TW: Non-graphic (mostly) child abuse. Stay safe, folks.

Only in recent years have Galbatorix and I discussed what went through his mind that day. I will save the fullest explanation for now, but to grossly summarize, it was nothing more or less than a whim. He and Morzan saw the smoke, he recognized the area, and pure happenstance reconnected him to the child he never expected (or wanted) to meet. He can be a deeply sentimental soul at his best… and a total lunatic at his worst. Still, even his moods were easier to navigate than his eclectic band of followers.

This may be surprising, but my feelings on most of the thirteen are… complicated, to say the very least. My first days in their "hideout" (a manor house they'd appropriated from minor nobles sequestered in the foothills of the Spine) were some of the most frightening in my entire life. Galbatorix took only enough time to explain that I was his creation, and now I was everyone's problem. This was (unsurprisingly) an…. unpopular order. Every single one of them took the task differently… Some certainly did better than others. In fact, I was strictly forbidden from interacting with three of the forsworn in particular.

The first was Idril; a small, fairy-like woman with a blank stare. She would often wander the manor humming to herself. Even as a small child I learned to be very wary of her. Once, she offered to show me my lungs. I believe with everything in me that she would have done just that if Galbatorix hadn't been nearby.

The second was Beren, the stocky follower always attached to his wiser companion's belt. He was nothing special on the surface… but his dark, beady eyes made me want to bathe in boiling water and scrub until there wasn't even a memory of him. Later in life, I would come to understand why. He was a pathetic creature, scavenging at the fringes of society for powerless victims to subject to his whims. I happened to fit the "criteria" of his preferred prey back then… and I have only Galbatorix's orders to thank for being spared direct experience with him.

The last was Amroth, a somber outcast of the wandering tribes. He took over the attic space and filled it to bursting with gadgets of a truly fiendish design. He was not himself a threat to me, like the other two, but rather I would have endangered him, myself, and the rest of the house if I bothered him at an inopportune moment. He preferred to work with incendiary devices after all, and possessed a notable indifference to safety measures.

The other ten rotated shifts watching me. I will restrain myself to only sharing the memories that stick out most from this period, otherwise, I will consume the rest of this volume only speaking of it… perhaps, someday, I should do just that. Though I am sure, Vidira iet would have much more to say on the subject. I was only a child after all.


"What do you eat?" Morzan stared down at me, hands planted on his hips. He was nothing less than a monstrous giant to me, dark hair curtaining his face and casting it all in a threatening shadow.

I blinked up at him, not really sure what he wanted from me. "Food?"

He grunted and strolled across the room. A thick mattress had been shoved into one corner and piled high with pillows and blankets, all clearly dragged from somewhere else in the house. A plush, deep-maroon rug filled most of the wood floor. Morzan plopped into an armchair that had been carelessly shoved into the corner and stared at me with obvious distaste. "Well, I was going to feed you horse shit and orphan blood, but I guess your way is fine."

I swallowed hard. "I.. like bread?"

"Fuck, you're boring." Morzan leaned in the chair, balancing on the back legs, "Ok… bread and…. Wine? Do you like wine?"

"I've… never had it?"

"Well, that explains everything!" He slapped his hands on his thighs and rose, crossing past me in three impossibly long strides to the main feature of the room. One wall was inset with shelves enclosed behind decorative glass. Each shelf held bottles of various sizes and shapes, one of which he grabbed out. "Wine fixes boring parties and boring people alike."

"I'm not supposed to-"

"Who says?" He bit into the cork and yanked it free with a sharp pop. "I'm in charge of you, and Mommy-Morzan says drink," he spit out the cork, took a deep gulp from the bottle, and stretched it out to me.

I grasped it in both hands, sniffing at the dark liquid. I glanced up at him one more time only for him to ignore me as he retrieved a fresh bottle. I sipped at it…

And immediately choked. It tasted like rotten oil!

"Hey!" Faster than a man his size should have been able to move, a knuckle came down and rapped the top of my head. My hand came up to rub the sore spot, and as it did I felt the smooth glass bottle slipping out of my hold. I had to scramble to keep a grip on it, just barely clinging to the neck. Morzan watched the whole thing, unmoving. I couldn't stop my hands from shaking under his gaze. Again his hand came down, but this time with a rough pat. "Better. Don't waste good liquor, kid. Life around here is much worse without it."

I grimaced down at the awful stuff. If what he said was true… I may need to develop a taste for it someday very soon.


And thus, a seven-year-old alcoholic was born! Gods, I wish I was kidding… but I actually did develop a bit of tolerance for "Mommy's" drink of choice. It numbed some of the pain; made it easier to sleep. And it was easier to sleep through Morzan's watch shifts back then, especially when he was in a foul mood. He would provide some "medicine" and I would take a very deep nap. Not exactly A-class guardianship, but it was far preferable to some of the other's tactics. I was never a particularly outgoing child, but I grew used to moving quietly and speaking as little as possible to give them fewer excuses to lash out. Formora in particular stands out in a negative light…. She didn't earn the name "Sea Hag" for her people skills after all.


I ran my fingers over the page of my stolen treasure, tracing the contours of the illustrated tree with utter fascination. I wasn't a strong enough reader to make out the cramped text next to it, but even just holding the heavy tome felt good. I'd decided to sequester at the top of one of the narrow servant stairs, for the best chance of remaining hidden.

A mistake I would soon have corrected in grandiose fashion.

The next few minutes are a bit of a blur to me. I remember hearing stomping footsteps completely out of proportion to the tiny body making them. I only knew to whom they belonged because she spouted a fountain of profanity that would make a demon blush, and loud enough to wake the dead. Before I could even turn, I felt a sharp pain in my back and then the sudden vertigo of toppling forward… The next thing I knew, I was lying on a sofa in the main drawing room.

My surroundings were a blur of bright white, mostly due to the werelight hovering over me. Kialandi bent low as she examined my wounds, her blonde curls tied back in a sloppy knot. Her fingers poked and prodded over my head and I winced. "You're lucky she lived." she shot a deathly serious glare over one shoulder.

A stick-thin redhead leaned against the wall. "She's lucky I let her. Brat needed to learn not to be in the way sooner or later. I picked sooner." I closed my eyes against a swirl of nausea.

"I suppose just saying that wouldn't have sufficed?" Kialandi grumbled. The glow of her gedwey ignasia was visible even through my lids as she ran her palms down my body. I yelped as a pop sent waves of tingling down my leg. "There now, this should be the last of the serious stuff. Sit still for a while."

I nodded once and stared up at the ceiling. Everything hurt to a greater or lesser extent, especially my head… it felt like an army of woodpeckers had set to drilling from every direction.

"Forget life or death, you're damn fucking lucky Daddy wasn't here." The last voice you want ringing in your head while nursing a concussion is Morzan's. "When he and Siyamak get back from their little field trip, you're going to have to explain why the kid's all banged up." He flashed a wicked smile at Formora. "Oh, and next time you feel like kicking someone down a flight of stairs, why don't you give me a try?"

Formora scoffed and pushed away from the wall, already turning her back to the larger man. "Because I don't want to break my foot on your fat fucking skull." She slammed the door shut behind her, not quite managing to cover up Morzan's mocking laughter.

It sounds odd, looking back… Morzan defending me? But, really, he was just trying to piss off Formora. The two of them were always at each other's throats. Sometimes they would fight for real… and, when that happened, it was best to be as far away as possible. (Morzan didn't care anymore for me than the rest of the Forsworn… he just got a kick out of calling himself my "new mother" I wouldn't really get the punchline until I was muuuuch older).

Morzan did make Formora fess up to her little tantrum. And what did my father say? "You're lucky to be alive. It's better you learn this now: never start what you can't finish." That rule became sacred in our 'family'. No one would be punished for "disciplining" me, no matter how shaky their reasoning was or how severe the injuries became. If I was in trouble, it was my responsibility to get out. In my adult years, this rule would eventually shift into a more favorable light… but for the next decade, it was nothing more or less than an open invitation for the thirteen to do whatever they liked.

I have no desire to languish in further details of their abuses. It was so very long ago, and my memory has blurred it all into one unpleasant haze. This was a group dedicated to bloody revolution, not to babysitting. Is it really any wonder they proved unequal to the task? Though there is one notable exception to this trend. One member of the thirteen went out of his way to take care of me when no one else would.


I knew every inch of the room before me better than I knew myself.

A small house on the outskirts of town. Warm-toned, worn wood showed through the cream-toned plaster. Wood cabinets formed a counter, each one piled high with pots, plates, and a leaning tower of rainbow-glazed mugs. A wood stove stood proud, never did I see it rest except in the very height of summer, and even then we would huddle around it to tell stories at night. Three chairs composed of natural wood, bark still attached, sat around a heavy table our neighbor had kindly gifted to us when he made his wife a new one. It matched nothing at all in the room, but it was stained a beautiful cherry and had the image of a flower carved into the top.

Verra perched in her usual seat closest to the little window, propped up on her knees so she could trace the carving with her finger. She'd gotten her scar in this very room when she fell from her chair and scraped her cheek on the window sill. Mother had to offer her an entire pie to herself to stop her wailing. Now Mother was humming to herself, tending an ancient teapot on the stove.

My stomach twisted in dread as the screaming started off in the distance.

And then the shadows danced along the walls, all larger than life. Some of them laughed like Formora, or leered like Beren. Flames licked at their feet. I tried to tell Verra, but she ignored me. I reached for Mother but she was getting farther and farther with every step I took. The fires finally consumed my vision and I bolted upright.

Alone in my room in the forsworn's hideout.

The darkness didn't bother me, it was almost a relief after the glow of the fire, but the crushing silence ate at me. I could hear my heart beating, my breath rasping out in short, choppy gasps. I never liked sleeping in a totally quiet room. Left alone in the dark, my mind was free to roam… and it so often veered into frightening places. Lucky for me, Verra was a very noisy roommate; always snoring, mumbling, and tossing.

Verra… The weight of my grief and guilt combined with the residual terror of the nightmare was overwhelming. I couldn't take it anymore. I tossed aside my blankets, shoved my feet into my slippers, and crept like a ghost down the hallway.

The center floorboard squeaked, so I placed each foot carefully along the wall. At a large, shuttered window I had to cross to the other side to keep my balance. The dark paneling made the space feel narrow and threatening. I passed by Eltereth's closed door holding my breath. Eltereth wasn't cruel, but she was a notoriously light sleeper. Small cracks of moonlight offered just enough light to reach my destination and I pried the door open in tiny movements.

The room was much brighter than the hallway. One of the thick drapes had been pulled back to allow a view into the tree line. A quarter moon hovered just above the line, offering me silhouettes of the furnishings. Of particular interest was a mound of blankets, rising and falling in time with its resident's breathing. I padded over to the bedside and reached a hand up to Xanist's back. "Papa?" my tiny fingers jabbed into the plush comforter. Even my prodding wasn't enough to rouse the death-like sleep of my de facto guardian. Like any brave adventurer, I squared my shoulders and began the treacherous ascent up the slope of his back. My knee rested on his side just as a particularly loud snore rumbled from deep within the mountain. I froze, sure my mission was doomed.

Rookie mistake.

With an exaggerated yawn, he began to roll, tossing me from my perch to the empty swath of bed next to him. His heavy arm dropped onto my back, a barely-restrained smile my only hint that my captor was perfectly awake.

"Papa!" I whined heroically, kicking him in the shin in quiet frustration.

"Hm? Thought I heard something..." he murmured more to his pillow than anything. " Oh, hello, Lilly. I didn't see you there. Did you need something?"

"Mmhmm!" I nodded up at him, doing my best to wriggle out of his trap and under the blankets. "I had a bad dream..."

"Same one?" I nodded. The smile faded from his lined face as he focused on me. Even in the darkness, I could make out the streak of grey in his charcoal hair. He insisted that I was the sole reason it grew ever more apparent these days, and that made me even more fond of pointing it out whenever possible. "You want to stay here?"

"Yes, please." Usually, even Papa Xanist would insist on removing me back to my assigned room. Galbatorix didn't like me wandering about and anybody that enabled it was liable to get in trouble right alongside me if discovered. Even worse, I was well-reputed to sleep like a possessed squid; limbs tangling up in anything that strayed too close. I could tell the jig was almost up, so I blurted, "I don't wanna be alone," I chewed my lip and soldiered on in the face of his frown, "It's quiet. I don't like it."

Papa sat up slowly, joints popping and cracking. "You were used to sharing a room at your old home, weren't you?" I nodded again and snuggled deeper into the duvet. He sighed and plopped a heavy hand on my head. "As was I," He hesitated, "Do you remember the story?" I mumbled a snoozy assent and pressed closer to his safety. "She was a lot like you, my Emelia. She had trouble sleeping in the dark, so I made her a crystal that would glow. Perhaps we ought to make one for you that can sing?"

"Butyouc'njus'singforme.." I yawned.

"I will for tonight, but I may not always be here when the nightmares come." I pretended not to hear the touch of sadness edging his words, "Now, which song shall we choose…"

I didn't even last to the first note before tumbling into a deep, dreamless, sleep.


For many years, Xanist was my only confidant. He read to me, protected me, and made life seem almost "normal". Once he even stopped me from making a very foolish decision… which I shall not recount here. Suffice it to say, I learned a valuable lesson:

"There are no bad reasons to keep living."

He even promised that, after the war, he would ask to take charge of me completely. That hope was more than enough to keep me alive. Though, not quite enough to keep me from doing foolish things.