Chapter 46: Contact

CW: Graphic Violence

Roran stood upright atop the easternmost roof of the village, his hand clenching on the handle of his hammer. Elaine had roused him twenty minutes earlier, right at the crack of dawn. The evening chill had not abated, so he found himself stretching and jogging in place, forcing his blood to warm up.

He had chosen his post because it was the closest building to the blasted farmstead where the enemy had set up camp. The grass glinted with morning dew, a thin sort of film that slicked everything with pure, crystalline water. The view seemed more beautiful than usual, like the world wanted to show its best side before revealing its worst. The sun was framed by the mountains of the Spine behind the farm like a painting, golden rays streaming forth, illuminating the bottom of the cradle of Palancar valley where Carvahall was settled.

But he could not properly appreciate it. There was an unbearable tension in the air, like the very sky was drawn apart so strongly it threatened to snap in twain, releasing all manner of beasts and nightmares. A thin column of smoke rose from the horizon, Commander Harfang's encampment.

He heard them before he saw them. A rumble of thundering hooves and clanking armor drawing closer. A smudge of red crested the lip of the valley, tipping forwards and charging forth, eating up the distance between them and Carvahall. Everywhere he looked, gleaming steel armor, lofted spearheads and flapping red-black banners drew closer at a furious pace.

Roran's grip tightened, grasping his hammer so hard he thought he might split the skin of his palm. Below, Alain and Bardrick stood just below the barricade, ready to pop out and spear anyone pressed against the crudely fixed logs. Roran cursed himself for leaving archery to his cousin. Stationed on various rooftops stood every villager who could shoot. A single arrow flew from a rooftop down to the soldiers. It arced lazily through the air, deceptively slow for all the force behind it. The gleaming broadhead tip flashed in the sun before dragging the shaft of its arrow down into the charging line of Galbatorix's men.

Time seemed to stand still for a moment, stretching interminably out. The only motion was the horses bearing the men forwards. Then, even from hundreds of yards out, Roran could make out the Commander's voice over the hoofbeats. "LOOSE!"

A return volley tore through the air much faster than the hunting bows used by Carvahall's huntsmen. One shot thudded into the makeshift barricade Roran was using as cover, drawing an angry curse from him. He ducked behind it, eyes meeting the razor sharp arrow tip embedded deep in the overturned table.

A shout of pain drew his attention to the rooftop next to his, where one of the soldiers' arrows had pinned a man's shoulder to the sloped roof behind him. The man's bow fell from his slackened grip and skittered off the rooftop and onto the ground. He tried to take cover, but the shot had stuck him in place like a skewer. Roran lurched forwards as if to help, but he was too late. A follow up shot splintered the man's skull right in front of him.

The soldiers sent two more volleys which went unanswered. Carvahall's archers took individual, measured shots on their own time. Six found their marks before they were upon them.

The barricades were recessed into the alleys far enough that it was not immediately evident they were there. The cavalry charged forwards expecting to rout the villagers, only to be crushed into the unyielding obstacle by their fellows behind them. Screaming horses and men split the air, drowning out all else. Roran leapt down from his rooftop to aid Alain and Bardrick. Their spears were both bloodied.

A helmet popped over the barricade, sword poised for an overhead strike. Quick as a viper, Roran swung his hammer in a short arc, bashing it as hard as he could into the presented head. The metal caved under his weapon, yielding with a horrifying wet collapsing sound, like snapping wet wood.

A scream of anger came from behind the barricade. Roran eyed his hammer. It felt wrong that it was still clean. Evidently despite caving the helmet and skull in, the metal hadn't split enough to bloody the striking surface. He noticed his breath coming in ragged gasps. Abruptly, his stomach revolted and Roran was sick all over the ground beneath them.

"Next time, do it over the edge, eh?" Bardrick gave him a bloody grin.

"There won't be a next time," Roran gasped, wiping bile from his mouth and flicking it over the lip of the barricade.

"Let's see if there are any more of those bastards down there." Bardrick eyed the barricade distrustfully. It happened so fast he nearly missed it. The instant the villager's head popped up to check, a spear thrust forward from below, bursting out the back of Bardrick's skull. He gurgled for a moment, slumping limply next to him.

Roran was forced to swallow his words–in a manner of speaking. The remaining contents of his stomach sailed over the barricade and spattered over the soldiers. Foul curses drifted up in retaliation. He glanced down at Alain. The villager's face was pale, shaken by how his friend died right next to him.

Splintering wood sounded off to the side. Roran's face darkened. "Kill anyone who tries to climb over." He dashed through the doorway to the house adjacent. The interior was darkened from the closed shutters, light spilling in through the doorway to the right.

"Come on. There's no one inside. Harfy said we need the Roran guy alive. We just need to force a surrender." Murmuring drifted from the bedroom. Roran smothered his breathing, fighting the urge to heave massive breaths. He flattened himself against the doorframe to the bedroom, hammer poised above his head.

The floorboards creaked under the soldiers's feet. He heard a scraping, splintering sound and muffled grunts. Roran adjusted his fingers on the wooden handle of his weapon.

A helmeted head passed through the doorframe. Roran didn't even think, he just swung with all his might. For the second time, a man met his death under his hammer. The crunch echoed terribly in the enclosed room. Shouts of alarm came from the room ahead of him. Footsteps tromped closer.

Frantically, Roran yanked at his hammer to draw it back. It was stuck. Only the men in the other room kept him from cursing a blue streak. He dragged the man to the side of the frame, scrabbling at the corpse's belt and ripping out his sword. The scrape of the sword seemed to give the men pause.

"You're dead, scum," one of them said calmly. Roran cocked the sword back like a bat and waited. He struck with all his might the moment the soldier crossed. But the soldier had gone through with his shield held out first. The sword struck his shield so hard Roran's arm jarred. He retaliated with a slash that caught him across the chest. Roran shouted angrily. The sword had likewise been wedged in the wooden buckler. Instead of jerking sharply to free a weapon he didn't feel confident with, Roran pulled swiftly back, yanking the soldier by the shield into his waiting knee, knocking out several teeth. The man gripped his ankle with a steely grasp, but Roran managed to stomp on his wrist before he could be thrown off balance.

Frantically, he snatched at the sword and levered it to the side, wrenching the man's shield and arm until he heard a gruesome snap. The soldier howled in agony. Roran finally extricated the blade and used it to silence the man.

The remaining two soldiers had spilled from the doorway and were circling him cautiously, weapons held out cautiously. One wielded another sword, the last a cruel looking flail. Roran put the sword out between himself and them.

I can't get into a protracted battle with trained men; I'll surely lose. He was keenly aware that not only were they both certain to be far more skilled with their chosen weapons than he, he also felt his shirt growing wetter with blood, the line of fire left by the second man's sword burning ferociously.

The one with the flail studied him carefully. "Your face is familiar, bastard. You're Roran, aren't ye?"

"What's it to- you!" Roran thrust his sword forwards, hoping to catch the soldier off guard, but he proved too wily to fall for it. The blade slid to the side, parried easily. The swordsman retaliated with a wide swing at head level. Roran ducked underneath, unnerved by the shuddering woosh of the sword passing overhead.

"Idiot!" flail-guy cursed. "We need him alive. What do you think the Ra'zac will do to us if we kill him!?"

Well didn't that change things? Roran edged to the side, putting flail-guy between him and sword-guy. Flail-guy seemed dull enough to allow it to happen. When his back was to his friend, Roran feinted a crude strike. The soldier raised his flail to block, and was caught unprepared when Roran lowered his shoulder and tackled the man brutally into his friend's sword.

Thankfully, the sword did not puncture through both sides of flail-guy's armor, stuck immediately after cutting through his chest. Roran pushed himself up off the dogpile, bringing his sword up as high as he could, dagger-grip style, and stabbed straight through both sides of the top man's armor and deep into the swordsman beneath him.

The act of rearing his chest back had split his vicious cut even further open, and it now poured blood at an alarming rate. Roran felt the beginnings of light-headedness. He yanked his shirt over his head and grimaced at the wound. It stretched nearly from side to side, just below his breastbone, like a gruesome red smile. Cursing, he tied his shirt as tight as he could around his chest like a sash that went underneath both arms. Slumped dead against the wall was the corpse with his hammer embedded deep in the skull. Roran pinned the man's head to the ground by the forehead with his boot, queasy at the wet sound the action elicited, and the horrifying level of give under his foot. Gritting his teeth, he wrenched his hammer out of the caved helm. It came out covered in brain and blood. Slightly disgusted, he wiped the tip on the dead man's tabard.

Outside, men and horses continued to scream and shout. Roran wrinkled his nose. The smell of bile and human waste hung on the air like a black miasma. Alain still stood hunched just below the top of the barricade, his friend's corpse a grisly puppet hanging from the spearhead impaled through his eye. Alain's eyes looked wild and haunted, and he seemed not to recognize Roran immediately.

"Anyone try anything?"

"No!" Alain snapped desperately. "I'll kill 'em all."

Shrugging–and wincing at the pain it caused, Roran clambered back onto the roof he'd started at. Each handhold tore at his chest, and heaving himself up proved more difficult than killing the four men he'd flanks had split off to circle around. Roran cursed violently and called down. "They're going around! We need men on the other sides!"

Stumbling drunkenly, he tried to follow the handful of men who spread out from there.

The rest of the battle seemed to slip by his notice. Roran was dizzy from blood loss, the previously reasonably clean garment saturated with blood. He had wanted to continue fighting, but Baldor had held him back and lectured him briefly on his idiocy before rejoining the fray with a sword in his massive hands that he looked at ease wielding.

He sat down on an upright barrel against the wall of Gertrude's temporarily commandeered house of healing, waiting nervously for the waiting casualties to be seen to. He leaned against the rough cobbled wall, skin rubbing against the bare stone. The wrapped shirt stuck out far enough on his back that it made getting a proper seat impossible.

By the time he'd gotten his wound sewn up, the whole fiasco was over. A horn sounded the retreat, to raucous cheering and shouting from the villagers. Albreich and Baldor found him laying down on a pile of blankets on the floor of the house, the true beds gone to those with more serious injuries than him. Both of Horst's sons wielded bloodied swords with near manic grins, elated by their victories.

Everyone's blood was up, hollers and cheers floating on the air, mixing with victorious elation to form an intoxicating air of revelry. Morn had dragged out a great barrel of mead and was distributing mead to everyone. Roran forewent any drinks.

He could still feel the sensation of bones giving way beneath his hammer, the nauseating squelch when he pried it loose from a man's skull. The juttering feeling of plunging a sword through two men stacked and in armor, inch after inch plunging downwards, returning covered in an ugly mix of red-brown and bright red blood.

Slowly but surely, his feelings seemed to spread. A pall draped over the townsfolk, dimming the high of victory and bringing them back to earth. The bodies of their allies were dragged together in the center of Carvahall, where they were identified before Quimby gave them their final rites. Twelve of Galbatorix's men were accounted for, their corpses unmoved and abandoned after the battle. Horst estimated twenty more with non-lethal injuries, though he claimed to be unsure exactly. That Roran had killed a third of them did not grant any sort of pride or accomplishment. The agony on their faces, the indignity of death robbed him of any personal victory.

Without the time or space to bury each body, it was decided that they would burn all the bodies, though they would not bother giving rites to the soldiers, who would be burned in a separate pyre. The hemlock placed in the hands of the fallen villagers hung heavy on the air, though it could not mask the scent of burning flesh that threatened to turn Roran's empty stomach.

When the adrenaline of the fight wore off, Roran felt too tired to do aught but find the nearest horizontal surface and go to sleep. Whatever tomorrow held, it could wait until morning.

Murtagh looked awful. His arms were an ugly black mass of burns and necrotic tissue, so pulped they scarcely looked human. He wore only a thin linen shift, but what areas of his body were visible were pulled taut against his bones, his skin tone that of parchment. "Fools! You've doomed yourself coming here," he rasped painfully. "He's nigh omniscient in the citadel."

"We can't fit all three of us under the cloak," Harry hissed. "And fixing him up will be magically loud, more even than the office."

Murtagh coughed wetly. "He will know if you pass through the doorways by the guard's quarters. I am beyond help already. He knows my True Name, and I have sworn fealty to him in the Ancient Language."

A flicker of emotion crossed Arya's face, unseen by anyone but Harry. "We may have a solution to that," she ventured cautiously.

"It does not matter," he hissed frustratedly. "You cannot spirit me away without him taking notice of my absence. By some astonishing fortune, you have gone unnoticed until now. Whatever it is you came to do, do it and get far away from here." His lips twisted into a mocking smile. "It seems fate is determined to make me my father's son."

"Bullshit," Harry refuted. "We'll come back and collect you and your dragon before we go. I don't care if we have to sit on you until you change your Name, I'm not leaving a friend here, especially not in this state. Why are you even down here anyway? Shouldn't Galbatorix want his minions in tip-top shape?"

"It is punishment for running away before," Murtagh groaned. "He has a very charismatic facade, but he has already dropped that mask in front of me. I suppose he no longer feels the need to keep pretenses."

Harry glanced at Arya. Her face was unreadable, her eyes fixed on the red dragon pinned gruesomely to its rack. "What did your dragon do to deserve this?"

"Nothing!" Murtagh snarled. "Be foolish enough to hatch for a doomed man, I suppose. Galbatorix tortured him to make me swear fealty, then proved himself a liar and kept doing it anyway." He shivered in place, shackled to the stone plinth. "If you're serious about the offer, you need to be quick. If Galbatorix visits and asks me directly if I saw anything, I will be compelled to tell him."

Harry gnawed his lip. "English. Confundus. You have no idea why your oaths no longer bind you." He glanced downwards. The clouded expression on Murtagh's face cleared. "Now you should be able to lie to him. No accounting for your ability to sell it, though. We should be back–" he glanced at Arya searchingly. "Within the next hour."

"I would not promise to be so quick," Arya sent privately. "Especially if we are using the same method to reach those deep vaults."

"Fine," Murtagh agreed tersely.

"We need to prioritize," Harry told Arya. "Things are heating up and we could be forced to leave at any moment. I would rather leave with the egg than some dusty old tomes or piles of loot. We ought to head straight to the small room."

They started the mouth of the tunnel on the opposite side of Murtagh's chamber, breaking up the endless lines that formed the trim of the room before sealing it up behind them. Harry did not bother making crawlspace-sized tunnels. The difference between that and one they could walk through (albeit narrowly and without much headroom) was probably less than time saved would endanger them by increasing the likelihood that Murtagh would be questioned.

Harry mentally listed the things they'd done that could get them caught. Shruikan saw our ankles. We've been using low-level foreign magic nearly constantly. We've duplicated his entire office in a way that was almost certainly noticed. Six imperiussed guards, two of which were briefly suspicious before being cursed. Speaking with Murtagh.

Put in a list like that, it sounded a lot more risky than he'd thought. "Is it possible Galbatorix is careless? It's not like anyone would ever expect someone to dare to do this. Especially since Brom died."

"Perhaps. But mad he may be, Galbatorix is no fool. Your actions in his eyes have likely earned you a similar level of consideration from him. He does not know what your magic can and cannot do, so he will be wary."

The atmosphere of tension was a familiar one to him. The darkened passage which grew before his wand transformed in his eyes, becoming tall, treacherous hedges waiting to ensnare him or lead him to some ferocious beast. They became the dark blue black bricks of the Department of Mysteries, the countless rows of prophecies looming overhead, whispering promises of enemies behind every shelf. They became a rickety boat over a placid lake, horrors lurking just deep enough that he could doubt what he'd seen.

It was morbidly comforting, to acknowledge that what they were doing was likely to end up in a fight of some sort.

Relative to the surface far above, the way to the smallest room was short. With magically silenced footfalls and hundreds of feet beneath the surface, Harry was able to relax if minutely on the way down. When the wall fell away, Arya's breath caught. Inside the bare room was nothing but a box the size of a microwave, and a heavy barred door so warded it virtually screamed to his senses. Without conscious thought, she crossed the room and popped open the hasp. The chest opened silently. Harry clenched his teeth. "You are so lucky the box wasn't warded."

Nestled in a bed of velvet laid a bottle green egg. It was shaped like a cut gemstone, facets all over as if shaped to catch and refract the light. The shell increased in opacity the deeper it went, from a gem-like translucent outer surface to what looked like veined malachite or jade on the inner wall. The infant dragon was obscured from view.

Hastily, Harry produced the fake diamond he'd prepared, fidelius charmed to be indistinguishable from a dragon egg. He bit his lip, glancing between the two oblong objects for reference and tweaking the fake, modifying it to be nigh indistinguishable.

"The red one's useless, I guess."

Arya appeared not to have heard. She was entirely enraptured by the egg in her hands. Her face held such a heartbreaking longing Harry nearly asked if she was okay.

"Do we continue? There's a big room just that way." He pointed in the direction of the door.

That seemed to snap her out of it. "Very well." By the reluctance she showed to put the egg in her bag, Harry would have thought she was psyching herself up to kill a puppy. Taking her eyes off of it seemed to cause her physical pain.

He felt a sense of anticipation growing in Arya the further on they got. And unlike with the egg room, it wasn't the good kind. "What are you worried we'll find?" he wondered.

"Proof of something unforgivable. Most elves share a suspicion on the source of his power, but every decent one dearly hopes they are wrong. The rumors of what was going on during the Fall…they lend credence to the theory."

The room ahead was different from the others in that Harry could not see its interior at all from outside. To his mental senses, it was like an opaque forcefield of nothingness. Warily, he disillusioned the thin stone surface between them and the interior. Inside were hundreds of crystalline gems which Harry mistook as dragon eggs. It was only when Arya hissed furiously that he looked closer.

Instead of the opaque interior of the two dragon eggs Harry had seen, the strange gems were translucent enough to see through to the other side. In the very center of each was a glowing light similar to the spirits. They brightened and dimmed like a heartbeat, casting multicolored, shifting light all over the room. The gems varied in size, some almost too large to hug with his arms to smaller than the green dragon egg.

He glanced at Arya. Her beautiful face had been contorted into an ugly snarl of rage, eyes fixed on the smallest gems. "Are they dangerous?"

"Yes, but hopefully not to us. We cannot leave without every last one."

"What are they?" Harry stepped cautiously over the threshold and instantly fell to his knees.

His ears were filled with inaudible screaming. Fear, terror, panic, desperation, and anger clogged the air, overwhelming his mental senses like a flashbang. Arya pushed past him and tugged off the cloak.

"What are you doing!" Harry exclaimed urgently. The sound ricocheted endlessly around the room, bouncing off the concave walls and roof.

"If we could not see the Eldunari's minds from without, Galbatorix shall not see ours. And we need them to trust us."

"Trust…us?" Carefully, Harry shut his mind except for a single tendril, extended towards one of the larger gems- Eldunari. He gasped. The glowing gem was unquestionably, vibrantly alive. Immediately, the being within attacked him with all its might, ripping and tearing desperately.

"Stop! I'm not going to hurt you!" Harry shouted. The attack paused.

"You will…not?" The voice felt familiar. Deep, unquestionably feminine, and wary. The orange Eldunari's light brightened and dimmed hypnotically. "Who are you, if not the Foul One?"

"Harry. We're here to steal shit from Galbatorix. Mainly the dragon eggs. One of them hatched, though, so we're going to pick the red dragon and its rider Murtagh up on the way out."

A wave of relief washed over him. "If you manage to escape with us, you will have earned many friends and many debts. I urge you to hurry."

"Sure. What are you? Spirits don't have any physical body. Are you just a sentient gem?"

Anger. "Before Galbatorix killed my rider and my body, I was a dragon."

"Is this the big secret you and Oromis keep dancing around?" Harry wondered aloud, surprised but not overly shocked.

Arya shot him a glare. "Yes. To receive confirmation though. Galbatorix has a lot to answer for. The existence of Eldunari is one of the dragons' most closely guarded secrets. We learned of them during Du Fyrn Skulblaka. I shall leave their finer points to Oromis to explain, but suffice it to say they contain the souls of dragons." After the first few words, the echoing of her voice overlapping with itself made the second half of her sentence decipherable only because their minds were touching and he could glean her intentions directly.

"Are they delicate?" Harry pulled his pouch off his waist and raised his wand.

"Yes. Far more than eggs which are nigh indestructible from the outside, Eldunari can be destroyed by crushing, dropping, or simply being struck moderately hard. They are as glass."

He frowned. That would complicate transportation. "Can they be underwater? Like dumping them in a pool or something?"

"We can survive anything short of shattering," Orange assured him.

Harry smacked his forehead. "I'll just cushion them." He got to work casting the familiar charm. In minutes, every Eldunari was packed safely in their bags. "Do we try for the last room? If the trend continues, there will probably be even crazier stuff in there?"

Arya seemed a bit out of it. Each time she touched one of the Eldunari, her expression went hazy and unfocused. Harry had levitated the gems without touching them. "Arya?" he asked concernedly.

"Oh!"She exclaimed. The sound repeated over and over in the cavernous room. She shook her head absently. "I very much doubt it. These Eldunari do not appear to be…broken in. I imagine those he has-" she lost her voice for a moment. "He would keep the source of his power close at hand. There is nothing else worth the risk." She placed the last one in her bag. Arya strode over to her bag, open in the center of the room, shoes clomping oddly on the ground.

Harry peered closer. Something felt off to him. The sounds weren't synchronized with her feet touching the ground. "Let's hurry up," He said lowly.

The footsteps paused. Understanding bloomed on Arya's face. The pouch flew to her hand, closing mid air. Beyond the door, the footsteps became footfalls as whoever was behind the heavy barred portal began to run. Arya crossed to the tunnel. Harry slung the cloak over his shoulders, holding up the hem in anticipation. The door flew open.

Galbatorix's eyes darted around for only an instant, taking in the empty room where rows upon rows of multicolored Eldunari had sat. He zeroed in on Arya and Harry, face contorting with rage. "YOU-!" He spluttered, incoherent with rage.

That fury saved their lives. Harry threw the hem over Arya's raven hair. Both he and the King shouted their eldritch commands at the same time, the words echoing like gunshots, melding together in a mixture of fury and urgency.

"LETTA!"

"REDUCTO!"

The gossamer silver fabric of Death's Cloak drifted agonizingly slowly to the ground. The reductor curse struck the center of the stone room with all the force of a bomb, tearing up the floor and blasting shrapnel all over the room. Harry felt a tidal wave of angry magic race outwards from the epicenter, grasping urgently at nothingness. He shivered as it passed straight through them, fooled completely by the cloak.

"Run!"

Harry flicked his wand at the mouth of the tunnel, causing it to deflate. Just before the hole closed, he caught sight of Galbatorix's furious face. "Jierda!" he barked. The retaliation struck at the stone as it melted into a whole, flinging boulder-sized shrapnel directly at them.

"Protego!" Harry was forced to abandon the untransfiguring to shield. The debris bounced off the translucent shield. "Arya, shield us!" he ordered, dropping his spell and trusting her to keep them alive. As fast as he could, the tunnel began sealing itself behind them like a zipper. They both ran in tandem as quickly as they could without tripping each other. Every few seconds, a veritable earthquake would strike behind them, shaking the ground violently.

When the quakes paused, Harry was not reassured. He knew the king would not give up so easily. They made it a dozen more paces before the next attack came, almost without warning. The stone behind them glowed cherry-red for the briefest moment before collapsing into sludge, chasing at their heels. The heat immediately became stifling. Sweat beaded up from his skin, pressed uncomfortably against the scent-masking charm. Harry cursed. "Finite." he ended both of their spells.

The relief was short-lived. He had to practically jog to keep ahead of the sluice of lava at their heels. Arya had dropped her shield and was now breathing heavily. The air grew more stale, heating up and wicking any moisture away, converted to dry steam. The lava gave off short-ranged illumination, revealing a seemingly endless, narrow tunnel, grey stone on either side of them dimming for hundreds of feet before fading into an indistinct black rectangle.

"Faster!" Arya urged, her tone on the verge of panic. Harry glanced back. The red-hot stone was gaining, creeping up the walls on either side. The invisibility cloak flapped at her heels. Harry tugged up the hem in front, uncaring if it opened his feet to spellfire. If he tripped, they were both dead, entombed in lava.

Arms pumping, Harry accidentally brushed the wall, cursing at the feeling of his flesh blistering and blackening. The heat was so intense his skin felt red, raw and painful, on the verge of burning from mere proximity. It had filtered through the bubblehead, making the magically pure air feel like it came from an open furnace. Ahead, the ceiling sagged alarmingly.

"Activate!" Harry called desperately. The portkeys flashed, tugging harshly at his navel. He felt like he was being forced against a brick wall for a moment before the portkeys gave out with a snap.

He whipped his wand forwards, forced to give up on untransfiguring the tunnel behind them. The only spells he knew for structural support were the unbreakability charm which wasn't relevant, or transfiguration. And he couldn't transfigure anything with a higher melting point than rock in the quantities and speed needed. Instead, he used raw, unshaped desire to hold up the molten ceiling.

"Ganga!" Arya called out. Go. Seized by her spell, they were flung forwards at a terrifying speed down the tunnel. Harry tucked in his arms and legs, the walls flying by in a blur. She ended it a moment later. Even pumping his legs as fast as they would go, They still touched the ground faster than even elves could run. Both their legs were stolen from beneath them by the ravenously pulling floor. Harry tripped on his face, skull redounding off the solid stone with an agonizing echo.

His head rung like a thousand bells were tolling within. The tunnel seemed to split into three faded images of itself, swimming in his eyes. "We need to get up!" Arya called desperately, hauling at his shoulder. The cloak had slipped off them. The second he grasped it, a furious bolt of mental power slammed into his mind like a spear, honed to an infinitely sharp tip. Next to him, Arya cried out in agony.

"Under- the cloak-" Harry choked out, stumbling over to the pile of fabric and tossing it over them. His entire head felt buried in lava, buckling under the weight of the mental attack. The fabric fell over his head, blessedly relieving the worst of the mental attack. Arya crawled towards him a single step before her body went rigid. Harry stumbled forwards and tucked her under the hem.

"Finite!" The spell had no visible effect. "Waise Heill!" Harry grasped his head desperately. Cool relief spread through his brain. His nose was still on fire, shattered beyond recognition. Laboriously, he slung Arya's petrified form over his shoulder, awkwardly tugging the cloak to cover them both.

The slushing lava grew closer behind them. Harry took a couple unsteady steps forwards, knees folding awkwardly under Arya's disproportionate weight compared to her size. He began jogging forwards, wincing each time her arms or head cracked against the walls and roof of the narrow tunnel. "Sorry!" he called apologetically.

Beneath his unsteady feet, the earth began to quake, less at first but with increasing intensity. Harry lost his footing again, skinning his elbows against the ground and dropping Arya in a way that couldn't have been comfortable. Desperately, he folded his limbs beneath himself and picked his girlfriend up again.

Dust shook down from the roof, cracks spiderwebbing across the walls and ceiling alarmingly. Pebbles began raining down on Harry like sharp, angry hail. All the while, the dry heat of the lava chased at his back. Cursing, he fumbled with his belt, tugging on a charm-sized broomstick. "Engorgio." The little broom inflated, growing eight feet long. Harry wore Arya like a backpack, shooting a sticking charm at her front and praying it held. He slung his leg over the broomstick and leaned forwards.

It was just barely narrow enough to fit through the tunnel. The metal stirrups of the broomstick scraped at the walls, producing flurries of sparks and tugging at the broom's heading, catching on the little cracks and forcing Harry to snatch at the handle, dozens of microscopic adjustments to his course. Any mistake would crush them against the tunnel wall. The ceiling was so close to Harry's head that he could feel it dragging against the frictionless outer surface of the cloak, ruffling his hair. His vision was growing increasingly impaired, the blood from his shattered nose smearing over the inside of the cloak right in front of his eyes.

Behind them, the glowing red heat raced towards him, like the glowing orange maw of some hell monster, mouth gaping and poised to swallow. Around the bloodstain, Harry could just see the front wall of the tunnel racing towards him. "Reducto!" he blasted the stone across the hall of the Soothsayer, racing out and braking as hard as the broom would allow. "Arresto Momentum!" Harry shouted, instantly bringing the broom's momentum to zero.

"Releashio!" Murtagh's shackles popped off. "Listen, mate. If you want to leave, we need to go, right now." Harry freed the rider's little red dragon from the rack. Unsteadily, Murtagh got to his feet, limbs shaking from malnourishment and torture.

"Waise Heill," Harry commanded, pouring as much juice as he could spare into the spell. The burns on his arms sealed up. He thought briefly about how ridiculous the scene must look to Murtagh. An invisible voice busting him out and healing him from atop a riderless flying broomstick. "Can you carry your dragon?"

"We're about to find out," Murtagh gasped, scooping up the dog-sized dragon. Harry fumbled around Arya's waist behind him, hand snagging on her own broomstick.

"Finite." he tossed the rider the broom. "Hop on."

Awkwardly, he threw a leg over it, hugging the red dragon to his chest. "I haven't got a clue how to steer this thing!"

"Point the handle the way you want to go, lean forwards to go, back to stop. Now come on!" Harry blasted the door away, speeding down the comparatively huge hallway. He glanced over his shoulder. Murtagh was following, albeit unsteadily and wobbly, one rail-thin arm on the handle and the other hugging a heavy dragon to his chest which definitely looked too heavy for him.

At the first checkpoint, shouting soldiers echoed through the barred window on the door. Harry sucked in a breath and braced himself against the broom, flattening himself against it and practically standing horizontally on the stirrups. Immediately, the broom accelerated to an alarming rate. "CORASCIS!" he bellowed. The kick from the spell pushed him down so hard it stopped the accelerating broomstick dead in the air. The brilliant blue spellbolt of the siege-engine curse leapt forwards towards the metal door.

At the moment of impact, the heavily enchanted, reinforced door simply vanished, along with everything a few hundred feet behind it. The stone walls of the corridor bulged out obscenely, like someone had inflated them like a balloon-animal. The soldiers in the hallway behind the door were just…gone. The only sign they had ever existed was the fragments of steel armor embedded in the furrowed stone walls, and a fine red mist that settled all over the invisibility cloak.

Harry raced through, Murtagh hot on his heels. "You're visible!" the rider warned from behind. Harry swore furiously. The bloody mist had colored his cloak, forming a red film over him that was plainly visible.

"It still protects my mind," Harry called before leaning forwards again and repeating the tactic on the next doorway. He felt Arya twitch behind him as the guards were slaughtered, likely from her imperius ending so violently. Harry guessed she had kept one of them when they came in.

"We need to hurry," Murtagh called up. "If Galbatorix orders me to stop, my oath will compel my obedience. I cannot get within earshot."

"English. I release you from your oath," Harry snapped. "Don't tell anyone about it."

A tremendous boom echoed from far above. Immediately, he felt Arya's body relax, sliding down behind him to sit on the broom. "Galbatorix just used the transport spell," she warned. "Judging from the sound, he went to the throne room. We may be chased by Shruikan."

When they reached the stairs upwards, Harry abandoned all pretenses of subtlety and dismounted, bending his knees and bracing himself on the ground. "Shield me! Corascis! Corascis! Corascis!" Each siege curse felt like a giant fist pounding him into the ground, but he bore it. Debris and chunks of stone rained down, deflected by Arya's shield charm. All the flights of stairs were obliterated, blasted into the air. The siege curses flung chunks of stone and marble hundreds of feet into the air, revealing azure sky overhead. Turning back, Harry tagged the red dragon with a featherlight charm, then both of them with bubbleheads before mounting up.

"Come on! Straight up as high as you can, until it gets too cold. Stay close to me!"

Murtagh adjusted his grip and shot up the hole ahead of them. Arya released her shield, allowing the piles of stone to thunder to the ground. Harry was right behind Murtagh. The crumbled and broken ledges and landings of the stairwell plummeted beneath them, giving way to the airspace over Uru'baen. He overtook Murtagh near instantly, looking over Arya's shoulder down at the enormous gold-and-marble dome of the citadel. Harry leaned back, narrowly avoiding pasting himself on the underside of the overhang. The great walls of the city, the buildings, the citadel, everything dwindled in size as they sped upwards.

Harry allowed himself a breath.

Then the citadel exploded.

Chunks of marble blasted up in a fountain of stone and dust. Titanic black wings unfurled, thrusting debris all over the capital city of the Empire. Shruikan beat at the sky, each laborious flap a miniature hurricane, clawing its way into the sky. Marble silt and dust billowed out beneath him. A tiny little spot on its mountainous back, the Black King stared upwards with hate etched into every line of his face.

Shruikan's sheer size beggared belief. Harry refused to believe that any living thing could reach his size. Each extended wing cast a shadow upon half the city below, stretching for what must have been several hundred yards. His gaping maw was filled with long ivory teeth the size of battlements, his furious eyes open wide with rage, each wider than a wagon and filled with boundless hate and madness.

The dragon clawed furiously at the air. Harry couldn't believe that such a massive beast could gain altitude faster than their slim brooms, but it was happening. Deep within his brain stem, some primal part of his mind recognized a predator, terror clogging his breath and fogging his mind. Each beat of Shruikan's city-sized wings catapulted him unnaturally high. In moments, the entirety of Uru'baen was blotted out by his wings.

A shock of frigid water drenched Harry, shooting straight through his clouds. His vision was completely obscured by grey for a brief moment before the cloud cover obscured their pursuers. "Follow!" He shouted at Murtagh, zooming parallel to the top of the clouds, headed for the edge of the walls and thus the wards.

Suddenly, Murtagh let out a dreadful scream, seizing up and letting the red dragon in his arms tumble down to the earth. Another, higher-pitched scream came from below. It took Harry a moment to identify its source as the tiny red dragon. Apparently, Galbatorix was not above mentally attacking baby dragons. The tiny bundle of red scales plummeted, flipping end over end in uncontrolled descent.

Then, the clouds vanished. A single torrent of black flame consumed the steely grey cloud cover, hundreds of yards in every direction. The particles of water flash-boiled, further scorching Harry's lobster-red burned skin.

"Accio Murtagh and red dragon!" Harry screamed over the wind. The King shouted his own spell, snatched away by the rushing air. Harry felt the summoning charm encounter impossible resistance, like tugging on a steel cable bolted to a brick wall. Growling, he poured more and more power into the thing. Shruikan loomed below, blotting out the entirety of the city with his size. He inhaled, sucking the atmosphere above into his gaping mouth in preparation to breathe out once more. A paradoxical glow of black light emanated from the base of his throat, somehow radiating darkness.

Murtagh and his dragon had stopped in the middle of the two sides, hauled upwards at an agonizingly slow rate as Galbatorix and his dragon gained. Inexorably, Shruikan was closing the distance. The air began to chill around them when a torrential gout of black flame burst from the dragon's throat, blistering hot like a black holocaust, blotting out anything beneath it with its mind-bending radiant darkness.

Harry could see nothing behind it, nothing beneath it. The sheer scale of the flames stole his breath, a pennant of fire stretching for hundreds of yards, mere feet from swallowing Murtagh and his dragon, suspended between two titans.

The plume continued for nearly a minute before dissipating, revealing Galbatorix, his hand wreathed in glowing black fire, extended upwards.

Harry narrowed his eyes, and pulled out the Elder Wand with his other hand, steering by his knees alone. He poised it awkwardly around Arya, making absolutely certain that she could not get in front of the tip. He adjusted it as best he could, pointing the wand unerringly at the tiny figure on Shruikan's back.

"Avada Kedavra!" The green jet shot from the tip of his wand unnaturally fast, shooting down to where Galbatorix was doing his level best to climb in altitude. The spellbolt aimed true, headed straight for the Mad King. Harry's sharp eyes followed the killing curse's trajectory as it grew closer.

The instant before it would have sunk into the King's chest, he saw some spell force Galbatorix out of the way.

Unimpeded by wards, the curse continued straight down.

Right into Shruikan's back.

The dragon seemed to take an age to fall. His enormous black eyes lost their focus, lost their burning hunger. The air snatched up his wings, pushing them up like a ref announcing a football touchdown. Limply, Shruikan spiraled towards the ground, his colossal form tumbling impossibly slowly, defying gravity simply by sheer size.

Harry felt a pang of regret, watching the majestic beast fall. A scream of incoherent rage emanated from below, its volume magnified ten thousand times over, echoing around the hollow azure sky.

That was all the warning he got before the sky turned black. A bolt of lightning blasted from Shruikan's back, so bright that the sun was briefly eclipsed. The unimaginable power of the attack speared upwards, flinging out lethal tendrils that grasped greedily at anything near it, leaping from object to object. Like some gruesome, godly thread, Murtagh, the red dragon, and the tumbling broom were unified by the column of ionized air, which leapt next to Harry and Arya, striking the broom they straddled and instantaneously reducing it to ash.

Harry had no time to erect a shield, no time even to think the word protego, if the shield charm could even handle an attack of such magnitude. All he could do was react with the intent to protect.

In his hand, the Elder Wand grew hot. It moved of its own will, casting an unfamiliar shield spell made from purple light.

The bolt of lightning impacted so hard it physically blasted Harry into the sky, catapulting him end over end away from Murtagh and the red baby dragon. By the sticking charm between them, Arya was dragged like a ragdoll ever higher. "Accio!" Harry tried again, pushing against the alarming fatigue and grasping with his magic for Murtagh and the dragon. Wind tore at him like a thousand greedy fingers, grasping at every inch of his skin and trying to drag him to the ground.

The grasping threads of his summoning charm connected without resistance, pulling his targets upwards with him. Even as the atmosphere grew icy, whirling past them, Harry spotted two blackened objects coming up to meet with him. Tugging a little harder, he brought them to his and Arya's relative speeds, tumbling head over heels uncontrollably. Frantically snatching, Harry caught the smaller bundle by some unidentifiable limb, gripping it with steely fingers. He reached out again, groping blindly for Murtagh.

The moment his arm closed around him, Harry twisted midair, hanging on desperately to all three of his passengers.

They emerged from the void with a tremendous bang, kicking clouds of salt into the air that stung at his eyes. Harry collapsed on his back, laughing hysterically.

"We did it. We actually did it," he grinned. He patted himself down, checking for splinching. Every pat elicited a wince. His skin looked horrifically sunburnt, skin slick with frigid cloud-water, his nose was all but caved in, and he was so drained he couldn't cast a wingardium leviosa to save his life, but they had escaped. The adrenaline rush was so potent he could practically taste it, heart running a mile a minute.

The rattling breaths were the first sign something was wrong. Irritably, Harry pawed around for a gem and leeched the power out of it, sighing at the familiar buzz of energy filling his limbs. He'd released the apparition group-hug as soon as they arrived. Murtagh had simply rolled off his body and onto the ground.

Harry sat upright. Alagaesia's newest rider didn't look good. The bottom half of his body was entirely blackened by burns and soot. His right leg was gone up to the mid-thigh, the left one missing a foot. "Shit, shit shit!" He shot a diagnostic spell at him. No heartbeat.

He cast a medical spell on the man, a fairly harsh one he'd found which forced his blood to circulate. It created a constant flow instead of the proper rhythm and if used too long, it would start to blow capillaries all over the body. "Arya, any ideas?"

Groaning, she pried herself off the ground, eyes widening in alarm at Murtagh's state. "This is beyond my ability to heal. Perhaps with singing? If it can alter life, surely it can save it." She zeroed in on the red dragon, rushing to its side. "They're both going to die if we don't hurry."

"Vulnera Sanentur," Harry chanted urgently. The entry wound sealed, but it did nothing for the horrific burns all up and down his body. "Stupefy." Murtagh's muscles seemed to relax minutely. Harry bit his lip. "I have no idea how to fix internal damage like this. We need a muscle-knitting spell." He shot a stasis charm at the man. "I hope that works."

Frantically, he tore at his bag, yanking out his tablet and pawing at it, inputting 'muscle healing' as fast as he could without typos. With his other hand, he cast the healer-vision spell upon himself, examining Murtagh's insides hastily. The spell helpfully signified that Murtagh was dead. A trail of scorched flesh traveled from the stump of his leg upwards, splitting off into tendrils around his chest cavity before coalescing and completely charring his right arm from the inside out.

When he began singing, it felt like he was sending his magic into a brick wall. Nothing was changing to his senses. "Why isn't this working," he demanded, frustrated.

"It probably means your stasis spell is working," Arya reassured. "The dragon is in much better shape. The lightning struck Murtagh first, then him, then us."

"Then why the hell did it take so much to stop it?" Harry eyed Murtagh's body–or what was left of it.

"Lightning isn't very lethal. It tends to pass right through your target, which is why Oromis would tell you it's only good for showing off. The energy necessary to create lightning is relatively high for its low lethality. To do this-" Arya glanced down at Murtagh. "-it would have taken immense power. Especially since none of us were grounded at the time. Your shield went directly up against all the remaining power of the attack."

That sounded reasonable. Powering the shield charm felt like holding back the ocean, infinite power pressing against his very (relatively) flimsy defense. "Would Galbatorix do that? I would have guessed it had to do with the speed of the attack. Lightning travels incredibly quickly. Even with our ridiculously quick reaction times, I didn't even have time to speak. It was all the wand." He glanced at the innocuous, knobbly stick resting atop his palm.

The red dragon growled, flapping its wings to balance on three legs. Awkwardly, it hobbled over to where Murtagh was frozen, nosing at his rigid body. "How long does it take for dragons to learn to speak, anyways?" They couldn't just keep calling it 'the red dragon,' after all.

"Eragon said Saphira took months."

Harry sighed, prodding at the dragon. It flapped away angrily, snapping with needle-like teeth, holding its tail high like a cat. "Male or female, d'you reckon?"

"It can tell us when it figures out how," Arya said firmly.

Now that Murtagh's life was no longer in imminent danger, (for it could not be said that it was not still endangered,) most of the tension of the situation drained away. "You are one lucky dragon," Harry booped it on its red scaled snout. "You just happen to be bonded to a friend of the one guy in the whole world who can replace your leg." Conjuring a swab and grabbing a saliva sample (which the dragon tried to eat) Harry pitched the tent.

"I'm going to go make him a new-" he double checked "-left back leg. And bring out a metric ton of cooked meat. Did you see how much Saphira ate as a baby?"

"Leave your bag. I intend to confer with the Eldunari on their wishes."

When he got back from cooking up a handful of cows, Arya had brought out every Eldunari they had rescued, as well as the bottle-green dragon egg that she couldn't seem to keep her eyes off of.

It had taken him a couple hours to set up and then accelerate the growth of the baby dragon's limb to match the size of its remaining ones.

"They want to watch." Arya pointed to the hundreds of glowing gems placed on conjured cushions all around. Harry shrugged. Gradually, the weight of hundreds of dragons observing him fell upon his shoulders. While some felt mature and curious, the overwhelming majority felt young and innocent.

"Right." He beckoned the little dragon forwards. "See this?" He shook the fresh red leg in its tube. "It's a leg. For you. Do you want it?"

The red beastie was clearly skittish, unsure if they would hurt it. "I'm not going to hurt you," Harry rolled his eyes. It relaxed immediately, nosing forwards and prodding the seal of the glass cylinder with a wing. Evidently even dragons understood the honesty-compelling function English had. Yawning, it tried to grip the cap with its mouth.

"I brought snacks, you don't need to eat that. And if you were trying to open it, I'm afraid you're outta luck. Opposable thumbs for the win," he grinned, popping the seal. Harry conjured a big cushion like a flat beanbag. "I need to get at your injury, so you've got to flip over. You're too small for me to get under you."

Obediently, it flopped on its back. He anesthetized the burnt stump of a leg, scouring the fresh limb of amniotic fluid and then sterilizing the wound before levitating the new leg into place. A moment later, the little dragon had all four limbs and was skittering about unsteadily, testing it out. Its tiny claws dug little scratches in the salt, coughing at the puffs it kicked up. It returned a moment later, tongue lolling out and growling pitifully.

"Hungry?" Harry said knowingly. He pushed forwards a refilling basin of cubes of cooked beef. The little thing gorged itself for several minutes before flopping back, belly bulging obscenely. Morosely, it crawled over to Murtagh's frozen form and curled up around him.

"We wish to know the shape of the land," Orange told Harry. "Galbatorix never spoke to us, only visited to select his newest victim. It has been one-hundred and seven years since I have heard from another."

Harry hummed, swiping through passages on burn wounds. Virtually all literature on the subject referenced a handful of brewed treatments, ranging from ingestible potions to topical cream. Apparently, uncursed burns were trivial to treat. Unfortunately, virtually all of the potions referenced were derived from fire crab parts and aloe vera. He probably had aloe, but fire crabs were right out. He bookmarked a spell which accelerated the sloughing of damaged skin and vanished the detritus. Locating a spell that looked promising, Harry's eyes flicked over the passage. He squinted, then tapped his wand on the reddened back of his palm. "Sanalenire." the red skin lightened, returning to his natural pale. "Wow. Really on the nose, there. Mangled latin for heal and soothe kinda crammed together." He glanced at the rows of Eldunari.

"Can you fill them in, Arya? I'm certainly less knowledgeable on world history than you, miss elf princess."

She rolled her eyes. "Very well."

Harry ignored their psychic communication and paged irritably through his immense library, which somehow managed to not contain any relevant information on the medical aspect of burns. Even Lily's textbooks only contained a cursory description of how the body healed them. It was a problem he'd long managed to compensate for, though. Lily's books went up to the equivalent of grade twelve material and thus lacked specialized information. At most, he got an outline of how things generally worked, which required him to engineer his own version using magic. Easy enough for something like a centrifuge which needed nothing but rotational energy, but quite a bit harder for a CNC mill which demanded precise construction, incredible complexity, and prodigious knowledge in programming.

Magic enabled him to cut some serious corners, especially the more ridiculous charms like unbreakability, but it still took some ingenuity to piece together a working project from nothing but descriptions.

On a whim, he looked up spell creation.

The information he found was some of the most paranoid, superstitious load of quackery he'd ever read. Frowning, Harry produced a notepad and jotted down the sparknotes for each method he came across. Thirty-seven different methods of creating a spell, all insisting they were the best (and only) way to do it. Often heavily conflicting, some decried Arithmancy as a bunch of quackery, while others insisted it was impossible to do without the unfamiliar branch of magic.

"What are you doing?" asked Arya, peering over his shoulder. Her hair brushed the back of his neck.

"Figuring out spell creation. This is ridiculous." Harry thrust his pen down on the table and propped up his head with his hands. "I want to be able to make my own bits of magic. Either the proper method was never developed, or somehow it managed to never end up in either the Potters' or the Blacks' libraries."

"You cannot just say what you want done in your native language and be done with it?"

He could absolutely do that, but it was wasteful in terms of energy, and spell creation was something he really wanted to crack. There were lots of spells he wanted to exist that didn't, and Harry figured learning how to make them would be very convenient. "Well, I want to make one of my spells to do stuff. Stuff that probably never occurred to wizards, or else was implemented with an extra dose of idiocy. The spell that generates rotation for my centrifuge is seven hundred years old, and its default parameters make it switch directions every seven seconds, and it stops when the full moon is out. I now understand why Hogwarts teaches their specific slew of charms and spells. Compared to what you can find out there, their arsenal is positively wonderful. The Ancient Language only exists here, in this dimension if not this continent, and it's an energy hog. My spells will be cheaper, and work anywhere. I hope."

Arya's eyes flicked down the notepad he'd been scribbling on. "And these are the recognized methods?"

"No, those are the personally believed methods used by two very different families. The goal is to link a concept or action to a wand movement and incantation, but they disagree on how. A lot of this is probably min-maxing power invested to effect generated, though. And it's conflicting." Harry glared at the paper as if it had offended him.

"We could use guess-and-check?" she offered. "While it would probably be wise to hide behind wards, Galbatorix lost the best part of his mobility when Shruikan died."

He turned and kissed her on the cheek. "I agree. What did the Eldunari say?"

"I do not think they have any strong desires in any way, except far away from Galbatorix." Arya sat in the chair opposite him. "Crazy magical experiments are best done far away from anything important."

"Well, if you want to get even further away, what do you think about trying to find the east coast?"

Arya grinned before schooling her face into a mock-pensive expression. "The barren deathscape of the salt flats is getting tedious."

Harry cackled. "Beachfront property, baby! Oi, Orange, how do you feel about taking a brief vacation before we head to Ellesmera?"

"Anywhere but Ilirea is acceptable," she agreed. "I am called Aupho."

Dragons, Harry found, really enjoyed flying. From the moment he had lifted off the ground, he felt hundreds of minds paying enraptured attention. He found it easy to open his mind to the bodiless dragons. Though there were a few dozen adults, the vast majority felt young and innocent, full of enthusiasm for the sky, a part of their nature that they had been denied for a century.

None of them spoke or offered commentary, but nor did they keep their emotions to themselves. Harry could sense the tension of their interminable wait in darkness fade away. Without anyone but each other to communicate with mentally, they had no physical senses whatsoever. He imagined it would be like two hundred people in a darkened room hearing only each other, and every so often a monster stole a voice away. They must have waited in endless fear of being the next victim.

At first, he and Arya flew at a dragon's pace, leisurely and without the wards that emulated a sealed cockpit. The generation of brooms they flew on had double stirrups that let the pilot hook the top of their feet against it, to increase grip for violent deceleration. The air over the salt flats was dry and hot, and the scenery left much to be desired. The sky was cloudless azure, and below was an endless stretch of flat white. Even from a thousand feet up, Harry could see the spiderweb of cracks sprawling from horizon to horizon, like the scales of some slumbering beast. Where his eyes could no longer make out the cracks, the ground became like printer paper; flat, white, and formless.

They followed Harry's wand, pointed eastwards. When he became bored of the uniform terrain, he called to Arya. "Let's get going." She grinned fiercely back and leaned flat against her broom.

There was something to be said about aweing a dragon. It was almost surreal, to feel the unusual emotion from such magnificent beasts. In Alagaesia, they were very firmly at the top of the food chain. The murmurs of private conversation between the adult Eldunari quieted. The sense of observation behind his eyes sharpened, and he knew they were paying full attention. To his senses, the broomstick beneath him seemed to truly come alive, power racing from the diamond set in the handle, surging down through the shaft and exploding into the bristles. It felt powerful, thrumming beneath his grip.

The wind tugged at Harry's skin, sent Arya's long black hair rippling behind her like a silky pennant. The fresh air felt great against his skin, blowing away the sweat that had accumulated under the scent-masking charm he'd worn for hours, whirling over newly regrown skin. The formlessness of the flat salt made it difficult to judge speed accurately, but the intensifying wind was a pretty clear indicator.

They entered transonic speeds. Near the speed of sound, convex corners could create a vapor cone that surrounded the vehicle. For Harry and Arya, the sharpest convex corner on the broomstick was the outside edge of the soles of their shoes. The airflow would shoot out from the corner, creating a low pressure zone directly beneath. The recoil from the action drove Harry's feet up against the stick, essentially pinning his shoes to the inside of the stirrups. Moving his feet felt awkward, since the imbalance between the sides of the broom tried to fishtail him in the air.

He laughed wildly, the sound snatched from his lips and lost behind them. They were outrunning sound. At the head of the mach cone, Harry could not hear his own supersonic boom, but Arya was just ahead of him, generating the iconic sound. It sounded like Shruikan himself, roaring at him. Harry maneuvered to be directly behind her, drafting outrageously in the center of her mach cone.

The wind wards activated, nearly sending him careening into her. Simple shapes were stronger, costing less energy for the resistance they provided. Spheres were the strongest shape, but not particularly useful. Harry had opted for an ovoid egg-shape, stretched to a narrow tip. The force field was invisible, meaning the shock collar wasn't visibly attached to anything, like an anti-scratch dog cone floating behind them.

The silhouettes of a low mountain range before them grew closer. The vapor cones vanished, indicating they were well above mach one.

"What happened to the wind?" Aupho asked, intrigued.

"There's a ward that keeps all supersonic wind from entering the area around the broom. At much higher speeds, the air would tear our skin off," Harry explained. "And we're about to go a lot faster."

Any distinguishable features in the cracked wasteland vanished, blurred like an impressionist painting. The world almost seemed to stretch. Within minutes, the mountain range grew to dominate the horizon. The transition from salt to soil happened so fast Harry nearly missed it. A strip of brush and yellow grass ringed the salt basin, transitioning into a mile or so of grassland before rolling forests covered the foothills like an endless, lumpy green blanket.

The mountains were relatively gentle, the sharp angles of the range smoothed by millions of years of erosion. Trees, grass, moss, and weeds covered most horizontal surfaces. Ravines and bare stone cliffs yawned, splashes of tan and brown contrasting against the endless shades of green. At their speed, Harry had split seconds to take impressions before the landscape was snatched out from beneath him.

Within minutes, the mountains and valleys smoothed back into hills, dotted with lakes, intermittent pockets of marshland, and bands of trees. Rivers flowed from the mountains behind and snaked around, connecting strings of lakes together on its way eastward. For countless miles, the land stretched unchanged.

Arya spotted it before he did. A thin strip of navy just below the horizon. Already, the sun had sunk low in the west, accelerated by the speed of their travel to the east. They both began to decelerate as quickly as they safely could, feet hooked into the upper stirrups. When they slowed below the threshold of the wind wards, the sudden blast of air was like a stone wall in the face. Harry made a note to keep the wards up until the broom stopped in future iterations.

"This place is begging to have a city put up," Harry called over to Arya. The shoreline meandered back and forth, gently sloping down into a sort of scooped basin, a wide strip of grassland separated from the ocean by a sandy beach. On either side, the shoreline sloped up and forwards into rocky cliffs, weathering the endless crashing waves. The salty sea breeze wafted up into his nose.

"Indeed. That the grass has grown so close to the shore indicates mild storms, for waves of salt water would surely kill any growth," Aupho commented, examining the site critically.

He alighted on the ground atop the northern cliff. The salty spray cooled his sun beaten skin. Harry shook out his stiff limbs, breathing in deeply, smelling the fresh air. Arya set down next to him. "Satisfied?" Arya grinned, taking in the endless azure expanse. The dull roar of the ocean, the endless crashing waves and mist felt nostalgically familiar to Harry, who had lived most of his life on the island of Great Britain, where the coast was never more than a few hours away. The cliff next to the silty beach reminded Harry of Shell Cottage, where Bill and Fleur had lived after their disastrous wedding. The memory brought back sorrowful recollections of fallen friends during the war. Dobby's death in particular had always gnawed at him with grief. His diminutive friend was so enthusiastic and childlike.

Harry snapped out of his reverie. "I suppose we could scout the coast for a better spot."

Arya rolled her eyes. "Very well. I shall head north. Do you dragons have a preference who you wish to travel with?"

Of course, everyone but Aupho chose to go with the dragon-loving elf, so Harry was left to fly south, conversing with the mature dragon alone.

Meandering down the coastline, Harry found himself deep in thought. Despite being uncertain about how, he knew for certain that Galbatorix would retaliate for the theft. Without a slaved rider, he could not simply send a powerful enough underling to defeat Eragon, and he could not see Galbatorix marching on foot to wherever the Varden chose to siege first. Harry suspected that being a rider was central to the King's identity. It was humiliating enough that his dragon had been slain by a non-rider, there was no way that Galbatorix would lower himself to walk like a common soldier.

"What other servants does he have?" inquired Aupho. "Riders and dragons are not the only dangers in Alagaesia."

Harry shot along the edge of a sheer cliff that rose some seventy feet from treacherous, rocky waters. "He has these two creepy insect/bird/man things called Ra'zac, but they cannot fly, nor did they give any indication of using magic. They have superhuman strength and reflexes, but no more so than elves."

"They cannot fly yet. Those named Ra'zac are the adolescent form of great evil beasts called Lethrblaka. Imagine a rotting, bat-like dragon, innately cruel and malevolent, with black skin and venomous claws and fangs. Just as intelligent as their younger brethren, Lethrblaka have slain many an unprepared young dragon."

He shivered at the thought. They had dodged his curses adroitly, even when they were sprawled on the ground and in no position to move quickly. What they had done to Eragon's uncle didn't bear thinking on. "Arya slew his pet shade Durza, which leaves him with rank-and-file magicians. I am wary of encountering them since I have not mastered the mental awareness Oromis is teaching us, but I do not imagine they're more dangerous than a rider."

"Shades are cheap," Aupho disagreed. "He could simply produce them to slow you down. Durza was a fearsome foe whose name even I know, but any Shade must be approached carefully. Even the greatest riders treated them with great caution. Only two–now three people have survived the death of a Shade: Laetri the elf, Irnstead the rider, and now Arya."

"I guess we can hope Galbatorix proves too proud to try and kill us in any way but his own hand."

"It seems likely," she agreed. "With only three living dragons known to him, Galbatorix will not risk Saphira or Thorn's deaths, and I am sure his avarice for your skills with magic will force him to treat you likewise."

Harry would take that. Like Voldemort, it seemed villains insisted on making their own lives difficult by forbidding their underlings from killing him. It certainly made fighting them easier. A thousand miles away from Uru'baen, it was finally sinking in just how big a blow he and Arya had just struck against Galbatorix. Deprived of his entire future generation of riders, in theory it was to the Varden's advantage to stall as long as possible. If the green dragon hatched–and Harry dearly hoped it would hatch for the person he thought it would–then it and/or the little dragon would be able to produce more dragons for their side.

In practice, Harry doubted that Nasuada would be willing to cut her campaign off before it even began. No, Harry believed that the last few hours were the beginning of the end for the Mad King. A slow smile stretched across his face, and he took the next few miles to enjoy the warm sun on his skin.

The coastline meandered downwards, interrupted by occasional capes and such. His rudimentary understanding of Geology suggested that the waters were likely either lagoons, or else there was a series of barrier islands keeping the tides short. Aupho had agreed with his assessment. "My rider was a human named Urd, and he had always been fascinated with the mighty nidwhals. His interest took him all up and down the coastline, marking out habitats and topography beneath the waves. Your observations are in line with his readings."

"I'm sorry for your loss," Harry offered aloud. "Galbatorix has a lot to answer for."

"Yes. My Eldunari was with his husband in Kausta when Urd and my body died. Glaerun of the Forsworn slew him and took my heart of hearts to Galbatorix."

He was silent for a while, coasting over a wide river delta that formed dozens of small islands just inside the coast. The main river twisted like a ribbon, headed back to the mountains in the west. Beyond that point, the air devolved into muggy humidity, the terrain a mess of bog and marshland. "Let's turn back," he decided, pulling the handle of the broom about in a wide loop, leaning perpendicular to the ground.

"How did Galbatorix get the Forsworn on his side? If he was simply using name-slaves, he would have kept riders like Vrael and Irnstead alive and in his service, right?"

"The King hides his madness behind a silver tongue," Aupho seethed. "To those fools who rode the Nameless ones, they could not know what Galbatorix planned in the beginning. I suppose avarice and lust for power kept them sated even after the Oathbreaker began to commit his atrocities. The Nameless ones though, were cast out of our species, no longer fit to bear the title of dragon."

Harry swallowed nervously. Du Namar Aurboda was one of the dragons' most famous pieces of magic. The Banishing of Names was their punishment to the traitorous dragons of the Forsworn, the forcible abolishment of their very identities, reducing once proud dragons to the meanest dumb animal, one who had never merited a name.

After only a minute of flying, Harry decided to apparate the rest of the way to the cliffside. Wandering down to the beach, he stripped off his shoes and socks, hiking up his pants and wading out to test the temperature of the water. It was very warm, slightly more than he set the pools in his tent.

The racing water surged past his ankles, swirling eddies behind his heel on the way across the soft, fine grey sand. The first wave softened the edges of his footprints. He stood watching the ocean until the marks he'd left were no more than indistinct smudges. Sun glittered off of every wave, forming ripples of light over his bare ankles.

Bits of seashell speckled the sand, tiny bits of color in the uniform sand. He closed his eyes and listened with Aupho. The water roared out to him, agitated by even the gentle wind. Seagulls winged about overhead, cawing curiously at the novel human. Several foot high waves roiled a few dozen yards out, spending their energy out in the surf before they reached him as nothing more than a knee-high splash.

With a thought, his pants and underwear melted into swim trunks. Harry levitated his pack and pouch back to the uncannily smooth sandy beach, depositing them beside the lone trail of footprints leading to the water. Vanishing his shirt, Harry grinned and let himself fall backwards into the warm water.

"The water is as warm as Surda's coast," Aupho remarked dispassionately. "Without magic, it took a hardy human to swim off the coast of Vroengard."

"I kinda hope Arya doesn't find anywhere amazing up north," admitted Harry. "I want to be able to swim in the ocean." Crossing his legs, he sat on the beach floor, the warm water lapping at his waist, but not reaching over his neck. After the first few waves, he learned how to shift his body with the waves, letting it push and pull him without moving his feet from their place. He opened his mind like Oromis taught him, peering beneath the waves with senses keener than sight. Behind him, the shining star that was Aupho observed him from within his own mind, still slightly wroth at the memory of the Forsworn's dragons. Harry found the exercise easier on the beach than in the glade. There was far less life to overwhelm him.

Dots of bright, intelligent life meandered up and down the coast, seagulls squawking out over the water, curious, hungry, sated, thirsty, tired. With some effort, Harry managed to maintain the tranquil state of reflection, sending his senses down and out. No more than a couple paces forwards, fish swam about, unblinking, with ruffling gills. They were dull creatures, driven by urges and without the ability to think beyond what their instincts told them.

Dull though they were, the fish were myriad, shoals swimming about in the deeper waters. The further out Harry looked, the more abundant the marine life. By the time he had extended past two hundred feet or so, the torrent of minds made him reflexively guard his mind, cutting him off from the ocean.

Gasping, he let himself flop backwards into the water, regretting it moments later as salty water rushed up his nose. Cursing, he sat up, blowing his nose with watery eyes.

"How long have you been practicing that technique?" Aupho asked.

"Maybe four-ish months?" Harry did some rough mental math. "Sounds about right, yeah."

He felt Aupho's grudging impression. "I am surprised at the speed which you have learned the skill. Urd took years to master it." She was silent for a moment. "The reflex to protect yourself from overwhelming information is the only thing impeding you from mastery. Like flinching away from a strike, or blinking in blinding light, it can be suppressed, but it does not need to be. You must put your mind at rest, young wizard. I am not going to attack you, nor is Arya or any of my brethren. You are a thousand miles from any enemies. You shall be safe. Now try again."

Behind him, the sunlight began to fade, turning the golden sunset rays to a flat, flavorless light like the sky was overcast. Taking several deep breaths, Harry folded his legs again and dropped the barriers to his mind. He reassured himself, keeping Aupho's words in mind. Galbatorix didn't even know the east coast existed. The only people for miles were a little red dragon inside his tent, a bodiless and non-hostile dragon, the dense cluster of livestock in his tent, a sleepy serpent, and his wonderful girlfriend with her own entourage of friendly dragon souls.

He let the world rush in. He acknowledged the rush of sensations and emotions, and accepted them. Without conscious direction, the range of his senses expanded, enveloping the shoreline, the shallows, and then his world lit up.

The barrier reef was a riot of colors and sensations, a fireworks display to his third eye. Polyps, coral, crustaceans, manta rays, uncountable fish floated on the currents. More intelligent life swam in the reef, their senses far sharper and their intellect unbearably luminous compared to their duller brethren. Sea turtles and octopi seemed like geniuses next to the stupid fish. And compared to them, the coral sharks were all but gods.

Harry peered at the riotous bright colors of the reef through the sharks' eyes, watching the sea anemone ripple with the currents like grass. He opened his mind further, letting even the most insignificant organism speak to him. Aphids, seaweed, anemone, the information pressed down on him, but it did not overwhelm. Harry narrowed the awareness of his own body to a thread, conscious only of his rising and falling breaths. He simply let everything wash over him like a shallow wave, flowing past a rock. He was a tranquil pool of still water, reflective as a mirror and without conscious thought to disturb the surface.

His awareness soared out further. The first dolphin he encountered almost shocked him out of his meditation, burning nearly as bright as a human. Though it lacked a language, Harry could follow its deliberate reasoning, understand its considerations and conclusions. He blushed when he encountered the next dolphins, a pair engaged in rather amorous activities. Carefully, he let his embarrassment go. It was the instinct of his physical body, and that meant nothing to him when he was the all-seeing eye of the reef.

If he could have formed conscious thoughts, Harry would have wondered if this was what being God was like. For nearly an hour, Harry meditated, listening without judging, without thinking. He felt like the very water, surrounding and encompassing everything beneath its waves. He felt thousands of lives snuffed out without flinching; fish snatched from the surface by enterprising seagulls, or else octopi consumed by the coral sharks, or else crabs, eating their own fish.

Each time a life ended, something seemed to float away gently, in an indeterminable direction outside of three-dimensional space. Though that something was not definitively moving in any direction, it was unquestionably floating up. Whatever form life took, its senses faded, its cells dying until the physical animal or plant released some unknowable entity from its grip. After that, the connection was severed.

Harry was shocked out of his meditation by the arrival of over two hundred blazing minds concentrated in a single point, next to a very familiar and much beloved musical elvish mind.

"Arya!" he called, jumping to his feet with a wide smile. "Find anything cool?"

She leapt off her broom when it was still six feet up, splashing down in the shallow water with a grin. "A bit, yes. Adurna, risa." A globe of water rose at her command, flattening into a reflective surface. "Draumr kopa." The reflection changed into familiar shoreline.

"The shore continues like this for many miles, though it gradually grows rockier." the image raced upwards, showing an aerial view as Arya had flown along it. Evidently, she had gone further than him, because the image did not stop until it became tundra. The trees grew denser the higher she went, eventually transforming from deciduous to coniferous. Along the way, the shoreline grew higher and higher, sandy beaches replaced entirely by rocky shores or cliffs. Just after the transition completed, the shoreline became a breathtaking series of fjords, wild and untamed cliffs, crevasses, and channels carved by ancient glaciers and rivers. Harry breathed out in awe.

"Wow. We've got to build something there."

"You prefer your locations?" Arya asked, continuing to manipulate the image upwards. The evergreen trees became sparser, covered in a thick blanket of snow despite the season being late summer. When the shore grew frozen with icebergs thick snow, Arya ended the scrying and let the water drop into the ocean. "I do not mind snow as such, but I would prefer to live somewhere with life."

Harry could get behind that idea. "Right. Well, I didn't find anything so exciting. The coastline continues like this-" he gestured back at the shore "for hundreds of miles. There are some capes and bays sheltered either by barrier islands or sandbars or reefs. At some point there's a big river delta, after which it's pretty much all marshes and bogs. This place may not look as exotic as the fjords, but it has something the north does not. Extend your mind a few hundred feet out to sea, and you'll see."

Arya's brows met in concentration for a moment before she gasped, a radiant smile on her face. "A reef!?" She exclaimed joyously.

"Plus, we won't really need any climate control here. It's probably too cold to swim up north, and the marshes are so hot and humid we'll be miserable unless wearing cooling charms." He didn't fancy living his entire life in a bubble.

She grinned. "Here is perfect." Arya reached down and tossed her soggy shoes to the shore, jogging over and placing her bags with his before racing back into the surf. Her eyes traced his bare chest, then glanced at his swim trunks. "A strange material."

"Swimsuits." Harry summoned his wand and flicked it at Arya. She yelped, her clothing morphing into a rather skimpy bikini.

"Women wear this?" Arya asked in astonishment, tugging at the stretchy white material, striped with pink and lime zig-zags. "I can't imagine any human but a whore wearing such- insubstantial attire."

Harry appreciated the view for a moment. "It makes beaches very attractive tourist destinations."

She swept her hair back over her shoulder and waded deeper into the water, glancing back at his bare chest. Oromis's demanding training was a challenge, but she could not deny the results it had on each of their bodies. "I can imagine."

The sky was still lit, if indirectly, well enough to see the beautiful crescent waves forming from choppy and unremarkable blue chunks of water, rising up, then collapsing into a rush of foam. Feeling the warm water flow past her, Arya understood perfectly why elves were so entranced by the ocean. It defied description, though that never seemed to stop the more poetic of her kin from trying anyways. It was majestic. All manner of shades of blue, stretching to the infinite horizon, it was strength incarnate, mercurial in its moods. It was wrathful in storms, gentle in fair weather, fathomless deep and so full of life as to challenge Du Weldenvarden.

Harry paddled up to her from atop a strangely shaped floating board, dragging another one behind him. Both were colored a very loud emerald green. "What are these?" She took the one trailing behind him and played with it, pushing one edge down to feel the buoyancy, flipping it over and examining the rudder in the back.

His eyes sparkled. "Surfboards."

Arya flipped it over and shoved it forwards halfheartedly. It slid down the trough of the wave, then glided smoothly up the next wave. Harry yelped. "Don't let it get away from you!"

"Kausta," she deadpanned. The surfboard returned to her as if pulled by an invisible cord. He looked sheepish. "Is this plastic?" Arya rapped the board experimentally. It produced a cracking sort of sound, lighter than wood. Hefting it off the water proved it weighed much less..

Harry clambered up onto the board, wobbling unsteadily. "The top surface is rubber, but yeah." To his credit, the wizard managed to perch atop the water for a few seconds before the first wave unseated him. Arya squinted against the splash of saltwater, giggling at Harry as he came up spluttering.

"Damn, that's salty! Accio!" He shook his hair out, flipping the bangs out of the way. The board, which had made a valiant effort at escaping, was dragged back into his hands. "You're supposed to be able to ride the underside of a crested wave, but it probably requires a lot of skill. I just can't tell if I made the boards wrong, or if I suck."

Arya perched on her own surfboard with natural grace. "Not so unlike skiing," she remarked with a grin. Though she had hidden it at the time, Arya had found Harry's repeated snowy tumbles rather amusing. "Oromis will be so disappointed that all his efforts to teach you the Rimgar were wasted." By shifting her weight to keep her center of balance over the middle of the board, Arya found it relatively easy to keep abreast of the rolling ocean waves. Twice more, Harry plunged lengthwise into the water.

Disappointingly, the board simply bobbed over the water, slowly drifting towards the beach. When she could see the sand beneath the shallow water, Arya stepped off easily. "How are you getting this so easily?" Harry grumped, conjuring himself an ankle strap to eliminate the need to summon the board every few seconds.

"I don't think I have." Arya strode back out to waist-high water, laying down on the board. The rubber felt odd on her belly, almost like it was sticky without any residue. Eyeing Harry's dazed expression, she suspected that his troubles likely stemmed from the amount of attention he was paying to the task at hand. Glancing down at herself, Arya supposed that was the point of her… minimalist attire.

Catching waves properly proved more challenging than she had thought. Her sense of balance was good enough to stay on top of the board in any case, but staying in front of the white-water waves required a certain angle to the board.

Harry managed to tear his eyes away from her. "Right. I bet we just need bigger waves." Tying his wand to his wrist with a strap, Harry pointed it out to sea. Alarm shot through Arya.

"Wait-"

"Accio water!" he shouted, sweeping the wand in a wide arc. A massive bulge of seawater formed a hundred yards out, extending for perhaps three hundred yards across. It raced towards them faster than any natural wave. "-oh dear." Hastily, Harry paddled on his stomach further out, closer to the wave. Arya sighed and followed him. When the wave was nearly upon them, she spun around, bracing her hands on the edge of the board and bringing her legs up, managing to place her feet properly. Next to her, Harry similarly got on top of his surfboard.

A wave would have unseated him, but fortunately (depending on your perspective) the colossal trough of the summoned wave sucked them back several paces. At its lowest, Arya could actually see the ocean floor through the water. Overhead, the colossal wave crested, yawning like a hungry sea monster, threatening to fold over and crush them.

Then the wave struck. The water plucked her off the surface, sliding backwards until the tsunami was pushing her forwards faster than she could fall. Instantly, she realized why surfing was a leisure activity. It was intoxicating, feeling the force of the entire ocean beneath her crouched legs, propelling her forwards. She found the courage to lean left, the pressure of the water turning the board leftwards whereupon she began to gain lateral traction, propelling her across the great wave.

Every moment was a heart-pounding opportunity to lose her precarious balance and be thrust under the water. Arya loved it. The surfboard kicked up a wake of mist that sprayed up her bare legs. The wave was completely out of her control, she was but a passenger riding the uncontrollable power of the ocean. Wind blew her hair out behind her, a ripple of black on the endless backdrop of green-blue water.

Behind her, Harry yelped and capsized, falling into the water. The cord attached to his leg dragged him forwards by the buoyant surfboard, head stuck underwater. Before Arya had time to be concerned, she saw a bubble form around his head.

As the wave continued to propel her, Arya felt her confidence and daring swell like a wave. She began to experiment with leaning back and forth atop the board, swerving on the water. She managed to get pointed forwards again, but the swift spin overbalanced her, and she went crashing into the sea.

The warm water shocked her briefly as her head submerged. Without a leg strap, she was free to maneuver beneath the water. Instinctively, she had closed her eyes against the salt water. Arya deliberately forced them open to reveal an entirely different world of aquatic life. Underfoot, sand and shell particles seeped between her toes. Everything was tinted with the beautiful blueish color of the water. Visibility was far lower than usual, but she was still able to pick out the very rough outline of the reef ahead.

When she began to run out of air, Arya kicked powerfully upwards, emerging from the water with a spray of seawater. Her hair covered her eyes and mouth. She stroked back towards the shore, dipping underwater as often as possible to keep her hair out of her face. Using her hands proved irritating; the strands stuck to her skin and resisted parting.

When she next resurfaced, Harry was laughing. "Go underwater, then flip your head back right as you're emerging."

She obliged, deliberately spraying him with her hair. The tip proved useful enough. When her vision cleared, she found the wizard grinning like a loon at her. "You're missing something," he grinned lecherously, eyes fixed just below her waist. Arya glanced down, rolling her eyes. The wave had torn away the entirely insufficient scrap of cloth which paid only lip service to her modesty.

Eyeing Harry's dripping bare chest, Arya decided that she didn't mind the loss, and tossed her top away as well. "Oh dear. I've lost the top, too."

Harry was very quick to 'lose' his trunks, also.

Arya laid back blissfully on the soft towels Harry had set out. The sky had darkened to night, revealing an even greater tapestry of stars than even Ellesmera boasted. It was a warm night, nice enough to sleep naked on the beach. She had brought out the Eldunari, the dragon and the green egg to share the view with.

"These constellations are all unfamiliar, you know." Harry spoke softly, evidently over his embarrassment from the realization that the dragons had been watching them boinking. His hair was still damp from swimming, making it look smaller than normal. His eyes were fixed upwards, tracing the constellations in the sky. "I would know. One of the classes we had to take at Hogwarts was Astronomy. Mapping out the stars was pretty useless, since we didn't even gather our own potion ingredients which is the only applicable field we learned at school. The formations are not the same. No dippers, crabs, dogs, fish, twins."

Arya extended an arm, tracing the Dragon with a finger in the sky. "Elves consider astrology to be superstition, though we still learn the constellations for reference points and navigation. Many great legends are written about the shapes the stars form."

"Tell me one?"

She considered which to tell. "This is the legend of Alsvinder the quick, the horse who pulls Mani's moon chariot. Fleet of hoof and with a rippling silver mane, one day Mani was called to Odin's table, and Alsvinder was to pull the moon alone…"

The wash of the waves lulled them both to sleep, growing more tired until Arya drifted off in the middle of describing the foolish mistakes the moon-yoked beast made by himself."

The sun set below a very different Uru'baen from the one it had risen on. Galbatorix was so enraged, his mind just– slipped. Like treading water, such was his wroth that he could not even think. All he knew was an ugly, dripping, festering, all-consuming hate for the baleful wizard and the egg-bearer. He had slain scores of his guards for their incompetence. Better to assume them traitors than failures so miserable as to let his enemies into his innermost sanctums. He had broken the mind of several witnesses in his careless fury, digging memories from their mind with all the care of a mace, rather than the scalpel he typically used.

He was incapable of using magic at the moment beyond the most basic attacks and commands, vocabulary obscured by the reddened haze of his rage. The loss of Shruikan was nearly inconsequential compared to the unbroken Eldunari. Despite Durza's and his best efforts, the beast was driven incurably mad by the forced rider bond, rendering him no more than a chained dog to let at his enemies, or else a status symbol and vehicle. He would utilize the butchers and leather workers of the city to render the corpse.

Galbatorix breathed heavily, nearly panting in an effort to calm himself and plan. Shruikan's corpse had collapsed on the citadel, further crushing the blasted roof. A few thousand peasants died from buildings collapsing near the citadel, though they were inconsequential. He would have to acquire more slaves from Dras Leona to reconstruct the citadel.

The floor of the throne room was unbroken, if covered in dust and small rubble. The largest chunks were propelled out from his blast. Behind where the stupid thing laid, the archway to the inner part of the citadel was unguarded. Galbatorix had never imagined anyone would dare sneak past Shruikan, nor that they would be capable. Without it, he would need to install doors and cast more wards.

The labyrinth of hallways was untouched, which he expected. It would take a fool indeed to enter through the open doors and walk right past him. He found the gaping hole in the stairwell down, shot through all the upper levels and open to the sky. He leapt down the obliterated well, all of its stairs reduced to rubble. "Siga. Slow." Galbatorix alit on the ground lightly. The same massive blasts had destroyed each doorway, despite the enchantments that should have made it impossible. Shards of metal and wood mixed with blood and viscera suggested that several guards were caught in the way. He supposed it was better for the victims, since the penalty he meted out would certainly have been less merciful.

The Hall of the Soothsayer was similarly wrecked, the entryway a caved furrow of rubble and dust, the floor covered in slag and volcanic glass. Curiously enough, the shackled slab (now much lower to the ground) was not destroyed, the shackles unlocked cleanly. Evidently the wizard was capable of finesse.

Opposite the entryway, a ruined, collapsed, and smoking tunnel filled with cooling lava revealed the method of infiltration to his most secret chambers. Where had the excavated stone gone, though? From what he remembered before the wizard began sealing it, the passage was cleanly quarried like a dwarven mine, with no sign of the excavated rock.

He took the secret passages he had produced with now-dead slaves down to the Eldunari room. A fresh wave of fury washed over him, stalling his thoughts briefly in the doorway at the sight of the barren shelves. They were his greatest treasures, his keys to power. Fortunately, he was wise enough to keep the broken dragons on his person in a spatial envelope.

A crater thirty paces deep marked where he had attempted to blast through to the intruders. Beyond the wall, Galbatorix entered the egg room furiously, certain that the thieves had stolen the last egg.

But the box was untouched. He hardly dared hope, teasing open the latch…

A dark green dragon egg winked up at him. As Galbatorix stared at the thing, a brilliant, malevolent idea formed in the recesses of his twisted mind.

"Take my dragon…" he whispered, black eyes gleaming. His hand stretched over the egg, gedwey ignasia glowing black. "Lose yours."

The Mad King began the chant used only once before, devised by himself and Durza, the two most brilliant magicians to ever live. His black tongue twisted around the words, each syllable falling from his lips with the weight of truth behind them. A cloying sense of wrongness gathered about him, coalescing around the green dragon egg. The last verse finished, Galbatorix prepared to shatter the egg and seize his new mount. "Jierda." he whispered lovingly, madness shining in his eyes.

The shell gave way with a crystalline crack.

And the diamond it actually was, was no longer a 'big green diamond.' The fidelius failed, revealing the true depth of Galbatorix's loss.

Moments later, many hundreds of yards above, Uru'baen once again shook from the force of an enraged scream.

AN: I finally found out what real languages the Ancient Language is based on! Celtic and Norse. Some enterprising readers may think 'wow, why would you use a different language when it's English in the fic' and to that I am pretending that there is a perception filter on the book, and you're reading unfamiliar words because I said so, like when you use italics to denote someone speaking in like Chinese, despite writing the section in English.

To be honest, I have no intention of giving Harry a dragon. Riders and their dragons are practically inseparable, and I have plans for many sequels to this fic. Some of which will not work if Harry has a dragon. Plus, it feels cheap and fake to hand-wave a fourth dragon egg into existence for him, and the unnamed eggs on Vroengard don't feel narratively 'real' enough for a main character. If dragon-ey things need to happen, Firnen will be around to do them.

I spent like an hour trying to figure out how to geologically justify the Beors and the Spine being perpendicular to each other despite their proximity before just giving up and deciding that I don't need to explain it to you. Also, unless the Endless Plains are like WAY bigger than the Hadarac Desert (which is like the size of the Sahara,) there needs to be a better reason for no one being there than 'no one ever bothered.' We know Jeod's super scholar squad has some monasteries out there, but to never attempt to find the east coast, despite having dragons that could fly with passengers and go weeks without food, and elves that are apparently just better in every way to humans except fertility that have a sense of adventure, it feels flimsy. I mean, the elves could literally walk around any obstacle, since it's not like they're going to die of old age before they get there and back.

Thus, the salt flats. Too big to cross, devoid of all life and completely impossible to get drinkable water in. Eragon's little groundwater trick won't work because even if the water table is somehow below the salt, pulling up the mysterious freshwater through the salt will render it saltwater.

I figure Alagaesia is like Eurasia, and the general area where the story happens is Europe. Then we have the giant Mongol-less grasslands, except here there's a salt basin after that, then a mountain range, then some more plains and hills, then the coast.