Post-Eldest AU, remember. Characters and end plot points included.
The song was nearly there. He's been close for a hundred years now, since silencing the drone of the opposing chorus. The lamentations of his Eldunarya were almost all that remained of that. They only amplified his voice, and his alone. With their weight behind him his words had power no other had ever held or would hold again.
Still, it was almost never enough. His Forsworn had massacred too many dragons before harvesting their souls. The power behind him was drowned by moon and sun, who made his ears bleed with forces beyond even his comprehension, and seared his vision when he sought only the primordial darkness. Only on the moonless nights might he have tried again.
And try again he must. The world would have never been his, been Jarnunvosk's, if not.
Sunset stained the whole world red; it set the plains of Green Isle aflame and turned the water into a frothing, bloody sea. Over the whispering waves came murmurs of prayer; to Lorelei to keep their Lord Moon safe in his slumber, to their Sky-Father to rise once more, and to countless ancestors already fighting among the stars to watch their backs tonight.
Caedmon sighed without a single spark. Through plates of star-steel his mate squeezed him tight. Love, hot and strong, pulsed across their bond. Courage, dear heart. Courage.
Once more, he murmured to her. Once more.
Oisin sang, and all the warriors standing tall that dusk opened their hearts to him. He sang of a thousand Long Nights weathered, a thousand dawns witnessed, beneath Ardanach's unwavering fire. So too did he sing of times far darker, the night that had claimed King Arran and his only heir, the first night Triath Luan failed to rise. Yet Queen Sirona and Queen Amalia had risen in their wake, burned back the night and all its evils. Osin wove his words in fire, in the first light of sunrise and the first calls of victory.
For a time Caedmon basked in his anthem. He soaked up that courage and confidence, purged every last shred and fear from his conscious mind. Only then did he too open his heart to add his soul to the fili's. Until sunrise Caedmon was the highest authority in this world, as his grandfather's soul sailed the world above. He gave their people his soul and his fire, his solemn promise the Right would wake to a world reclaimed.
Rise! Rise! Rise!
Every chant stoked the fire in their hearts, roused their Will, melted down their fear into things far stronger. Such was the cry of the duine-arach. The day one fell is the day they died, to rise again all the stronger.
Rise!
On the last Caedmon bellowed. He did not exhale his normal flames, blazing gold, but star-fire hot and searing as the ancestors above. So too did the strongest dragons roar with him. Even those weaker managed hotter flames than they ever could without the spirits of kith and kin to gird them. Myrna's pike of star-steeled blazed, a thousand weapons and defenses lighting with her.
For a heartbeat, their light blazed in the sun's last rays. Then Father Sky passed from their world entirely.
Worst were the Long Nights when the hours dragged by like centuries, when the burning anticipation of his people had time to gutter into fear and tepid hope. Only then did the shrieks begin, and rip their world asunder. At least tonight did not prolong their suffering.
After only moments of dark Crown Castle itself heaved beneath them as the Earth-Mother moaned her agony. Its defenders screamed their rage and pain, runes flaring along every exposed surface as their Will stilled its quaking, and the star-fire in the braziers sprang back to full radiance.
Beneath them the ocean floor was not so fortunate. The waves steamed and churned as they forced their way through.
Fliers!
Caedmon's call was lost under shrieks that sounded somewhere between thunder and breaking glass. But Brede and her dragons dove. The sea boiled as the first writhing Serpents up from the waves burned with them. Those small or stubborn enough to force their way up from the inferno met Ciar and a volley of searing arrows.
Some fixated with a vengeance on the castle's first lines of defense. Others had greater hungers in mind. Their myriad eyes focused on him. Into the water dripped slaver of smoke and acid.
Caedmon kicked away from Crown Castle, his vanguard ascending with him. Out to sea they flew, away from Crown Castle and Green Isle. A portion of the writhing horde broke away after them. What the dragons could not burn Myrna and her casters eliminated with deadly precision. Those that sought to snare their coils or tentacles around him lost their appendages. Some disintegrated into clouds of foul smoke. Others burned to ash at a mere touch of star-steel or sloughed diseased flesh into the sea.
Yet not all focused on the crown prince and his mate. Crown Castle sheltered dozens of souls, tempting and defenseless by comparison. For creatures that fed on life and light, there was no greater a meal than the Righ, whose spirit flared near bright as the moon's, the only spirit up in the stars with a physical body left to devour.
Ghouls dragged their way up the lower rocks like spiders, tangies drenched in rotting seaweed and shellycoats in the rattling bones of their victims. The Sluagh descended in a hateful mob, with monstrous wings and beaks belying otherwise humanoid forms. Castle defenders bathed them in fire and hurtled boiling oil down the rocks. Erna Suther burned back a mob that near dragged one of her maids down with them. She could not save old Agnar, when his caster was overwhelmed and the Sluagh sunk their razor teeth into his neck.
So began the Long Night.
They were only hours more to go.
From her last moonless night in these accursed Isles Saphira remembered anxious prayers and fitful silence, the keening wails of one lone female. Tonight the prayers were louder, more fervent. The weredragons clutched talismans or to the carved paws of Triath Luan, as they urged their loved ones strength or outright begged for their lives. Children and those even younger broke out into wails. Elders paced like caged beasts.
Their guards shifted restlessly. Saphira's hackles rose as their anxious gazes did not strain outward to the tunnels, but rather to those within.
Saphira glanced to her bonded. Eragon's knuckles were white around his sword pommel. Inwardly he warred on unsheathing it. To draw steel might perhaps ignite the chamber's stress into something far more dire. Eragon, do you remember what happened last time?
The old female? He swallowed thickly. Do you suppose-
One old man tore his way through the throng, screaming for his sons. Several guards had to restrain him, as he snapped desperately at their throats. A female shrieked, high and wordless, clawing at her own heart. The children at her paws cried for their mother as others swiftly snatched them away.
"Grandma!" shrieked a child, before the old female's broken wail drowned her out. Saphira's heart dropped as that formerly loving female turned mad, frantic eyes on her own grandchild.
Instinctively she lunged, smashing into that dragon's side before her paw could swat her own blood aside like vermin. The old female was more than twice her size, but brittle with age as Glaedr had never been. Something snapped when Saphira shoved her down. The she-dragon flinched guiltily back. And nearly lost her own throat when the old female snapped madly after her.
Eragon's furious shout split the air, before it deepened into a sound she had come to learn far more recently. The last of his human form fell away by the time he reached her side. Together they were able to pin the female down, as another spirited her grandchild away to safely. Together they could hold her until...
Until suddenly the female shuddered once and then went still. A final breath rattled out of her before the spark left her blazing eyes.
Eragon leaped back, stricken, staring down at her and then his own bloodless paws in horror. I... I didn't...
Not you, Saphira murmured in heart-sick understanding. Not me. Someone she loved. So much so she couldn't bear a life without them.
Glaedr had told her of the incredibly strong bonds wild dragons had shared; not only those between mates, but those of close siblings, parent and child, platonic partners. Once forged those connections were almost always until death, binding two souls as no other power could. The elves had used that bond to exterminate entire clans, relying on the agony of a few downed yearlings to lure out their parents and grandparents. Later they had repurposed it to forge the foundations of the Rider bond.
Such was why dragons had almost always died with their Rider, and that even their Riders scarcely faced higher survival rates. It had driven the wild dragons to extinction, as whole clans had chosen to die together rather than retreat from the Forsworn.
For Saphira the concept of a dying bond had been a cool comfort. If she was to be dragged into captivity as Thorn's breeding stock than Eragon would have to be taken to. Her Rider was fierce in his defiance, enough that he would surely be put down by accident, and so ensure her freedom too.
Now, faced with grandmothers who lashed out at their young children in their grief, mothers who preferred to orphan their children than live without their mates... Saphira shuddered at ever being driven to such hopeless desperation.
But tonight Eragon was safe by her side. And they had no true family to lose among the weredragons. Those that had happily pretended they did not exist the month before now could trust them to hold down bondeds driven mad by grief or provide a safe wing for shivering children to shelter under. Saphira certainly had no risk of going feral as the death toll mounted outside.
In his dragon shape the weredragon language rolled thickly from Eragon's throat. It was still enough for the children quivering beside him, that he could at least wanly assure everything would be all right, that dawn was soon to come. He spoke so certainly they believed him.
The lies he buried deep down, where only Saphira could share them. This was where Saphira buried her own. Her calmness kept one bereft weredragon catatonic on the floor, but alive enough to perhaps recover.
The weredragons cursed of Serpents and Sluagh, whatever the fuck that was. Saphira did not need the words to understand the devastation wrought. The glazed-over eyes of those that died without a single physical wound, only wounded souls, spoke for themselves.
Not all of Green Isle's souls could be evacuated out to Crown Isle. The majority of their livestock, and no small amount of the lesser clans, sheltered instead within the cramped confines of Home Castle.
Niall growled in frustration at the blazing fires and twisted shapes glimpsed in their light, so distant from his home. When the wind blew right he could smell decay and disease, under scents his brain only registered as foul. This was as close as he had ever come to facing the Serpents and all their ilk on his own. Home Isle was simply overlooked. Since his majority Niall had been banished here during the Long Night, insurance should the main line fall at Crown Castle. Even his mongrel of a cousin might see glory tonight, if the horde breached that deep into the isle's defense.
Tonight, however, the wind shifted. Some of the abominations scented a target nowhere near defended as Crown Castle, a Ruadhluan yet to prove himself.
Niall licked his lips in anticipation. Are you with me this time, all of you?
Always, Donagh and Doran vowed as one. They were brothers, who flew together and fought together.
For our people, Eachann murmured. They were all he had left, when the Serpents had devoured his parents and siblings alongside the rest of his clan just the moon before.
Niall's stomach plummeted. He glanced back to Home Castle, the young and the old and the injured that had nowhere else to go. With a chill he remembered Whale Isle, now a lifeless rock in the sea. "Forever and always."
"Fliers!" his mother roared, aloud and across the minds of her guard. "To me!"
Niall and Donagh snapped their wings open. Astride them Eachann and Doran raised their weapons. They kept pace with her wing-beat for wing-beat. Imke snarled back at them but they were all men now. How could she order them back when so much more were threatened?
Niall first fixated on the mob of small, winged creatures he recognized as Sluagh. On their own they were pests. Together they could strip the flesh of even a mighty warrior. He reared back as the little bastards swarmed at his eyes. His blaze of star-fire burned through them but served as a beacon to draw the others in. They knew a Ruadluan when they smelled one.
"Fall back!" Eachann grunted through gritted teeth.
Niall knew damn well to listen to his caster. Only away from the others could Eachann unleash his Will without collateral damage. The prince flared his wings as the air pressure around them sharply dropped. His own Will blazed as he resistance Eachann's push to crush. The Sluagh were not so lucky. With shattered wings the bastards fell to their deaths on the rocks below.
Niall glanced to the shore. His mother surged on to the sea without ever glancing back at him. There were Serpents slithering ashore, eyeless and writhing. They were not large, but still a damn good first kill. Donagh flew at her side to a greater victory for him and Doran than their own prince could yet claim. With an affronted growl Niall chased after them.
The Serpents breached themselves - itself on shore. They were not separate beasts but appendages, eyeless but each with a sucking mouth, connected to a large, misshapen mass between them. Imke and her senior fliers pulled back, bathing the tentacles in fire as their casters hurled projectiles down at the main body.
With their elders occupied Donagh swooped down for the actual kill. And screamed as its tongue snapped out to spring him. Doran roared, driving his spear the into the fleshy mass.
Like a toad the thing's tongue recoiled. Its mouth snapped down, even as more dragons threw their fire down its throat.
By the time the abomination stopped struggling Eachann had shifted to help the other daonna-arach pry its mouth open. Most of the others sprang forward to cover them from assault.
There was no hope for Donagh. Niall had seen his neck snapped in the bite. For Doran, trapped on his back...
The beast had died choking, as the force of Doran's stifled transformation shredded it from the inside out.
Doran had gotten his glory after all. Even if he tumbled lifelessly out of the monster's mouth half-shifted and clouded eyes unseeing.
Niall stumbled back. He opened his mouth to sob.
And wretched instead.
"Prince!" roared an elder dragon, scooping Doran's twisted shape under her arm. "Retreat!"
Niall did. Until an assault by a Serpent even larger than the thing forced him onward.
He was free. Free at last. Up here was where he belonged, free of the aches of his bones and the weight of the world. Here he was a brother-in-arms; perhaps the brightest out tonight, but still an equal. Not a ruler. Not a Righ. Up here higher powers ruled supreme, forever and always, unto the ending of the world.
It was the duty of his grandson to keep the world from rupturing beneath them. It was his to keep the sky itself from splitting apart. Whenever the foul tendrils of the darkness beyond slithered into his skies, he was there to burn them out, through fire and spirit. And stars, dragon and duine-arach, joined their brilliance to his.
Night ended only when Lorelei's fires lit the eastern skies with dawn. Hers was a song beyond the physical, to welcome Adhar Athair back from Mag Mell. As his blazing eye first breached Mother Earth's horizon, his call drowned hers out. His was a lullaby, to thank the stars for their service and lull them back to their resting place beyond the sea.
He was the only one alive to know their song. For up here he clung to the world below by only a thread of Will. It was a song they could not know until they themselves were only bones, stirring restlessly in their Mother's womb against her long sleep.
Away his parents flew, ancient heroes and honored ancestors long dead. They beckoned him to a rest long earned, to avoid Mother Earth's embrace entirely and claim his rightful place in Mag Mell.
Brother, whispered Berach, thin but persistent across the divide. I'm here, big brother. Come back to us. Come home.
Home was Mag Mell. Home was beside Adhar Athair, his Sky-Father. If his wife or child called to him from there, not even the Earth herself would hold him back from them.
But Mag Mell was empty of those he loved the most. It always would be. And so he let the radiance of the stars drift away toward that distant horizon without him. Down and down he fell, to a cage of flesh and breath and bone.
He wrenched open his eyes to darkness, an aching head and aching bones. His baby brother lurched to his paws. He growled weakly at Berach's murmured prayer of relief to any and every god listening. And growled again when Berach nuzzled his head as if still a baby seeking the warmth of his wing. In this shape his whole being quaked with the movement, no matter how gentle Berach moved.
"Good morning, big brother," Berach murmured. "You made it."
Unfortunately.
For a time he lay there, relishing in the coolness of the stone beneath him and the quiet silence of the grave. Here was where his Marit had slumbered ten years, before he had set her spirit free to drift into an aimless unknown. Her shade still lingered here, when the nights were dark enough and his exhaustion even greater than his guilt.
But he could not wait long. His people never could.
Naked hands scrabbled desperately at solid earth. These mornings it was more of a struggle to fight for his rightful shape than it was the fucking abominations still out to devour creation. His whole body shrieked as his wings ripped themselves free, as brittle nails sharpened into claws. Only a choked snarl escaped him.
Berach waited patiently, bristling with concern but never looking his way. To turn back would be to shame his big brother, his Righ, in his moments of greatest weakness. When he was finally ready, stumbling to his feet like a fucking newborn colt, Berach was immediately there to lean against.
Panting against his brother's side, he waited a small eternity for his hammering heart to subside, for his bones to accept their current reality. Only then did they limp forward.
When at the threshold he pulled away first. The celebratory cries of his people grated his ears more than usual. But this time he bit back his irate snarl. There were far too many bodies laid in the corner, those that had taken the easy way out rather than endure a lifetime without those closest to their hearts and souls. Gods damn their weakness in abandoning the rest of their families. Gods damn him for his envy.
As the sea bowed and parted for him he used the distraction to search the sanctuary's edges. First and foremost he fixated on blazing blue eyes; those of his mate, those of their daughter. Even set into the face of an unfamiliar great-grandson they were still the same.
Gods damn the fucking idiot for stumbling into a place not meant to him. With a name like Eragon he had obviously been intended for another life entirely, far away from the mess his grandmother had wrought. Gods damn the ultimatum given to him; execute Beline's blood on the spot or claim him for a life that should have never been his.
The magic that bound their race together was one of absolutes; one either was a duine-arach or was not. It could have never abided a Rider openly bearing Amalia's name. Dragon magic was jealous as the dragons themselves. And had never possessed any tolerance for all the arrogance of the Grey Folk, the foul language had had near unmade all the world in its folly.
It had made poisoning own great-grandson a necessary evil. Of course Eragon would have never taken it of his own free will. If not for that damn oath he would have gladly flown off astride his Saphira to get themselves both killed come the next full moon when Amalia's Will took its toll. But Airmid's gamble had paid off. Eragon lived on to loathe him. Even Soraid fucking Knoth had no choice to acknowledge him now. He'd only had seven assassination attempts thwarted already.
And gods damn him for staring too long. Because now Eragon was baring his teeth in unease.
Ardanach shambled forth, quick as his aching legs could take. Let the boy mistake it for disdain at his survival. Ardanach knew from personal experience a duine-arach was much like a dragon. Minds made up were damn near fucking impossible to change. This was why the daonna-arach now stood alone. Only Father Sky's belated bastards survived, after his favorite children had gone and warred themselves into oblivion.
"Adhar Athair rises!" Berach declared. "Adhar Athair rises!"
Ardanach rolled his eyes as the crowd erupted into sonorous bellows behind him. He had served them for over a century. He would serve until a force greater than himself wrenched him off the mortal coil.
He certainly wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, not until this whole fucking problem with Eragon and Saphira resolved itself. By one way or another.
With his arachtide broken the boy was a full member of the clan. Ardanach was now well within his rights to banish him properly, declare him dead in all the eyes of the Isles so none would be idiotic enough to hunt him into the world beyond.
It would only take Eragon's heart of hearts. Perhaps the spell that had first bound him and Saphira together was merely muted by Amalia's Will. Perhaps its breaking would reassert the proper way of things. They might yet be dumped somewhere south, with only scars and muted memories of that Dragon-Killer's prison to spur them to vengeance elsewhere.
If his fucking great-grandson ever worked the courage to seek him out on his own. Ardanach was very fucking tired of forcing every command needed to keep both Eragon, Saphira, and his people away from each other's throats.
What mattered now was the list of the dead, the repairs and reparations needed. That was what Berach was for, as steward and brother. Ardanach had done his part for today. All the world could wait for him to properly return to it.
The Righ kept composure until the haven of his own chambers. Berach, as always, kept the anxious servants away. He collapsed onto his bed, then into himself, and then into a sleep dark and dreamless.
From this he would wake. What other choice was there; dumping it all on Caedmon's shoulders?
He was close, so fucking close. This time the notes were nearly there, and the voices of the primordial dark lent their power to his. He had strained to hear them over the... the dissonance. But he'd heeded them still. The True Name, and all the world with it, had nearly been his.
If not for that one voice, hot and hateful, that thought itself loud as the moon. That had drowned out that final, most crucial of words with its no. Its never.
Then came sunrise, and the agony of a whole month's labors crumbling into ash.
Galbatorix was flung out of his meditations and back into himself, screaming as blood gushed from his mouth and ears. Shruikan bellowed with him, shaking Urubaen in their stifled rage. As he staggered on the verge of unconsciousness the wards finally kicked him. Hundreds of feet beneath him, the Eldunarya safely entombed there shrieked as magic replenished his blood and rebuilt his wards against... that thing.
Galbatorix nearly toppled a table and its priceless instruments in his rage, before he took a deep breath and settled back on his floor, to drain out his frustrations exactly as that long-dead master had taught him. He was a Dragon Rider. Decades ago his weaknesses had been melted down in the crucible of training and losing Jarnunvosk to leave only a hardened, disciplined soul behind. How fortunate. Otherwise he might have sabotaged a century's work in his temper.
His tools had been pieced together by Durza and a dozen other Shades not nearly so long-lived. They had been plundered from Ilirea and Doru Araeba, from Riders who had warned of powers not to be trifled with or else had been ambitious enough to treat with on their own. He'd rather not waste any more of his Black Hand on replacing any. They tended to kill themselves rather quickly or descend into gibbering madness when forced to dabble where he lived and breathed on a near daily basis.
The Grey Folk had meddled with the very foundations of creation to stake their claim upon it. To find its root, the True Name that bound all their magic to it, Galbatorix had to wrench at its very roots. None of his Forsworn had ever even begun to begin with it. Even Durza had only been a beginner. No wonder the Shade had sought to leech off his studies, all jealously guarded. His death had been no great loss.
Galbatorix summoned Shruikan. His dragon's head was a welcome weight in his arms, even if he was forever a pale replacement of Jarnunvosk.
"We've been so close these past two months, my Shruikan. The closest we've ever been in... four decades? Five? Since that one glorious night when that no was a little less... emphatic." He sighed, his dragon rumbling with him. "I thought we silenced it forever, then. Until the next fucking night!"
He'd been trying to shut it up ever since. And failing.
How could he remake the world from the bottom up if that dissonance kept fucking with his spell? Losing the last she-dragon's Rider had seemed a small price to pay, after how they had also meddled in his melody. But tonight had been even worse.
"Perhaps it is time to consider a new approach, Shruikan. Murtagh may not have his sire's diligence, but his intelligence certainly has its uses."
So Galbatorix climbed astride his dragon, leaving the depths of Shruikan's lair beneath Urubaen behind for their throne room. Only once Shruikan was comfortably curled behind his seat did he summon Murtagh alone.
Not Thorn. Even on his good days Galbatorix could not tolerate that impudent little brat. This morning he found himself especially despising dragons. All except his Shruikan, of course, who sadly could not be called a dragon at all. The spell that had bound their souls together had damaged his young mind too much, left him with only a beast's impulses.
Galbatorix braced for the wave of satisfaction in seeing Selena's son kneel before him, humbled at long last. No matter how handy the bitch had been for Imperial interests he still did not regret letting her die out raging fever out on Morzan's estate when but a word could have healed her. If she had betrayed her paramour, then she would have turned upon him at the closest opportunity.
This morning, however, made him only frown when Murtagh slunk before him. Perhaps the boy hadn't inherited Selena's eye color, but that fire and carefully veiled disdain was all her.
"You summoned me, master?"
Galbatorix relished that title and its double use, for he was both the boy's owner and mentor. Normally Murtagh's barely humble tone was even more amusing. Today something in his tone impossibly reminded him of...
"No," he ruled at last. "Not today, Murtagh. Go and make yourself useful by taking Thorn for a long flight, far beyond my mental range by noon. Be back by midnight."
Murtagh hid his bewilderment with a swift bow and an even swifter departure.
It was for the best. Murtagh and his dragon remained Galbatorix's biggest advantages, especially with Eragon dead to his senses and Saphira still somewhere beyond his reach. He had no use to kill them in a foolish fit of pique, as he had done to one or two Forsworn before.
Or risk them before the rebellion. Not if those fools no longer had a true dragon backing them.
They were an afterthought now, one easily wiped from the world when the time came to forge it anew.
Remember that ambiguous origin given for the Lethrblaka? Yeah, they're the tip of the iceberg here. 'Serpent' is a catch-all term for the biggest of abominations the daonna-arach meet on a monthly basis. Especially common in more recent decades are smaller threats - whose names are shamelessly plucked from Celtic folklore. Mag Mell is also from there - it's a variation of Tir na Nog.
Despite being sixteen Eragon and Saphira are still veterans of several rather bloody battles. This... was Niall's first taste of anything like that. Two different levels of maturity and social expectations here.
Many characters have pointed out that if the Righ wanted Eragon dead, there are so many easier ways to have done it. Drugging Eragon without his consent, however fucked-up, was the most minor evil available to him. To the Righ at least. Eragon would of course beg to differ. On Long Nights Righs and Banrighs have been lost before... because they choose not to awake. If one actually gets caught and devoured... Well, the daonna-arach have spent three thousand years trying to avoid that. And their job hasn't been any easier since their distant cousins to the west gone and got their entire continent devoured by fucking with the wrong forces. But that's a story for another time.