WARNING: I was so excited writing the last chapter I whipped this up immediately after. Those readers coming back from a longer absence should double-check the last chapter to make sure they're caught up with some... literal earth-shattering plot points.
Eragon stopped bristling the moment the Righ's dull, distant gaze drifted away from him. He remembered the thunderous cries that had erupted with his departure the following month. Now the celebrations were thinner, quieter, and quickly broke off into weeping and prayer. Some daonna-arach rushed up the tunnels to seek out their loved ones. Others had no need to search. They huddled around bodies still and silent, those that had died without suffering a wound themselves.
...Not physical wounds, at least. Eragon's horrified gaze strayed to an older male, hours dead, with lustrous scales only a shade off from Saphira's own. He shuddered and reached out for her. His wing unconsciously draped over her back. Strange. He still could not recall shifting back into a shape he'd held for all of two weeks.
Little one, she murmured, not quite realizing his size in this form. W-We... should leave them to their privacy.
He nodded somberly. Together they awkwardly sidled past mourners and tearful reunions. Those that had once stared at them in disdain could not see them at all now. With no reason to take the long, slow way up the stairs they instead headed for the open air.
Eragon gagged on the wind outside. Death hung heavy in the air. Beneath it was another scent, something that made his whole being shudder in revulsion. His eye fixated on patches of sloughed flesh and sickly, misshapen limbs still clinging to odd patches of rock. As soon as sunlight hit them they burned away like bad dreams. The noxious oozes that slathered the stones faded, washed away by sun and salt. The dried blood was not so easily cleansed.
Crown Castle's cliff face was battered, new scars gouged into the rock and braziers dented. On the plateau above the survivors gathered. Eragon felt an unlikely pain of relief to see Caedmon and another he recognized as Myrna, bloody but standing. They stood solemnly over the dead, passing from their bodies one by one. Oisin rose his voice in a funeral dirge.
Eragon knew little of the dead by name. Still he had flown around Crown Castle the past few days to recall some of the servants that had awkwardly passed by him. There was a grizzled guard that has escorted from the Beast to this place. With a sickening jolt he recognized the deep gray scales of Lillias. In life she had been Saphira's size. In death she was smaller, made especially so by the distraught females weeping over her. Erna attempted consolation. She was rebuffed by roars she should have protected their daughter better.
Brede stood with a bandaged head that did little to disguise one of her horns had been snapped from her head. She and Ciar fussed over each other, for his own arm was in a sling. Several flustered daonna-arach he recognized as healers looked near ready to drop dead from their workload, carrying on through sheer stubborn will inherited from their dragon half.
Eragon almost offered assistance. Then his gaze turned south. Alagaesia was a huge land. Surely with enough flying one would hit it eventually.
He jolted as he realized how possible escape suddenly felt. After the Beast's rancid dungeons had come those first few days of Oisin leaving little in their heads but room for his lessons, followed by his sickness and then by two weeks stranded in an unknown shape. Even after their limits had been expanded to a good vicinity of Crown Castle's waters Eragon still hadn't tested the boundaries. Mostly because the weredragons had been the only ones who knew what a fucking arachtide comprised of.
But now this body was his own again, as much as it could be. What stopped them from just flying and seeing if the Righ's Will held when the bastard could scarcely walk?
He turned to Saphira. Well? Should we try?
She stared longingly at the horizon before looking at him askance. You know my answer, stone-head. Do you want to? Right now?
Eragon reflexively bared his teeth at the insult before stilling his snarl. I... This place fucking imprisoned us, forced fucking knowledge into our heads, and turned me into this. Why the seven hells would I want to stay here any longer than what we have to? Just because I share blood with these people doesn't mean I owe allegiance to them any more than I do Galbatorix!
Aye, little one. "Than we have to."
Eragon swallowed thickly. Of course she knew all the fears he buried down deep. She knew him like no other could. Thirteen Forsworn had massacred the wild dragons. What use was he to Oromis, to the whole damned rebellion, when he could not trust himself with the ancient language? He was a half-dragon that could perhaps show Galbatorix to the next best thing after another Order of Dragon Riders.
I... I don't look like myself, Saphira. This spell undid whatever the Blood-Oath Ceremony wrought. The gedwey ignasia on my hand is faded. I... don't know how deep the changes extend.
Saphira leaned in to whack her wing against his. It was something they had learned from watching the daonna-arach around their own age, to show exasperation with each other. Eragon, our bond is as strong as ever. Stronger, even. No other Rider before you could understand flight like you could, or flame, or how good you feel when your point is proven right.
His greatest immediate fear was of course Galbatorix killing him and dragging Saphira into a fate worse than death. A tiny, optimistic part of him now harbored a new nightmare for some nebulous future. Weredragons age, Saphira. Age and die. Maybe it takes one three hundred years, but they still do. And don't grow anywhere near as large as Glaedr. As you will, gods willing. And-
Eragon, like I could care about any of that! A life without you is no life at all!
He shuddered as she mirrored Brom's last warning to him, a new nightmare that would haunt his dreams forever after last night. That's exactly what I'm afraid of.
With a sigh Saphira led him away from temptation, back to their chambers. Their little den away from the rest of this crazy fucking world. Their bed smelled of him, of her. It eased his instincts as their closest thing to a stable home since that tree in Ellesmera.
Upon landing the full weariness of the night before sapped into his bones. They had spent hours holding down distraught dragons twice their size and mustering up the confidence to assure children somehow or some way everything was going to be all right. He flopped into bed and could not contain his pleased thrum when Saphira settled beside him. One good thing about this second form was its ability to drape a wing over Saphira, to twine his tail with hers. Such closeness had never been possible in his human form, at least allowed them to connect on a more equal and intimate level.
Saphira?
Hm?
Dragons have never been ones for falsehood, have they?
No, she tiredly conceded. But they're also half human, and your people are full of it. Perhaps even wild dragons believed the stars were their souls of the departed. Glaedr would have certainly told me if the fucking moon was supposed to be a living one.
But that story of the earth and sky, of the Serpents? After what we saw...
Saphira had never seen Teirm herself, not up close. They grimly poured over his memories together, of such narrow streets and so many souls packed closely together, those without any experience in fighting off abominations from the time before creation. What if such things ever thought to try easier prey? Were they of any relation to the Ra'zac, monsters not even Oromis could wholly explain?
Saphira's sigh of surrender was answer enough. Together they drifted off into uneasy sleep. At least their proximity seemed to keep the true nightmares at bay.
It was late into the afternoon when Oisin darkened their door. They had only picked at their meal. It had been delivered by near strangers, not their usual staff. One boy still burst into angry tears when they passed on their quiet apologies about Lillias. The other boy quietly asked their permission for his outburst, for Naoise had been her brother.
Their tutor, who appeared near dead on his feet, dipped his head wanly to them. He reeked of death and no small amount of beer. "Good afternoon, children. Do you believe me now?"
Aye, Saphira stated simply.
"How could we have otherwise?" Eragon murmured aloud, for he had spoken so much of this damned tongue in his human form it carried over in this shape.
Oisin plopped wearily onto the floor. "Children here grow up with it as a fact of life. Their first Long Nights are spent hidden away but death still finds their clans all the same. I was... only five or so when I was adopted. When your new mother tells you the Long Night is worse than even your rebirth, you believe her pretty fucking quickly."
Eragon turned this over in his head, of how Oisin had gained his rudimentary knowledge in the human tongue to begin with. "You were... like me, then?"
The poet laughed. "Never so privileged, my prince. My blood was mud through and through before my true parents found me. Mom was the last Laoghaire, you know, and Dad a Manran. If Talamh Mathair would not bless them with a child of their own then the name and their arts would start fresh, not fall on to some distant cousin or some such pretender." He grinned proudly. "And, of every child in that town, my soul called out to them. So they took me home, and I was reborn."
Saphira's eyes narrowed. What of your human parents?
Oisin shrugged. "Long dead by now, and far from the best to begin with. I remember a fair share of human siblings. We went to bed hungry more nights than not. All I remember of my first father was being quiet as possible, for fear of waking him when he smelled sour from beer." He titled his head as something else came to him. "I was from Kuasta, if such a place rings a bell."
Eragon bit back a laugh as he recalled Brom's birthplace. "It does actually. My old mentor was born there." He frowned as something else came to him, a story idly told by Brom around a campfire. "He spoke of child-snatchers; bright-eyed people that would snatch away naughty boys and girls in the dead of night."
Oisin snorted. "All changelings in the Isles were born human. Rare was the dragon mother that laid a clutch without intending to do so. Even rarer was the clan that would let a single hatchling stray from them. Human parents are not so dutiful with their young. It is not a loved child that wishes to be taken away, holds their heart open for any and every willing to come seek them." His gaze flicked back to Eragon. "Of course, no changelings have been legal since humans joined that pact of... Riders. Then even the borders of their settlements became too closely watched to be risked. Like that ever stopped those that sought children. By then those that dared were well-adept at hiding from their presence regardless."
Saphira exhaled a puff of smoke. I suppose that's why Oromis never told us of them, she mused privately, before reopening her mind to the poet. Have your changelings become more common then?
Oisin bared teeth too sharp to ever be called purely human. "The penalty was increased to execution for any who dared your lands after the Dragon-Killer. I was the last am over a hundred by now. Such was also the reason we stopped exiling. The risk to our Isles was too great. Better execute all the unbonded criminals and imprison the worst of those linked to another, then let anyone invite that evil back upon us. Isolation has always been our saving grace. Isolation is why we lived, where our closest cousins have all perished."
They sighed at yet another impending story but settled down anyway. This time Oisin did not bother with his elaborate singing. Save to let Saphira speak, his mind was cut off from theirs. Neither pried. The waves of exhausted waves that escaped him were answer enough.
This time Oisin did not sing of dragons or gods. The All-father had been no daring adventurer, only a desperate king seeking to save what remained of his people. Sailing east into the sunrise, after legendary islands ruled by fire-breathing beasts, would have been madness to any not facing something far, far worst in the kingdoms to the west. Their gods had smiled upon them by guiding their ships to the Isles.
Those desperate refugees established themselves on virgin soil, formed the backbone of the Seafolk. In the years after the occasional ship following their path found them, from kingdoms more and more distant. The wars of their time had come to consume them all. Those seeking to win those wars had resorted to darker and darker magics. Perhaps they had created their monsters. Perhaps they had simply sundered Mother Earth's creation enough to let them in.
The All-father had ruled twenty years when an expedition to the lands of their birth revealed only ruins and the foul things that walked them. With such a small founder population and so many islands in the archipelago yet to settle, there had been no reason to turn back west. Yet nor could they advance further east, where the great dragon clans of the mainland had furiously burned any ship that dared disembark.
Eragon considered his own knowledge of Alagaesia's origins. Only dwarves and dragons were truly native. First had sailed the elves from Alalea and Urgals had followed like ticks seeking blood. Centuries later had come humans, in turn hunted by Lethrblaka, whose juveniles consumed only human flesh.
The elves had sadly sung of their silver ships, of Alalea. In all the centuries before the Fall they had never attempted to sail again, had never reconnected to their homeland.
The maps, Saphira murmured, faintly sickened. Perhaps wild dragons were settled in their clans, but the Order controlled whole lands of peace. Why do we have no clue what lies north or east on our own lands, let upon in the seas south and west? I asked Glaedr of it once and he just... just changed the subject.
"Do you have any idea how long ago this happened?" Eragon asked hoarsely.
Oisin cocked his head. "Well over three thousand years ago, my prince. Before the Union formed us."
You... predate the Pact?
He managed the ghost of a smirk. "By then the first generation of true daonna-arach had grown old. We are a race of outcasts, Saphira, descemded refugees from one of several cataclysms in the old lands on one side and rogue dragons on the other, banished to the edge of their known territories. We are certainly no kin to elves. And by then not even to the dragons that happily disowned all their distant cousins as mongrel exiles. We are no more subject to that magic than you are to Amalia's Will."
Yet the Seafolk had not been burdened by the Serpents. In those days the Lord Moon had yet rose full and bright every night. The Isles had not known its burden until the exhausted Lord Moon fell into the arms of his wife. Since that night Amalia had took up her father's cause her blood drew them to the thin places in creation as few others could.
Is that what happened to the lands in the west? Saphira pressed. They... poked too many holes in the world?
Oisin's eyes darkened. "When the Seafolk sailed for survivors there was still a coast to search, ruins for men further inland to resettle. We had safer options for adopting our changelings, more land for hunting. Twenty-two hundred years later, the later kingdoms of men waged war on a scale that has never been seen. Nor will it ever be seen. There simply aren't enough souls left in the world for it... nor that much of a world. The void between us and Mag Mell looms larger than ever."
"G-Gone? It's all just..."
Oisin bowed his head. "It is not your fault. It is not the Riders'. We can only blame men long dead and try to learn from their mistakes."
And when they are too stubborn to do so? Saphira asked pointedly. Too far gone?
The duine-arach shrugged darkly. "Well, we're running out of places to run away too, aren't we?" He stood, swaying with the movement. "Excuse me, my prince, my... prince's bonded. I believe the time has long come for me to retire."
He took his leave without either of them caring. Eragon burrowed his head into his paws with a snarl, claws raking against his horns. "How in the seven fucking hells do we tell if he's lying again or not?"
Saphira cocked her head. I... do not believe any weredragon here has ever actually lied to us. Not directly at least.
Eragon blinked up at her in astonishment. Then he waved a sardonic paw to his snout. "'Recover your spirits' my scaly fucking tail."
A gross under-exaggeration, Saphira retorted flatly. For what it's worth, they never intended to outright poison you. She bared her teeth. Of course, no one had high hopes of your survival. Remember that betting pool we weren't supposed to know about?
He smirked back at her. So many weredragon had quietly cursed him for fucking up their bets. Some had outright thanked him, because odds of his survival had been low enough to make them all very rich indeed.
All too soon another dark possibility swam into his head. His head sank to his paws again. "How the hells am I supposed to leave this place if that bitter old bastard is truly all that stands between us and the ending of the world?"
Or even simply of the Isles. Perhaps even the adults he grudgingly liked were prejudiced and spiteful and ossified in their beliefs. There were still children here, no matter how alarmingly few Oisin believed there should be, innocent of whatever crimes their elders had done to him. There was always the hope they could turn out better than the generation before.
That's what Caedmon and Myrna are for, aren't they? They're... not as bad.
How had Garrow felt, when Selena had returned home after years gone, when she had fled in the dead of night and left behind an infant nephew he had only the faintest connection to? How would he have felt if he had wholly known Selena's past, who had sired her sons? Would Eragon still have found a home there? Had Garrow and Marian loved him immediately, like he was their second child? Had that fondness only come later? Eragon could not remember his first full years of life. Gods knew if his uncle had first cared for him only of familial duty.
"Caedmon can't actually want me here," he growled. "I don't think any one actually wants us here. They'll be glad to see us go, if we only fucking vow to keep their backward little kingdom secret."
Saphira thrummed, resting her paw over his own. A knot in his stomach unraveled. I'm all for that.
He sighed, shutting his eyes. "First I need to make this body work for me. At least enough to kill a king."
Perhaps the weredragons simply had no mastery of the ancient language to go off of and feared the worst happening to someone at least technically of their royal clan. True wild dragons had taken their concept of clan to impossible extremes. The careless slaying of one juvenile had been enough to pull them into the Du Fyrn Skulbaka for a reason, after all, as clan after clan had joined to avenge distant relatives.
Saphia rested her head upon his. Eragon bit back a grin at the gesture. This was something he had missed from two weeks stranded in this form. In the morning. Right now my head is going to explode if I hear another earth-shaking revelation about these stupid weredragons.
He mumbled a sleepy assent and drifted back off her.
This time his dreams were not so merciful. Again he dreamed of the Long Night. The old woman that died screaming beneath his paws was Aunt Marian, flushed from those lost nightmarish days of her illness. Her child had Elva's eyes, sharp and accusing. There stood Islanzadi over a lifeless Arya, demanding why he had not saved her daughter. Katrina, belly round with child, wept over a dying Roran as she screamed for him to heal her husband.
Then it was Saphira dying his arms. He died with her, as he tried and failed a thousand times to call up the spell to save her life.
Only, no, the dying one was himself. How could she hope to save him, without Will or magic? She was just a -
They jerked awake as one, blinking blearily at the other. Eragon squeezed his wing against Saphira and she his tail, as they confirmed themselves alive and well.
Perhaps their nightmares would not bleed together if they barricaded their minds and moved away from the other.
But there was no power in the world to divide them, not tonight, not ever again.
This story has a fair share of favs and follows, and an eye-brow raising amount of views. That said, guys, that doesn't tell me much as a writer. I'm laying out the full stakes at risk here and trying to nuance characters important to the end-game plot. Dead silence is not only discouraging, it's unhelpful. Reviews let me know what you like, what you want more of, what confuses you, whatever. Even if your thoughts boil down to one sentence, that one sentence can help guide me on how this story is going. I only have my gut to go on when I get little to no reader response.
I legit have a timeline that goes back to 4514 AC in that dwarven calendar to help guide the big events in the back story. That's when some fishermen get blown way off course and first spot the Isles - uninhabited at that period except by a few outcast, clan-less dragons. By 5217 (elf land-fall) the daonna-arach are established in a way their dragon cousins to the south can heartily pretend they aren't relatives. Or even out there at all. The feeling's mutual with the daonna-arach. When it comes to strange storms in the north and adventurous novices that wind up disappearing forever... the Riders eventually learn to live and let live. It's... a lesson they learned a lot in trying to explore beyond Alagaesia. The waters to the northwest are strange in a slightly different way, but forsaken all the same.
You know what's great about Paolini's sparse world-building? All the fridge horror I can shove into the gaps! Why do we have no real knowledge of the world beyond Alagaesia when the Order is confirmed centuries of peace and an exploratory nature in regards to the word? And why the elves lament Alalea even though they had centuries to go back? Why, there's nothing left to go back to, you silly goose. Alagaesia is a Flat Earth and it and its little archipelago are ALL that's left :D
...Really, with a magic system like the one in canon, and canon terrible consequences, why not bring things to their inevitable conclusion?