The Blasted City
Eragon woke up feeling strange. A good strange. The world seemed…brighter. He opened his eyes and immediately saw that the ceiling in Vrael's bedroom had changed. A hazy labyrinth of meaningless grooves scored into the wood resolved themselves into a recognizable pattern. Eragon saw that it was beautiful.
"You're awake." Saphira observed.
"I'm awake," Eragon agreed. "What happened," he said aloud.
"You collapsed at the end of Agaeti Blodhren. Eragon, you should look at your reflection."
He threw the covers off his legs and stood. Beneath his palms, the threads of the sheets leapt out at him, a miraculously perfect net of tiny strings woven together. He sighed and breathed in subtle hints of sweat and pine needles. A million tiny signatures leapt out at his nose. The glossy hardwood floor felt smoother than he remembered beneath his bare feet, padding to the bathroom. A stranger entered the mirror before him.
He had Eragon's features, but they were not the face he knew. His jaw was slimmer, his eyes slightly narrower and slanted, and the tips of his ears were pointed. No one who had seen an elf would mistake him, but for those who had heard only their description, Eragon looked regal. He was more beautiful than any human, and more ruggedly handsome than any elf.
Further examination revealed that every scar present on his body had been healed. A thin one on his thumb from cutting himself with an arrowhead, one on his palm from a scythe blade, a slash wound from the Battle of Farthen Dur, Eragon was completely unmarked.
"You are different," Saphira observed.
"Aye. I feel…awake."
On the way to the sparring field, Eragon noticed that the elves had not stopped celebrating even after the conclusion of Agaeti Blodhren. A moment later, the realization struck him like a lightning bolt as a brightly-colored shape flew past. The dragons! The elves moved at a snail's pace down the roads because each time a dragon came into view, everyone stopped to gawk. Over two hundred dragons, and this was very obvious.
Joy hung in the air, an atmosphere of celebration unmuted by their great enemy or the low-burning wick of their hope for the future.
Oromis was not present at the sparring field that morning. Eragon squared off against Vanir. The elf was slower than usual, as if he were greatly fatigued. Frowning, Eragon identified an opening and disarmed him.
Vanir looked at Eragon like he'd grown a second head. Nevertheless, his assigned hour was not yet up, so they squared off again. Eragon had never had such an easy time beating Vanir. The elf moved sluggishly, and Eragon found it easy to read his body before he struck. Again, Eragon defeated him. His sword felt light in his grasp, little more than the sticks Brom had first taught him with. He could tell Vanir had trouble stopping his blows, and again, Eragon defeated him.
The next bout, Eragon fought less cautiously. He stretched the extent of his capabilities, jumping fifteen feet straight up and slashing down. Vanir dashed to the side, then struck Eragon's blade from his hands. Embarrassed, he retrieved his sword and squared off again. It was clear Vanir was no longer on his level as a swordsman, but he was good enough to punish Eragon's mistakes. At the end of the hour, Eragon had lost two bouts to Vanir.
He had won 37.
Panting, Vanir clasped Eragon's extended hand and pulled himself up. "How swift is your sword, Eragon."
The quote was a reference to a bit of elvish poetry. "You are too kind, Vanir. You remain a formidable swordsman." Eragon wiped the sweat from his brow and ended the guard on his blade.
Vanir scoffed. "If this morning is any proof, I had previously defeated you only by superior strength and speed. You are now perhaps the greatest swordsman I have ever fought."
Eragon thanked him again and departed for the Crags of Tel'naer.
"He is right," Saphira commented. "You have grown strong, little one."
When he arrived and after Saphira departed with Glaedr to the Stone of Broken Eggs, Oromis immediately inquired after the changes he had experienced.
"My senses are sharpened, I am strong enough to defeat Vanir without much trouble, and every scar I had is gone."
"And how do you feel?" he asked probingly.
"What, about the changes or in general?"
"Both."
Eragon sighed. "I dislike that my body was altered without my consent, but I understand the value of this gift. I remember you specifically warning me that to be granted the strength of elves was dangerous, yet the dragons did it anyway."
He could recognize the value of his transformation, but that did not mean he was okay with it. Once the novelty of expanded capability wore off, Eragon was disturbed at the idea that the dragons could have done something else to him without his consent. He shivered. The Banishing of Names came to mind.
"But…?" Oromis led.
"But it is a priceless gift," Eragon finished. "Were you not going to do the same for me?"
"We could have done something similar, yes, but likely with inferior results. Remember, the magic of dragons defies expectations. It is closer to Harry's magic than ours. And any magic I might have done would be nothing but an imitation of the magic that belongs to dragons, for our strength comes from the Rider Pact. I am glad you recognize its value. Let us test your newfound abilities and then discuss what magics are available to you and your increased strength."
Oromis ran Eragon through the gauntlet that morning. He had him attempt the fourth level of the Rimgar, an absurdly demanding exercise which revealed that his flexibility had not increased proportionally to his strength, and the demanding balance remained out of his reach. He lifted increasingly larger boulders, then underwent a test where Oromis dropped a notched stick between his fingers, and he was to grasp it as soon as he reacted. He submerged in the creek and held his breath for as long as possible, determined the thread count of fabrics through touch alone, and completed a handful of odd tests that seemed determined to stretch his brain with oddly-shaped and marked blocks, riddles, and maths.
In all areas, Oromis assured him he did markedly better. It was obvious when he managed to lift a boulder larger than he was tall, but even with the mental exercises, he surpassed his previous abilities.
It was also revealed that there were entire disciplines of Alagaesian magic he could now explore with spells so demanding, they would have killed him at his previous strength. The furthest fringes of most branches were explored by elves with the strength to push the boundaries of their knowledge of the universe, and now Eragon could cast the magic they had discovered.
By lunchtime, he was so wrung out he did not question why Harry and Arya were joining them only then.
"Hey, how are you?" Harry grinned.
Eragon smiled. He and Arya looked a bit…rumpled, and he could smell lingering arousal on both of them. "Better than I once was."
Oromis hummed. "The dragons spoke to you as well, Harry, yes?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Remember what I told you about those obliviations? Essentially, the dragons issued a summons to Arya and I to Vroengard, and she can remember the name of the place we're supposed to visit again."
"You intend to go. Good. That is not something you ought to ignore. And I presume due to the Varden's pressure on you two to return to them, you intend to leave immediately?"
Arya nodded. "There was an assassination attempt on Nasuada. Aberon is not completely safe, and I know Harry wants to get back to training Du Vrangr Gata."
Oromis frowned. "Very well. But I would ask that you exercise caution, Harry. The secrets of the Riders are–were for Riders alone. You have been extended our trust as a courtesy and in recognition of your tireless efforts on our behalf, but secrets of ours, they should remain. Deliberate carefully on what you teach your magicians. There is no magical government to hold them accountable if they abuse what you teach, and plenty of your knowledge is too dangerous to release into the world with bare hope that no one abuses it."
He folded his hands and sat at his table. "Did you come here only to give your goodbyes, or was there anything else?"
"We will return briefly as soon as we leave Vroengard to pick Elva up again, so you shall have another chance to speak to us," Arya said.
"And the sniper corps," Harry added.
"That too," she agreed.
A thought struck Eragon. "If you are headed that way, can you check on Carvahall and Roran for me?"
Sorrow flitted over Arya's face. Harry looked away, decidedly uncomfortably.
"What happened," he demanded.
"I'm sorry, Eragon. Carvahall is gone."
He laughed weakly. "Gone, what do you mean, gone? It's a village."
"It's been burned to the ground, and the people are gone." Arya said gently.
Eragon stepped back, reeling.
"Wait," Harry corrected. "Not quite. I scryed a few names I was familiar with. Everyone I knew by name is around Teirm. Except Roran. I cannot scry him."
Eragon's heart plunged. He could not think of a reason Roran could not be scryed save one. "You don't think…"
Arya winced. "It's the most likely reason. Galbatorix would not kill him. It's probably retaliation for the theft and insurance that we don't postpone the campaign until Firnen and Saphira have bred a whole army of hostile Riders."
Suddenly, Eragon was furious. "So it's your fault, then." he accused. "If you hadn't-"
"Eragon," Oromis said firmly. Cheeks burning in anger and humiliation, he turned stiffly and stalked off.
"Shall I rend them?" Saphira asked gently.
"Yes." Eragon seethed. "Well, maybe. I do not want my fury misplaced. I know who is truly responsible."
His burning hatred for Galbatorix was something Saphira would wholeheartedly, unflinchingly support.
"And we are coming for him, little one."
"Yes we are."
Harry, Firnen, and Arya appeared on a barren mountaintop in the Spine with a crack. Firnen was getting big enough that apparating him was a real struggle, but for the trip before them, Harry could manage.
"Merlin, I'd forgotten how cold it is up here," Harry exclaimed, breath fogging in the air.
Arya nodded, casting a warming charm. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"
At their feet, the flattened mountain top was a maze of rubble and ice. Harry toed a chunk of granite sticking out of the snow. "Weird to remember the home I built here."
Arya hummed. "It seems so long ago. Everything is moving so much faster now."
Harry pulled out a broomstick. "Do you want to carry Arya or fly by her side?" he asked Firnen.
"She is my Rider," the dragon said simply, in his deep voice. Arya grinned wildly and stepped into his saddle, her black hair windswept from the alpine winds.
"Point me, Vroengard."
Harry's wand spun in his palm for a moment before aligning with the afternoon sun. "Off into the sunset, it is."
They traveled as slow as Harry remembered. The only exception was when they were with Brom and Eragon, trekking on horseback (ugh) across the Empire. After supersonic brooms and teleportation, the hundred miles an hour Firnen could manage according to his accelerometer spell felt very slow. What it did do was give Harry and Arya the opportunity to really appreciate how incredible flying was. Overhead, banks of clouds drifted, driven by biting cold winds invisible to the land-bound wretches they glided over.
"I feel bad for leaving Elva out of the trip." Harry voiced quietly through their magical headsets. Damn if Arya didn't pull off the operator look in camo fatigues, a headset on her long raven hair, and a .50 cal slung over her shoulder.
"Mother may complain, but to the elves there is no greater blessing than children," Arya said. "I am sure she's feeling nostalgic for raising me."
"It's a bit weird to think of a queen babysitting."
"Is that what your world calls it?" Arya laughed. "It's an evocative term."
Harry grinned. "Kidnapping also comes to mind. I'm glad, though. I don't want to be the sort of parent whose kids are raised by essentially paid surrogates. That was a thing; lawyers and doctors and CEO's and stuff would be so busy with work that they didn't have time to raise their children."
"Then they should not have had them."
Harry leaned back a bit on his broom. "Yeah, but having children isn't always a conscious choice. In fact, I don't have the statistics but I think it's usually an accident. We had condoms and IUDs and pills and stuff, but it only takes one accident to be saddled with a kid for a few decades. At least, if the mother didn't choose abortion."
"What." Arya said flatly. "Please explain the connotation of that word to me."
Harry sighed. "Women back home–muggles at least–had the choice to essentially have a growing embryo or fetus killed before it came to term if they couldn't handle a child. I think it's a shitty thing to do, but-" he shrugged helplessly. "Should the government be able to exert that kind of control over women's bodies?"
"Should the government keep humans from killing their babies?" Arya demanded.
"I assume prospective mothers don't think of unborn babies as real humans," Harry defended. "And I'm not saying I think it's a swell thing to do, either. There are lots of reasons why someone might have an abortion. If the baby was a product of rape, if they can't financially support the child and don't trust the foster system to take care of them, et cetera. There are more children than parents who want to adopt, so the government has to house and feed and provide for them, and the public perception is that those programs are underfunded, impersonal, and generally inferior to even a disenfranchised single parent."
Arya did not respond.
They flew in silence for several minutes.
"Children are precious," Firnen finally rumbled.
"Agreed." Harry and Arya thought back unanimously.
The mountains ended and the coast flattened out into a ribbon of cliffs and fjords, up against a clashing sea of azure. Overhead, the sun had sunk to the horizon, casting orange, sparkling reflections over the waves. Stiff from riding for hours, Harry awkwardly extracted a small flying carpet from his bag and made the switch. He packed up the broom and laid on his stomach, gliding alongside Firnen and watching the waves race beneath him. His wand pointed a bit to the right of the sun.
"What do you think about Roran?" Harry voiced.
"Everyone we could possibly ask would forbid us from trying to rescue him," said Arya. "Including me."
Harry rolled onto his back. "Ugh. I hate that I feel responsible."
Arya drooped in her saddle until her cheek rested on Firnen's neck scales, her palm on his flight muscles, feeling them work away tirelessly. "Galbatorix would have sent someone eventually," she decided. "The people of Carvahall always struck me as the sort that would rather their village be burnt down than let one of their own be handed over. I am surprised that so many escaped, and got so far."
"I should do something about it, shouldn't I?"
"Mmh." Arya mumbled, her jaw held closed by the weight of her head resting on Firnen's neck.
"But not try to rescue him."
"Mhm," she agreed.
Harry considered the reborn dragons back in Ellesmera. In mere months, they would be strong enough to seriously contest Galbatorix in combat. In years, Galbatorix would have no chance. Objectively, the strategically correct decision was to stall as much as possible. Their advantage grew with every day.
"It's really fucking hard not to turn around and go after Roran," Harry admitted. "But, contrary to what Phineas Nigellus Black would say; I can be taught. This exact same thing happened in my fifth year. Trying to rescue Sirius got him killed in the end. I guess we just have to win decisively."
Arya did not answer verbally, but her mind touched his and for a moment, her agreement and unyielding resolution to see Galbatorix dead shone through.
The sun dipped fully below the horizon and in the darkness, a sliver of crescent moon rose over the waves. The stars were out in force again, the broad band of the galaxy stretching across the sky. Ahead, the horizon was blotted out by black.
"Stormclouds," Arya warned.
"I see them."
Harry's wand pointed straight at them. Over the next couple hours, the darkened sky grew larger. The moonlit waves were unnaturally small. Harry tapped the carpet beneath his stomach and murmured "Engorgio." It swelled until it was large enough to encompass the whole of Firnen's shadow. The green dragon did not even glance at the offered landing spot. Harry sighed. If he needed it, it was there. While the carpet did not boast the top speeds of his brooms, it could easily keep pace with Firnen and had enough wards to make even the oncoming storm feel like indoors.
He and Arya both sat up and ate, keeping themselves alert and ready.
"Glaedr would have advice," Harry murmured in the unnatural stillness.
"He would," Arya agreed. "He'd probably mention that Firnen actually has an advantage; he is smaller, and wind affects larger dragons much, much more than it does smaller ones."
"Friction does increase quadratically with speed," Harry agreed. "And you are hardly weak for a dragon. But it would be a pretty stupid way to die if you were too stubborn to accept help, even if you didn't need it, Firnen."
Firnen pushed Harry's mind away from himself and for a moment, he and Arya communicated silently. A couple minutes later, he seemed to come to an agreement, landing with flawless dexterity on the enormous carpet.
With a mental nudge, the wards activated and abruptly, the low wind of flight vanished. They were within a bubble of silence soaring over the waves and into a massive thunderstorm.
The rumble of thunder reached them first, a deep, bassy growl that rose and fell. Flashes of white illuminated the pockets of clouds blotting out the sky. Less frequently, a bright flash and a jagged, forked line seared itself into their eyes as a bolt of lightning fell onto the waves below. If he watched carefully, Harry could see just a few feet into the ocean through the illuminated wave where the bolt struck. Then his eyes would adjust and it was gone again, navy blue roiling waves of heaving ocean, an entire continent apart from his home.
The dark clouds were visible only by their contrast against the night sky. Overhead, they seemed to eclipse nearly the entire world, and yet they had not gotten beneath it yet. It was too dark to spot details or rain. For all he knew, they were seconds from the stormfront, about to be tossed about in the tempest.
It came without warning.
One moment, they were drifting along, shifting uncomfortably against the ever growing tension, and the next, it was as if the flying carpet had plunged into the ocean hundreds of feet below. Raindrops smeared against the wind wards like a glass windshield, outlining the shape of its profile just enough that Harry could actually see it. The wards presented a teardrop-shaped profile against the direction of highest air resistance. In the wild winds, the rounded nose of the drop bobbled around like a seismograph, adjusting to every variance in the air.
Arya pulled her headset down around her neck and marveled. It remained quiet enough to talk. From inside the wards, the space around the carpet sounded like wind lashing against a glass window in a sturdy home.
Firnen stood up, craning his neck to touch his nose against the border that kept out the elements. He withdrew a nose of wet emerald scales. Though thunder raged outside, it could not reach them inside their flying shelter.
It remained quiet. None of them had anything to say that could not wait. Harry almost felt as if he were in a zoo, watching the majesty of the storm from safely behind a sheet of glass. Thunder rumbled nonstop, yet it was muffled by the membrane of throttled air. Harry nudged the carpet down closer to the waves.
Even dozens of feet over the surface, colossal waves of dark water collapsed on themselves, regurgitating salty spray up to them. Despite traveling in a near-perfect line in the air over the waves, the sea churned so violently it seemed impossible to believe they were moving only straight forward. Like an arrow, they flew along over the water. Harry was entranced by the churning sea below.
The patterns and textures of the water never stood still, a dynamo of navy change that bent and twisted, rose and fell over and over, waves like glass and waves like foam emerging from the chaos for a bare moment before the ever-changing nature of the water folded them into some new configuration of fleeting art. He stuck out an arm to touch the water, but the wards kept him dry and isolated from all but a salty mist that traveled too slow to be captured by the wards.
"Pull up!" Arya suddenly shouted urgently.
It took Harry a precious second to get his mind back into working order. "What? I-"
"Up!" she demanded.
Tugging the carpet into a steep climb, Harry let his mind grow in search of some threat. He found nothing until like a flashbang, ravenous hunger blanked his mind. Some huge thing was chasing them, up from the black depths. It was closing fast.
A moment later, it broke the water.
A hundred times larger than Shruikan, Harry's mind had trouble classifying the wall of flesh and hungry teeth as alive. It was as if a skyscraper had been launched from the base of the ocean, a towering bore of wet, grey skin. Its teeth snapped shut on air a ways behind the carpet, but it had been far too close for comfort.
Plunging back into the ocean, it seemed to drag the surface of the water down with the sheer force of its size. Hundreds of feet across, the roiling waves collapsed back together, ejecting a plume of water which drenched all three of them from head to toe.
Harry spat out the salt in his mouth and flipped his bangs off his forehead, incidentally spraying Arya as she did the same. "What the hell was that?!" he demanded, panting. He flicked warming charms on all three of them through chattering teeth.
"Nidwhal," Arya gasped, coughing desperately. "Think water dragon."
Chest rising and falling, Harry laid on his back, cruising up towards the clouds disgorging their torrential rains. A flash of lightning turned his vision black. Groaning, he put a warm, wet forearm across his face. "That was loads bigger than Shruikan."
"That which lives in water tends to be," Arya choked out. "I've never heard of one so close to shore."
Harry laughed weakly. "We're halfway to Vroengard!"
"In the days of the Riders, nidwhal were only ever found west of Vroengard. Dry."
They continued upward. Harry's mind was captured by the huge beast, even as he peeled off his shoes and dumped out the water within. There was supposed to be a pretty firm upper limit on the size of living animals, wasn't there? How thick did a nidwhal's skin have to be to keep itself from simply bursting under its own pressure? How could it possibly feed itself?
He had the vague idea of flying above the clouds. The lightning grew brighter and brighter until it dimmed all at once. The torrent of rain did not begin to slake until they had been flying through the incredibly dense fog for almost a minute.
How far were they from Vroengard, anyways? Wasn't Harry supposed to be doing something? His trail of thought escaped his grip. Why couldn't he think properly? Frustrated, Harry sped the carpet up.
What was he supposed to be doing again?
Arya looked similarly bewildered. Why?
"You are too high," Firnen's voice resonated in his mind.
Harry found that he was breathing harder than normal.
"Dive. Now."
Firnen's voice sounded so far away…
There was a spell that would fix this, wasn't there? Ebu…-? Bubbley?
"Ebu- bubbly, bubba-" Harry's tongue felt thick and sluggish. Arya looked at him curiously as if thinking what was he doing?
"Buble…Ebublio!"
A film of air formed over Harry's mouth and nose. It smelled gloriously fresh. The instant clarity returned to Harry, he flicked his wand at Arya and bubbled her head. His mental clarity brought with a chilling realization: He had almost died.
Harry flicked a bubble at Firnen's muzzle and breathed deeply until the black spots vanished from his vision. "That was way too close," he murmured.
Arya nodded. The fog had cleared from her mind, too, leaving her shook. Harry barely even noticed the warming charms begin to demand more from him. Arya peered around the edge of the carpet. It was impossible to make anything out beyond the border of the flying carpet. The fog was so dense, it was as if the world ended with the edge of the fabric.
And then they crested the clouds.
"Wow," Harry murmured.
The whole ocean had been covered by a fluffy blanket of starlit clouds.
Pillars of fluffy white twisted into great caverns and enormous cathedrals. Entire cloud cities formed on the air currents, fluffy white mountains, cliffs and shelves. Deep within, the rumble of thunder had been reduced to a low heartbeat. Up in the sky, it was quiet. Far, far to the east, a thin aura of blue curved ever so slightly across the horizon. Yet the sky above it remained black.
Harry twitched his wand. 47,872ft. Overhead, the crescent moon smiled down upon them. Firnen craned his head curiously, peering in all directions over and beneath the carpet.
"Could we make it?" Arya wondered quietly. She laid back, green eyes unfocused at the sky.
The aching in Harry's chest drew him towards the white crescent, but he knew they were unprepared. "We'd die before we got there. Fifteen thousand feet higher, our blood will boil off in the low pressure. We're breathing 100% oxygen right now, and it's still barely enough at this altitude."
She sat up and looked at him. "How would you fix it?"
"What?"
Arya rolled her eyes. "When I tell you something that should make something impossible, you immediately challenge it. How would you make it to the moon?"
"Muggles did it with spacesuits that held the pressure in like a balloon."
Arya raised an eyebrow. "They made it to the moon without magic?"
Harry sighed. "Yeah, they did. They had these great big rockets–imagine a massive tube the size of one of those giant trees in Ellesmera, completely filled with explosives pointed downwards. I think I'd try to tweak the bubblehead charm to serve all the functions of a spacesuit. Make it pressurized around my whole body, constantly recycling warm, oxygenated air."
She laid on her stomach and propped her head on her elbows. "And how would you get there? A carpet?"
"Probably a ship. But I'd make it fly with magic. I could use the propulso charms to get it going. We'd only have to make it there once, too. Then we could apparate back and forth."
"What's it like?"
"If it's the same as my old moon, there's no air up there, there's no dirt–just stone dust–and it's so cold there's no liquid water anywhere on the whole moon. Ours had some ice, I think, but no life. Not even a single blade of grass. All those craters are from asteroids that hit the moon. Since there's no air for the little rocks to burn up on, everything that decays out of lunar orbit ends up striking the ground. Thinking about how terrible a place the moon is to live on really makes you appreciate how perfect the world here is."
Vroengard came into view soon after the sun began to peek over the horizon behind them. The skies had cleared entirely of clouds, an endless arena of azure. Firnen got off the carpet after they dove down on the other side of the stormclouds. It seemed that the ego concession he made to escape the storm did not extend to being a passenger the rest of the way. The island was so big, it could barely be called an island. Harry could not actually see the end of it on either side. The shore stretched all the way across the horizon like a miniature continent.
Before landing, Harry and Arya both cast a lengthy spell that featured the world 'filter' no less than seven separate times. Oromis had given it to them with the explanation that it was necessary to stay safe from the lingering radiation fallout of Thuviel's blast. Harry couldn't quite put his finger on exactly how there was still lingering radiation, though. The way Oromis had described "converting flesh into energy' sounded like Thuviel had magically fissioned all the matter that composed his body. There should have been no harmful radioactive isotopes leftover. Despite his curiosity, Harry and Arya both linked their spells to filled gems. Arya's was the larger for covering Firnen as well, though neither of them expected to be on Vroengard so long as to drain them.
By the time all the flying and the adrenaline rush of two consecutive near-death experiences stacked with their having been awake for an entire day, none of them were in shape to do much more than land at the edge of Vroengard's outer shore and magically pitch the tent. Firnen in particular had been straining the whole trip to keep up with the carpet since dismounting after the storm. 'Shore' was a bit of a misnomer; there was barely enough flat-ish ground to call it anything but a cliffside. The mountains or volcanoes jutted steeply up from the beach only a few dozen paces from the shore. All three of them collapsed into sleep upon making their campsite vaguely safe and slept.
Arya and Harry woke by noon, but it was evident by his comatose state that Firnen would need more than a power nap to get going again. With time to kill, they sat out on the chilly beach. Harry set up plastic chairs for the both of them and then, jokingly, an umbrella.
"These look- different?" Arya remarked, touching the plastic.
Harry looked embarrassed. "I finally managed to make plastic without magic. It gave me a better understanding of the material. Apparently, my transfiguration reflects that."
She raised an eyebrow. "Is that what all those giant bubbling vats of black goo were?"
"I promise, you have no clue how many steps it is to get from crude oil to that," Harry assured her.
"What did you use it for?"
Harry thought back. "It's used for a lot of stuff I haven't gotten to, yet. Polymers tend to be good electrical insulators. It's good for preserving stuff and I'm certain there's a way to make it into acrylic paint. The first things I used it on were the rifles, actually. The stocks and grips are coated in it. And," he gestured at the chairs, "furniture. Everything was made out of this stuff. And the process of making plastic or synthetic rubber has lots of byproducts. It produces paraffin wax, which is essentially candle wax, kerosene and petrol, which are both extremely energy-dense fuels, bitumen, a core component in asphalt, lubricants, inks, solvents, synthetic fibers, and a bajillion other things. There was a reason having oil reserves could prop up entire countries' economies. It was almost as necessary as food."
For all that both of them were eager to get over the mountains that ringed the island and lay eyes on Doru Areba, Firnen had pushed himself hard on the flight over, and continued to sleep soundly. Harry and Arya killed hours lounging on the chilly beach, chatting about nothing in particular. It was a relief to have time alone again. Between Elva's and Firnen's youth, it seemed the both of them were usually needed in one way or another. The sun set and they went to sleep again and when they woke up, Firnen was stirring.
The first impression Harry got of Doru Areba was that it seemed small. From up high in the air, he could see most of the entire city and at first, Harry thought that hundreds upon hundreds of dragons and Riders would have trouble fitting into the quantity of buildings he saw. Something about the massive ruins was…off. The perspective felt wrong somehow. Once Firnen began to glide down, it became apparent why.
The sheer scale of Doru Areba was unimaginable.
The style of architecture reflected Uru'baen most out of the cities Harry had seen: very similar to elvish architecture, but with human twists that kept the place a bit more grounded in reality. There were great big landing pads made from tile and stonework as large as mega stadiums. There were no a-frame houses, but the residential homes were obviously scaled with dragons in mind. Despite how enormous everything was, the city somehow managed to avoid overtaking the natural landscape. There weren't so much parks as regions of wilderness that Doru Areba had seamlessly integrated around. It was odd to see the entire city from far enough up that it was apparent it genuinely scaled to the size of downtown London and despite that, it was no concrete jungle. A massive lake dominated most of the far side of the caldera, rippling azure in the gentle breeze.
Harry could not spot a single building higher than seven storeys, but those seven storeys were so massive, he couldn't fathom how they stayed up without magic. They didn't look constructed out of stuff you could find on the island, either. Volcanoes usually meant basalt, yet the architecture was predominantly marble.
The whole city had a haunted, tragic beauty. It was blasted and crumbling, and no edifice had escaped the desolation. Craters that had from afar looked like bullet holes and pockmarks yawned like ugly wounds in the landscape. Nature had reclaimed much of the roads and paths and climbed voraciously up and over everything its grasping could reach. Merely from the open air, Harry spotted several dozen massive dragon skeletons, remnants of mighty last stands against the Forsworn and Galbatorix. The epicenter of destruction was a crater far deeper than any of the others. It looked to be two hundred meters across and a hundred deep. Buildings caught in its line of sight were shorn off a few feet off the ground. Around the lip of the crater, there weren't two stones stacked together. The bottom of the crater was a pool of scummy, still water.
Firnen set down in a stone pavilion so large it felt more like a courtyard. A circle of marble pillars hundreds of feet tall surrounded the edge of the floor, half toppled and shattered. The stone pavers heaved up and down under the bulging weeds that snaked along the cracks. Harry found his footing and carefully dismounted.
"So, what, do we explore and keep an eye out for big rocks, possibly with 'Kuthian' on them?" Harry wondered aloud.
Arya shrugged.
There was something to be said about exploration where Firnen could follow them anywhere they went. Doru Areba was genuinely built for dragons with consideration that amazed Harry. It was more than giant doorways that were catered towards them, there were obvious nods everywhere to dragons' lack of dexterity. What doors were left standing had no handles but rather massive push panels. So dragons could operate either side, the doors were always two halves that opened opposite ways. The marble and ivy aesthetic reminded Harry of prestigious muggle universities back home.
There were massive, empty fountains large enough that a human could fully submerge themselves standing upright in the basins, there were big open platforms large enough for dragons to nap under the brilliant sun. Footpaths were occasionally not built to draconic size, but every single dwelling featured a blatant landing pad/lounge spot. Harry walked down a central road wider than a three lane highway. It was eerily quiet. The size of the city drew Harry's mind to London, but even in Surrey, the sound of the nearby highway was never silent. There was a breeze, but it was low enough that some of the eeriness Harry had been feeling since his arrival resolved itself in the silence. Doru Areba looked like the sort of city that never slept. There should be a constant, resonating thrum of dragon wingbeats overhead, chatter of Riders walking the streets, and if Harry's impression of London was accurate, the roar of traffic punctuated by loud cursing.
Instead, it was silent.
They headed up the thoroughfare towards a massive, circular building, the only seven-storey building they'd seen. It was by far the most impressive, a massive, domed building with windows large enough for dragons on every floor, and a doorway so huge that two dragons could easily walk past each other. The building was in some disarray, but Harry thought it would have to be little more than rubble to be unimpressive. The dome was supported by enormous pillars high enough that dragons could fly in from the top.
Inside was the most impressive library Harry had ever laid eyes on. Arya gasped at the main floor. It was wide open, and the floor was depressed by ten or so feet, surrounded by ramps. On the floor, huge tables sized for dragons were almost like desks, arranged around two intersecting aisles. The middle of the floor was a cleared circular relief map of Alagaesia, shot through with cracks and fissures but still as brightly colored as dwarven enamel.
The inner wall of the circular chamber featured shelves that stuck out of the wall a dozen feet. Each tier was at least thirty feet tall, six balconies ringing the central depression. Harry had to pull out his broomstick to see over the railings which extended far enough that dragons could walk around unobstructed. Every shelf was completely empty. Barren marble shelves made it clear that the whole library had been looted long ago. "Reckon all this is hoarded away underneath the citadel?" Harry remarked bitterly.
Arya nodded, eyes glazed over. It sucked to have such a clear image of the place in its heyday, yet for it to be so desolate in the present. Harry took a bit of selfish pride from the realization that while Doru Areba's library was architecturally bigger, Hogwarts still had an unfathomably larger selection of books. Even if the shelves were full, there was just no matching the endless tiers of balconies and branching wings of the Hogwarts library. There simply hadn't been enough people writing books to fill such a library.
They explored the building further. Firnen's claws clacked on the marble floors next to their quiet footfalls. The library was more than just the central chamber, but the rest was comparatively less impressive. There were doorways and halls sized to humans and elves, but they never led to anything more important than living quarters and scribes' workshops. There were a few different lounges that featured those bowl-shaped depressions for resting dragons and a couple more wings of empty shelves that were sealed completely from the elements, but the complex was clearly designed with the support of the vast main chamber in mind.
There were a myriad of offices that seemed to line the outer walls, since every single one he'd seen had at least one large window outside. They too were looted down to the last empty knick-knack shelf. Harry wondered if Oromis had had one, once.
They located the Rock of Kuthian mere minutes after leaving the library. Among the huge scale of Doru Areba, it looked small until they stood in its shadow. It was a spire of solid basalt over thirty meters high, a clean black finger that jutted from the ground between the back of the library and the slope. It lacked a convenient plaque, yet Domina Abr Wyrda referenced it as being 'near to the library' and it was a big ass rock next to the library.
Firnen craned his sinuous neck from the shadow of the stone, examining it like prey he hadn't yet decided if he was going to eat. Harry pulled up his tablet. "Solembum's exact words were: "When all seems lost and your power is insufficient, go to the Rock of Kuthian and speak your name to open the Vault of Souls." Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but Vault of Souls sounds quite a bit like a whole bunch of Eldunari hiding away from Galbatorix's murderous rampage."
"That sounds like a plausible guess," Arya agreed.
"Moment of truth, then? Harry James Potter."
"Arya Drottingu."
"Firnen"
Beneath the weight of their expectant gazes, the Rock of Kuthian stood as stubbornly still as its name implied. Arya frowned and tried Arya Shadeslayer. Harry cottoned on and used Harry Lightbringer. Firnen bitterly repeated his singular, chosen name with his mind. For several minutes, the three of them attempted different combinations and titles, all the while watching the solemn rock's indifference.
Harry sighed. "This doesn't feel like the sort of challenge where legal loopholes are the win condition. As tempting as it is to call out different orders and variations of our names to this literal rock, I bet we're missing something."
Something flitted across Arya's face. "Then this Rock is asking for something precious indeed. We have to consider how much to trust Solembum; if we are wrong, it will mean a fate worse than death."
Harry swallowed. "Why?"
"It appears to want our True Names."
They set out a picnic in the shadow of the Rock of Kuthian. It had turned from a benign mystery into something more sinister. It was the trapped door to the third floor corridor, the mysterious door at the end of the blue-black brick hall, and the mouth of the cave by the ocean. Harry had never given much thought to the idea of True Names. Somehow, the idea of being beholden to someone else's will never concerned him; he had thrown off Voldemort's Imperius curse easily. Conceptualizing anything as more powerful than him was difficult under the shadow he had already cast over Harry's life. He had simply equated the two and assigned them consummate risk factors.
The reality Arya corrected him with was much darker. With someone's True Name, a magician could cast a spell that modified you. It was worse than having a perfect designation for a spell. Even if you had your own little tracker linked to a missile, the worst it could do was kill you. Someone who knew your Name could cast a spell as simple as "Name obeys me," and unbreakably bond you to them for as long as your name persisted. No amount of willpower or stubbornness would allow you to escape–only two things could slip the noose: a shift in your own identity so significant, it changed your core personality, or else knowing the Name of the Ancient Language and thus being able to break one of the words comprising your own Name. While Harry and Arya could use the Name of the Ancient Language to change their Names, a theoretical enslaver could easily forbid the method and entrap even them.
"It feels impossible to even come up with a True Name," Harry mused. "People are too complicated for anything short of, I dunno, seven books at the least, aren't they?"
Arya tilted her head. "I know–knew mine once. It was just two sentences. I suppose that makes them less terrible than you think. They aren't actually chronicles of your life, rather the core of who you are: your strongest motivators, most impactful personal relationships, deepest desires. Your Name is that which cannot be removed without no longer being you."
Harry sighed deeply. "How in the world did you learn it? I live in my own head, and I wouldn't know where to start."
Arya laid back, hair splayed across the checkered blue white blanket. "The trick is to look at yourself as you are, rather than how you wish to be. I was unhappy to discover my Name; it named traits of mine that I did not like to think about. I was once apathetic to my relationship with my mother. I used to tell myself it was only temporary, just so I could do my duty as egg-bearer better, but my Name forced me to confront the fact that at least then, I resented Islanzadi and I wasn't interested in making up with her. Your Name will make no allowances for the lies you tell yourself. If you are selfish, you must accept that or your Name will elude you. If you are vengeful, you must confront even the things you hate about yourself, or whatever is behind this Rock will be closed to us."
"And for one who has not experienced enough to know himself?" Firnen's tone suggested he was profoundly unhappy with his state of being.
"Then your wish to earn an identity as large as your heart will be represented," Arya smiled. "Fear not, Firnen. Soon your name will live in the minds of everyone in Alagaesia, whether they have ever laid eyes upon your glorious scales or not."
"Do you think the Eldunari in there can hear us?" Harry asked.
"If they exist, yes," Arya agreed.
Harry waved lazily at the rock. "Curse you all for making us jump through hoops to give you your bodies back," he grumbled.
"A journey of self-discovery has its own value," Arya reminded him.
That was true, Harry thought, but it would be nice to take said journey when they weren't under a time crunch. "Do you know your own Name still?"
Arya hummed. "Not exactly. I have changed, but not so much that it will be completely different. Firnen is right that his youth means there is less identity to guess at. Yours will be the challenge. You are a complicated person, Harry."
Searching for his identity felt like a mocking joke Snape was playing on him from beyond the grave. Clear your mind, Potter! He'd demand. What did that mean, anyways? Alagaesia's method of mental defense was to focus on one thing so narrowly that it acted like an impenetrable umbrella. Academically, he understood that making his mind a void was a higher level entirely, but the very act of clearing his mind filled it with clutter. Searching for his Name felt much the same. Arya suggested he search his soul alone. Harry was fine with setting off by himself, but he had plenty of practice occupying himself while alone.
He rubbed the Resurrection Stone on his finger. The task before him felt like the sort he would go to Dumbledore for help with. The wizened old man probably knew exactly what to say to help, and with the ring, he was within Harry's reach.
But Harry withdrew his fingers. He had never really refrained from using the Resurrection Stone for information; he was always calling on experts to explain things he didn't understand in the books he'd read, or to fill in gaps in his knowledge that he had no books for. Somehow, that felt entirely different from what Dumbledore's advice offered him. The prospect of returning to Britain in the instant after his father's death still existed. He had not forgotten that one day, he could return home. Harry thought that if or when he did, he would like to be his own man. When he reflected on his 'victory' over Lord Voldemort, it rang hollow.
Sure, he, Ron and Hermione had destroyed Horcrux after Horcrux, (mostly) evaded Death Eaters, Snatchers, and the Ministry, and ultimately, he had found the courage to confront his death head on. But Harry thought it was less honest to grant Dumbledore an assist and more accurate to acknowledge that the old headmaster had cobbled together a terribly difficult path with the last of his life, and that he had merely found the strength to walk it to its end.
Harry passed beneath a marble archway into a cozy room. It was circular, the center dominated by a dragon-divot. On the floor ringing the divot was a series of depressions the size of dinner plates. Around the walls were small cushioned divots ranging from the size of a cat to large enough to lay horizontally across. A series of empty hearths set in intervals around the room. Kneeling down, with a whisper, Harry laid an armful of orange flames into an empty grate and laid down in the divot next to it.
Harry had lost track of how old he was. Between all the time compression he'd used in the workshop, he was somewhere between twenty and twenty-two. His face still reflected the nearly eighteen-year-old he'd been when he 'died.' Age had once seemed an all-important factor to him; it measured how far he was from being able to apparate, being able to use magic outside of Hogwarts, from graduating, from drinking. Harry had not reflected on his age since he gave himself enhancements to keep up with Arya. In Alagaesia, it seemed like the only use for age was counting your days until the grave.
What motivated him?
Harry's head spun from the influx of ideas. He wanted to build his university. He wanted the threat of war to be gone. He wanted to drag Alagaesia into the 21st century. He wanted Elva to be happy. He wanted so many things. He wanted to return home.
Most of those things felt like stepping stones. Intermediate goals to reach something larger, some nameless good Harry could not find words to, but which he knew in his soul he longed for.
He felt egotistical merely for entertaining the idea, but he had to give it voice. "I want to be a hero," he murmured. He was uncomfortably aware that wizards tended to have that perception of himself. Thus, he was relieved to hear the words fall flat. They lacked the authenticity of truth-bound English words. The truth revealed to him that his motivation for embroiling himself in the continental conflict was not heroism. For years at Hogwarts, he had ridden the surf of public opinion, rising on the crest of Quidditch victories and Basilisk-slaying shenanigans, then plunged to the trough of Heir of Slytherin accusations and defamation in the Prophet.
After the Triwizard Tournament, glory was as empty as Cedric's unseeing eyes.
Heroism was for people who weren't heroes. No one who had earned the trait would pursue it again.
Why then, did Harry want Galbatorix dead?
He squirmed closer to the fire, letting his eyes unfocus before the dancing flames and feeling the warmth on his skin.
Galbatorix was evil, and evil ought to be defeated. He had received independent testimony in the very beginning. Both Brom and Arya were firm that Galbatorix was a monster, and every shred of evidence he had seen reflected that. The absence of dragons, the slums of Dras Leona, the valley of bones in the Spine, and the mountain of corpses beneath Farthen Dur.
One terrible city did not make a ruler evil–Teirm was a nice, clean (as far as medieval goes) city. But on the other side of the galleon, nor did a nice city make a nice ruler. Harry had seen historical photos of Berlin during the Nazi regime.
The villagers of Carvahall and Daret all seemed quietly desperate, in fear of tax collectors who would break their unsteady food security. But perhaps that was a function of the time, rather than the government. They were not battered by secret police, Snatchers, or Death Eaters. They just struggled to make ends meet.
How would Galbatorix's death change that?
Well, the elves could leave Du Weldenvarden again, he remembered. The dwarves could venture out of the Beors. The Urgals could leave the Spine. Harry thought he had been viewing the races as nations with firm borders. There was no reason why they had to stay separate. The Riders managed to keep the peace between four different races for thousands of years. They would come back, too.
The amalgamation of desires and subgoals Harry held coalesced in his mind. From within the hearth fire, Harry found the answer.
He wanted to make the world a better place.
Aloud, the phrase resonated with him
The world was worth protecting. It was Christmas dinners with the queen and her daughter on the snowy coast, bewildering conversations with Luna Lovegood or Angela, and flights over an awesome, turbulent navy ocean. It was Quidditch matches with fans screaming in the stands as his fingers closed around the snitch, or jumping up and down in the high box as Viktor Krum pulled off an impossible chase. It was dinner at the Weasleys, or jokes in the Gryffindor common room. It was watching understanding bloom in the eyes of the D.A. as patroni emerged from their wands for the first time, the satisfaction of magic racing through his wand, and the wonder of beholding Hogwarts from atop the Black Lake.
Tyrants like Voldemort and Galbatorix emerged from the imperfect elements of the world and threatened those pure things. Poverty and famine and sickness threatened people just as much as evil wizards. Harry would beat them down so long as he had breath within them. The world was worth it.
Harry wandered the empty hatchery for hours in a pensive mood. He considered himself, reflected on the greatest influences in his life, and cobbled them together whenever something resonated with him that felt right. Hogwarts was in there, Voldemort, as well. They did not fit in as names but rather for what they represented. He returned to Arya and Firnen by nightfall with his success.
"Those are the easiest parts," Arya said. "What we want is not always obvious. It took me much longer to articulate the tangle of desires within me as simply as my identity is. I suppose life changing events also tend to be memorable. Far harder is to discern the parts of yourself that you are ashamed of."
In that time, Arya had managed to find her current Name. Again, Harry set off to be by himself.
Doru Areba made Harry's hand itch for his wand. He spotted a fallen, crumbling pillar and wanted to repair it. A shattered carving on the side of a building deserved to be appreciated for the vision the artist had had when they first made it. At night, the whole place was haunting in its beauty.
Out of curiosity, Harry retrieved a geiger counter from his tools. The moment he turned it on, the counter started screaming at him. 2.4 sieverts per hour. It just made no sense. He was miles from the crater. According to his encyclopedia, that was comparable to the Chernobyl exclusion zone. The Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown had happened after Lily's edition had been published, but he had heard endless coverage on it in the news. 2.4 sieverts was likely to kill a human outright, rather than just increase their chances of cancer.
He had no idea how much more or less vulnerable elves and dragons were to radiation, but he couldn't imagine anything surviving without thick fur or shells. Bowing down, Harry scraped up a fallen branch and ran his finger over a leaf. The veins were asymmetrical, like the plants themselves were tortured by the poisoned earth and forgot how to grow.
Harry ventured off the paths and into the wilderness.
With a whisper, his wandtip lit golden. The facsimile of fire light felt gentler than harsh, pure white light. Tonight, Harry was less interested in laying bare the secrets of Vroengard. He merely wished to explore in contemplation.
Loose dirt whispered under his shoes, crumbling without the support of lush grass roots to bind itself together. The foliage was sparse. The underbrush had suffered the most. The trees were less affected, though they were all tilted a few degrees north, as if trying to escape whatever contamination still lurked in the blast crater. Harry inhaled through his nose and smelled nothing. The air itself had been stripped of flavor by the filtering ward that protected him from the radiation.
A rat scurried across a patch of bare earth from one covering shrub to the next, its fur patchy and its skin red and irritated beneath. Harry moved on.
Further in, he came across a lichen-covered hill. Intending to rest, he sat down at its base and leaned back. He fell through the hill with a shout. Holding his wand aloft, Harry found his top half had fallen through between the ribs of a dragon's skeleton and landed on a pile of sharp rocks. They glinted an oily red like lustrous rubies. He picked one up and held it to his eyes. It was a scale. Harry got to his feet with a clatter of gemlike scales sifting against each other and squirmed back out of the ribcage.
"Ventus."
The lichen was blown away in the harsh gust, laying bare the bones of a dragon bigger even than Glaedr. Three ribs were broken halfway on its right, like something had snapped them off in the process of dealing a lethal blow. Its skull stared blankly ahead, absent of life. Crawling across the bleached bone, a fat, green caterpillar inched across it.
Upon reaching the edge, it made a scre scree noise, bunched up, and leapt nearly a meter into the air. When it struck the ground, the caterpillar split into a dozen tiny red babies furiously burrowing into the ruined dirt. Without his sharpened eyesight, Harry might have assumed the babies to be droplets of blood.
Carefully inching around the patch of dirt they had disappeared in, Harry proceeded beyond the skeleton and deeper into the forest.
Chernobyl wasn't like Vroengard, was it? Hadn't he seen a documentary where the film crew suited up in white hazmats and explored the abandoned province? The dwellings were haunted and abandoned, cluttered with pots and pans and childrens toys abandoned in the night when the Soviet Union called the evacuation, yet the wilderness seemed normal if not thriving, finally able to reclaim the land humans had wrested from it.
The trees of Vroengard were all normal sized. Harry had a hunch that was not the case before the blast. He spotted half of a hollow trunk twice the size of a schoolbus resting in the ground. A pile of giant snail's carapaces glistened in his wandlight, asleep in their dens within the trunk.
He imagined the months after the blast. Whatever had happened, Harry knew that radiation was at its worst immediately after the disaster. Had the whole island lain barren within the caldera, sanitized by Thuviel's last stand? Perhaps seeds had survived under the soil and outside the ring of volcanoes, stubbornly growing and dying and growing and being killed by fallout until one day, the island could support life.
Harry resolved to eat or drink nothing he did not bring with him.
He reflected on fallout. The term had come to represent the consequences of a mistake. Harry wondered what mistakes he had made would come to haunt him. Already, he planned to release guns into Alagaesia, a purposeful tool of killing. They would undoubtedly save many of the Varden's lives at the expense of the Empire's, and he had a tight grip on every weapon he'd made. Wasn't that what he wanted?
The Art of War disagreed. "The supreme art of war is to subdue your opponent without lifting a weapon." Was Harry being selfish by refusing to cut the head off of the snake by assassinating Galbatorix? For some reason, killing in open battle felt less repugnant than a whispered killing curse in the night. Yet, the fallout of his decision seemed to be the inevitable death of thousands in battle, when only one man at the top needed to die. Nasuada, Orrin, Hrothgar, Islanzadi, even Eragon had only the one option, but Harry did not.
Harry had the Cloak of Death. He could don it tonight, apparate to the citadel, and become Death for one night.
That he was not willing to, did that make him a coward? Aloud, the term did not catch his attention. He thought back to a similar situation. Years ago, he had Bellatrix Lestrange beneath his wand. The killing curse weighed on the tip of his tongue. After his failed cruciatus, Harry had sorted out his emotions such that he was dead certain; if he spoke the words, Bellatrix would die.
Harry grappled with his emotions for nearly an hour. There were lines he would not cross. Harry acknowledged that he made poor decisions if the alternative clashed with his morals. He was stubborn, but the term fell short. Opinionated felt too arrogant, it was not the word he was searching for. Close-minded fit Hermione better than him.
Inflexible.
The word struck a chord within him. He never considered adapting to Alagaesia. From the outset, he was determined to adapt it for him. It had both a sweet and sour connotation. He would not compromise his morals, nor would he compromise in practice. Oromis had chastised him for risking everything to rescue Murtagh and the dragons from the citadel, and Harry had all but ignored him. If Roran had been closer to him as a friend, Harry might have risked another rescue despite everyone forbidding it. He refused to bend his pride for the monarchs he'd met, and he rejected the status quo in favor of the world he preferred. He stood in the midst of a nuclear disaster that represented the worst of technology, yet he steadfastly pushed his private technological development forward with every intention of distributing it across Alagaesia.
Through the trees, faint lantern light bobbed up and down. Quietly, Harry extinguished his wand and crept closer.
From deep within the treeline, he peered out at a procession of hooded figures bearing staffs from which the lanterns hung. Even with his sharpened hearing, all he could hear was indistinct murmuring. He glanced down at his muted geiger counter in disbelief. 1.9 sv/h.
One of the figures turned towards him, its face obscured by its cowl. Harry held completely still. A moment later, it looked away.
He retreated back into the forest and headed towards their camp.
Firnen was curled up around Arya, who had lain back against his side and was stargazing peacefully next to the tent.
"Success?" she murmured.
Harry laid down next to her. "Some. I have another word. I'm unsure if it's a good word or not, but it's certainly part of it."
She stretched and yawned. "Labeling an ambiguous character trait as good or bad is reductive. A peaceful man may be good in peacetime, but is he a coward when he does not take up arms in defense of his family and home? Learn from your identity, and recognize its work in your life, but do not seek to change everything about yourself to become who you think you should be. Who you are is who I love." She put an arm around his shoulder and pulled him in for a kiss. "Let's sleep. Self-discovery cannot be rushed."
Harry sighed. "I wish it could be. Without the radiation wards, we would have received a lethal dose in one hour. We cannot eat or drink anything here. But I appreciate your wisdom. How in the world was I lucky enough to catch your heart?"
Arya laughed softly. "You're a good man, Harry. And you loved me for who I was, when even I wasn't sure I could do that."
Paranoid about radiation sickness, Harry and Arya slept in the tent hoping that Firnen, who could no longer fit through the flaps, was offered some protection by his scales and draconic constitution.
The daytime, Harry frittered away exploring the ruins. While the sun was up, the world felt too active to him, too loud and busy and bright for the quiet contemplation he needed to face the worst parts of himself. He thought to bring out the Monopoly board and trounce Firnen and Arya, but he couldn't bring himself to admit to them that he intended to waste the entire day because he liked to think better in the dark.
Harry found that the individual homes resembled the Chernobyl exclusion zone far more than the public buildings. Galbatorix and his cronies had not bothered to thoroughly loot each house. There were signs even the houses had been rifled through, but Harry pieced together from where the search stopped and the complete absence of Rider swords that Galbatorix was after just those in particular.
Instead, the homes resembled those family dwellings around Chernobyl where the residents had dropped everything and left. Half-finished letters lay in dirty sheaves on the floor, moldy kitchenware laid abandoned on countertops and in sinks, and piles of rotted scrolls stuck out of cubbyholes they had not left for over a century. Beds were unmade, hearths were occasionally heavily scorched from fires that had been left uncontrolled to burn until the marble walls denied them further fuel.
Harry went down and sat by the bank of the lake. The geiger counter read 1.4 Sv/h when held above the surface. When he submerged the tip of the antenna, it dropped to 0.2 Sv/h. There were actually fish beneath the surface, salmon and flounders that had presumably swam up the river from the sea and found a lake free of competition. The fish looked unhealthy and their scales were asymmetrical, but it was more than Harry expected in 0.2 Sv/h water. In another hundred years, would Vroengard be habitable? Maybe not for humans, but it certainly seemed like wildlife was well on its way to reclaiming the isle of the Riders.
The prospect of testing a nuclear weapon tasted bitter in Harry's mouth. He had recently gotten a good handle on explosive lensing, a project he'd done with anti-tank weaponry in mind. The same principle was used in compressing the core of a nuclear weapon to criticality. The more he thought about it, the more he realized how easy it would be to make a nuclear bomb with the skills and tools he had. Alchemy made obtaining highly-enriched uranium trivial, he could go up to plutonium without much more effort, he had formulas for IPX insensitive plastic explosives and the technical knowledge to arrange them such that they lensed their explosive force into a perfect sphere of compression around the core.
In a way, testing a nuke was proof to himself that he'd managed to make technology modern enough to make advanced nations nervous, but then he looked at the fish in the lake.
It was a hundred years after the disaster and life was still suffering under Thuviel's decision. If he did it, Harry would nuke some corner of the salt flats where there was nothing living for dozens and dozens of miles and no chance of contamination. The sad thing was, nukes weren't even likely to kill Galbatorix. They generated immense energy, but Galbatorix only had to protect his own body and he had plenty of power to do it. The only thing nuking him would accomplish would be sterilizing the human capital of the continent.
Does being unwilling to cross some lines make me inflexible? Harry considered. Then, an uncomfortable thought occurred to him. Am I actually unwilling to cross those lines? After all, he had started using the killing curse, when back in Hogwarts, the mere notion would have repulsed him. Now, he was contemplating testing weapons of mass destruction merely to feed his own ego and prove that he could.
I am a complicated person, he thought. People are complicated. What a revelation.
A word reoccurred to him, one he had rejected without bothering to speak aloud. Arrogant. I'm not arrogant, Harry thought. Malfoy is arrogant. James was arrogant. I know what arrogant looks like. There was a simple test to determine if it was true or not, but Harry did not want to do it. He did not want to say the word out loud. What is the point. I'm obviously not, so I'll just move on.
Harry pushed the word out of his mind and stared at the lake, willing his brain to return to its pensive state.
A salmon swam by.
A wispy cloud drifted overhead.
Trees creaked and rustled.
"Argh!" Harry growled. "I am not-" but the world would not let him voice it. Harry fumed. He had never had trouble exaggerating or even outright lying with English, why was it obstructing him now?
He had invoked its truth-binding power on himself, hadn't he?
"I am arrogant," he whispered shamefully. The phrase thrummed within him, agreeing.
Had Snape been right? Harry immediately decided that however arrogant he was to Snape, the man deserved it all and more. But maybe that was missing the point. Draco Malfoy loudly and repeatedly proclaimed his own superiority to everyone in earshot at all times, always. He was so blatantly arrogant, the trait only came up in insult. Everyone knew. No one needed to reference it. Harry didn't think he was like that. His was a more subtle arrogance, subtler even than Hermione's. He thought himself better than the peasants in Alagaesia. Even sitting in the middle of Doru Areba, a monument to an order fallen in arrogance, Harry consciously concluded that he was better than those peasants. They were smelly, dirty, illiterate, embraced harsh traditions, and clung to anachronistic views. Never mind that they simply were anachronistic from Harry's perspective, Harry just knew that he had been produced by a more advanced world.
Was it arrogant to acknowledge an enormous advantage? How did someone determine if someone was better or worse than another? Harry's self esteem would not allow him to concede that a medieval peasant was as good as him, and so he was arrogant.
The sun set on his realization and over the nighttime, Harry's self esteem took a battering. He no longer shied away from the uncomfortable reality of who he was, puzzling together pieces and discovering new words and phrases. He walked and walked and walked all night, passing under arches and over roads more pothole than cement until he came to a great pillar. It was the tallest object he had seen in Doru Areba upon their descent. From the ground it was much harder to tell height between buildings that flirted with the skyscraper designation.
Thick vines snaked up the pillar, winding like the stripe of a candy cane. Harry tested his weight on it experimentally, bouncing and concluding it would not budge. He began his ascent.
He hugged the side of the pillar for what felt like an hour, climbing up the vine. It began to thin and grow treacherous the higher he got. His arms began to burn even as every pull required him to check the integrity of the vines. Just when he thought the vines would not allow him to reach the top, the pillar abruptly ended before his eyes in a flat top big enough to lay down on.
Harry never got tired of looking up at the stars. It was impossible. In Astronomy, he thought all the maths and charts and maps required were tiresome. The act of charting everything robbed the majesty from stargazing, but having done it, Harry could really appreciate how big the sky was. Up atop the pillar in a nearly dead city, Harry took one more reading from his geiger counter. 7.2mSv.
Recklessly, he allowed the filter ward to lapse and took a deep breath through his nose. The late night air was clean and tranquil, dark and clear. It smelled a bit like salt, far less than his home. He could just make out the roar of ocean waves tumbling against the cliffs and narrow beaches on the other sides of the volcanoes.
He had all the pieces of the puzzle. Every core part of his identity had been accounted for, even those he didn't like to think about. From his vantage point far enough away, Harry could almost pretend Doru Areba was just ill-cared-for. He let his eyes unfocus and blur the pockmarks and smashed walls and imagined the Riders had simply moved on.
The sky began brightening in shades. Harry tried many phrases, murmuring them as if being too loud would shatter the illusion of peace in nature.
A Name occurred to him. Harry contemplated it in his mind. It demanded his full attention, and pushed all other considerations to the side while he examined it. Harry thought it described an imperfect person. He might not even like that person if he met them. Nerves crept into his skin–if he said it and it turned out to be true, he could not escape the reality that it represented him. The magic that bound the English language would impress the truth upon him as only it could. He wasn't necessarily oblivious, but Harry had found comfort for all of his life with the lies he told himself to smooth over his self-esteem.
If Harry climbed down and let the phrase lapse into his unconscious memory, he might never have to face the utterly unsympathetic, objective definition of who he was. He could try to get at the Rock of Kuthian from some other angle; if anyone could escape the narrow path destiny had set down, it was him.
I don't need to do it for them, Harry realized. There will be time in the future for Eragon to come here and face the same trials as I have. I can avoid doing this and pass the baton.
Suddenly, Dumbledore was revealed to him wholly, as Harry had not known him even in the moment of his own death. He trusted Eragon, perhaps more than Dumbledore had, himself, yet faced with a great trial he could shirk and let fall to a younger, less prepared man, Harry could not conscience sparing his own discomfort for the suffering of another. There would be a time where Eragon was faced with the same choice Harry now faced, yet when it came to him, Harry would give him the option to choose if he wanted to or not.
The realization that he had missed one last word came to him. Harry slotted it in like the last piece of a puzzle, gliding into the gap made to accommodate it.
"_," _ said aloud. As the sun broke the horizon, _'s chest thrummed like some enormous machine was resonating with him, except he was the one resonating. His identity was irrefutably before him, an absolute truth the universe itself recognized. He could not reject it if he wanted to; it simply was.
Draco Malfoy would never again bother him with the name 'Scarhead.' How could he, when _ knew viscerally that he was more than that? His scar factored into his name, but he was more than that and he would always know, even if his name changed a thousand times and he forgot what he knew now. _'s name was both greater and more awful than anything someone could dream up to hurt him.
It was the Truth.
AN: I intended for this chapter to go until Harry and Arya returned to the Varden, but you just don't get better stopping points than this.
Paolini generally describes Doru Areba as less contaminated than I do, but I thought this would make a good teachable moment for Harry. If Thuviel was deliberately trying to make the island uninhabitable, I imagine the radiation would be pretty bad.
Speaking of other projects, the sequel to this story has been taking up some of my creative efforts, and stands at 81k words in 6 chapters and an incomplete 7th. I'm actually glad to have the opportunity to tweak them as I please without worrying about pulling the rug out from underneath my readers.
Speaking of that, for those of you who feel disoriented by my updating earlier chapters and the confusion around it, I apologize but I don't intend to leave my shitty early writing as a monument to the poorer writer I was when I started this fic. If you ABSOLUTELY MUST read the terrible 1st edition, there's a website called the wayback machine that lets you read archived earlier versions of websites which will probably enable you to read the first draft. I'm not willing to leave my worst work right at the beginning for prospective readers to immediately click off of and miss reading the best I can offer today.
The first chapter of that fic won't go up until the last one of this fic does, but that will probably be within the year (oh boy, I don't know if I can keep to that deadline) since I intend to really hurry the story along (bet you haven't heard that line before). Most of the reason I think this fic will take a while is because I don't intend to end it the moment Galbatorix dies. I always thought Paolini could have done more with the fractured Empire and the factions he referenced in the end of Inheritance. His recent announcement of the sequel Murtagh has been creative heroin injected directly into my arteries to keep writing. Harry has also been promising a university to himself and Arya, and a space program to Angela for a while…
HOWEVER, as a bit of a treat, here is a snippet I was especially proud of from Harry Evans's Multidimensional Adventure: Volume 2.
"But why? Why didn't you even try? You were setting up something with the Hallows, I could tell. I just never knew what. You started giving me private lessons during my sixth year, but never taught me any spells, any advanced dueling. It was just memories of Tom Riddle's history in your pensieve, all so we could go hunt down his Horcruxes. I was so frustrated, I felt like I had no agency at all. I was Dumbledore's pawn, and you just kept pushing me to the other side, deftly capturing a few meaningless pieces, hoping I'd make it to the other side of the board. People were dying around me, and Ron, Hermione and I were on this stupid fucking treasure hunt!"
The Headmaster's office filled the pause, chortling, beeping and booping, glorping and gleeping baubles tirelessly puffing quietly beneath the volume of recognition in conversation.
Dumbledore gave Harry a sympathetic look. "I cannot speak to the Dumbledore you knew; I am not him and I suspect I never shall be. But I can tell you what has occurred to me now. You grew up knowing nothing but the stories that trickled down from adults willing to tell you what they knew. I was not such a prestigious wizard then. Notable, sure, for defeating Grindelwald and being Hogwarts Headmaster, but I was not so unique as this 'legendary wizard above all.' I had many colleagues. Some still live, mostly those in a certain…old people club, but many more across the world were slain, surrounded by rumors of some nightmarish, evil god."
His eyes were lost in reminiscence. "How wonderful the world was back then, Harry. For academics, especially. WWII had ended. The quality of life for muggles especially but wizards too had skyrocketed. Grindelwald was imprisoned, and it felt to all like we had just emerged from the crucible of enlightenment. One last, savage war to usher in an age of science and innovation. There was a bit more overlap than would be allowed today between top muggle scientists and the wizarding world; we learned from each other, catapulting our respective fields forwards. I was not the only big name in the game. Andres Vasquez was famous for breakthroughs in healing, Damocles Belby was a potioneering titan who worked with Marie Curie on a cure for radiation sickness, Marla Paradiso was legendary in the field of charms, there were dozens like me. And Voldemort murdered them all. These were the strongest witches and wizards out there."
Harry could imagine it. Dumbledore described almost exactly what it felt like on the east coast of Alagaesia after Galbatorix's death. It wasn't just the elves who pursued enlightenment, humans and dwarves and Urgals all took the train across the Endless Plains and contributed their knowledge to their collective understanding of magic and natural science.
"Voldemort came for me last. I doubt he knew at the time that Grindelwald was still alive – it was, is, a closely kept secret – I believe, to borrow a muggle phrase, that he saw me as the 'final boss.' I was the irritating schoolteacher that caused him so many problems, and when he came to Hogwarts again, I was Armando Dippet's replacement as Headmaster. And I only survived because of my shameful past. You see, Harry, dueling has many tiers of skill. At first, students learn basic defensive charms in their schools and can manage to cast them under pressure. Then you have uncommonly skillful schoolchildren with excellent aim and reflexes, a narrow repertoire of spells they know so well they can cast them under any circumstance. Then you have aurors, who have a private repertoire of combat spells and intensive training, then professional duelists who employ the mind arts to push their reflexes and decision-making to the limit, and then you have wizards like myself, Grindelwald, and Voldemort."
"Far above everyone else?" Harry guessed.
Dumbledore gave a half-smile. "Legendary wizards who also possessed the skills of professional duelists. Niche, because becoming a legendary wizard usually does not leave time for dueling lessons. We all wanted to rule the world. We live and breathe magic intuitively as only a lifetime of practice allows, and yet the mysteries of the universe were not enough, and we sought to impose that power upon others. How then, Harry, could I help you to my level within a year? A decade? A century? Even if I abandoned all three of my full-time jobs, both of us managed to lay our hands on Time-Turners, and I spent the next thirty years doing nothing but train you, Voldemort has had eighty years and so much experience over you, the world would burn before you were ready to face him as an equal."
"The prophecy said-"
"That he would 'mark you as his equal?'" Dumbledore suggested. "Prophecies are rarely literal. Voldemort is not my equal in transfiguration and alchemy, yet I am not his equal in the Dark Arts. Equal in parts, or equal as wholes, Harry. You are a remarkable young man, so much so that I have no trouble believing you are at least his equal, if not far surpassing him. The measure of a man does not come from his ability to fight. In the ways that matter, you are far greater than Tom Riddle."