever, the faint melodies of eggs shattered before they could truly be sung.
But not hers. Vervada Stormcleaver and Iomungr died so that she might sing quietly on, however stifled beneath Galbatorix's choke-hold.
For a hundred years she waited for a mind like her own, one to join its voice to hers.
She had long given up to despair and endless sleep, until a sudden explosion swept her away from all she had ever known. And into his arms. Even through the shell his voice had stirred her. Her half-formed mind had brushed his own, untrained and ignorant, and found harmony.
So she had hatched for him, to join their voices into one song, forever and always.
Eragon blearily opened his eyes to deep blue darkness and a slow, deep heartbeat. At first he thought himself caught up in one of Saphira's earliest memories. As he realized himself truly awake his next hysterical thought was that he had somehow devolved back into an egg.
Instinctively he lashed out with a leg. He kicked against leathery wing membrane until Saphira grunted and let him out. Away from warm darkness he flailed in the freezing, open air.
Saphira!
...Aye, little one?
I can't feel my wings!
...You're not supposed to have them, little one. Not in that shape at least.
Eragon slumped to the bed as something snapped into shape for him. Oh? Oh. He blinked as the last of his muddled mind finally woke up. Then I'm back to normal?
...Mostly.
At that positive reassurance he groaned into the cushion before righting himself. The room was so bright he first thought it day before observing the stars and sliver of a crescent outside. He lurched instinctively onto his hands and knees. Apparently even in this shape weredragons held onto their senses. An experimental inhale revealed his nose no less muted.
From there he rocked back into a sitting position, slumping against Saphira's side. His side cracked at a motion now almost unfamiliar. He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck until it jogged his muscle memory of sitting upright.
First Eragon ensured the critical points. He had ten fingers and toes, not a single scale visible on his naked skin. Belatedly he remembered his clothes shredded to bits in his first transformation. It at least assured him certain parts were very much accounted for. Without the certain bulge that protected dragon males when such bits were not needed.
He had only naked shoulder blades without any inch of wing. He had no true tail, only that stubby little tailbone all humans had. Eragon inspected nails that had grown, their tips ever so slightly pointed like claws. He tried and failed to bend one. Grasping at his hair revealed it had also returned. The ends were longer and so had apparently grown even when locked away in dragon form.
In reaching for his hair Eragon brushed his hand against his ear. One very rounded ear. His stomach dropped. Feverishly he raised up his hands to inspect his face. After the Blood-Oath Ceremony he had committed every inch of it to heart, until that angular face in the mirror had become his own and not an uncanny stranger's.
"Fuck!" he snarled.
Not even that sounded quite right, though he yelled in his birth tongue. It reverberated ever so slightly deeper in tone, lower in his throat. No doubt Oisin would be damn well pleased he was capable of speaking like a proper fucking weredragon now.
Eragon?
"This is the third fucking time I won't recognize myself in the mirror!" he growled. "Not counting the time I woke up a fucking dragon."
...Perhaps, but-
"No!" he snapped, shutting his eyes desperately. "Please, Saphira. I need to see for myself."
Patiently she waited for him to stand. He bared his teeth in a snarl as he leaned heavily against his side. His legs rebelliously shook at going back to bipedal posture. He squared his shoulders and wobbled away from Saphira's side anyway. By the time he reached the washroom he damn well stalked to the mirror.
He blinked as he saw... himself. The human reflection from Teirm, before the Rider bond and the Blood-Oath Ceremony had truly altered him. A year older, a year wearier.
Gone were the angles of an elf, the pointed ears and slanted eyes. His pale complexion had darkened back to a human skin tone and dark stubble sprouted from a stronger jaw. There were Roan and Garrow in his lower face. In his cheekbones was Murtagh. The broad shoulders promised he would not be one of the lean weredragons after all. His eyes were all Beline's, down to the shape and the dark shadows from a restless night. Good gods why was his scowl the Righ's?
There were more predictable changes, such as the irises that glinted when they caught the light just so and the canines too sharp to be normal teeth. But he had expected those.
"Shave in the morning," Eragon grumbled to himself.
He headed for the wardrobe and grabbed one of his old tailored tunics. Before he even tried it on he raised the sleeve to his arm. He tossed it aside when he realized that muscle was not fitting through.
One of the unaltered tailors was still a bit too loose in the sleeves and shoulders. He did not drown in it. The length was perfect.
Murtagh had once been two inches taller than him. A part of Eragon was smug to note the balance had reversed. Assuming that two inches was not truly three or four.
Once human decency was accounted for Eragon returned to Saphira's side and collapsed face-first into bed. He did not dream.
Hunger stirred Eragon the next morning. It was nowhere near a healthy appetite but at least his stomach no longer demanded to be emptied.
Despite it being the usual hour no breakfast came. Dragons battened down doorways and stoked braziers high as they could flare. If it was even possible they appeared more frantic than the first Long Night he had witnessed in the Isles. Eragon and Saphira watched them solemnly from their chambers. The poor bastards outside didn't need them tripping under foot or offering help they had no idea how to give.
Eventually Eragon's nostrils flared at the spicy tang of sausage. He frowned when Erna lingered anxiously outside the door.
"Enter," he called at last. The word rolled easily off his tongue, more so than it ever had before that first nightmare of a transformation.
The servants laid out breakfast valiantly. Their hands scarcely shook and their disbelieving eyes glanced his way only once. Erna looked too drawn to smile. Some spark returned to her when she glanced his way.
"I am relieved to see you have recovered your appetite, my prince.'
"So am I," he answered wryly, before frowning down at simple gruel and sausage. "Today is a fasting day, aye?"
"Only for those that must keep their minds sharp and spirits calm for the war ahead, my prince," Erna answered gravely. "The Righ does not expect such service of you. We expected to find you still breaking your first arachtide or newly recovered from it."
Eragon and Saphira both bristled at her tone.
I am no child to be kept locked away! I have fang and fire, have held my own against dragons before!
"I am well trained in the blade," he snapped. "I have slayed Shades and Ra'zac." These were said in the tongues of men, for he had not the duine-arach terms, and thus met with blank stares. "I have survived battle against Riders," he amended furiously. "Let me defend this castle, if I am truly its prince."
"I will as the Righ wills," Erna said stonily, scales bristling across her skin. "And the Righ does not will children slaughtered." Larger and larger she loomed, until Eragon and Saphira before retreated to avoid her looming shadow. "Saphira, you have not the Will to hold your fire firm against true darkness. Your wild magic might slaughter us all in your panic. Little prince, you have never honed your Will before, never shifted of your own free will. Do you think your grandfather would see you thrown away so easily after just returning you to his wing?"
Eragon growled defiantly, aware of something rough and dry rasping over his skin. Erna rumbled thunderously back. He recoiled never having faced such ferocity from her before. The shivering sensation withered and died with his revolt. His stooped down not to bow, but to snatch up a sausage. He tore into it savagely.
"Thank you, my prince." Lillias and the others scurried out beneath her baleful eye. Only then did Erna shift back to human form, face weary. "Please, do not wish away your youth so soon. Eat and rest. Pray for those who cannot." With a brief, final bow she departed.
They devoured their food in sullen silence.
At last Saphira ventured, You had scales going across your skin, when you stood up to her.
He frowned, remembering that odd sensation. "I did?" He frowned at the memory Saphira sent across their link. Seeing his own human face contorted with such bestial rage disturbed him even more than the obvious fangs or black scales that had momentarily crawled across his face. "I wasn't trying to do so."
Perhaps it is tied to your emotions, but what would I know? I am but a dragon.
"The dragon of dragons," he corrected, nudging her mentally because at his side it would do nothing physically. "None of these half-breeds can claim that title. None of them deserve it."
She rumbled in fond exasperation at his flattery but the bitterness did not dissipate entirely. It simmered in the back of his mind just as his frustration over his form did. Perhaps remaining a human Rider with free use of his magic would have at least allowed him to stand his own in the eyes of these people that despised him, no matter how metaphorical the dangers of the Long Night still appeared to be. Surely all the lore warned of something.
Thunderous wings and gleaming gold startled him from his bitterness for this dragon did not pass by as all the others did. At first he impossibly thought Glaedr and Oromis, to the rescue at last. More hysterically he realized it was Caedmon. His uncle.
The golden dragon landed on the balcony. The threshold's current settings blocked the interior from view. That did not stop from gazing expectantly in their direction. "Nephew," he rumbled quietly.
Eragon twitched at a title that should have died with Garrow. He still strode forth to meet him. "Uncle," he acknowledged flatly. Inwardly he was satisfied with see the bastard flinch.
For a moment they awkwardly regarded the other, each just as perturbed. At last Caedmon extended a clenched right paw. He uncurled it to reveal a blade. Runes shimmered down its side.
"You will not fight with us tonight," he said resolutely. "In time you shall. Before then, this is a last resort. There will be those among you who cannot wield a weapon at all."
Remembering the children and elders they had sheltered beside, Eragon took the blade in his hands and unsheathed it. It was larger than Zar'roc, its hilt intended for two hands. Holding it up experimentally he found the blade was still unbalanced. Despite his growth spurt it was still long, still heavy, but usable. It was no masterpiece, no Rider's blade of shimmering metal or the milk-white ore he had seen used before, but the steel was strong.
"I shall do all in my power to protect all I can," he vowed. After a long moment he dipped his head just low enough to matter. "Thank you, uncle."
Caedmon turned to leave. Wings half-furled, he finally offered, "May we meet once more as the Mother's."
Eragon's lip quirked. "And burn all the brighter as the Father's."
With nowhere else to be Eragon practiced while he could. Since Zar'roc's theft he had tried swords and staffs and staves, all inferior to a piece forged by Rhunon's unmatched hand. The weredragon blade also paled in comparison, but it was still the closest alternative he had yet found. By the time Brede and Ciar came for them he felt comfortable enough to trust it in combat.
"It is time," Brede said heavily. Her gaze fell heavily on Eragon's human form, the sword at his side. "As before, you stay where commanded until the Righ Wills otherwise."
Of course he will, Saphira cut in. Your stone-head prince isn't getting himself slaughtered on my watch.
Brede laughed wanly until Ciar locked down the room and their good humor with it. Down they descended into the dark, to perhaps never see the sun again.
Many of the faces he faintly recognized from last month. They still stared, though their stares were more furtive than before. Perhaps because he had proved himself a true duine-arach rather than a bastard Rider. Perhaps because this time Saphira was not afraid to snarl at them for their bad manners. She thrummed in satisfaction when they were the ones who guiltily averted their eyes.
They settled in a quiet corner. After a moment Ciar offered Eragon a whetstone from his person.
"May we meet once more as the Mother's," he offered gruffly.
"And burn all the brighter as the Father's," Eragon returned.
Brede clapped his shoulder. With a jolt he realized her expression made her look like Garrow, stern but tender. "Be good, be safe."
"You too, cousin." She was distantly related, aye?
Brede considered this. "The last two clans in your blood are Standa and Ruadhluan... so aye, cousin. If the stars are kind you may one day meet Lord Torin. His brood would... enjoy another cousin around their age."
Ciar snorted ominously. "Oh, would they."
Saphira tilted her head after their departure. What did he mean by that?
Eragon had only grown up with one cousin that had been all but his brother on an isolated farm. Most in Carvahall lived in closer proximity, with vast extended families through Palancar Valley. He had witnessed too many family unions during the festivals. "Everything from older cousins ready to beat me into the dirt for being what I am, to a bunch of children never willing to let me go."
Only purely human children could never all transform into horse-sized dragons to pile atop him, as one such group did beneath the eyes of watchful elders. Saphira laughed at the image.
Their cheer fled with the Righ's arrival. The air grew oppressively hot. All the crowd shifted to make him a clear path, bowing his direction with necks bared and hands to their hearts.
Eragon did not. The Righ's unwavering gaze fixated upon him. Sweat beaded down his neck. Bitter defiance kept him from blinking.
The Righ disappeared into the darkness beneath Triath Luan's idol without his stoic expression ever faltering. His brother Berach was not so reserved. His lips curled in a brief snarl before he whirled back to the crowd. "The Righ descends," he rumbled. "He rises!"
"He rises! He rises!"
When both dragons disappeared the chamber descended into prayer and heavy silence. Eragon's gaze flicked from the crowd of worshipers at the Lord Moon's paws to his single moonstone eye. He had believed in Carvahall's gods only vaguely, for Garrow had never cared for the old ways. His belief in the divine had died entirely since Saphira's egg had hatched and thrown him into hell. More awkwardly he realized the weredragons believed this massive dragon, the fucking moon, their distant ancestor.
They waited for the storm to break. Minutes crawled by. When Eragon could stand the silence no longer he quietly started sharpening his gifted blade. The familiar motions eased some tension from his shoulders.
The earth beneath them shook, walls rumbling until runes seared bright on every surface. For a heartbeat, all the white-hot braziers in the chamber guttered. Eragon and Saphira both snarled at a heartbeat of... not quite cold, before the warmth of living weredragons pressed it back.
Children wailed. Elders snarled. Their guards growled and raised weapons.
The Long Night had come.