Harry Evans's Fabulous Multidimensional Adventure

by androidrainbow

After dying in the forest, Harry is offered the chance to help other children of prophecy. Adventure ensues.

49. Christmas

Chapter 49: Christmas

Nasuada was incredibly relieved at the sight of Aberon in the distance. The last few weeks of marching were miserable, dogged by frigid rain and muddy terrain that clumped on hoofs and clogged wagon wheels. Every morning, she would hold her breath and peek out of her tent, thanking Gokukara that he had stayed the first snows once more. The shortening days further cut into their time to march. Even after crossing the Petrovya river into the friendly territory of Surda, there was always a lingering question of if the Varden would be snowed in before the army camp reached Aberon. She had Trianna to thank for their expedient progress.

As irritating as the entitled woman could be, when needs must, the sorceress rose to the occasion. The capable, tough group of two dozen magicians were a very different lot from the sorry ones she'd known before Harry had lent his expertise. Despite Islanzadi's predictions, they had made it not just across the Petrovya river, but all the way to the heart of the free country. The magicians spent day and night levitating carts over impassable terrain, tugging out horses stuck in mud, distributing food and healing wounds and sickness. Nasuada had witnessed them taking pinches of powder that enhanced their power and kept them awake for days on end, forcing the Varden forward even in the deplorable, wet and muddy conditions. Now that they had arrived, Nasuada would ensure every magician in the corps would have a room in the citadel, safe from the elements they determinedly beat back for the sake of the Varden.

Drawing her cloak tighter around her, she leaned down in some vain hope to shelter herself from the rain. The gloomy, overcast city promised a warm hearth, and she was eager to get under a roof that wasn't made of canvas.

A few hundred yards from the northern wall, the men and Urgals cheered and laughed or were otherwise in good spirits, erecting a long-term camp to wait out the winter. Du Vrangr Gata's members were likewise relieved, though they showed it with slumping, relieved shoulders and long, lethargic blinks. At the gate, Nasuada and her guards were welcomed into Aberon.

"Welcome, Lady Nasuada!" King Orrin exclaimed, once they made it to the great hall. "I have been eagerly awaiting your arrival, ever since my scouts spotted your host."

"You are most generous, King Orrin," Nasuada inclined her head, a bow of acknowledgement that deliberately avoided subservience. She was trying hard to keep her intense relief at being indoors off of her face. The dry, warm halls were something out of her dreams, the rain lashing helplessly at the sturdy stone walls of the citadel. She did not want to give Orrin the upper hand, even subconsciously, by appearing weak, even if the shelter of the citadel made her want for nothing so much as a soft, warm, dry bed. Her initial impression of the King was prideful, yet soft. Orrin was trim and fit, and sat straight upon his throne, his crown straight upon his head, but there was a boyish enthusiasm about him that Nasuada hoped would not stop him from doing what was necessary to dethrone Galbatorix.

"From all that we have corresponded, I feel as though I know you already," he smiled. "You must be hungry and weary from marching through the Beors. I would feast your arrival, and quarters have been set aside for you and your staff. We may discuss matters of state after we sup."

The feast took place in another grand hall laden with fragrant meals she had not had since Farthen Dur. Oddly, the food Harry had gifted them was actually fresher than King Orrin's feast, but the cooks never had time to put together intricate meals on the march. Stuffed birds and filets of fish were arranged inside plates of sliced fruits and steamed vegetables. A selection of sweet and sour wines circulated in the hands of cupbearers. Nasuada nearly melted at the first few bites of apple pie.

"My compliments to your cooks," she said to King Orrin. He smiled warmly.

"They shall be conveyed. They are the most skilled in Surda. If I did not train with arms so much, I would surely grow fat from their efforts. If I may ask, and I mean no offense, are your guests all commoners? A few of them don't seem to have a solid grasp on etiquette."

Nasuada followed his gaze to a lower table, smothering a smile. She had brought the entirety of Du Vrangr Gata to the feast in gratitude, and it was clear that many of them had never expected to dine with nobility. She spotted Carn, a clever, wiry man, eyeing the vast array of cutlery at his place with bewilderment, chatting with a stuffy noble that seemed to be growing offended by his words. Trianna, despite the bags under her eyes, sat straight and bore herself like she was born to the role, but she was the only one. Most shifted awkwardly, generally behaving like the commoners they often were. The only one who looked truly comfortable was Imladris, dressed in her usual black leather getup. Rather than try to blend in, the woman who often guarded Nasuada from the shadows lazed about with a predatory grace, slouching carelessly, unbothered by her observers.

"They are, for the most part. Magic does not discriminate based on status, it seems, for none of Du Vrangr Gata are nobility." Nasuada sipped her fruity wine, watching King Orrin.

"You brought your entire magician corps to dine?" he asked incredulously, and with the smallest hint of wariness. Nasuada quickly allayed his fears. She did not want it implied that she was threatening him.

"They have put forth titanic effort to see us all in Aberon before the snows," she explained. "I would reward them for their diligent service. It would be poor thanks to fill my belly with fine food while they are left in the freezing rain."

King Orrin smiled easily. "Then they are heroes, and should be treated as such."

After the feast, Orrin led Nasuada and a few of their guards to a stone council chamber in the keep. The overcast sky made it seem like evening in the windowed corridors of the keep. A pair of the guardsmen carried unshuttered lanterns with them. A thick, reinforced wooden door barred the way. Orrin fished a heavy key from within his vest and fiddled with the lock. Leaving the guards behind outside, the King of Surda shut the door firmly behind him.

"My magicians have assured me that no man, elf, or rider may spy on us while the door is shut," said Orrin, taking a seat at one end of the council table. "Please, make yourself comfortable." Nasuada sat, taking in the chamber. It was lit by four bracketed torches and a candelabra on the table. Despite the eight chairs surrounding the table, Nasuada gathered by the cluttered spread of parchments, scrolls, books, and the enchanted jade scroll which she carried her own copy of in her sleeve, that the space had been somewhat converted into a study for the King and his secrets.

Immediately, he spread open his jade scroll, arranging it next to a sheet that looked to record his errant thoughts. "Much has happened recently. I was unsure of committing to an offensive against the Empire initially, but the magician Harry has allayed much of my concern. Slaying Shruikan is nearly half the battle, is it not? Now only the Black King stands in the way of a free Alagaesia."

Nasuada sighed. If only it were so easy. "Not to hear him tell it," she told the amiable King. "Arya has told me the elves agree; Shruikan was nothing more than a slave to Galbatorix. He may have lost his transportation, but make no mistake, King Orrin, Galbatorix is far from crippled."

He frowned without meeting her eyes, fixed on the scroll and his notes. "That is concerning. I am glad of the Wizard's presence, that he and Eragon and Saphira might together prevail, where so many riders of old did not."

She slumped imperceptibly. Orrin had given voice to the dirty little thought that plagued her so often. Galbatorix was well-reputed to have slain dozens of riders and dragons by his hand, experienced ones that had served for centuries. He was also thought to have been gaining power in all the time since. Nasuada was no fool, and it was a fool's gambit to hope that Eragon, a rider with all of a couple years' experience, would best the most powerful rider to ever live. If not for Harry's aid, she might have despaired over their chances when it finally came down to a battle between riders, as everyone knew it would. Their best and only hope was to stack the deck in Eragon's favor; send him with so many supporting magicians and warriors that he might strike down the Black King where he stood alone.

"Aye, Harry is a wizard of rivaling power. I ill-understand the true scope of his strength, only that he is wily and clever, even if his courtly bearing could…use some work."

Orrin nodded in agreement. "He barely offered a perfunctory greeting to me when he delivered Islanzadi's missive, and left without my excusing him. Nevertheless, I am concerned about the breadth of his powers. Islanzadi's reports paint a grim picture for us: 150,000 trained men to form the Empire's army. The whole host is bearing down, and will be upon us in late spring at the latest. a further hundred thousand garrisoned across the cities, and likely many hundreds of thousands of levies he can compel into his service with magic. Without the dwarves, the Varden and Surda number 15,000 trained men, perhaps 50,000 additional levies if I conscript only so many that Surda does not collapse in their absence. With the dwarves, a further 30,000 at most. We shall be outnumbered no matter what, and the dwarves' assistance will be absolutely crucial. I have given this dilemma much thought, and I would hear your ideas."

Nasuada considered how much she was willing to reveal. She had many cards to play, many which would fail if they were known to the enemy. Toying with the hilt of her dagger in her dress, she examined King Orrin. Despite the perceived softness and rumored absentmindedness, Nasuada found genuine support in his expectant blue eyes.

"The Empire's army numbers too large for us to defeat even with perfect maneuvering. Our best chance in a conventional war would be to defeat it piecemeal before it could form up, but in the Empire's territory, we have no hope of doing so. It is fortunate, then, that we are not fighting a conventional war. The presence of magicians on both sides lends an enormous advantage to whoever has the better ones. In fact, without enemy magicians to contend with, our own can slay entire armies instantly and without much effort."

"Truly?" he looked equal parts dubious and voraciously curious.

"Truly," Nasuada confirmed. "Thus, the only thing that matters is killing enemy magicians, and keeping ours safe. Each magician keeps some battalion of men protected from those lethal spells, and the battalion in turn protects them. Because magic costs more over distance, it demands a magician's proximity to the battle. When either the magician is killed by mundane means or defeated in a wizard's duel, the opposing magician is free to butcher the whole of the soldiers under their wards. Unless the opposing army vastly outnumbers ours by so much that they can reach our magicians before we can overcome theirs, or siege engines or riders and the like decimate the army physically, most all of our battles come down to magic." It was not easy to hide the distaste in her voice. Magic was the greatest headache she had to contend with. At least Orrin was taking notes. Given out randomly, it was like a divine lottery that elevated normal men and women into demigods. There was no discernable rhyme or reason to who got the ability, and policing it was completely impossible by any reasonable means. It twisted and warped the simple facts of reality that Nasuada relied on, making every battle unpredictable in ways she was helpless to alter.

When Orrin professed his intention to test his aptitude, she nearly let a tiny sigh past her lips. Eagle-eyed, he caught the suppressed gesture. "You disagree, Lady Nasuada?"

"I do not disagree that it would be wise to test yourself, I am irritated by magic's mere existence," she corrected. "If not for it, we could just wait for the damn King to die already, and the world would continue. It lies at the root of so many of our problems, and as I am unable to use it myself, much of those problems' resolutions lie beyond my understanding. It is…discomfiting to know that despite the thousands of troops under my command, in the face of a single unskilled magician, I am as helpless as a newborn babe."

King Orrin scowled. "I had not thought of it that way. On the whole, I think I am glad it exists for the possibilities it lends. Nevertheless, I suppose we ought to adjust accordingly and plan around it. I also must ask, was it truly necessary to ally with the Urgals? My men have very low opinions of them, and I myself struggle to view them as other than beasts."

Nasuada felt her opinion of the king rise a bit. She would have expected him to dig his heels in. "They have been done evil by Galbatorix just as we have, King Orrin. Should we leave them out of our campaign, we would silence their voice at the table, so to speak. I, for one, would rather properly solve Alagaesia's problems with them than go back to enduring endless raids once Galbatorix is dethroned."

Orrin laughed, half bitter, half incredulous. "When Galbatorix is dead. Very well, Lady Nasuada. Let it not be said that the House of Langfeld shirked its duty. To Galbatorix's death. I'll drink to that."

The very next morning, the temperature dropped, and Nasuada woke to see the curtains to the windows of her guest quarters in the castle fluttering. She pushed them aside and was met by a flurry of crystalline snowflakes landing on her eyelashes and in her dark hair. Leaning out and looking up, snow fell quietly upon Aberon, a carpet of white over the rooftops and paths. She breathed a sigh of relief, leaning back into her warm, sheltered room. Thank the gods we made it.

---

"Can you repeat the 'Three D's' again?"

"Er, Destination, Desperation… uh- Don't splinch yourself?" Arya glanced back at him in concern.

"You're sure you can fix splinching?"

Harry crossed his arms. "Of course. I splinched myself to test it. Way easier than transmuting new limbs, really. You're overthinking this. Visualize yourself inside the hoop, gather your magic, then twist on your heel and force yourself into it."

Arya eyed the pink candy-striped hula hoop on the grass yard dubiously. Elva watched with an intense, unreadable expression. "Do you want me to side-along you again?"

"No, it's fine." Arya took a deep breath and prepared to twirl on her heel, magic suffusing her body.

"Wait!" Elva shouted. Arya nearly toppled over, aborting her twist mid-way. "You were going to splinch your arm." The girl rubbed her bicep sympathetically through her jacket.

"I'm sorry," Arya apologized. Elva shrugged apathetically.

"That's okay," Harry reassured. "Splinching your arm just means you managed to apparate everything but that. That's progress. This isn't really a true spell, it's instinctual magic. Find a visualization technique that works for you. You're forcing yourself through reality to your destination." Twisting briefly to the right, Harry vanished and appeared in the hoop so quickly the two faint pops melded together. He stepped out and gestured for her to try.

Arya nodded and set her face. Learning apparition would unlock the entire world to her. It was an unparalleled independence and freedom to be able to be anywhere at any time. Twisting the portkey ring on her finger, Arya imagined being able to discard the shortcut to the villa and travel under her own power. She let the determination fuel her and envisaged the inside of the ring, letting magic suffuse her limbs. With a deep breath, she twirled on her heel, hurling her magic at reality itself, forcing it out of her way. Suffocating blackness enveloped her. Arya steadfastly held onto her destination, pulling it towards her.

With a blast and a shockwave that sent ripples over the pool's surface, she arrived in the center of the hula hoop. Harry cheered. "Yes! That was amazing, Arya, second try!"

Prideful triumph bloomed in Arya's chest. Summoning her magic once more, she twirled again, pulling herself through the dimensional film and back to where she started. Laughing delightedly, she concentrated upon the balcony looking out on the yard and with a brief twist, suddenly she was looking at Harry and Elva from above. Their eyes found her quickly, a proud grin on Harry's face. Twirling once more, she threw her arms around Harry, a fey laugh on her lips. "It's wonderful. Though I wonder, does it ever get any more comfortable?"

Harry grinned ruefully. "You get used to it. I suppose I shall add 'better apparition' to my list of things to do." jokingly, he conjured a scroll and let it roll out a dozen feet on the lawn, scribbling in his entry near the top. "Let's go inside. I have yet to introduce you to pizza. I already prepared everything.."

Elva climbed up onto her highchair around the table in the three-season porch while Harry lit the stone pizza oven. "How is your time chamber progressing?" Arya asked while Harry learned through trial-and-error how to throw pizza dough.

"Good. My experimentation with the stasis charm suggests the issue is much easier than I'm making it out to be, but I like to make the first project of its kind as best I can. I wrote a script to match up the level of time dilation with my sleep schedule and the day/night cycle outside. Hopefully it should reduce jet-lag from using it. Preliminary testing is promising; none of the test mice died from 86,400:1 compression." Harry smeared olive oil and tomato sauce over the dough, sprinkling salt he'd distilled that morning from the ocean over top, busily selecting bottles and bowls from the line of arranged ingredients and preparing them atop a flour-dusted counter.

"Why do you need that much time?" Elva wondered. Harry levitated the pizza into the oven.

"I've got loads of projects in the air right now, and several of them are too important to push back, like my egg fabricator project or the re-embodiment ritual.. There's just not enough time in the day for me to do everything. Thus-" he shrugged, "time chamber."

The smell wafting from the oven was divine. Arya awaited the new food with anticipation. When the flatbread dish emerged from the oven, the aroma filled the room, the scent of mushrooms, peppers, cheese, black olives, garlic, and roasted meat. Though she abstained from eating flesh, she could not deny that a primal part of her appreciated the scent. With a few deft movements, Harry split the pizza into twelve slices and slid them across the table

When she bit into her vegetarian piece, the sound she made was certainly not child-friendly. Harry gave her a lewd grin. Arya's eyes flicked to Elva, blushing.

Later, when Harry had dragged her to their new bedroom, Arya pulled away. "Harry, we can't have sex with Elva around," she hissed. He frowned.

"I thought her thing was only pain."

Arya rolled her eyes. "Are you really interested in being absurdly careful to do nothing but the most vanilla acts in bed?" She crossed her arms, which unfortunately did nothing to redirect Harry's interest. He pouted, but acquiesced.

"Shit, we gotta find out how to block her powers as soon as possible," Harry breathed.

Arya flicked her wand with a devilish smile. "In the meantime," she linked arms with him and pressed herself against his body, catching the rolled-up tent. "-take me to the salt flats?"

Harry nodded eagerly. They disappeared with a pop.

---

Elva was curious as to where Harry and Arya disappeared. They always returned an hour or so later, happier, slightly sore, and lacking a strange, unfamiliar sense of…urgency. Despite her expressing her wish to keep her ability, Harry insisted he figure out some way for her to turn it on and off at will. He was respectful of her wishes, and never did anything that had the chance to permanently take away her powers. He would disappear into a new room in the basement for a moment, return, and test out some new bauble or enchantment on her. On the fourth try, a bracelet took all of Elva's ability to sense any pain at all, including her own, emotional or physical. That bracelet was quickly taken and stored safely away. A dozen refinements later, Elva never took off the bracelet Harry had given her. The outer surface was red, the inner one, blue. When she flipped it inside-out, the sense of pain she had lived with for her entire life vanished.

In a way, it was unpleasant. Like missing a limb, feeling the pain around her had become her sixth sense. The void where those sensations had previously been felt numb. Her sense of foresight had been incorporated into every part of her life, including her ability to walk. Knowing exactly when she might trip made it easy to place her feet perfectly. Missing her power was like walking without a crutch for the first time.

Harry didn't ask her to wear it often, only for a couple hours a day for a week before his and Arya's bedroom became a deadzone to her ability. Still, it was empowering to have the ability to turn it on and off. In that way, she began to view Eragon's curse as a gift. She still hated him for the torment he forced her through, and the way she was forced to mature early just so she could throw herself in front of oncoming danger, but no longer did she viscerally hate him with every part of herself.

"He meant well, and made a mistake any inexperienced spellcaster could make," said Harry, one night as he put her to bed. "Judge people's use by what they do, but their hearts by what they mean." He drew the covers up to her chin and pushed her bangs out of the way of the silvery mark. Elva felt his wariness of the spot on her forehead that marked her as different, and the uncomfortable parallel he drew to his own pinkish, jagged lightning-bolt mark.

"You're interested in my brow," she told him. He surfaced from his thoughts and smiled wanly.

"Facial disfigurations tend to cause problematic destinies. Don't worry; I've got a pass from the top to meddle with them." He got up and closed her door softly. "Goodnight, Elva."

Once he was gone, her room felt lonely by herself. She considered if she missed her previous caretaker. The woman would rock her and sing her songs, frantically try to discern how to help her when she was crying from the cumulative agony of the entire Varden, and later when she was strong enough to follow the compulsions, protect her from running off. She reached out motionlessly for comfort, an instinctual reaction ingrained into her childish brain.

A mental presence was watching, and immediately accepted her clumsy probe. "Hello, little one. What keeps you awake?" Aupho's mind felt comforting and caring. Elva hadn't words to describe her feelings, so she sent them without.

"Sleep well, Elva. You are safe and you are loved."

---

As the weeks rolled on, Elva found a confidant in Aupho. The orange Eldunari carried a profound sadness with her, a wound in her soul that for the first time in her life, Elva had no idea how to solve. When Harry felt sad or bothered by something, ideas and avenues to reassure or further damage him floated right at the surface of her consciousness. The only thing her power saw in Aupho's melancholy was how to break her utterly with the knowledge of her rider's death. She carefully kept those thoughts away from Aupho when the female dragon's mental presence resided in her mind.

Life changed quickly for her. Harry was the very image of unquenchable creative fire. The only times she couldn't see him doing or making something were when he disappeared on day trips to "get some stuff," when he was in the basement, or when he was spending time with her. Elva visited him often when she was bored. He was always delighted, and made time to explain what he was doing.

She climbed up a table and peered over a glass-covered machine. "What's this?"

Harry set down a sparking stylus in a little holder and flipped up his goggles. "That's a laser cutter- or it will be, once I manage laser diodes strong enough to burn through metal." He rolled his stool over and flipped up the cover. "Right now, it's got a little mithril bit instead of a diode that channels a piercing spell. As I lack actuators I can control from my computer, it's guided manually."

Opening the topmost drawer under the cutter, he pulled out a thick, paperish die. "I drew the design on graph paper first, then embossed it on this." Elva watched him arrange the sheet in the top part of the machine. He put a thick metal plate in the bottom section and set the bit at the beginning of the track. The cover shut blue lines sprung up on the glass cover matching the ones on the die.. "I flip this…"

Suddenly, a bright green beam shot out from the lid and cast a little green dot on the metal sheet. Harry pointed to a green button. "Then press this."

Elva pushed the button. A bright green dot appeared in the middle of the blue diagram. It glided to the first blue line, turned purple, and began racing around the track. The beam had turned purple. A second later, the purple beam turned back to green. With a muted thunk, Harry threw back his switch and opened the glass. Elva reached her whole arm in and tugged out the cut sheet of metal. It had been perfectly shaped into a shape Harry termed a 'fan blade'.

Things only advanced from there. Between all the odd contraptions Harry worked on, Elva got the sense he was building to something. He seemed inordinately thrilled to bring home a great big drum of some viscous, black liquid. The way he explained it, oil was more valuable than water in the desert. The next few machines he came up with looked like tall, metal tubes which boiled and bubbled away constantly. Each time he left the house, Elva would spend her time with Arya instead, whose talents ran in a different direction.

Arya was just as clever, but she preferred more artistic pursuits. The elf had her own studio space with many devices. There was a complicated wooden frame Arya called a 'loom,' which she sat at, passing a device she called a 'shuttle,' back and forth between the nets of thread stretched taut by the loom.

Elva's favorite activity with her was the pottery wheel. It was a delightful device which looked a bit like a circular bedside table, except it had a bit of gearing in the leg in the middle, and a pedal on the ground. It was messy, messy, messy, but that only made it more fun. Elva could only imagine how Nanny might have shrieked if she saw the clay-splattered, wild-haired, grinning mess that she and Arya were after pottering about.

"It's a good idea to form the blob evenly, or else it can go flying off the wheel," Arya coached. Elva dug her fingers into the wet, slimy grey clay and slapped it down on the middle of the surface with a very satisfying plop. Droplets of dirty water splattered over her apron.

"Where does clay come from?"

Smiling, Arya replaced the cover on the wet basin of clay on the ground. "I scoop it from a river delta a few miles south. It's formed by water wearing down stones for millions of years. First they become gravel, then sand, then clay."

Elva climbed up and sat in Arya's lap. "Ready?" She asked. Elva nodded. The elf's leg moved beneath her and suddenly, the wheel began to spin. Elva reached out with her fingers and smoothed out the blob of clay. It was hardly perfect, but that was okay. Arya guided her gently, her hands on Elva's and teaching her how to angle her hands and fingers to manipulate the wet clay. They both got horrendously dirty and only managed to produce an awkward vase, but they both emerged from the activity with big grins.

Arya dumped their dirty aprons in a basket and helped her up to the big metal sink to wash off their arms and hands. She made Elva promise to shower or take a bath before going to bed. Then they went and had snacks. Harry had baked cookies before he left, the eleventh batch so far. Each one had been a little bit different and a little bit different, a process Harry called 'iterative refinement.' Elva understood the concept, but she appreciated it more for the extra cookies than the improvements of the latest batch.

The little phoenixes came in when Arya pulled the cookie bowl from its cabinet, suddenly releasing its aroma. They were as fresh and hot as they were the second they came out of the oven. Hedwig was missing, and the three little phoenixes were acting wilder than usual without her intimidating presence. She was probably hunting. The big white bird had an attitude. Elva crumbled off bits of cookie and fed them to the little birds with sticky, chocolatey fingers.

"Why do you like art but Harry likes science?" wondered Elva aloud.

"It's not that definite," disagreed Arya. "But if I were to guess, I would say that Harry values effectiveness a lot more than he values beauty. He likes to make things as good as they can be at whatever they do. Did you know that virtually everything in this house is unbreakable? Not just resilient; you couldn't scratch the paint on the wall with a sledgehammer. He valued the quality of resilience in the walls and floors and furniture, so he used the best spell he knew to give those things the best of the qualities he valued. But if the walls served better as ugly walls than beautiful ones, he might choose the stronger wall over the prettier one."

"But the house is beautiful."

Arya smiled. "So it is. Harry can make beautiful things when he applies himself, he just chooses to do so less than I. I feel the opposite way; I value beauty more, so I pursue arts that reflect that."

"When's Harry going to be back?" Elva wiggled her fingers. One of the little phoenixes was trying to get her attention, nibbling at them with its tiny beak.

"Not longer than a few days, I would guess," reassured Arya. "He said he was out looking for silicon, nitrate, and uranium. Two of those are very common. Don't worry, I cannot think of anything save Galbatorix that could threaten him. Let's wash our hands and see what to do next."

After snack, Arya and Elva put on their swimsuits and made a mad dash through the chilly air, leaping off the stone patio and into the warm pool. When they got bored of swimming, Arya hugged her in the pool and twisted. With a wet pop, they appeared back in the warm entry hall, depositing a load of chlorinated water all over the tile floor. Arya commanded it to evaporate and tugged a couple of folded towels off a shelf of cubbyholes.

"Shall we do lessons? Elva made a face. "They might be boring now," Arya conceded, "but reading and simple maths are the key to all of literature. Through the written word, dead people may speak again."

Elva conceded and let Arya fetch a pile of wizarding children's books for her. "Why aren't there any in the common tongue?" she wondered, settling by the fireplace.

"Literacy is very common where Harry is from," Arya explained. "In Alagaesia, humans find the written word too rarely used to be worth teaching everyone their letters. It has become a tool of the upper class. Even elves teach our children reading later in life. Harry's world has better tools for teaching youth how to read, since literacy is so important to regular life."

"Fine," Elva muttered sullenly. Arya smiled and grabbed a weathered, dog-eared book made from very thick paper with moving illustrations. "Ba-Babbity Rabbity? And the Cackling Stump." Arya shrugged.

---

Everything was so different from the short months of torment she had spent in the Varden. There, she could never rest, her curse forcing her frail body onwards, assaulting her with the agonies of thousands of men. Not only did she feel every jammed finger and toe, every cut or crush or break or festering wound, but the emotional anguish of men who had killed and seen their shield brothers die next to them.

Nanny meant well, but her ability to effortlessly manipulate her made her feel like less of a person to Elva. Harry and Elva were much more real. They had pains of their own, but they were rarely physical and never overwhelming. She couldn't tug on their strings because they were not a puppet to their angst. Harry's issues especially were more baggage than anchors. Arya was more often completely blissed out interacting with her baby dragon. Besides that, they both treated Elva like a real person. Neither insisted on treating her like an infant. Harry made some effort to shield her from the harsher parts of life, but he would not deny her if she asked.

The three of them read all sorts of stories like Cinderella and Snow White and Rumplestiltskin from picture books that stayed still. Elva noted that they tended to put very…innocent dressings on the ugly side of humans that she was familiar with. But they would sit down after and discuss. The green dragon liked to sit with them and listen, ears perked.

There was one story Harry wouldn't read to her unless she asked him to, from an old and weathered book without pictures. She would give him a pleading look and feel his resolve crumble. He would dredge up the deepest well of emotional pain he possessed and bring it to life with his wand and the shadows on the wall.

Harry set up the story with a mysterious river at midnight, whereupon three brothers came to cross. He told her all about how they tricked Death with their magic, and how Death got them back. The saddest part of the story was when the third brother gave up.

"...The third brother folded up his cloak neatly and passed it to his son. Death came to him and asked: "Why have you taken off the cloak?" The third brother bade his elderly son, a grandfather himself, goodbye and spoke to Death. "You have taken all but my only child, and I am ready to die. I see your specter in the empty place in my bed, the abandoned rocking chair on my porch, the empty perch of my owl. I have lived a full life with few regrets, and I am ready to see what comes next." And Death smiled and said "Come then, with me on this next great adventure." And he did. They departed as old friends."

Elva snuggled deeper into her bed, drawing the starry comforter to her chin. "The book doesn't say that." Harry smiled gently.

"It's called creative license. I put my own spin on the story, true to my experiences."

She frowned. "But people don't think like that. They cry and beg, and are paralyzed by terror." Harry's smile turned sad.

"A war camp is not a particularly happy place, Elva. And Beedle isn't trying to say everyone lives like the third brother. The first brother died in pain and fear, woken by his throat being cut in the night. The second died in miserable longing. I think the third brother was wise to devote his life to living, rather than not dying."

"But he hid from Death," Elva observed.

"We all do. We eat and drink and handle knives carefully and fear war. Death is not innately good, and shouldn't be pursued. But we should not flee from it, either, and let our desperation to survive consume what life we have."

"What about the elves?"

"They are not immortal, only eternally youthful. They can and do still die. But they don't let that stop them. They train with arms and plan to war with Galbatorix, knowing some of them will die. To reject death is to run away from danger and obsess over extending one's life. Do the elves do this?"

"No," Elva admitted. "But everyone who dies is always so scared of what comes after. What if it's terrible?"

Harry smiled and pressed something small and cold into her hand. "Why don't you find out?"

Elva opened her tiny fingers. A little black stone rested in the palm of her hand, almost the same size as her fingernail. The facets were cool, yet even when she closed her fingers around it, it did not warm up. Like the second brother, she closed her eyes and turned it over thrice without thinking. The stone warmed pleasantly.

She found two more presences in her room. Except they were the dimmest her senses had ever seen. They felt no pain or hunger, feared nothing. The only thing she felt from them was longing. Elva opened her purple eyes and gazed upon two strangers, a man and a woman. They looked as healthy and clean as nobility and wore simple clothing. The woman regarded her with purple eyes just like hers. They were filled with such kindness and empathy that Elva's breath was stolen.

"Elva," she murmured. Elva squeezed her eyes shut, feeling them brim with hot tears. Her chest felt tight and her breath shook. "I love you," she heard. Ghostly lips touched her forehead.

The stone cooled in her hand. The longing disappeared. The stinging in her eyes and the tightness in her chest remained. Elva peered at the warped image of the little black stone through her tears. "I think I understand the second brother," whispered Elva. She turned her head away and held out the stone, fearful that if she beheld it for one more instant, she would lose the will to stop herself from turning it over thrice more, if only to see that smile again, to hear the woman speak.

The weight of the stone lifted from her hand. Elva let out a shaky breath. "Thank you."

Once Elva put up a convincing enough act of sleeping (a challenging task when living with two mind readers) Arya confronted Harry.

"Are you trying to prepare yourself for Elva's death?" She whispered angrily.

"No!" Harry was taken aback. "What do you mean?"

"This whole 'not running from death' message." The elf glared.

"No," Harry insisted. "It's supposed to warn wizards and witches against the super-evil death insurance methods. Didn't I tell you about Voldemort and his Horcruxes?"

Arya's ire subsided a bit. "Oh. Elva may not even be a magician."

"If she isn't (and I don't believe that for a second, what with the Gedwey Ignasia) then I'll find a way to give her magic," Harry promised fiercely. "It has to be genetically bound, or else it wouldn't run so blatantly in family lines. I just-"

Arya hugged him. "What are you going to do if it turns out she has a normal human lifespan?"

"Figure out how to make a Philosopher's Stone," Harry said instantly. "If Nicholas Flamel could do it in the thirteen hundreds when the periodic table wasn't even a glimmer in his eye, I can do it with unlimited time and modern science."

She sighed. "Just… be careful, Harry. There have been affairs between human riders and elves before, and humans and elves. They always end in tragedy."

Harry kissed her. "Not this one. We're going to kill Galbatorix, bring back the dragons, and live happily ever after."

---

It was a bright and snowy morning. A thin layer of glittering white carpeted the world, hanging off the boughs of the pine trees like icing and ran over the bare fir and cypress branches. The sky was a clear, azure blue and the quiet morning lent an otherworldliness to the scene. The ocean roared just down the cliff, frigid and untamed, its water defiant in the face of the rapidly approaching winter.

"It feels…wrong," said Arya. "To have such power and yet see Galbatorix sitting easy on his throne." Arya sipped at the bitter, black coffee and watched Firnen tumble in the fresh, snowy yard with a less solemn Elva and her phoenix, Eppie. Harry sighed.

"I think it's unhealthy to fixate so much on killing him. You already spend so much time reading the linked scrolls and planning and training. If your identity as a person is built around trying to kill him, who are you once he's dead? Besides, we're on the Varden's timescale, right now. Even if I killed him today, then what? His standing army decides to give up, the cities capitulate without sieges and accept a democratically elected leader? I've only been in this dimension a few years, and I'm already weary of this war."

Arya shook her head slowly. "It feels odd to seriously plan for after Galbatorix's death. You take it to be such a foregone conclusion."

"The good guys always win, Arya."

She rolled her eyes. "What are you working on today?"

"A solution to elvish squeamishness over eating meat."

Arya punched his shoulder lightly. "We're not squeamish, we're just not selfish. I'll bite. How have you solved elves having a conscience?"

He vanished for a second, returning with a little circular glass dish filled with pink tissue. "Artificial meat. It's never been more than a collection of cow deltoid cells. I grew it from bone marrow, and the cow who I took the marrow from is perfectly fine."

Arya leaned forward. He felt her mind probe the dish. "How odd. It completely lacks consciousness. Less even than plants."

"Very ethically sourced," Harry agreed. "Do you want to try it?"

"You swear it's not from a dead cow," Arya demanded. He nodded. "Heat," she intoned. The culture baked immediately to perfection. With a deft motion, as if she was afraid she'd lose her nerve if she hesitated, Arya bit half of it off and chewed.

"It's odd," she decided. "It feels looser than it should be, and not very good."

Harry sighed. "There's still trouble to be shot. It's absolutely nothing but muscle fibers, so there's no fat – which gives typical meat its flavor – and the muscle tissue hasn't been worked. Normally, exercising muscles opens micro tears that heal back over stronger each time. There's mention of this actually being deliberate in lamb meat." Arya's face bore a horrified expression. "Yeah," he grimaced. "Not super ethical. Anyways. I've tried it with a few other livestock animals, too. The beef was just the best in my opinion. So, verdict? Is non-living, lab-grown meat acceptable to the elvish conscience?"

Arya eyed the other half of the tiny patty. She bit off a corner slowly, nodding. "I think so."

Drinking the rest of her coffee, she leaned back in her chair. "Are you working on anything in particular to help with the war?" Harry gave her an exasperated look. "I'm just curious," she defended.

"Well, besides making great strides in the Eldunari reembodiment ritual, yes, I have. An idea occurred to me on the nature of warfare with magicians. Oromis told us how enemy magicians are seeded throughout the army to protect their battalions from instant kills, yes? And arrows are usually warded against." Harry wore a shark-like grin. "Well, my world has a ranged weapon significantly better than archery, and I think it will be a game changer."

---

"Why do you think Harry put up a giant tree in the backyard, Aupho?" asked Elva, tugging on warm pants and a long sleeve shirt.

"He claims it is a holiday from his world. I would suggest bringing the 'snow pants' today. Harry indicated he would be experimenting with weather magic."

Elva wrapped herself in a small blanket with twinkling golden stars that moved on the fabric. She pressed her nose against the cool glass of the doors to her balcony. The ocean felt anticipatory today, like it was holding its breath. Elva stared into its unreadable depths. The waves were an enigma to her, alive, yet invisible in her senses. She drew doodles on the breath-fogged glass for a moment. Wiping it off with her sleeve, she headed down for breakfast.

The hallways had been transformed overnight, rainbow lights strung along the railings, festive wreaths and garlands on the walls. Red, green, gold, and silver seemed to be everywhere. She could see the tops of decorated trees and their starry peaks over the balcony overlooking the tall living room. Tenor singing emanated from the kitchen. Elva made her way down the staircase to the kitchen.

"Oh the weather outside is frightful,

But the fire is so delightful.

Since we've no place to go,

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow."

It looked as if an explosion had gone off in the kitchen. The marble countertops were covered end to end with endless mixing and measuring bowls, boxes and cans and bottles of ingredients, appliances and tools, and in the middle of the chaos, a grinning Harry hopped between tasks, conducting the chaotic orchestra with his wand held like a baton. Floating bowls and spoons mixed and poured and stirred at his direction.

"Merry Christmas, Elva!" He exclaimed when he spotted her, spinning in such a way that his apron flared out. Big letters spelled "KISS THE COOK" around big red lips in the middle. Underneath it was a knitted emerald sweater with a great big 'H' in the middle. Joy practically emanated from him as he directed a laden plate and glass to a hastily cleared section of the countertop, a barstool pulling itself up next to where Arya was also sitting, in a rather evocative and tight apron that had the same design on it as Harry's.

Standing awkwardly on the flat counter, Hedwig and her chicks surrounded a bowl of lemon drops, bobbing their heads forward and snapping up the candies.

"It's not snowing," she pointed out, clambering into her chair. Harry paused for a moment.

"Oh it will be," he promised, winking. "I checked China's annual snowfall; it's like two inches a week! Unacceptable. No Christmas is complete without a blanket of snow covering everything. Preferably a blizzard in the evening, too. I've got an old druidic ritual I've been itching to try out."

"How did you sleep?" Arya asked, sipping a creamy, unfamiliar drink with a red-and-white striped straw. Her dragon, a male who had recently accepted the name Firnen, was curled up around her stool, his head resting in her lap. Behind her in the living room, several more trees were bedecked in silver ribbons, shiny baubles, and twinkling lights. The hearth roared with fire, three incredibly stuffed stockings hanging from the garlanded mantle. The area beneath the largest tree was absolutely stuffed with brightly-colored parcels tied together with shimmering ribbons and bows, their paper wrappings covered in decals of bobsleighs and broom riders gliding across the paper.

"Fine," Elva yawned. "What are these?" She picked up one of the stylized pine tree-shaped biscuits, frosted with alternating red and green lines.

"Dessert for breakfast," Harry grinned. "Cookies are like biscuits that are loads sweeter, and eggnog is just brilliant." Cautiously, she sipped from her straw. He was right. The drink was creamy and sweet, with just enough flavor to be interesting. Likewise, the cookies did not disappoint. She began to devour them.

"Why all of-" she waved her hand encompassingly, "-this?"

Harry slid a great slab of ham into the oven, shut the door, and dusted off his (immaculately clean from levitating everything) hands. "The hols are a festive time in early to mid-winter where instead of pouting and being sad about slushy and iced-over streets, cold weather, short days, and long nights, we celebrate a bunch of secularized catholic holidays, get drunk, exchange presents, and party. We missed the boat for Halloween, and Thanksgiving rolled around before I was prepared, but Christmas is the most important, anyways."

"He's celebrating the birth of his world's messiah figure," Arya summed up, biting the head off a gingerbread man.

"That's just the excuse," Harry corrected, pointing a dripping spatula at her. "The holiday has been secularized, so now it's just a capitalist, consumerist revelry without particular cause that happens to revolve around a few key icons: the Christmas tree, stockings, gift-giving, etc."

"A consumer holiday," Aupho mused. "Who have you sponsored with your patronage?"

"Myself and a bunch of very happy and much wealthier Surdan artisans." Harry declared.

Elva glanced at the massive piles of luridly-colored parcels under the trees. "They're all for us?"

Harry grinned. "Not quite. I've invited a guest or two tonight."

Arya's eyes narrowed. "You have?"

"Did you make any other breakfast?" Elva wondered. Harry stopped and looked at her aghast.

"A kid, asking for healthy food instead of cookies?" Arya rolled her eyes and made a beckoning gesture at a bowl of sliced french bread and a charcuterie board. She dropped the guest remark.

"Have at it."

Harry continued to sing acapella christmas carols and dash around the kitchen until Elva and Arya finished their cookies, at which point he ushered them onto the shaggy living room carpet by the hearth. Aupho watched through Elva's eyes with curiosity as he set out three stockings, each embroidered with their names. They were overflowing with stuff.

"The stuff in there's yours," he insisted, grinning eagerly. Arya reached inside and pulled out a wrapped tube with circular tabs on either end. Furrowing her brows, she looped a finger through each side, tugging. A solid bang and a plume of blue smoke enveloped her, dissipating to reveal a pointy red wizarding hat with a white fluffy brim and a white pom-pom on top. Smiling, she set it on her head. "You're supposed to pull those with someone else," Harry explained. Obligingly, Arya pulled out another and, smirking, shared it with Elva. It exploded into white smoke, and they were left with two wizards' chess sets.

Harry kept up eager commentary on each new item they pulled from their stockings. Candy canes, which were apparently very easy to make, chocolate in several different molded shapes, which were apparently not. He claimed it took even longer to make good chocolate than figuring out how to make good cheese. Firnen bit the head off of a peppermint bark nutcracker, announcing that it was "Good." in his deep mental voice. Elva withdrew a glass ball next.

"A Remembrall," Harry said. "It fills with red smoke if you've forgotten something. I've never been sure if it's a gag gift or not, since it feels like it's just taunting you with the knowledge that you've missed something. The spells to make them were lying around and it's traditional, so…" he shrugged. Leaning over to Elva, he plucked the ball out of her tiny hand and shook it. The bauble promptly filled with billowing crimson smoke. When he handed it back, the smoke vanished. "I think it's supposed to be for obliviation or magically-enforced forgetfulness, actually. I only got it to turn red after making myself forget what presents I decided to give myself. Merlin, that sentence sounds crazy even to me, who has lived with wizards."

When the stockings were finally exhausted of their seemingly endless bounty of candy, chocolate, baubles, crackers, and the like, they bundled up in the entry hall with scarves, hats, snow pants, and jackets, and headed out to the backyard. Aupho's Eldunari was bundled similarly in layers of warm enchanted thermal underwear, her orange facets peeking out over the bundle. An enormous evergreen tree speared fifty feet into the air, its boughs adorned with the same shimmering ribbons, rainbow lights, and floating ornaments. The lawn was covered in a thin carpet of snow, sparkling white. At the tree's foot was a gleaming red sleigh. Elva felt a sense of awe at the otherworldliness outside. It was magical.

Before embarking, Harry produced his tablet and wand and reading off the display, began a long chant in a language that sounded eerily like the common tongue, only more primal, less refined. Elva became aware of a rising feeling, an unresolved tension in the air. Her brow itched. He pointed his wand at the sky, then, arm pointed straight up, his diction growing more urgent and commanding. Something enormous and invisible blasted into the sky, ruffling their hair and the boughs of the tree.

And it began to snow.

Harry grinned and helped them all into the sleigh. Firnen ambled up to the side, poised as if to take off. "Should I assume this flies?" Aupho asked.

"Expecto patronum!" Harry called. A great silver doe shot from his wand, cantering up to take her spot in front of the sleigh. Five more times, he called out the incantation. Each one pawed their ethereal hooves at the snow, forming up into two columns of three. They began to pull the sleigh, slowly at first, before accelerating gradually into a gallop. Firnen kept pace easily, flaring his wings and gliding next to the sleigh. He had grown larger than the sleigh itself, scales glittering emerald green. The deer's hooves began to strike at the air, climbing higher and higher until the walls of the yard passed beneath them, and they were sailing through the snowy skies.

Elation rose in Elva's chest. She felt the last vestiges of anxiety drain out of Harry, chased away by the radiant moonlight emanating from the magnificent deer. A delighted laugh bubbled up in her throat, escaping before she could trap it behind her lips. The sound surprised both Harry and Arya. "Now that's the Christmas spirit!" Harry cheered, his Santa hat's white pom-pom bobbing in the wind, flakes of snow getting caught in his windswept hair. Hedwig dove and bobbed around the sleigh, swooping in and out of sight. Arya drew Elva's bundled form into a hug, and Firnen let out a bugle of triumph, scaring a brace of birds out of the snowy forest below. Elva luxuriated in the attention Arya gave her, a woman she was very quickly coming to view as her mother.

She put her gloved hands on the sleigh's railing and rested her chin on top, gazing down at the wending coastline, the thickening carpet of pure white, and the rumbling ocean. On one side, foreign, uninhabited land stretched for a thousand miles. On the other, an unexplored ocean stretched to the horizon behind which untold land awaited. Elva felt as though she was standing on a razor's edge, the whole world on either side of her, wending back and forth with the coastline. High above the earth, she flipped her bracelet to blue and let her earthly concerns drain away.

Elva glanced back at Harry, holding ethereal silver reins and smiling widely. He caught her gaze and his expression softened into something gentle. Elva snuggled up to Arya and decided that she quite enjoyed Christmas.

When they stumbled back inside with rosy cheeks and happy faces, Harry stomped snow out of his boots and unwound his scarf. "Brr," he shivered exaggeratedly. "Let's get warmed up." He produced hot chocolate, whipped cream and marshmallows and an enchanted guitar that played soft ambient music. Elva rubbed the cold from her cheeks and sipped her drink.

"I've got two more guests to fetch tonight. I'll be back within the hour," he promised, pecking Arya on the cheek. Hedwig swooped down and in a gout of white flame, he vanished from the hall.

Elva was left alone with Arya. The snowstorm outside had turned into a blizzard, drowning out the ocean's rumble with a howling shriek that tore at the sturdy home with a million grasping fingers, lashing at the windows and whiting out the lawn. Peering out the windows, all she could make out were the faint glowing outlines of the fountain and pool. Elva flipped her bracelet back around. Her senses heightened with uncomfortable clarity. Arya was thinking about her own mother with regret. She missed how things were when she was young. Elva saw the way to comfort her laid out like a path.

The ravenous winds only served to make her home feel all the safer. Bundled up in poorly-knitted red-white-and-green blankets with a mug of hot chocolate in her hand, the coziness seeped into her. She was mesmerized by the flickering hearth and the scent of home. "Would you like me to brush your hair?" Arya offered quietly.

"Why?" she wondered.

"My mother used to do it for me when I was a girl."

Elva shrugged, and Arya scooted behind her. Gentle hands gathered her hair. A moment later, a pleasant sensation began on her scalp. For several moments, she listened to the whispering hearth, the intermittent sips of hot chocolate, and the brush sliding through her hair. The well-hidden tension eased from Arya, and she felt the elf's succor like a balm to her soul.

"What do you think of Christmas?"

Arya's gentle hands never stopped brushing through her hair. She took a moment to answer, and Elva could feel her internal conflict. "It's a celebration not unlike some of my people's. Perhaps it has different iconography. It makes Harry happy."

"That's not how you feel," Elva observed.

She fell silent again. The hearth crackled merrily. Firnen's quiet breaths rose and fell from the spot he had curled up on the floor.

"I'm feeling opposed to it on principle because it's a religious celebration. We elves have prided ourselves on being logical, and we do not believe in higher powers as a matter of course. Yet Harry has proven that they exist, and I do not know how to feel."

"Why don't you like religion? It comforts men in their final moments."

Arya paused her brushing for a moment. Elva felt a hand rubbing on her back. "I don't begrudge them their comforts. But religion often does more harm than good. The priests of Helgrind cut off their own limbs and drink human blood as part of their creed, and the dwarves squander valuable war materials on their wishful thinking. And even if there are gods, they have never taken their vengeance against the elves for our atheism."

"What about you Aupho?" Elva said aloud.

"Dragons do not care to imagine make-believe powers above ourselves."

"Even if you had proof they existed?"

"If they do, they have not interfered yet, and will not in the future. Their existence changes nothing."

"Hmph. Firnen?"

"I…believe…Aupho," he said slowly, piecing his words together slowly.

Smiling, Arya went back to brushing. "You should know that a dragon will tell you what they think, whether you like to hear it or not."

Harry's presence returned a few minutes later, accompanied by one stranger and one familiar presence. The door opened for a moment, letting in a gust of frigid air and a flurry of snowflakes. Hedwig soared through the opening and swooped under the balcony, curving up to alight on top of one of the Christmas trees.

Arya turned to watch the door warily. Her expression transformed when she caught sight of the guests. "Mother!"

Islanzadi, who looked about to banish the snowflakes from her raven hair, abstained. "My daughter." She gave a genuine smile. When she spotted the hairbrush in her hands, her smile widened. She twisted her fingers over her lips. "How have you been?"

"Very well. And you?."

"Busy." She hung up her snow-dusted coat on the hook and gave her head a little shake. "Even with my attendants, we discover something new and horrifying every day we sift through Galbatorix's documents."

"I have read everything you've written," Arya reminded her.

Islanzadi nodded regally. "There is much more I have restrained myself from putting to writing. Even if the scrolls themselves are beyond subornment, the information conveyed is not. Oromis has consulted with me on several scrolls which he assures me contain information the Riders worked hard to suppress."

"A curse on strangling innovation!" A woman exclaimed from behind her. Angela stomped in and hung up her shawl.

"Angela," Arya greeted warmly.

"Rider," the herbalist returned.

"Herbalist," Harry quipped.

"Weirdo,"

"Touche," grinned Harry. "Come in, both of you. You can all tell me what terrible technology and magic the riders have suppressed which is about to bite us in the arse."

"Has Oromis not mentioned Thuviel?" Islanzadi asked darkly.

"He has. But at least where I'm from, every single major leap forward in technology and thus, quality of life for humans, has been preceded by a big war where the relevant technology was developed for weaponry. World War Two inspired nuclear warfare, penicillin, the jet engine, vaccines for viral illnesses, and the first computers."

"I say enlighten the masses," Angela announced. "Surely things must be less dull with space travel in the mix."

Harry considered Petunia. "You'd be surprised." Islanzadi looked to be grappling with the concept of space travel. Fair, given it was a rare discovery among even the elves and riders that the world was a sphere.

"Among other cruel innovations, Galbatorix has been developing an explosive powder," Islanzadi warned. "He has philosophers working on siege engines that can propel iron projectiles with it."

Angela raised an eyebrow. "Curious that he has taken his nose out from being stuck in his lair. I would wager we have you to thank, Harry, Arya."

"I'll not apologize for giving Galbatorix more time to his own devices by preventing him from torturing Eldunari," Arya said crossly.

"Good," the herbalist decided. "This is sure to make everything more interesting."

"He hasn't conceived of handheld cannons?" Harry checked. "Ironic that he's just started developing gunpowder technology. I had a similar idea a while back." He disappeared with a pop and reappeared a moment later with an armful of long, deadly-looking weapons. "These are called firearms, or colloquially, guns."

"Why are you so cavalier about this?" Arya demanded.

"Because Galbatorix is starting at the bottom of the tech tree," Harry explained. "Besides, I already had this in the works, Arya. Game-changing ranged weapons? The best he can get with smiths and hammers is a not-perfectly-straight barrel, probably without rifling, and he won't have proper ammunition. He'll have musket balls and powder horns at most, more likely cannonballs and cannons so heavy they need to be wheeled around. Firearms are a technology that my world has exhaustively improved upon. The newest generation guns are the process of four centuries of refinement across dozens of wars, including two that engaged nearly every country on the planet. And this favors our side incredibly heavily, because snipers are practically perfect for killing enemy magicians."

He glanced up at the clock over the oven. "We can try them out after dinner and gifts, though I warn you, one in particular will steal the show."

Harry had been busy for a couple days beforehand prepping food and deserts to put under stasis. The Christmas spread wound up consisting of many dishes. The stash of cookbooks he'd found led him to making quiches, sweetbread rolls and maple syrup, cinnamon rolls with frosting, assorted fruit pies, sparkling wine and juice, spinach lasagna, deviled eggs, and trays of vegetables and fruit. For himself, Elva (who had proven willing and eager to eat meat) and perhaps Angela, whose dietary restrictions he was unsure of, he had made a glazed ham and a variety of sandwiches.

"You made all this food yourself for one dinner?" asked Angela, bemused.

"It did take most of the past few days," Harry admitted. "But It'll go under stasis, and we can eat the leftovers later as fresh as the moment they came out of the oven. Are you vegetarian, Angela? I'm unsure."

"Nope," she said cheerily. "I'm fully prepared to enjoy the vast breadth of cuisine in all of its ethically-dubious glory."

Islanzadi wore a politely dubious expression. "Right. The lasagna, quiches, pies, and deviled eggs are all vegetarian," Harry pointed out.

Over well-received dinner, they had a lively discussion about the origin of Christmas and how it had been mostly separated from religion, which led into a debate on religion itself that Harry was very interested in. He gathered from Angela's cryptic and bizarre quips and answers that she did not necessarily believe in life after death or a god-above-all, but she was aware of the minor deities like the Urgals' gods and the Dwarves' gods that could be felt during important moments where they were invoked by their entire nations.

The queen inquired if they were keeping up with their training. Arya told her that yes; they spent an hour each day dancing the Rimgar and swordfighting. They had reached the point where they were able to keep up their mental exercises while sparring. Though she won the vast majority of their bouts, Harry did occasionally manage to defeat her.

Elva continued to have poor table manners, but they were practically regal compared to when she'd first arrived at the House on the Hill. Back then, Harry might have been forgiven for thinking it was Ron at the table and not her. Her bracelet was blue, but she kept fiddling with it, like she wanted to see but was unsure about it.

After dinner, on the way down to the workshop, Islanzadi looked around at the house itself, its architecture and materials and the like. "You two made this all by yourselves?"

Arya shrugged. "Harry likes making things. I imagine you'll get some idea of that when you see his workspace."

"You're twenty, twenty one?" Islanzadi clarified. Harry nodded. "How have you had time to learn all these skills?" She picked up a silver candelabra. "Wax-making, silverworking, architecture, carpentry, masonry," the queen listed. "Does your magic truly make these crafts so easy?"

"I worked hard- ish," Harry amended. "I'm only twenty one or so in terms of the earth going around the sun, but with time magic included, I've had perhaps an extra year to do nothing but learn crafts. And-" he added, "magic does make everything easier."

Harry led them downstairs, across a cozy living room with game tables that had never been used and under a big doorway.

Arya would admit that the workshop was less impressive than the massive complex beneath the tent, but it was also more organized. Instead of one colossal room with rows upon rows of machines, Harry appeared to have restrained himself to common tools around the edges of the room instead of bizarre contraptions sharing the same floorspace as something as basic as a sawhorse. There were four big square areas marked out in the middle of the room, their borders red, green, blue, and yellow. Each was perhaps ten paces across. Waddling around atop a wide desk, a chicken with smoky black feathers and baleful eyes pecked and scratched furiously at important-looking papers.

"Get off, Mr. Evil!" Harry shouted, chasing the bird away. "God, what a stupid thing you are. Go away." He pointed sternly off the desk and towards a little pen with a square of sod and a carpeted cat jungle gym. The chicken glared resentfully at him. He waddled off, but not before vengefully pooping on the papers.

Harry, grumbling and grousing, explained the idea of better workflow management, and showed a system where by putting different cards in a little terminal post slot, he could save and move different workspaces around. Arya exasperatedly thought it was exactly like him when she peeked into the rack of workspace cards and found several dozen. Her mother was politely interested, and somewhat impressed by the ingenuity behind the magic, but Angela seemed blown away.

Slotting in a pair of cards, Harry led them to a newly-existent large machine made from metal with clamp spikes on either side. He hefted a long billet of steel and plonked it down on the machining surface. Hefting it up, he clamped it between the spikes. "This is a lathe."

"For metal?" Arya asked.

"Just so. It spins faster and requires a harder bit. Ironically, diamond actually doesn't work on turning metal, so I had to produce tungsten carbide." Harry handed out plastic safety glasses and fastened on a thick apron. "Put these on. You don't want to get hit in the eye with a flying bit of metal."

Islanzadi donned her safety glasses without complaint. Harry took a moment to appreciate the surreal sight of the regal elf queen wearing rugged plastic safety glasses. He pushed up a gauge. "This sets how thick the rod will be. I've focused on anti-material rifles with huge calibers because they carry the most kinetic energy and thus will have the harshest drain on enemy magicians' wards. I can get away with any thickness by using magic to keep the barrels from exploding, so these are an inch-and-a-half thick instead of the rugged 2 inch barrels." He threw a heavy switch on the lathe. The guts of the machine gave off a powerful thrum, but the bit and the workpiece were silent. The carbide bit chewed smoothly through the steel billet. A minute later, the bit retracted. Harry recalibrated it. The bit added threading to one end, then the other. He flipped the machine off and carefully handled the barrel over to another machine. He slotted the circular bar deep into its receptacle and screwed a wheel.

"Laser drill. It flashes a laser quickly to eat through a tiny tube perfectly down the middle of the barrel. This will create a guide hole for the drill bit, ensuring that it drills perfectly level through the exact center of the barrel. The laser actually takes a while to get all the way through, so I added time compression to this machine." Harry lowered a glass case over the machine's work area and pressed a button.

"Can you explain the laser?" Islanzadi asked after the unfamiliar term politely.

Harry hummed. "The sun delivers heat to the earth by light. Light carries heat. A laser focuses light to billions of times brighter than the sun over a tiny little area. It's basically just a way to deliver a ton of heat very very accurately to a tiny area. Since light travels in a straight line, it cuts a straight hole, which is exactly what I want. Each time the laser pulses, it vaporizes a little bit of steel, digging a hole a little bit deeper each time. By pulsing it, the drill never lets the surrounding metal around the hole heat up enough to deform or ruin the heat treatment. The inside of the tube circulates cold air to speed up the process and wick away the vaporized steel, but it still takes a while."

Harry showed off the floating drill bit next, and explained how the guide hole made the bore straight before replacing the bit with a different one that added copper rifling. "Rifling makes the bullet spin when fired. This is one of the biggest differences between primitive firearms and proper rifles. Without rifling, muskets actually have comparable range to arrows. A hundred yards or so at most." He milled out little indents on either side of the threaded portion of the barrel.

"What is the range with rifling?"

"Without magic, a mile or so would be the upper range for reasonably skilled snipers. With magic, basically any line of sight is enough because I can enchant the bullets to be homing."

Arya and Islanzadi fell silent. Harry picked up a device they recognized as the back part of the rifle he'd shown off earlier. "The actual firing mechanism is more complicated than the barrel, but it doesn't need to be as precise." He crossed to a table and rummaged around a pile of graph papers, flattening one out in front of them. On the way, he scooped up a massive bullet.

"This is the other major difference. Obviously, musketballs will be horrifically inaccurate since they're just balls. The round is made of two parts: the pointed slug and the casing. When making rounds, you pour gunpowder into the casing, then set the slug into the neck and push it in with a vice." He flipped it over. "This little hole here exposes the gunpowder to the back of the barrel of the gun. When the trigger here is pulled, a little hammer strikes the primer which sets off the gunpowder. It explodes, forcing the bullet out of the casing and out of the gun. The bolt action pushes out the casing when pulled open, and the spring-loaded magazine pushes the next round up into the chamber. You push the bolt back closed, which pushes the round right over the striker, and the gun is ready to fire again."

Harry threaded the barrel into the body, twisting it tightly into place where it locked. "The barrel is replaceable. It's the most delicate part of the weapon and without enchantments, just hitting the middle moderately hard can warp it enough to merit replacement. You can also exchange it with longer barrels and the like. Longer barrels mean more accuracy, but a more unwieldy, heavier piece of equipment to carry around. The whole thing ends up weighing about forty pounds including a box with ammo, a muzzle brake/flash hider, collapsible stock, and scope."

He led them to a set of three narrow booths beyond which the far wall fell away dizzyingly in an odd triangular prism. The ground and ceiling sloped away from level at a gradual pace. The room remained narrow, perhaps fifteen yards across, but was so long that the back was hidden even from the elvish eye. One had a bench and table, another a mat on the ground, and the third had an adjustable bar.

Setting the rifle's bipod on the mat, Harry said aloud "one kilometer." At the very edge of his vision, a tiny white dot appeared. "It's a lot easier to get good with a gun than with a bow. If any of you want to try?"

"Yes, please," Angela grinned. He handed out headphones to the herbalist, queen and her daughter, hanging his own around his neck.

Arya shrugged and laid down on the mat. "Lay down with your finger comfortably on the trigger guard. Your elbow should be bent. It's okay if the stock isn't snug up against your shoulder- like that, yes. Adjust it like this- good. Rest your cheek against this bit here. Can you see through the scope properly?"

The elf nodded. "Right, important bits of gun safety. Treat all guns as if they're loaded, never point them at anything you aren't willing to see destroyed, and don't put your finger on the trigger until you're ready to fire. With a gun like this, keep track of what's behind your target, since it will tear right through several inches of steel. Now, keep your eye at least an inch or so away from the shroud of the scope. When you fire it, it's going to kick back hard." Harry coached. "Now you can cycle the bolt. Flip up the handle and pull it back. It was empty, so nothing came out. If there was a round in the chamber, you'd see the brass casing through that ejection port. If there was an empty casing, it would pop out there. A new round just got pushed up from the box and into the chamber. Now push it closed and lock the bolt down."

"See the little switch there? That's the safety. It should be on at all times except when you're using the weapon. It locks the trigger and hammer so the gun can't ignite the bullet. Toggle it. It's red now, so when you pull the trigger, it will fire."

Islanzadi watched her daughter attentively while Harry coached her through calculating bullet drop by range. One kilometer was exactly one mil-dot up, so little was required to adjust. "Excellent. The most important thing is working around your breathing. The crosshair bobs up and down with your breathing. The natural instinct is to hold your breath while shooting for the most stability, but it's actually better to shoot in the middle of your exhale. You know which dot to put over the middle of the target. There's no wind in here, you're firing at straight level. We're all going to put on our ear protection now. When you're ready, gently pull the trigger."

Islanzadi supposed the headphones had to be enchanted because she heard absolutely nothing once she put them over her ears. Despite that, she could feel the powerful thump in her chest. The trigger had an odd sensation of increasing resistance that Arya familiarized herself with after the first shot. The rifle jerked in her daughter's grasp, pushing her chest back slightly before settling. A grin crept over Arya's face.

"Two kilometers," her mouth moved silently. The tiny dot shrunk to near invisibility. Islanzadi had to strain to see the dot. Arya reached up to cycle the bolt. A large, empty brass casing fell out of the gun and onto the concrete floor next to the mat. She peered intently down the scope, one green eye closed, the other absolutely focused into the metal tube over the weapon. Through the scope, the target looked only a few feet away. A few seconds later, the gun jerked back again with an inaudible thump. Her hair flew back, the muzzle break funneling expanding gas out to the sides that washed over her.

Arya squirmed back and stood upright, sliding off her bulky headset around her neck. Islanzadi and Harry mimicked her. "Accio target," she said. A circular bullseye printed on paper appeared on a table behind the booth. A fist-sized hole had been torn through the exact center. "Mother, you must try it." Arya beamed.

Obligingly, the elf queen laid down on the mat and scooted up against the stock. "One kilometer," she said aloud, drawing her headset over her ears. The scope alone was incredible. Islanzadi had never seen such clear, precise glass lensing. Keeping in mind all that Harry had previously said, she set the second dot from the crosshair over the target. The magnification was so great that minute twitches of her arm shook the scope. She deliberately stilled, breathing levelly. Bringing her finger within the trigger guard, she rested her index on the curved metal piece, watching the scope intently. Islanzadi familiarized herself with the sway of the crosshair, recognizing the pattern it moved with each breath cycle. Harry was right that unless she wanted to shoot at the instant of full breath, the rifle was most stable during her exhale. She took one more breath, then pulled the trigger.

The rifle leapt back like the kick of a horse, forcing itself into her shoulder with a harsh shove. The thump resonated through her entire body. The scope jumped, settling an instant later on a target pierced right through the middle. Despite herself, she smiled. Shooting the gun had a certain primal appeal, she decided. It was thrilling to experience the force of the kick and to know that the bullet had done that. "Two kilometers."

With the target much further away, the scope seemed to sway far more than before. Nevertheless, Islanzadi cycled the bolt, composed herself, and smoothly exhaled. The hole in the target widened slightly at the top. She was uncertain if her first or second shot was more accurate – the bullet had torn out the entire bullseye and most of the second ring.

"How was it?"

"Easy," Islanzadi admitted. "It is as though you have taken the soul of archery and distilled it into an act so easy it can hardly be called a skill. But it was…fun." The elf queen thought it odd that she was able to use the word accurately. Admitting it out loud gave her clarity on her feelings; the Ancient Language would not allow her to lie aloud, even to herself.

"That is the force of 170 arrows all at once, fired from a 150 pound bow," said Harry.

"That is not guaranteed to overwhelm an enemy magician's wards," Islanzadi observed.

He shrugged. "Then shoot them again. You don't have to shoot magicians, either. You can take out enemy commanders, siege engine operators, any important people, really. Also, that rifle was completely unenchanted. I have plenty of ideas for making it more lethal."

"How many rifles can you make, and how much ammo?"

"The rounds, I can batch craft. The ones in that mag are cupronickel FMJ with lead cores. The rifles themselves? Maybe one every other hour by myself. I was thinking about automating it, actually. I had some thoughts about using the spatial card system to make modular assembly lines-"

"May I?" Angela interjected excitedly. Harry smothered a grin.

"Please," he gestured.

"How many bullets fit in this thing," she asked.

"Unlimited," he cackled. "My cleverest use of the refilling charm. And the best part is, since the mag is still detachable, once I make different kinds of rounds, you'll be able to swap them out easily."

"A different kind of arrow?" Islanzadi inquired.

"Yeah, like incendiary, fragmentation, hollowpoint, I guess? Armor piercing? Definitely homing, at least. I don't actually know how I'll make rounds more lethal to magicians. Probably high explosives, honestly. The energy it takes for wards to stop them is consistent with the total kinetic energy of the projectile, no matter how narrowly it's focused. The best way would be to make the bullet heavier, or shoot harder," he muttered to himself. "Or explode. 're not locked in to just pointy metal bits."

Once Angela had sated her desire to blast holes in the bullseye, ironically as the worst marksman of the four of them, they returned to the living room.

"What happens when these rifles are captured by Galbatorix's soldiers?" Islanzadi asked warily. "If they work as you say, you will have created a weapon that can kill even dragons with impunity."

Harry hemmed. "Well, elves seem to be the best with nature, which leads me to believe you'll be great at the requirements of being a sniper beyond marksmanship. Standard practice back home was to wear all white and hide in snowdrifts, or wear a ghillie suit (imagine being covered head to toe in clothing covered in leaves and grass and such) and sneak up close enough to take the shot, then sneak back away. I'll not say it's impossible for a sniper to be found and defeated, but if you do it properly, it's vanishingly unlikely Galbatorix will get his hands on more than a couple."

"But not impossible."

"Not impossible," Harry agreed quietly. "I'll see what I can do about these. But you should be prepared, anyway. If Galbatorix uses gunpowder, there's no putting that genie back into the lamp. And I don't know that it wouldn't be for the better if he did. Industrialization was the largest catalyst for a complete revolution in the quality of life of people without magic."

Islanzadi kept silent. "Something for the future, I suppose. Anyways." Harry rubbed his hands together. "Time for presents."

---

Islanzadi was faintly amused by the whole gift-giving. But the part of her that made her a successful politician never truly turned off. She understood people better than most everyone she knew, without ever entering their minds. She had never been overly impressed with Harry. She knew he was outrageously powerful and prone to wresting victory from hopeless situations, but in a protracted campaign against a cunning, lethal enemy, all the power in the world couldn't make up for the fact that Harry was careless.

He made zero effort to ingratiate himself with the linchpins of the Varden's alliance. Islanzadi was not so petty as to dislike him for his disrespect towards her, but others might. He was supposedly the head of the Varden's magic corps, yet he lived completely beyond their reach. He knew too much to risk being captured, yet he defied that assessment in favor of gambling with the highest stakes Alagaesia had ever seen. Impulsiveness seemed so central to him that Islanzadi would be unsurprised if it was somewhere in his true name.

Harry was dangerous, irreverent, and often irritating. But somehow, he had managed to bring together their unlikely group of monarch, herbalist, toddler, wizard, and ambassador. It felt like a meeting among equals, among family. The Herbalist had been brought in from flitting about the edges of world-changing events and Islanzadi's daughter had been reunited with her. For her part, Islanzadi felt like she had been before Evandar's death for the first time since it happened.

Even her closest peers, Dathedr and Oromis, never truly forgot that she was queen. Out on the east coast among her family, thousands of miles from her responsibilities, Islanzadi felt like the happy new mother that had died so long ago with her mate.

So when she was handed a little gift-wrapped glass ball filled with bright red smoke, Islanzadi was jarred to see that Harry was the one who immediately paled.

"Please let Arya hold that," he said urgently. Islanzadi placed the bauble in her daughter's hands. It remained an angry red. "Elva?"

The moment it left Arya's fingers, the remembrall emptied. Harry picked it up himself. It turned red. Confusion flitted across his face, then he realized something and tapped his wand against his temple. His eyes cleared, and so did the ball. "Do you know of any reason why someone would be tampering with your mind?" the wizard asked her. Islanzadi's heart plunged in her chest.

"What?" She asked dangerously.

"You don't recall consenting to an obliviation?"

"What is that?"

"A memory erasure," Harry clarified. "Remembralls are tools for detecting mental tampering. Red is memory erasing, purple for mind-control, blue for false memories, yellow for mental curses, green for natural mental deterioration."

"What? I-" Islanzadi tripped backwards. The whole room was tugged out from underneath her, like the universe had decided to alter her location on a whim. Suddenly, Harry was on his feet, brows creased. Elva was biting her lip, and most concerningly, Angela looked genuinely worried. Sitting on the couch across from her, Arya looked similarly bewildered.

"Mysterious entity," Harry and Arya said in unison.

"If it has this kind of reach…?"

"We don't know that it's hostile,"

"I hope it's not," Angela muttered.

Islanzadi looked down at the bauble that had returned to her hand. The red smoke pulsed angrily beneath warmed glass. "Would you be so kind as to inform me what is happening?" She asked, trying to suppress the imperiousness in her voice.

Harry glanced between her, Firnen, Arya, and the rest. "There are a couple of key words and phrases that cause Arya and now apparently you to lose a few seconds of memory every time you hear them." He shot a look at Angela. "They came from a phrase Solembum told to both Eragon and I."

"The werecat?" Angela wondered.

"Yeah. "When all seems lost and your power is insufficient, go to 'thing which wipes your mind' and speak your name to open the 'other thing which wipes your memories.'" Oh, and "if you need a weapon, look beneath the roots of the Menoa tree." We've been calling it the Mysterious entity."

"And when you mention these phrases?"

"I understand it's very disorienting. If you shift your posture or move at all, it seems as though someone is doing it to you." Harry drew his wand. "Do you mind if I check something?"

Islanzadi reminded herself that Harry was not her enemy. It didn't help much at the prospect of letting someone cast magic upon her. "Fine," she said shortly, trying not to think about how she was very literally putting her life in his hands. She lowered her wards.

Harry produced a tablet and poked at it a bit. "I've never needed to memorize these spells, but I think…" he trailed off, scanning the piece of glass. A moment later, he flicked his wand a few times, brows together and muttering. Again, he consulted the tablet. After a moment, he turned to Arya and did the same. "Elva, do you mind if I cast this on you? I just want to see a baseline."

The witch child shrugged, and Harry ran through the strange words again, this time with a bit more ease and confidence. After a minute of comparing, he straightened up.

"Right. You, Islanzadi, have had your mind altered seven times. There's no timeline for this, just a general sense of old or not. One is very very old and rather minor. The next three are a weak memory erasure, an implanted idea so faint it barely registers as a memory, and a lingering enchantment which is responsible for the next three obliviations. Every time you hear a trigger word, the enchantment wipes a bit of memory. Arya and I found this time to be about a minute or so when I was messing with her since she has it, too. Arya has 47 obliviations after the initial setup of the enchantment. I cleared myself of mental influences and checked myself, too. Nothing out of the ordinary. What I'm really interested in is if Solembum has been affected."

"Solembum keeps his own counsel," Angela sighed. "I can give him your ball and tell you its color, but I doubt he'd consent to you examining him."

Though Islanzadi received reassurances that what investigation Harry and Arya had done suggested the mysterious entity was not hostile and unaligned with Galbatorix, only Harry's eager anticipation for gift-giving kept her invested in the foreign holiday. She was more concerned with the entity that had a long and strong enough reach to tamper with her and her daughter's minds than the flying carpet Arya had woven, embroidered, and enchanted for her, or the typewriter device Harry had tooled by hand for her.

Still, it was evident that the large cylindrical parcel wrapped with animated dragon paper was a big deal to Harry, more so than the devastating weapons he'd introduced earlier that evening.

"This one is for Aupho, or Eldunari in general," said Harry. "Do you mind if I unwrap it?"

"You may open the parcel you wrapped for me and my bodiless brethren," Aupho decided. Harry tore it open.

Inside was a marble well. It was not a masterpiece of artistry, but when Islanzadi considered Harry's lackluster enthusiasm for art, it became clear that he had put a lot of effort into making the marble well more than just an open-topped cylinder. It had paneling running around the sides, dragon-shaped impressions ground out of them, studded with every color of gem she could think of. The prismatic dragons danced in flight over the marble paneling. Inside, the well was nearly completely full of pure, glowing water.

"This is the Well of Rebirth," Harry declared. "And if you want, Aupho, you can be the first to use it."

"Wait," Arya interjected. "Is it safe? You've tested it?"

Harry glanced at her wryly. "I don't exactly have a bunch of Eldunari laying around, but yes. I am as certain as I can be without testing it on an Eldunari, specifically. If you are wondering how, I'll just tell you that there is now a chicken out there with a Horcrux that can testify. Mr. Evil the chicken managed to use the Chicken Well of Rebirth successfully, and this is completely identical, except it's primed with a strand of dragon DNA."

Islanzadi filtered out the idiocy in his statement and extrapolated from the wizard's informal way of speech. "So if you place an Eldunari inside," she trailed off.

"Would you like to see?" He said slyly, like a showman magician working his audience up for some grand slight-of-hand. Aupho allowed her Eldunari to be lowered into the water. Once it was submerged, the glowing water turned from white to orange, illuminating the room with radiance spilling from the mouth of the Well. Despite her mind being closed, Islanzadi could feel the Well light up like the sun, magic coalescing in the water. Firnen trotted over and peered in, nosing the marble gently, his dark green eyes fixed on the water. Angela, Arya, and Elva were all inexorably drawn to the Well of Rebirth, enraptured.

Peering in, she watched the roughly spherical gem warp very slightly, growing oblong. The orange light faded to white once more. When Harry pulled out the Eldunari, Islanzadi's breath caught. The oblong shape could only belong to–

Tap tap tap. Tap tap. A fissure ran along the orange crystal, spiderwebbing across the surface. Tap tap. Tap tap tap. A hole formed, widening at the efforts of a tiny mouth. An infant, orange dragon poked out of it.

The oblong shape could only belong to an egg.

---

Far above Alagaesia, the chill of the air had long reduced Roran to a shivering mess. The enormous, rotting, bat-like creature that had grabbed him had not stopped once since his capture. In the daylight, Roran was able to get a look at the horrifying beast and its kin, who bore the other Ra'zac. He wished it had stayed nighttime.

With sloughing skin alternately scaly, leathery, and rotting, the beast looked like a patchwork of flesh sewn together to create some unholy beast. Its unnatural shape made Roran shudder to behold. Where the Ra'zac were all wrong limbs and insectoid attributes scaled up to a horrifying humanoid size, their enormous flying mounts were an ugly cross between bat, mosquito, beetle, and dragon.

Roran had tried to squirm out of the beast's grip, but with his hands bound and the thing's grip on his upper arms, he could scarcely do more than writhe. The sun had risen and sank beneath the horizon, and was climbing once more to its apex when their destination came in sight. Dread pooled in his stomach at the sight of the enormous walled city. Despite never having seen a true city, the legendary, enormous stone shelf hanging over the city could mean only one thing: he was being taken to Uru'baen.

Without warning, the leathery beast that gripped him dove towards the domed marble citadel in the center of the city. Roran felt his heart in his throat, all but panicking at the unyielding stone rushing towards him. They wouldn't fly this far just to kill me and themselves, he reasoned desperately. Just when the white stone filled his vision, the beast sank through it unimpeded, dragging him with.

The thing deposited him roughly on the marble floor. Roran grunted in pain, his bound limbs knocking against the stone floor painfully. While he was sprawled on the ground, a commanding voice said something in an unfamiliar language that rang in the air unnaturally long. The loud flapping of wings marked the beasts' departure. Roran tried to get to his feet, but before he even made it to his knees, the voice gave another command. His limbs froze in place, locked halfway through falling over. His bindings fell away and like a puppet, the voice forced him upright and facing him.

Heart racing, Roran took in the man in front of him. His first impression of the man was authoritative, commanding. The crown of gold on his head marked his identity as the most powerful, dangerous man alive. Galbatorix was a large man, but strong and not fat. His black eyes scanned Roran slowly, drinking in every facet of him. He stood straight and tall, so confident and assuming that Roran doubted he'd ever doubted himself in his life. A neat, closely-cropped black beard covered from his jaw to under his nose, though his cheeks were bare skin.

Steadfastly, Roran held his intense gaze. He ignored the near-imperceptible sense of something in the back of his skull, watching until Galbatorix began to slowly circle him to the right. With no more gaze to hold, Roran let his eyes wander, forming a map of the enormous room he had been deposited in. All around the circumference of the enormous room, rubble and marble debris littered the edges, swept up against the walls. A massive, bloody pile of black scales, red scales, and bleached white bones was crammed into a corner. When Roran caught sight of the colossal detached dragon skull, his eyes bulged at the implication.

Without his input, his mind's focus shifted to Garrow and his mother Miriam. It lingered on her facial structure for a moment before control over his mind was returned to him. Roran shivered at the violation. Galbatorix came back into his view from the left. His face was unreadable.

"I see the resemblance now," he remarked, his voice velvety and confident. Roran struggled to dredge hatred out of the morass of fear he felt in the King's presence. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to move, nervous energy that raced up and down his petrified limbs, unable to be released. The King's eyes drifted off of him. "I'm afraid urgent matters demand my attention, Roran Garrowsson, but fear not; I would be a poor host if I did not have someone escort you to your quarters." He snapped his fingers and a pitter of footfalls approached. "The Hall of the Soothsayer," he commanded. Turning back to Roran, his mouth opened. "Slytha." and darkness overtook him.

---

AN: I'M BACK, BITCHES. It's been a while. I started doing a bit of rewriting on the earlier chapters, but since it will necessitate changes to the later ones that snowball, I won't post anything until I have a fair bit done and can link up the earlier parts somewhat seamlessly. This has been terrible on my motivation, (along with mean comments) since every new chapter I write, I have to wonder if I'm going to end up deleting it anyways. But all those nice comments made me feel like I had to keep posting.

P.S.: I've been reading the amount of favorites on my story as indicative of its quality, which is rather stupid. My brain wants to treat it like a competitive leaderboard, but skill is no guarantee of success here. If it was, Harry Crow would be in a dumpster and HPMOR would reign supreme, and By Courage and Love would be right at the top of HP/IC.

I am also working on several other fics that all come later in this series. One is just HP but back in time to about when he's four, the other is the very start of a GoT crossover, and another is HP/Star Wars. I'm not totally opposed to posting them without finishing all my earlier works, but I want to have a fair bit written before I do so. The most likely project I might put up next is actually an Avatar the Last Airbender SI story I've been really into writing. If you follow me as an author specifically, you'll get notified whenever those go up.

PPS: I got a comment from Otsutsuki no Yami saying my Harry was disgustingly weak. For you, I wrote an entire fic. Here it is.

---

Harry apparated to Galbatorix's house and killed him with Avada Kedavra right away the end.

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Thank you, I accept your accolades graciously.