Chapter 15

A/N: WOW it's been a long time since I touched a keyboard. I am finally back not that I expect many people to remember me but I have finally finished my exams. I actually finished on the Friday before the weekend for additional physics but there was the problem that I had forgotten everything that has happened in this story. Then, another problem arose, I realised how boring and plain and rushed and restricted I was in the first month or two of writing. The number of grammatical errors and lack of language features seriously did a number on me. I felt like re-writing the whole thing from beginning to end but decided against that because that was just a stupid thing to do: after several months of English revision and learning different ways of how to improve the standard of English when writing made me a quite aggravated when I started to read through the story. One more thing is that my attitudes and understandings of things have changed me to an extent where my story seems quite bland so I will make an attempt at seasoning it from here on but there will be a big difference in the themes of the story. Anyway, here is the next chapter after over five months of revision.

Eragon

His stomach lurched at the impact of the devastating scene that lay before him: charred wood, metal and stoned littered the spider web cracked marble floor of the dragon palace. Through the debris he could see movement but not much. Only two things mattered to the rider, his beloved and his dragon – not even his new-born.

Eragon ended the spell in grief and turned to Oromis.

'This is disgusting. Oathbreaker made a promise not to attack Alagaësia but didn't say anything about here,' he said in a discontented tone.

'Patience Eragon. Things will turn out fine,' he reassured.

'How?' Eragon asked, tugging at his hair impatiently. 'Actually, it doesn't matter. The only thing that does matter is that I get to the capital as fast as I can.'

Eragon looked around the skies for a wild dragon, however there wasn't a single living airborne creature.

He must have killed the wild ones too… he thought bitterly.

Eragon often called on the wild dragons to take him to places when Saphira wasn't around. They hadn't a specific way of communicating yet he managed to get his point across most of the time. Times when he couldn't, they would usually attack him. He needed to run.

Du Dröttningu

Du Dröttningu turned to Du Ebrithil. The swarm was dead. All of them. A blast of pure energy had sent shockwaves of raw magic across the landscape. Tidal waves had appeared from somewhere which had helped them immeasurably.

'I'll teach you that someday,' she whispered while walking past him.

Du Dröttningu had manipulated a pebble to transform it into raw energy. Matter is a dense form of energy and to transfer it back requires a lot of energy but produces more than one can contain within himself. It is the same type of magic that destroyed the riders at Vroengard. A rider had used a spell to turn his body into energy and exploded, the reason for his suicidal attack was that he couldn't bear the loss of his dragon.

'Couldn't you have done that earlier?' Du Ebrithil asked her.

'Yes, but I couldn't remember how to do it.'

Du Ebrithil frowned but said nothing, she terrified him…

Eragon

The pinnacle of the palace was barely visible through the permeable fog. Picking up the pace of his sprint Eragon cast a few wards over himself. He wasn't sure about what the movement was but didn't think it would be wise to assume it was the migrants. He felt Saphira's presence tingling in his mind. He approached the nearest wall of the palace and hid behind it. Peering about the destroyed wall he saw almost nothing through the mist of the night. It had taken him almost a day to arrive at the mainland but he wasn't sure he wanted to be here. A flash of sudden light exploded to his right, causing him to immediately reach for his sword. A rider in clad blue armour penetrated the clouds and charged at him, armed with two swords. A familiar aura surrounded the soldier but Eragon couldn't pinpoint what the familiarity was.

Regardless, he unsheathed his sword and braced himself, taking a fighting stance. Brisingr made solid contact with the opposition's sword and a shower of sparks rained from the source of interaction. Eragon parried two more blows until he made a fatal error. The man had two swords, not one. Eragon locked Brisingr with one of the opponent's swords but forgot about the other, seizing his chance, the other man attempted a skewer at his abdomen. Eragon managed to spin on his right heel and push the sword out of his body from the momentum of the dab. He felt an excruciating pain boil up within himself as a kidney went flying through the air. The wounded area repaired itself but to his utter horror, the man pulled his sword back again and skewered his flesh from the same place once more. Once again, ridiculous pain overrode all his senses and he felt a large volume of blood trickle down his legs, seeping into his armour. Eragon used the magic from the chestplate to summon fire from his hand and launched it at the attacker. He felt relieved once the pressure on Brisingr was gone but he needed to prepare himself again. Eragon looked at the man and expected charred bits of metal on his armour but saw nothing, almost as though he dodged it knowing it was there.

Eragon unstably stood up and prepared himself for another set of clashes. He needed to relieve the man of one of his swords before he could do anything. Eragon was charged again by the attacker and prepared himself to loop his sword around the hand guard of the man. He was unsuccessful.

His sword looped around thin air as the attacker spun to the left, almost sidestepping, out of harm's way before striking Eragon in the back twice, making him loose his second set of organs. Eragon fell helplessly onto his knees before feeling cold steel pierce his heart… then again… his vision blurred as the pain ridiculed him almost, for not being able to take his life on several accounts. His face fell in the mud and as he turned around to look at his murderer. Who was he? What did he want? Why was he doing this? Where was Saphira? Why could he feel her presence and if she was near why didn't she come to help?

Discarding all thoughts Eragon only concentrated on Arya and his dragon as his final thoughts of his two century life that expanded to the furthest reaches of his mind… I have failed you…

Rya

Rya raced towards the area with the flash of light. Eragon hadn't arrived yet but Du Ebrithil and Du Dröttningu had both already reached them before him. This worried her. There was also something else that worried her. The flash of light hadn't seemed so far away yet they were running for about ten to fifteen minutes. Du Ebrithil stopped after a while and raised his hand to signal to the rest of them to halt. Among them were Arya, Blodhgarm, Du Ebrithil and Du Dröttningu along with Saphira and Moonstone in flight. They had surely travelled further than they anticipated yet the beam of light still looked like it was as far as when they started. Saphira continued to fly ahead with Moonstone behind her as they had both not seen Du Ebrithil's signal to stop.

Du Ebrithil turned to them all wearing a strange expression. 'We've been running through a loop. All of the trees and rocks seem like they are in the exact same place.'

Rya was puzzled but before she could say anything Arya snapped, 'how do you know?'

'We've been running for long enough for you to have realised that we haven't yet reached the farthest wall from where the migrant camp is. I saw it on the way there. The beam emanated from somewhere around there but we don't seem to have gone close to it all, or even reached the other side of the palace.'

'Although the palace is huge,' replied Du Dröttningu, 'it does seem strange that it's taking us this long to find the beam or the end of the palace. Rya and Du Ebrithil go back to the camp and send a few riders. Arya, Blodhgarm and I will continue.'

Rya turned back and started to run back in the opposite direction.

What is the point in going back? It's taken us this long to get to wherever the hell we are but to turn back will take a good long while. What's going on?

After a few seconds of loud silence a clearing appeared. Both of them started to sprint until they reached it but to their bewilderment they had reached the migrant camp.

'What? This doesn't make sense!' Du Ebrithil exclaimed in total confusion. It took us so long to… wait…' he looked at a dumbfounded Rya who looked back at him like a lifeless puppet. 'We need to find the rest of them.'

Taking a long sigh Rya followed The Master back through the thick of the forest. They continued to sprint at full pelt, using extra energy from the belt Zenith had left for her. Rya ran with several questions in her head that she knew nobody could answer. After a few seconds, once again to her bewilderment, they spotted the other three as well as the two dragons.

'Hey!' Du Ebrithil called out to them. They all stopped and turned around immediately.

'I thought I told you to go back to the camp!' Du Dröttningu exclaimed. 'What are you doing back here?'

'We did,' Rya responded, 'we did go back and we've just returned. It only took a few seconds.'

Du Dröttningu and Arya exchanged frightened expressions. Rya confusion was overwhelming but she knew not to ask any questions. Unfortunately Blodhgarm was not so patient.

'What is going on?' he asked in a berated tone.

Nobody replied and another eerie silence filled the forest as they all remained quiet in intense thought.

A flapping noise came from the side of the forest where the beam of light was coming from. Every one of them unsheathed their swords within a split second.

Rya looked around at everybody and saw the level of panic written across their faces. Even she was scared but wasn't sure what it was. There was a sense of familiarity coming from the flapping which she could feel strongly affecting her.

The sound of a thousand twigs snapping filled the air and several armed men jumped out from the shadows. Three of them were in clad white armour and another wore green. One wielded two swords and another wielded a two handed sword as well as an array of weapons attached to his belt. All of them were rider swords but the green clad man had a rider sword but with a dim gem, almost as though it was dying. They engaged in combat as Rya embraced the challenge of dispatching the dual wielding soldier man. Rya pulled out two of her own swords, the ones from zenith and began to attack with full force. Parrying and striking faster than she ever had, Rya was engaged in a full scale battle against her combatant.

Rya noticed that all of them had visors covering their faces totally except for the eyes. After a few more moments of fighting, Rya locked the hand guards of both of their swords. She could feel that she was losing her ground. Undoubtedly her challenger was both more skilled and stronger than she was. The contestant broke the lock throwing her off balance and volleying it with a deflected blow. Rya stumbled backwards trying to regain her stance but was prevented from doing so by one strike after the other. She realised that the rest of them were also struggling to fend off their foes. Rya was surprised to see that even Du Dröttningu wasn't being able to do anything. Arya was on the floor and without any weapons, trumped by the green armoured man and, without any weapons or armour, Du Dröttningu was dodging and strafing slashes one after the other. Rya lost her concentration in seeing the sudden chaos of unknown warriors besting the best of Alagaësia. Rya finally lost her footing and fell to the floor. The attacker swung a downward hit which she rolled out of the way of. While facing away from her opponent, Rya executed a backward lunge and elbowed the man's helmet off his head and commenced a half-turn to decapitate him… only to find the most familiar face she could possibly ever see smash her face with the pommel of her sword before running off into the woods. The rest of the attackers also jumped into the woods grunting out of what seemed to be anger. Rya felt a torrent of blood wash her face with a warm oozing texture. She could feel herself slipping away. All of her comrades were on the floor, whether dead or alive she couldn't tell. Her mind became fuzzy almost from the loss of blood. The beam of light in the sky was gone and she dropped into an unwilling sleep…

And once again I finish on my traditional cliff hangers. There may be a few errors in spelling or a few things may not make sense and that's because my keyboard is really stiff and sometimes misses strokes. I also didn't have the time to proof read right now but I will once I do and will edit it accordingly.

Anyway, leave a review tell me if there is anything I got wrong and a lot of the people that read this after a long time will probably have no clue what the heck is going on so you'll need to read this again from the beginning if you don't remember. If any of you have any ideas or anything please do leave it as a review or a private message and I will see what I can do about it.

Thanks ;)