Battle for the Burning Plains
Saphira and Eragon stared at the Black King. Harry wanted to smack them for thoroughly shredding any chance at a peaceful resolution. The moment of silence grew taut, then snapped with explosive fury.
"Then die!" Galbatorix snarled. The pretense of civility fell away. He leapt out of his seat. "Audr," he growled, hurtling upwards. Something snatched his dwindling figure out of the air. He climbed up the side of something invisible and massive.
"Revelio!" Harry shouted. The spellbolt splashed off the colossal shape. It faded into visibility, a draconic shape as large as Shruikan, except there were no glittering, hauntingly beautiful scales. It was a mass of scarred, rotting leather and nightmarish, insectoid eyes recessed in black pits. Its diminutive fellow screeched and winged away from the table.
The Lethrblaka flapped, flooding the Burning Plains with the smell of fetid meat, climbing high into the sky and disappearing into the clouds. "Avada Kedavra!" Harry shouted after him. The killing curse raced up, casting the bottom of the cloud cover in eerie green light. The massive lethrblaka contorted with uncanny agility for its size, allowing the bolt to race between the crook of its neck and into the clouds.
The rest of the leaders at the table shot out of their seats. Hrothgar got no more than a dozen steps away when he cried out. Harry fell off the table and towards the dwarf king. His blood froze. That was the doing of a purple tip. As if in response, the smaller lethrblaka winging away exploded in a cone of black blood and rotting meat, showering the ground in front of the Empire's men with viscera.
The windup of the purple tip was marked by a purple field expanding outwards, the border of the space expansion. "ACCIO!" Harry screamed, heedless of his voice cracking. Hrothgar shouted in agony, every bit of him being pulled away from a point below his hip.
A terrific vacuuming, ripping noise pierced the cloying air. The dwarf king lost half his body to a short-lived black hole in the blink of an eye. He fell away minus his spine, legs, and the back of his skull.
"No!" Eragon cried.
"I've got him!" Harry shouted. "Go!"
The Rider tore his eyes away from the fallen king, leaping fifteen feet up into Saphira's saddle. Harry scrabbled through his pack for a vial of Draught, kneeling in the smoking mud. The pouring rain billowed into steam beneath the peat and hissed back out the vents, a gauzy haze that covered the whole of the battlefield. Somewhere overhead, an awful screech set his teeth on edge, reverberating off the sky itself.
Hrothgar, miraculously, could still breathe. The dirt beneath him was black with the majority of the blood in his body. Harry called for the Draught with a voice reedy from long negotiations. "Vulnera Sanentur, Vulnera Sanentur," he chanted desperately. Hrothgar rasped.
"No."
"What do you mean? If I stop-"
"You're needed, Lifebringer," he whispered.
"I'm not about to lose my first patient," Harry insisted, forcing magic through his holly wand, trying to infuse the warmth of his arm into Hrothgar's cooling skin.
"Watch over my nephew Orik, won't you?" the dwarf king murmured with the last of his strength. "Guntera protect me."
His mind slipped further from Harry's grasp. Harry tried to seize at something, anything, to keep the essence of the monarch from floating away. Like a balloon with a greased string, he couldn't grip it. "Hang on, how did you hear that name?"
Hrothgar's lips twitched. Too quiet to hear, he whispered. "My nephew means the world to me."
"NO!"
The world seemed to freeze. Lightning split the sky, a blueish white crack in the universe that lingered too long. Blood roared so loud in Harry's ears, he couldn't tell where his heartbeat ended and the rumble of thunder began. Freezing rain traced down the back of his clothes, wicking holly warmth from him and leaving icy fury.
His holly wand fell out of limp fingers. He did not reach for the Elder Wand, he did not pull it from any pocket or secret soulspace. It was absent one moment, then in his palm the next. The Wand tugged him towards battle with the appetite of a tool that had not seen the violence it craved in years, starved first in Harry's hands and before, in Dumbledore's. The collective experience of hundreds of the greatest, most violent wizards and witches in history flowed up his arm. A corona of unlight split the Wand from reality, a halo of black radiance that marked the border between native matter and singular artifact.
Harry stood.
His mind was empty. The pain and fury and helplessness had vanished, in their place unwavering purpose. "Asce-"
"Eragon has his fight," Arya interrupted quietly. "Ours is down here." Firnen tossed his head up, roaring a challenge to the world.
Harry whirled. Arya's gaze did not move from him. Her hair clung to her skin, sticking up in loops of stray hair. Behind her, the Empire's cavalry galloped, eating up the distance between armies faster and faster, bearing down on them with unstoppable force. She drew her sword from her sheathe, a ray of white sunlight in the darkness. "We fight."
"We fight," he agreed hoarsely. "Angela! Take them back, please."
The herbalist cast off his cloak and tossed it to him. She nodded, linking up with Nasuada and King Orrin. Orrin knelt to Hrothgar's body and lifted it with all the respect owed a fallen monarch. A crack split the air, bouncing off a shield the Elder Wand had raised before Harry had made the decision to move his arm. The vacuum filled with a clap of thunder much closer to them. Angela twisted them out of the center a moment later.
Harry, Arya, and Firnen were left alone between the two charging armies, perhaps twenty seconds before collision.
"I love you," Harry whispered.
"Me too," Arya whispered back.
Harry stared ahead. A spell to kill an army…
The Elder Wand responded. "Protego Diabolica." The words spilled from him without conscious thought, guided by the wand which pulled his arm in a circle. Ghostly fire fell from the tip onto the ground, leaving them ten meters of packed dirt. Arya raised her wand in one hand, the white sun of her phoenix sword glaring in the other.
The enemy lines seemed endless from the ground, covering the whole horizon as they drew nearer. Arya stood back to back with him, fiercer and more beautiful than he had ever seen her. And then they were upon them.
Nasuada gasped and doubled over. Angela's arm released her. "What was that?"
"Apparition," the herbalist explained. King Orrin looked to be having similar troubles. Her Nighthawks clustered around her, her newest magician Carn and her handmaiden Farica fussing over her. "Remember what Harry told you about being exposed. You're a competent leader of the Varden, Lady Nasuada, and I'd hate for your replacement to be some blockheaded man. If you insist on riding out, pay attention to your wards." Angela's face was oddly serious. Nasuada noted that she was already fitted for battle with those strange black, lightweight plates Harry and Arya wore, her huthvir slung over her back.
"I shall continue to make my decisions in the Varden's best interests, as I always have," Nasuada said. "Now, let me at the maps."
Angela nodded and twirled out of existence. "An odd woman, but one I am glad is on my side," King Orrin remarked. He gave her a respectful nod. "I go to head my cavalry. I am apparently considered more disposable than you."
Nasuada worried briefly that he would be offended, but the wry smile on his face disabused her of the notion. "Good fortune, King Orrin."
"Aye. Good fortune, Lady Nasuada." The King of Surda departed the command tent.
"Lady Nasuada!"
The moment he left, voices and men clamored for her attention.
She looked down at the map Harry had given her. It marked out their fortifications in exacting detail, but most impressively, it mapped out the locations of both the Varden's and the Empire's men and assets. Harry, Arya, and Firnen stood alone, dead center of no man's land. The names of the Sniper Corps were anchored in pairs on the fringes of the Burning Plains, a vast number ranging from 20,000 to 60,000 'feet' next to each of their names.
Fixed to the walls of the command tent, great mirrors scryed the field from many angles. On the 'bird's eye view,' Nasuada saw a great circle of ghostly fire encircling her three greatest assets on the ground, blue light scattering in the rain and smoke like the glare of a brilliant light on a foggy night.
"Let them out," she commanded, and the Varden's men streamed forth to meet the charge.
"Bearing 220, a woman in armor not holding her sword," Illentha listed on their private channel. "On my mark. Set…mark."
Niduen fired a shot nearly straight down. She watched both her and Illentha's shots suspend the woman midair for a full second. Then, the woman vanished.
"Third row from the left, two back is unprotected," Illentha reported.
"Copy. Relaying."
A few seconds later, the entire squadron fell over, dead.
Niduen forced her eyes off the hurricane of fire in the center of the battlefield. "Man on the fourth squad, towards the front right," Trianna reported.
"Filvendor's mark," Filvendor claimed. Niduen peered through the redscope, willing someone or something to glare out at her.
"They managed to get a ballista up," Carn added. "Bearing 14 degrees from the command tent. It's hidden underneath a pavilion from above."
"I see it," Virian murmured. "Bombs away."
Niduen lowered the magnification of her scope just in time to see a tent on the front of the Empire's encampment explode spectacularly, sending clods of dirt and scraps of canvas flying. Below them, Eragon and Saphira's forms grappled with the invisible beast that supported Galbatorix. Both Eragon's and Galbatorix's forms blazed with power, Galbatorix's so much that it was like looking into the sun. The red washed out a thin aura around their forms.
"Should we be firing on Galbatorix's mount?" Illentha asked on the private channel.
"No. We're too high up. By the time our shots reach it, Eragon might have gotten in the way."
"Du Vrangr Gata found a magician on the dead center block- Never mind. Arya killed him."
The cavalry showed no semblance of self-preservation, trampling through the blue fire and emerging horrifically burned, but unbothered. Arya leapt and twisted midair over a charging lance, slashing down with Du Sundavar Freohr and cleaving the rider and horse in two in one stroke. The halves fell away into ashes before the next rider was upon her and she was forced to flick her blade, neatly severing his helmeted head. She twisted and flung out her wand hand.
"Avada Kedavra!" a viridian glare claimed the name of the next fool, the green flare flashing in the fog. Harry let her defend him, reaching out with arms of ghostly fire, vicious tongues that consumed dozens of men at a time, their screams aborted squeaks that reached him even as their sources were charred from flesh to bone to ash. Firnen loosed an emerald inferno from overhead, torching another row of horsemen. He dove and clawed through the tide of warriors with savage abandon.
Harry twirled the Elder Wand, sending a siege curse five meters in bore downrange, annihilating two grouped trebuchets at once and carving a furrow in the ground. He slashed a backhanded Sectumsempra, cleaving through thirty soldiers at the waist and forcing them to spread apart. The departing of their souls did not reach him, except as furthering his apathetic goal to clear the field of the Burning Plains of the Empire.
A thunderclap shone around the silhouette of two winged beasts, one dwarfing the other. The Lethrblaka's shriek pierced over the thunder. A pennant of blue flame shot through the clouds.
A crude bullet tore through Harry's shoulder. He staggered back, firing a retaliatory reducto in the general direction of its source, watching a plume of dirt erupt a hundred meters down. There were bodies mixed in with the clods of peat. Boulders and javelins rained from siege engines, splitting Harry's attention between attack and defense. He glassed a sandy boulder with a tongue of fire. It fell to the ground and shattered in a cone of glittering spray.
Flicking his wand, elephants blinked into existence, pre-enraged and pointed at the Empire. Hedwig burst into existence over Harry, white fire glaring like the mimicry of Arya's blade. The elf leapt straight up twenty feet. Firnen snatched her out of the air and towed them both thirty, forty, fifty feet into the sky. Arya shouted something lost to the storm and brought hell on earth. A tsunami bulged out from the tip of her wand, swelling and sweeping up horses and men alike, cresting fifteen feet high and crushing a battalion of the Empire's line in a tangle of spears and death. Foamy water choked the smoking peat, bubbling and frothing with steam and superheated gas.
Hedwig screeched, a musical note which shot courage and fortitude through the hearts of the Varden's allies. Harry fired jets of lava from the Elder Wand and into the standing water, the thick, goopy rock encasing the enemy and cooling around them in the flood, forming bits of obsidian cover the Varden's footsoldiers scrambled up to threaten the Empire from above. Angela fought closer to him, huddling within the border of his Protego Diabolica, which had shrunk to a couple meters under the trampling of hostile bodies. Her huthvir spun and twirled faster than Harry could track. Harry took the momentary lapse to heal his gunshot wound, an ugly hole that made raising his left arm agony.
"We need to back up," Angela called to him. "The Empire keeps trying to hem you in. The Varden is being forced beyond their fortifications to hold them back." Harry nodded, sheathing his rapier.
"Hedwig!" The phoenix swooped down and grabbed his left arm. Harry hoisted Angela up with him. The moment Hedwig's claws made contact with his arm, weightlessness enveloped his body. They soared over the roiling battlefield, coasting back towards the fortifications. The battle lines had deteriorated from neat segments into a sprawling, scribbly line of furious combat that looped around glassy chunks of obsidian, deep puddles of muddy water, and sprawling knots of bodies.
The Empire had formed a line around the wedge of the Varden's men. Harry had stood at the spearhead. He sent his mind back to the fortifications, knocking politely on Carn's mental defenses. "Can you get the order out to back up towards the fortifications? My stupidity drew them past our terrain advantages."
Relief flooded through the link. "You may need to help bail the flanks out. The Empire moved their cavalry away from your ring of death and harasses the infantry without cover. They are leveraging their numbers to encircle us."
Harry shouted over the wind and clamor of battle. "Head east, first!" Hedwig banked and glided over to a segment where the Varden were clinging to their enchanted spears for dear life, using them to ward off a cavalry charge that kept probing and splitting off, searching for an opening to run over the line. One of the marksmen kept forcing them back with explosive and incendiary rounds, but the standing water kept choking the fire before it could act as a barrier, and the Empire had begun to learn the timing between shots.
Arya must have gotten the same information because Firnen dove on the opposite side of the field and just before Harry landed, he caught a glimpse of glaring white and glittering green tearing through the western lines.
Plotting out a region in front of the footmen, Harry stabbed his wand down. Deafening shrieks and crunching bone rang out. The Empire's cavalrymen struggled to peel themselves off the ground against quintuple gravity, their horses' legs snapped in gruesome compound fractures. The Varden made to surge forwards.
"STOP," Harry commanded them. "Or you'll get caught in the field." The terror coming from the helpless men was overwhelming. He cast about for the magician, the only one defending their mind among the group, and sent a precise killing curse winging through the mess of bodies. A moment after that, the rest of the men stopped struggling, glassy eyes etched with terror. The men behind him gave a muted cheer, silently thanking their gods that Harry was on their side. "We're backing up to the stakes," he announced. They were covered by the Empire running around the edges of the soggy marsh studded with fresh obsidian-flesh obelisks.
Once they were secure behind the earthworks, Harry moved on inwards, pulling everyone back towards the fortifications. Once he had, the Varden's archers started firing en masse over the walls. With Galbatorix occupied overhead and Firnen, Arya, and Harry given free reign, the battle was a slaughterhouse for Empire men and magicians.
Saphira flapped her wings against the wind, stopping in the air just soon enough to let the lethrblaka's maw soar by. She dove forwards, raking her claws against the thing's skin, biting and grasping in deep. She tucked her wings and ripped with her teeth. The lethrblaka shrieked, bucking so hard she ragdolled by her jaw, flapping hard to keep her grip.
Eragon stabbed Brisingr at the figure on its back. Galbatorix knocked the blade away with his own sword, a bleached white thing that looked like half glass, half steel. Eragon's Eldunari attacked with deadly precision, driving again and again into the Black King's mind, but it was nearly impossible to grasp under the torrent of maddened, yammering voices lashing out at them. Eragon dared not open his mind any more than he had to to speak with Saphira. Umaroth and his fellows were acting independently.
Galbatorix flung out his right palm, gedwey ignasia glowing. "Thrysta!"
Saphira was hurled away from the lethrblaka, sent hurtling through the dim grey fog. She righted herself just below the cloud cover, granting Eragon a glimpse of the mayhem the Varden was inflicting on the Empire unopposed.
"The longer we keep him occupied, the more damage Harry, Firnen, and Arya can inflict," he sent Saphira.
Determination flowed back. "The Oath-breaker does not even ride a true dragon," she snarled. "We shall rip him from the skies."
Eragon fed her energy from the gems Harry had given him to fuel the powerful wingbeats Saphira used to get back into the clouds. The clamor of battle below quieted. Flapping from Galbatorix's dread mount sounded like it came from everywhere at once. Thunder exploded a dozen meters away, sending his ears ringing. The flash illuminated the lethrblaka's shadow for an instant, a hundred meters away and twice as high. Saphira winged faster, climbing as hard as her flight muscles allowed.
A second later, something enormous careened below. The wind sucked her downwards. Saphira bared her teeth and circled higher, waiting for the next flash. A minute later, the world shook and revealed the lethrblaka's position right behind her. She flipped backwards, diving onto the thing's back like a bullfighter and sinking her teeth into its nape. Galbatorix's form rested mere feet from her baleful glare.
Eragon surged forth with Brisingr, fitting his blade beneath his enemy's. It skated off the King's wards. Galbatorix retaliated with a slash, turned away by Eragon's shoulderpiece. The King's mental attack intensified as he met his eyes, a piercing attack that sought to shear through the bit of elvish poetry Eragon doggedly repeated. Just when he was sure his defenses would give way, Galbatorix blasted Saphira off his mount again, and they were tumbling through free fall once more.
Saphira flared her wings over a hot updraft, balancing on the pillar of air. Eragon wiped rain off his forehead. A moment later, she coasted over the fluffy ceiling of cloud cover. He spotted the blurry squares of the elves' carpets overhead. "Dive!" Eragon sent. "We can't draw Galbatorix's attention to the snipers."
She agreed, tipping off the updraft. The lethrblaka's presence was invisible and intangible to their minds, and neither of them were willing to risk brushing up against the Black King's mind. Saphira hovered at the top layer of cloud cover, hoping for a lightning strike. Else, they were flying truly blind.
"Naina!" Galbatorix's voice cried. White glare shone off the clouds, revealing his exact position. A moment later, the illumination ended. The lethrblaka was almost straight below them, maw agape. Saphira dove at an angle, leading ahead of the direction the beast was facing. Eragon leaned forwards, Brisingr held outstretched from her shoulder. Saphira twisted mere feet before soaring into its bite radius and crashed into its back, driving her teeth and Eragon's sword into the space between its wings. She pushed off, flapped once, and anchored her teeth around the massive base of the lethrblaka's wing. The beast immediately tipped back so that Saphira was closer to the ground, then let itself plummet.
The muscle was thick and the bone, as big around as Eragon's skull. "I cannot rip through this alone," Saphira sent. It would have been comical, had the situation been more serious. The base of the lethrblaka's wing was so huge, Saphira biting it looked like Eragon trying to fit a whole ham in his mouth at once.
"Brisingr!" he yelled. The blue blade burst into flames. Eragon hacked and sawed at the shoulder, the brightsteel biting deeper and deeper with every slash.
"Malthinae!" Galbatorix called back. Saphira and Eragon seized in place.
'Releashio,' Eragon thought as hard as he could. Galbatorix cried out, staggering in place ahead of them. The King stared balefully back. He needed to change tactics; he was unwilling to kill Saphira, and nor could his magic hold them against the spells Eragon had learned from Harry. Eragon's wand was stuck in a sheathe on his belt, but he did not draw it midair for fear of losing it to Galbatorix. They were in deadlock for until Saphira whittled away at the lethrblaka's strength. Galbatorix could not attack her in earnest with such an overwhelmingly large mount for fear of accidentally killing her and in his mind, consigning the draconic race and his subsequent dreams of a subservient Rider order to oblivion.
Galbatorix cocked his head as if listening to a report. Eragon's heart sank. Had he realized-? "Thrysta," he called back, flinging Saphira once more into the fog of the clouds. Eragon felt Saphira struggle to overcome the strength of a great downdraft. Galbatorix had disengaged to aid his army below.
Harry cast a bubblehead over himself. The rain kept getting into his eyes. He set the oxygen content to twice the normal, shook a pinch of nutrient powder into his upturned mouth, and fought on.
Angela wasn't where he left him when he apparated back. He cast his mind out to find her, finding it flickering between dozens of different locations across the field with unbelievable speed. An instant later, she emerged sagging against his shoulder. Dozens of men crumpled with little slash wounds across their necks, and the mental defenses of the knot's magician vanished with her lifeforce. Harry punched a head-sized hole in a mace-wielding fiend and offered her some powder. The herbalist took it with a smile.
"Time magic?"
She nodded, her curly hair clinging to her brow. "Their magician was preparing to kill a chunk of the Varden. Bargruuf's dead."
Harry winced. "Shit."
"Got any more aces up your sleeves?" Angela panted.
"The cavalry is on their way, if we can hold out long enough," he told her, splitting his focus, reporting to Carn that someone else needed to cover the section. "I don't know if Eragon's teacher is watching through scrying, but we can hope."
Angela scowled. "Wasn't his plan to stick with the elves and work through Gil'ead, first? It's a lot of ground to cover."
He spared her a cryptic wink. "Different cavalry."
Harry drew Zippy and quadrisected a terrified soldier pressed into him by the throngs behind. Another tiny swish and the next one fell, too. The Elder Wand urged him to delve into nastier magic, and the mental toll of keeping it on task with the magic he wanted made the simplicity of physical combat a relief. Harry backed away from their bodies. Tall presences smashed towards the two of them. Harry glanced back and grinned. A massive, fully armored kull bearing Garzhvog's standard smashed his way through the Empire's pikemen with a wicked sword long enough to outreach even spears.
"Nar Garzhvog!" Harry hailed. "How goes battle?"
"Excellent," he rumbled, his glass-like sword flashing as it bit through three men in one stroke. Hedwig shrieked and dove back a few dozen meters. Harry spotted her rising high up off the battlefield, an archer clutched in her talons. A few dozen meters up, she released him screaming back to earth. "Our shamans are finding their duties very easy. The Empire's magicians keep dropping dead."
Harry glanced at the sky darkly. The storm showed no signs of abating, and seemed to grow only stronger. The wind was tough to maneuver through on the ground. He could only imagine what flight was like overhead. "Only for as long as Eragon keeps Galbatorix distracted."
Nar Garzhvog shared his sentiments, his massive, lopsided horns bobbing. He raised a massive arm and caught four arrows on his shield, then slung his sword into its sheathe and unslung his enormous, Urgal-horn bow. Harry stepped in front of him and let Zippy dance to keep eager attackers off his friend.
Garzhvog squinted, drew, then released. The thrum of the shot resonated in his chest. A choked cry and the ram's satisfied nod told him he'd struck his target. Garzhvog switched weapons again and went back to carving through the Empire. "Well fought, Mooneater," he chuckled. Angela had switched from her huthvir to a much smaller sword of glass.
"Tinkledeath isn't my favorite," she admitted, slicing through a spearhead and then its wielder in a loopy stroke. "But it's fun to cut through everything." Garzhvog laughed over a lightning strike.
"As sharp as your wit, Angela."
Without warning, the sky fell. Galbatorix's mount emerged from the clouds, wisps of grey condensation flying off its wings. It circled low, facing the Varden, and exhaled. "Protego!" Harry snapped. The shimmering blue shield bloomed into existence, but nothing visible emerged from the lethrblaka's beak. "What was that supposed to do?"
Angela rattled something off in a hoarse voice, indicating Garzhvog in her spell. The massive ram had slowed down for a moment. "Poisonous breath," she coughed. All along the battle line, the Varden's men (and the unlucky Empire's caught in the fumes) froze, terror in their eyes. The Empire surged forwards, taking advantage of their incapacity to cut down the front lines. The most terrible part was, those eager first few were caught in the same evil breath and trampled to death by their allies behind.
Harry sheathed Zippy and sent a killing curse at the massive beast's center mass. It looked for a moment like it was going to connect, but Galbatorix must have cast something because it jerked out of the way like someone had shoved it through the air. "One moment." He apparated back to the Varden's battlements, slashing broadly across the battlefield. "VENTUS!"
Wind howled over the burning plains, drowning out the thunder for just a few seconds. Flagbearers in the Varden stumbled, snapping pendants straining to escape their grip. Immediately, the Empire began to freeze and when the Varden moved cautiously forwards to take advantage, the magical gust had already scrubbed the air they moved into. "Incarcerous," Harry called towards the lethrblaka. Massive, foot-thick chains disgorged from the Elder Wand, twisting like living serpents through the air, forming tangles of netting that raced towards Galbatorix and his mount. They seized midair for a moment, but the chains did not fall to the earth, rather they slithered and strained against the spell that foiled them as if magnetized to their target. Sparks of purple skated off the lethrblaka's wards, blasts from explosive rounds and spurts of liquid flame from the focused fire of every sniper below the clouds.
Galbatorix swooped towards the Varden's battlements, but Harry forced him away with killing curses that zoned him off and forced him back up into the clouds. Saphira dove beneath the clouds just long enough to torch a segment of the Empire's backline before following the lethrblaka back into the storm. Harry brushed Eragon's mind, watching the chains speed towards the sky in pursuit. "Tell me if the chains start to hinder you."
Eragon's mental defenses lowered just enough to slip through, "Saphira is more agile than the beast. They are an asset."
Harry twisted and reappeared where he'd left Angela and Garzhvog. He found himself well within the Varden's lines and had to jog to get to the fighting. Garzhvog was fighting with a few of his fellow rams, but Angela was not with him. "A good push!" he laughed, patting Harry on the back with a gauntleted palm. The herbalist reappeared with a crack, slicking blood off Tinkledeath's blade and switching it out for her huthvir once more.
She saw his curious expression. "One must take advantage of absolute chaos when one sees it," she nodded at the scrambling Empire. A javelin struck an invisible wall somewhere overhead, though none of the three of them could tell which of their wards had stopped it.
Harry shot a region of frigid cold at the clump in front of them, instantly slaying a hundred with hypothermia. He tried not to think about how the test rat had felt when he'd inflicted that manner of death upon it. Garzhvog's blade had no trouble beheading the already-dead men, but Angela wore a grim face that told Harry she had noticed the clammy, rigid state of the dead men as she stabbed through them with her huthvir.
"VANISH THE CHAINS!" Eragon shouted in his mind.
Saphira ducked under the whooshing chains, flapping backwards, then redoubling towards the lethrblaka. The chains stalled a few meters ahead, closer to its silhouette in the fog. They stalled, forcing her to make a jerky ascent. The lethrblaka couldn't hope to outmaneuver the massive links, and their relentless pursuit forced Galbatorix to stop and then release them after Saphira chased him away and he lost track of them, lest the distance drain too much energy, or be forced to release them when Eragon cast releashio on the chains.
That Galbatorix was sparing any thought to preserving his energy was heartening. The power the Eldunari lent Eragon was awesome, and they were but a small fraction of what Galbatorix could draw upon. He wondered how much effort Galbatorix had invested in holding them midair the first time Eragon shattered his hold. Lightning cast both the chains and Saphira's quarry in stark relief again, a looming net and an unfathomably huge beast.
The lethrblaka shot out a taloned foot, catching Saphira squarely in the chest. Eragon felt her pain bloom through the link. She held her wings out wide and airbraked to disengage. "Use this spell," Umaroth recited a long string of words Eragon relayed aloud as he heard them. The Eldunari fed him power once the magic took hold. "Be wary of chest, spine, and head injuries," Umaroth advised. "That was costly to accomplish." The strain of fending off a sustained, titanic mental attack for nearly an hour now showed in his mental voice.
Saphira circled higher, waiting for another strike. When it came, Galbatorix had moved well beyond the region he'd been fighting over, in the skies above the major clash. The silhouette lingered on Eragon's adjusting eyesight like a still fairth, further out. Not fleeing, but forcing them to give chase.
"Is he still attacking with his mind?" Eragon asked the Eldunari. "We can stall and give you some time to recover."
"He is, but you must stay on him, anyways," Umaroth sent, strained. "Even a moment of his interference could be disastrous for the Varden. You can kill him. He cannot. Lean into your advantages, Eragon and Saphira."
Eragon felt Saphira's savage agreement. She tipped into the headwind and tucked her wings, diving straight into the storm. Without being certain where the chains were, she flew with caution, both her attention and his own focused on catching the ropey shadows through the lightning strikes. They came so frequently now that Eragon felt strain on his irises as they struggled to compensate for the dim light and brilliant flashes. His vision had spots on it like he had pressed his fingers against his eyelids for too long.
Saphira followed the lethrblaka's pungent scent and caught a glimpse of the beast. Its right wing had been healed, but half-heartedly, like Galbatorix hadn't bothered to invest his full attention into properly fixing it. Saphira coasted in without flapping. It was foolish to think she would go undetected, but every second counted. The lethrblaka's wings were so huge that they flapped slowly, and made it easy for her to reestablish her grip on the half-healed wound.
Like the sky had fallen upon them, something massive and unyielding crashed into Eragon's back, pinning him to Saphira's back and pinning her in turn to the lethrblaka's. He shouted in agony.
Harry's chain had tied Saphira and him to the lethrblaka's upper back like a low collar.
"VANISH THE CHAINS!" he screamed with his mind. It took three agonizing seconds of Galbatorix battering at Eragon's mind with all the fury of the storm that engulfed them. Eragon heard ringing, saw spots, and tasted blood. The Black King's mount dove from the sky a second before the chains vanished, pulling Saphira down.
"Avada Kedavra," Eragon chewed around his wounded tongue. A pale, sickly curse leapt from his wand, a weak imitation of Harry's killing curses. Galbatorix ducked beneath it, letting the bolt race up the back of the lethrblaka's neck and out into the aether.
"To me!" he called. Eragon's wand wrenched out of his hand.
"Letta!" Eragon snapped, but it was like trying to hold back the ocean with a thimble. Even once the Eldunari lent their might, the surge of power required to keep his wand frozen was staggering. "Releashio!"
The weak, wandless spell failed to affect the wand. Eragon comprehended his error a moment later. A summoning charm was not a binding charm. "Finite!" The wand wavered. Galbatorix gritted his teeth, but was forced to abandon the attempt. Eragon stashed his wand in his holster. The cold, clammy certainty that he had almost just lost his only advantage made his fingers shudder, slick with frigid rain.
The beast's wing once again threatened to tear away from the rest of its body. Saphira watched it shriek in agony as it flapped once, twice, then ripped itself apart by its titanic weight. Absent a wing, the massive beast spiraled down.
Galbatorix ripped himself from the tiny patch of his saddle without hesitation, flinging himself into freefall. Sephora raced towards him, claws extended. The wind howled too loudly to hear what Galbatorix said, propelling him into the clouds.
"Look for a lone human," Eragon barked to Niduen. The King ditched his mount.
"He's coming back around," she mentally shouted.
O O O
Urd slashed through the Empire soldier's blade. The man held half a blade miserably, but did not stop attacking. The futility of attacking with vastly inferior gear had sank in, but he was resigned to his death. Urd saw it in his eyes. They never surrendered. He batted the weapon away and cut him down.
The battlefield changed on the random whims of the Varden's magicians. Before his eyes, a fissure opened in the ground between the Empire and a section of the Varden in need of relief. The ground kept changing, firming up beneath his feet and the feet of his battalion. Conditions kept absurdly favoring their side, changing and changing again as the Empire tried to adapt.
Urd's squad leader Trask bellowed some orders lost in the thunder, gestures equally futile in the terrible visibility. It was all he could do to keep linked up with his own squadron. They began advancing to the obsidian ridge. Their side flattened into a ramp, the surface roughening enough to allow their boots purchase. The Empire's side was a sheer, smooth glass drop.
The imperial troops were smart enough to stay back several paces. The battle line thinned to make way for men flowing to either side. Trask gestured for them to huddle a few steps below the ridge.
"How many arrows have we got?" he asked.
Urd reached over his shoulder and grasped at the bundle sticking out of his quiver. "Half dozen," he reported.
"Seven,"
"Four,"
"Three,"
"Four," the rest of his squad chimed in. Trask cursed.
"Not worth wasting just yet. Right, here's the plan; we head out east and help the Varden stop the Empire from wrapping."
Urd marched with his squad to the right of the ridge, all the way until it ended. A thinner battle line had formed out of Varden troops defending the crest. "Where are all the magicians?" Trask cursed. Urd threw a glance behind him. The sky flashed with unnatural colors all the way on the other side of the battle line.
"Probably over there," he joked.
Errin cracked a weak smile between pants.
The further to the east they got, the more dire the Varden's situation appeared. The Empire only kept a thin line of men between the Varden and their camps, men who defended rather than attacking. The bulk of the imperial forces split apart, maneuvering east and forcing the Varden to thin and thin itself until there were scarcely enough men to defend, even with fortification. Trask found them a spot to fight and Urd went back to cutting through men.
The Empire had wizened up. They refused to present Harry with clumps to kill en masse, thinning and spreading out, in some cases outright retreating to space themselves beyond the area of effect of massed spells.
While it did slow Arya's and Harry's rampage drastically, the spacing left between imperial men let the Varden's battle line advance almost without casualty, surrounding and subduing men in skirmishes of five or six on one
"This is not worth our time," Arya growled, electrocuting a man with a careless lightning bolt. She went quiet for a moment. "Nasuada suggests attacking their camp."
Harry shrugged. "We can do that."
Firnen swooped down and crouched low for Arya to jump up. Harry made to produce his broom, but Arya stopped him with an outstretched hand. "Wait, really?" Firnen eyed him with one massive green iris.
Without you, none of this would be possible, Firnen's voice rumbled in his mind. But this will not become a habit.
Harry allowed Arya to yank him up into the saddle. Firnen leapt off. It was a bit like riding Buckbeak. There was a rhythm, a rise and fall to Firnen's flight, and it was disconcerting to be a passenger instead of the pilot. Yet it was smoother than horseback. The air had a way of gentling Firnen's driving wingbeats, turning the harsh collision of hooves on ground into a bobbing sail, closer to rafting than walking.
He took the brief respite to magic his clothes and skin clean, siphoning away blood and gore and ash. A few ballistae shots cracked off Firnen's wards, but their flight was otherwise unchallenged. The disposition of the Empire seemed to have changed. They weren't really trying to defend anymore, it felt like they had acknowledged that they simply could not harm the juggernauts on the Varden's side. Rather, they had a frenetic energy about them, like they knew they couldn't win, but maybe they could make the Varden lose with them.
From his perspective, Harry watched their attacks get sloppier and more reckless, desperate for every drop they could bleed from the Varden. The Empire's massive numerical advantage was the only thing keeping them in the game. The battle line fanned out further and further to either side, threatening with every step to encircle the deployed men.
"I don't think it's going to make a difference," Harry called over the wind and rain. "They know they're going to lose. We'll just be killing support troops. They're killing themselves for every step. Either we massacre the backline in anticipation of Galbatorix winning the 1v1, or we play defense until the outcome is decided and bank goodwill with the Empire for the transition of power."
Arya nodded. Firnen banked and soared off course. "I explained to Carn. He says Nasuada understands and concurs. Whatever you can do to support the flanks."
"No point in us landing," Harry said.
Agreed, Firnen said. He dove low on the west flank, bathing the Varden's ranks with green. Harry could feel it through his legs, Firnen's entire chest thrummed. The backwash from his fire warmed Harry's face over Arya's shoulder. It illuminated her features an eerie green. From his perspective, the light crept across her cheek and ear, her face turned to watch the devastation.
Harry hardened his heart. It was a pretty terrible way to die. The only consolation was that once the fire overwhelmed the Empire's wards, the soldiers instantly died. He produced his broom. "I'm going to head to the other side. I wonder how Eragon's doing."
Worse. Much worse.
I am beginning to regret downing his steed, Saphira growled, catching the air with her wings and dodging the madman hurtling through the air.
The lethrblaka had been a shadow of a shadow to Galbatorix, a colossal tool to ride, the last desperate pretense that remained of the King's identity as a Rider. Torn away from him, Galbatorix took to the sky under the power of his own magic.
Tiny and wearing black in the dim light of the storm, visibility began to hamper Eragon and Saphira more than Galbatorix. He darted out between clouds with his stolen sword outstretched, made a cut or thrust, then disappeared for another pass.
Saphira had suffered several wounds thusly, and Eragon wasn't unscathed either. Tracking the King with his mind was far too risky when Galbatorix continued to utterly outclass them in terms of direct power. Each time he thought to lock them in place with magic, only Eragon's wand broke them free.
You must break this stalemate, Umaroth said. If this continues, you will be defeated by a thousand cuts.
We only need to strike him once to win! Saphira snarled, whipping her tail like a spiked mace at a dark form racing past. It hissed through empty space.
So does he, Umaroth said darkly. He is twisted and hateful. Should he decide he needs only you, Saphira, Eragon will die.
Eragon felt the notion cut through Saphira's frustrated fury. Fine. We land. Talk to him, Eragon. See if he will boast or gloat.
Eragon felt Saphira land hard on top of the plateau, her paws striking stone. He jumped out of the saddle and tilted his head into the rain, back towards the clouds.
"Keep the rain out of my eyes," he muttered.
Galbatorix was not long after them. He fell out of the sky with reckless speed, furious. An instant before he struck the ground with lethal force, he barked a word and halted.
Eragon fixed his gaze on the man, Brisingr readied. "Was this how Vrael died?"
The king sneered. "He was greater than you could hope to imagine. Centuries of training, experience, and wisdom, and I felled him all the same. You come before me knowing you are nothing, knowing I have grown a thousand times stronger since, and hope to slay me?"
In the storm, rain steamed down his aquiline features. He drew his own sword, a bleached shard of glass. "This was his, once. Perhaps you know it."
"Islingr," Eragon remembered. "Light bringer." With Brisingr, he struck out at the king. Galbatorix batted the strike aside. Even with all his elven strength, Galbatorix's blow felt like the sky falling upon his arm. Like striking a stone wall, utterly unyielding.
"I have taken to calling it Vrangr, now," Galbatorix said, unbothered. Eragon had to agree it fitted. Awry. He stabbed at the king, iridescent blue skating to the side against bleached translucent white. Galbatorix foiled him with half a thought at each strike, yet Eragon did not dare let up. Emotions roiled inside him.
Every other person he had killed had been an obstacle or attacker. The urgals in Yazuac and beneath Farthen Dur, the infiltrators he'd encountered on the march, the Black Hand, and a handful of others across the course of his time as a Rider. Galbatorix was the first man he had truly set out to kill. As justified as the deed was, Carvahall had a word for that: murder.
"You did not bring your friend," the king observed. "The wizard. Now him, I might've feared." Galbatorix tapped his boot with the flat of his blade. He looked close to losing control. "You come before me as a child, pushed and poked by powers beyond your ken. Even now they whisper to you, do they not?"
"Listen to him not, for he whispers only lies," Umaroth commanded. Eragon grunted and cleaved down at the king's unhelmed head. He did not bother to bring up Vrangr, except in incidence as he deflected the blow with a lazy tilt of his greaves. He feared if he stopped striking out, he would lose the will to slay the king at all.
"I did not expect any more Eldunari to show up. Introduce yourselves, won't you?" Galbatorix ordered loudly.
Both their minds were guarded as tightly as they could; no direct communication was possible.
"Umaroth speaks for them," Eragon spoke. The Eldunari's mental voice came forcefully, Umaroth nearly speaking with his lips. "There will be no quarter given, no moment or place of respite, and nowhere to hide. Eragon struggled to seize back his body, irritated that Umaroth presumed to set terms for him. Galbatorix did not need to know that this fight was to the death until the moment it claimed him.
The king was sharp, though. The instant he spotted the struggle, his demeanor flipped.
"Umaroth? I remember him well. I killed your Rider, Umaroth. Is that why you drive this young man to madness? Your mere tool to claw back revenge for a century old wrong, masterminded from within your crystalline prison?"
"Eragon. They are fair weather allies," he coaxed. "Show a moment of weakness, of spine, and you are nothing to them. They crave domination, Eragon. I have done nothing but prove myself stronger, look how they seek to tear me down. I am not cruel without reason. You could join me, in a position of power, subordinate only to myself, counsel me, work as my agent, learn at my hand." Galbatorix's dark eyes glittered, boring into his own.
"I do not know the wizard's power, but I do know ours, better and deeper than any other. You could step out of his shadow."
"And into yours?" Eragon snorted. But his serpentine tongue wormed into his mind, conjuring doubts. He remembered what Oromis had said. Galbatorix excelled at breaking minds. There was more than one way to do the task. He redoubled his sword work. Every clash of their blades felt like striking his sword into stone. The instant Galbatorix sought to end their fight, he would reach for magic. Eragon's wroth raised. He was being toyed with.,
"You assume to be a slave," Galbatorix said, slapping the hilt of Brisingr with a mailled palm. Eragon felt the impact jar his wrist numb. "Not so. Ask any scholar; the hallmark of my rule has been a light touch. Perhaps too light, if you believe the wizard. I envisage a great agent of good, a Rider of old, the head of a new order, subject to only a single check against corruption. Is my distant gaze too heavy to endure?" He slid his gauntlet down Brisingr's length and pounded the crossguard with his fist. Eragon gasped. Something had cracked in his wrist. Biting his lip, he chewed out a phrase of healing. The king allowed it without alarm, listening to the spell Eragon spoke and deciding it was unconcerning.
"We could bring the dragons back," he whispered, black eyes gleaming with sheer want. Eragon saw into his fathomless pupils and knew that this, at least, was no treacherous manipulation. Galbatorix truly wanted his new order of Riders. And it sickened him.
As quickly as Galbatorix's seductive illusion was built, it shattered. Eragon found himself enraged. The very idea that he would consider such a perfect vision on the backs, blood, and bones of thousands of dragons, elves, dwarves, urgals, and men, it offended him.
"Never yours," Eragon swore. He switched to the Ancient Language, sending his intent to Saphira. She immediately agreed to burn whatever caution remained. "We will never serve you. We swear it."
Eragon saw it in his terrible gaze. The moment Galbatorix realized he only needed a female dragon, not her Rider. The Black King pointed a finger at Eragon and pronounced levelly. "Deyja."
AN: Hey everybody. Long time, no see. This author's note is a long one.
TL;DR: This fic is ending. One more chapter. Plans for a full rewrite, check my profile for the new one.
I started writing this story over two years ago now, partly to flex my rusty writing skills, partly because I really wanted to read a Harry Potter + Inheritance Cycle crossover, and not enough of them existed, so I thought I'd give back.
Now I've got several projects in the air right now. If you haven't seen it yet, I'm working on a HP/MCU/ASOIAF crossover you can check out if you're interested. I wrote a few chapters of an ATLA self-insert, and I have a couple ideas in my head about pure Harry Potter stories that I may or may not publish or continue.
However, one thing I don't really want to do is continue this story. At least, in its current form.
It was my first piece after a long time without writing, and I had virtually never plotted out a story arc myself. I made a lot of beginner mistakes, and this piece is littered with them. I won't delete the story, if you're worried about that. But I also don't think I'll continue this fic in its current iteration.
However, I like many of the concepts and threads I started here. I started a halfhearted attempt at rewriting the whole story, pasting over the worst of my early chapters, but it was awkward and clumsy, especially since I kept trying to squish in all the stupid stuff I added to the story right at the start. I don't want to give up the ideas I've been exploring in HEFMA, but I want to iterate on the story as a whole, instead of trying to patch up a sinking ship.
Things you can look forward to: Blinky will not return. Basilisks are so overpowered in HP canon that either I have to nerf them into the ground and craft tricky excuses as to why she doesn't sweep every battle, or I have to leave her out. So as fun as it was to write a tiny little snake in, she's getting the axe in the new version. I'm still on the fence about Hedwig being a phoenix. It breaks some story beats far, FAR down the line. You'll just have to see, since I haven't decided yet. I will cull Harry's childish impudence and cut way down on his power level to give the IC characters their time to shine, and I'll rework the snap romance with Arya into a more sensible form. There will be no more explicit existence of God, traveling to Heaven, or anything like that. While I enjoyed the chance to play with our perception of the Judeo-Christian God and work that into the mythos of the story, some questions are too big to be answered. The Resurrection Stone will take a new form in the new story, as well.
To the guy who left toxic flames on my story for LITERAL YEARS, fuck you. I'm writing a new version and it's going to be Harry/Arya, just to spite you. I would make Eragon into a sniveling coward too, if I didn't have respect for the character.
This is one of the longest author's notes I've ever written. I try to keep them short and concise to avoid inflating the word count, but I felt this chapter needed an afterword. To the thousand some of you who stuck with this project 'till this point, genuinely, I thank you. I can hardly believe how many of you there are who came here to enjoy my first stumbling attempt at writing fanfiction. I hope many of you will find the same enjoyment in my new projects, but if you don't, it was an honor to entertain you all.
This chapter is the penultimate one in this fic. Out of respect for everyone invested, there will be one final post. I will try to get it up in a reasonable time frame. I know that knowing the timeline ruins some of the suspense of the story, but I've had a vision for this next chapter almost since the beginning that I hope to do justice. I think you'll like it. I'll re-paste this author's note on that chapter, too.
This is the part where authors paste a quirky line that means a lot to their fandom. If it was pure HP, I might have put Mischief Managed here, or perhaps Waise Niet or Argetlam or something. Instead, I'll just say this: Thank you.