CW: Yazuac. Gore, horror, vomiting, you probably all know what to expect.
Sure enough, by the time the sky had begun to pinken, Yazuac came into view down a hill and across a stretch of undergrowth. Not long after crossing the Anora, Brom had relocated the road and decided it safe enough to take, which accelerated their progress. They were far enough from Carvahall that they were not likely to stumble across anyone who knew the suspicious circumstances around their departure. Harry felt a pang of guilt over the way they had been forced to flee.
Despite being visible, Yazuac was still at least an hour away. It was only visible because the ground had flattened to papery yellow-green.
"The Great Plains," Brom announced. "The heartland of the Empire, though settlements are all on its fringes or atop a source of water. Crossing it on foot is foolish for most. Food and water are sparse and it is so large it is nigh impossible to carry enough supplies to make it across at walking pace. To the south, the plains get a bit more rain and support some villages. Up here, travelers must keep a close eye on their waterskins." Left unsaid was that Harry's presence obviated those concerns.
Either way, Harry agreed with the sentiment that he would never try to cross what amounted to a whole country on foot. Even with no vantage point, he could see for miles of uninterrupted flat grassland. In front of them and sitting on the fringe of the plains, drawing water from the Anora's offshoots and groundwater, was Yazuac.
It was a charming village, Harry supposed. It was nestled into a bend in a creek, a balding copse of trees on either side. The buildings were a bit bigger and a bit sturdier than Carvahall, but had the same rustic beauty to them. The river turned a water wheel that drove a mill. It was all very idyllic.
Harry once again had to reevaluate what it meant to be human. Carvahall had helped him understand that modern day Britain and the wizarding world were not the only ways to have a good life. Even without electricity or running water, families had been made and grew up here in Yazuac. He imagined what children might do without parks and playgrounds. If they would run laughing through the grassy fields, swim in the ponds, play games with their imagination. If they fished in the Anora River or explored the easy forests on the banks.
He had to force himself to acknowledge that it was possible to acquire food without going to the supermarket, and entertain people without the telly and the radio. People adapted to the world they lived in, and made their homes wherever they were. Yazuac was simply the home of people who were not fortunate enough to live in a time where electricity and indoor plumbing made things convenient and comfortable.
It was a nice village.
And quiet.
Harry could tell the others felt it too, a general sense of unease. It wasn't that late yet, and it had been a beautiful day. There should have still been kids playing outside, or parents yelling at said kids to come home, farmers finishing up in the fields, stuff like that.
Instead, the place looked and sounded abandoned. The caws of birds came from further in. Over the roofline, dark colored birds circled.
"Maybe they spotted us and hid?" Eragon supposed.
"Three random strangers on foot?" Brom said dubiously.
"Where else would they be?" Eragon wondered.
They crossed half of the final mile to the village when the wind changed directions.
Harry pinched his nose and scrunched his face. An awful, fetid and rotten stench blew from the village upwind. Harry had never smelled anything half as terrible, not even the sewage pipes full of decaying rat bones in the Chamber of Secrets. It smelled like death, there was no other word for it.
Brom and Eragon went quiet.
Harry cast a bubblehead around himself as the stench became unbearable, passing between the first couple houses on the road through town. Saphira was circling high overhead, high enough for her silhouette to be that of a normal bird's.
"She doesn't see anyone," Eragon reported. "Apparently there's something in the town square she can't make out. There's a whole storm of carrion birds flying over it."
With that ominous warning, they made their way towards the town square. Harry grew worried when even Eragon and Brom seemed to struggle with the stench. Eragon grew up on a farm and Brom was tough as nails. Harry knew if he could actually smell it, he'd be gagging.
What came into view when they approached was something out of some otherworldly horror movie. A mountain of seething, flapping black feathers. The vultures covered whatever was beneath so thickly that Harry could not see beneath. They screeched and fought over something. Around the edges of the pile, dirty, dried brownish-black ichor had seeped from the edges to cover half the square.
"What the fuck is under there?" Harry's hand was already going for his wand when Brom caught his wrist.
"We can't be sure there's no one left," Brom gritted under his breath. "No one left behind."
Confusion clouded Harry's mind for a moment. "You think whoever did this is still around?"
"Maybe." Brom patted the hilt of his sword. Eragon's hand went to Zar'roc. Harry only then realized that if he was not in the habit of keeping a sword at his side, even if he rarely used it, he would not have it when he truly needed it. Nor would he be able to conjure one on the spot. Not without revealing himself as a wizard.
Brom released Harry's wrist. Shooting Brom a dirty look, Harry crossed to a narrow alley and furtively cast. "Hominem revelio," he murmured.
He felt the spell race outwards in his mind, waiting for a ping. He got two in quick succession, Brom and Eragon. But the spell reached to the end of the village without detecting any more presences.
"There's no one here," Harry announced, returning. "We're the only people in the village."
Brom frowned. "How sure are you?"
"This spell has only failed once," Harry said. "And the reason why is impossible for these people to replicate." Inside his pack, the Cloak was folded at the bottom. Yet another mysterious property of Death's Cloak. It seemed unlikely, though theoretically possible, that someone else from his world might have managed to foil the human revealing charm. In Alagaesia, their magic felt physical, grounded, tangible. Harry would bet they couldn't.
Brom accepted Harry's assertion and turned his focus back on the seething mass of disgustingness and fighting vultures.
Harry was trying to avoid thinking about it. It was unsettling. It felt like something from his world. Some mythical decaying beast or strange happening. Something surreal that would draw hundreds and hundreds of birds to one place, birds of ill omen. Something that had driven all the people of Yazuac to flee their village.
Brom and Eragon seemed far more horrified.
"What d'you reckon is under there?" Harry asked. It looked spooky enough that his patronus might drive off the birds. As he prepared to draw up a happy memory of Ron's first triumph as Keeper, Brom stepped forward.
"Thrysta vindr," he commanded. A great bang ripped through the caws and flutters of the birds, like the popping of a balloon at the volume of a thunderclap.
Startled, the birds fled.
Eragon gaped in horror at the pile. Brom's expression was grim but unsurprised, as If driving off the birds had only confirmed his suspicion.
It took Harry long seconds for his mind to comprehend the sheer horror of what the vultures had been feasting on. His brain refused to recognize the tangled limbs, the pecked open chests, desiccated limbs, cracked open bones, and piles of viscera as true remains. To him and his mind, and the things Harry was willing to accept as reality, the pile was simply that; a pile of unsettling gore, unrelated to the absence of people in Yazuac.
It was not until he saw a human skull that his mind made the connection.
Those were human bodies.
Dead human bodies.
A pile of dead human bodies large enough to account for every single person who might've lived in Yazuac.
An entire village murdered and dragged into a pile in the middle of town, left to bleed out and drench the cobbles in blood.
His brain continued to work to gather information it presented to Harry, information he wanted badly not to know. Like how many of the bodies were very small. He wanted to be wrong, because things like that did not happen in the real world. It would be plastered across every newspaper on planet Earth. Even the wizards would hear about it. The muggle governments would find and capture whatever group was responsible, because things like this were not allowed. They did not happen in the 21st century. This act-
Harry threw up in his mouth. He coughed as the vomit forced its way out his nose, spilling over the corners of his lips. He bent over and gagged, letting it splatter on the ground.
This was something that only happened in medieval times, before people figured out how to be civilized, and not animals. It happened in medieval times, like the time Alagaesia was currently in.
"Oh my God oh my God," Harry whispered, turning his head away. "Tell me that's not-"
"Who did this," Eragon breathed through his mouth. Harry had never been so glad to be a wizard, so glad to have cast a bubblehead charm. Eragon's expression was mingled horror and fury.
Brom padded up to the pile. A spear had fallen down one side of the mountain of desiccated, rotting viscera. Gingerly, he picked it up without touching the bodies it rested on.
Harry almost threw up again. There was something sticking on the head of the spear. A tiny body. A baby, mostly picked apart by the vultures.
"Urgals," Brom said. "For a village of this size, probably fifty to a hundred. Especially if there were no survivors and nobody managed to flee. We'll ask about this place at the next village, see if anyone escaped, but my suspicion is no."
"We go after them," Eragon vowed. "This is exactly what a Rider would do."
"A trained Rider," Brom snapped. "And a dragon whose age is measured in years and not months. You cannot even beat me, an out-of-shape human, with a sword. Urgals are twice as big and ten times as strong. You would struggle to kill two at once, much less fifty."
"Magic-"
"-is how you would manage to kill those two," Brom snapped. "Boys your age have the tendency to think they are invincible. Allow me to give you some perspective, Eragon. Every single one of those hundred Urgals would see you and think "Oh look, a human child. How hilarious; it wants to fight me!" Saphira may give them some pause, but she cannot breathe fire and must fight with tooth and claw, which will bring her close enough for the Urgals to kill her. Even if she could-" Brom pointed at a barbed arrow with black fletching, sticking from the excavated ribcage of an elderly woman. "They would shoot her wings until she could not fly, and then finish her at their leisure while she was downed."
"Well we can't just ignore this!" Eragon cried in frustration. "What the hell are Riders supposed to do if not this?"
Brom's expression softened. "You train. You learn, you grow, and when something like this happens again, you will be strong enough to stop it."
"Harry?" Eragon asked. "Are you alright?"
Numbly, Harry nodded. His brain was caught in a loop he could not break, erasing all intelligent thought from his mind. Who could do this? Who could do this? Who could do this?
Eragon wanted to give the dead a funeral. Harry wasn't quite so eager to have a ceremony for nobody, but he understood Eragon's need to do something to make the massacre right.
For Eragon and Brom, it would only be practical to burn the pile, but Harry was not restricted by energy costs. Just outside the village, Harry excavated a deep pit. He levitated the bodies into the mass grave and covered it over. He headed down to a branching creek off the Anora and fetched a large stone to inscribe.
For Dobby, he had dug the grave with his hands. These people were strangers to him. They deserved the respect of a burial, but not his personal attention. He had not known them as he had known Dobby, nor had they devoted themselves to serving him like Dobby had. It just wasn't the same.
"What do you want the inscription to say?" Harry asked Eragon.
Eragon thought. "Something about not deserving this."
Brom cleared his throat. "How about 'Victims of a massacre, here is the resting place of the many good folk of Yazuac.'"
Harry flicked his wand and the words were chiseled into the stone face.
Afterwards, Harry wanted to fix up the village. He wanted to clean up the dried blood in the square, repair the homes that had been damaged in the attack, and return Yazuac to a livable state for the next people to happen by it. But Brom refused.
"Yazuac bears the marks of a village overrun by a normal enemy," Brom said. "An unmarked, pristine yet empty village? That is the mark of magic."
Harry wanted to growl in frustration. He had to do something. Digging a hole and dumping a bunch of bodies in it was too easy. He felt the same itch Eragon did, to do something to make it right.
But a pile of bodies had done what several of Brom's lectures had not; it had finally driven it home for Harry. Alagaesia was not Britain. It was a harsher place with greater dangers, and he had only now been shown what the consequences for mistakes could look like.
It made him wish there was even a government around to be corrupt.
The horror of what he'd seen was burned into his memories and visible whenever he closed his eyes. Harry had to force himself to do something. He had to put himself to a task, or else his mind would get caught replaying the sight of it over and over, and his thoughts would cycle endlessly through his head, leaving no room for other thoughts. How could anyone do this?
"Is the Empire going to intervene?" Harry demanded. "As soon as a soldier sees this, someone is going to respond, right?"
Brom laughed bitterly. "Yazuac is a nothing village in a nowhere part of the Empire. It'll probably be weeks more before it's discovered. Gil'ead may send some men to follow whatever trail the Urgals left. But it will have long gone cold. We would struggle to track them down with a head start and magic."
"I don't understand. If he lets this go unanswered, doesn't that make him look weak?"
Brom shook his head. "If the news gets out, Galbatorix's people will probably try to spread a less alarming version of this story and people will go back to forgetting Yazuac ever existed. It is simply too small for him to care. The group that did this cannot do the same to any larger town, and a group of Urgals large enough to threaten a larger city would be noticed. This is simply what happens to small groups with small voices, far from anywhere large enough to defend them."
"So this could happen to Carvahall," Eragon said flatly.
Brom sighed. "Yes. It could."
"And we're sure this group of Urgals is not headed that way?" Eragon pressed.
Brom grumbled. "Carvahall is in the middle of nowhere. Nobody would choose it as a destination when Ceunon is just across the Bay of Fundor. It's out of the way. Probably not on most maps."
Nevertheless, Eragon pressed his concern and insisted on trying to piece together where the group of Urgals went.
Brom had been right in the assessment that the trail would be nearly or already have gone cold. What little scraps they found indicated the Urgals were headed southeast, the opposite direction of Carvahall. There were a handful of much fresher prints, no more than a few days old, caught in a spot of mud on the far side of the village.
"Stragglers," Eragon pointed out excitedly. "We could go after them!"
Brom shook his head. "Leave them."
Harry shared in Eragon's outrage. "-But we could catch some of those responsible-"
"No," Brom insisted. "If we catch them, then what? Think more than one step into the future. Say it's five Urgals and we catch them. Do we just kill those unlucky five? Are you prepared to murder five sentient beings in cold blood? Do we press them for information on the larger group? We'd have to torture them or break their minds."
Brom drummed his fingers on the pommel of his sword. "And after that? Suppose we manage to extract the location of the larger force from these Urgals. Are you going to send this information to Gil'ead to be likely ignored? Try to fight them ourselves and die? And if we kill those five and the main group is expecting them, they may be spurred to unpredictable action, turning back or pressing on to attack some other village in their way."
He made a chopping gesture. "I understand the desire to dispense justice or get vengeance. But if you pursue it blindly, you will be left with nothing when you reach it. We have a plan, you have-" he hesitated. "A goal to work towards. This injustice has already happened. We cannot undo the tragedy. It is within our power to punish these five laggards which may have unknown lasting consequences for us later."
"So, what?" Eragon demanded bitterly. "Forget this happened?"
"For now," Brom agreed.
"Wait." Harry said. "You said Gil'ead might have sent men to search if they knew, but the news won't have reached them."
"Aye," Brom agreed.
Harry scooped up a handful of dirt between his cupped palms. He touched it with his wand, transforming it into a brown-feathered sparrow. "Help me write a letter."
Five minutes later, the conjured bird took to the air headed southeast. Brom watched it go warily. "You're certain it will not be noticed?"
Harry shrugged. "It will drop the letter on the desk of the captain of the guard, then return to me. If it works properly."
"At least we did something," Eragon said.
Brom grumbled. "It's a risk we didn't need to take. On to Daret, then?"
Harry groaned. "Why?"
"We need horses," Brom stated blandly. "The circumstances do not matter. Crossing the Great Plains without them will waste half the summer, even if your magic can sustain us during the crossing."
Annoyed at Brom's insistence, Harry rolled the Elder Wand between his fingers. "We may be able to travel by magic."
"A horse will be adequate," Brom persisted.
Harry tapped his backpack. "I have a broom and Saphira can fly Eragon. If you could fly, we all could."
"But I do not have a broom, nor would I know how to use one," Brom said. "We barely managed to cross a river." Harry frowned, but let it stand for now. Both of those objections could be overcome. He let Brom's insistence stand as they pitched the tent after a long and horrific day. He would change Brom's mind.
That first night, Harry was too exhausted to dream. He woke later than Brom and Eragon for the first time on their trip, glad of the respite. Harry knew all too well the sorts of dreams he got after terrible nights like those.
The next day was boring and exhausting. They forced themselves to walk until sundown. Harry practically dragged himself by force of will for the last sunset hour. The temptation to get out his broomstick and glide along lazily was nearly overpowering, but the pile of bodies made him reconsider how seriously he'd been taking the concealment of his magic.
Harry toyed with the idea of the obliviation charm, but he had never used it himself. He wished Hermione was with them. She often had the answers.
When they stopped for the evening just off the dirt road between the towns, they were in the midst of an unremarkable patch of grass with no distinguishing features from the rest of the plains they could see out to the flat horizon. They ate ravenously from a dish of pasta and a few different sauces – alfredo, tomato, and pesto – and Harry had never been more grateful for preparations his past self had done. Grimly, Brom brought out the mock swords.
Harry wanted to groan and say he was too tired. He wanted to fall into his bed and pray for another night of dreamless sleep. But the pile of bodies was painted on the inside of his eyelids. He could not forget, and he could no longer conscience slacking off.
He forced himself to really try during that evening's lessons. When he was giving it his all, he managed to beat Eragon with about equal frequency. But every victory took deliberation and thought. He could not let his body and muscle memory control his actions. He had to think and pick and choose his strikes.
By unspoken agreement, they all skipped magic lessons. When they were that tired, it was too easy to make a mistake, and mistakes could be deadly.
Harry fell into bed hoping for a night of dreamless sleep.
He was wrong.
Cloaked black figures with twisting horns marched on Yazuac, dragging people from their homes. Some of the children floated in the air like the family from the World Cup, screaming as crows pecked them apart, turning them into horrific corpses. Pink gore peeked out from bloody white bones.
The Urgals were all faceless, shadowed by hoods. The horns were the only details, yet his sleeping mind was certain of their identities. Logic and causality broke down in true nightmares. For what felt like an eternity, the Urgals marched menacingly on, doing nameless things and producing bodies that looked like the ones Harry had seen yesterday.
Harry was petrified, an invisible observer forced to watch the scene play out endlessly before him as his subconscious tried to make sense of what he'd seen.
Then, the dream shifted.
It was the elf Harry had seen a month ago, before he'd cast the Fidelius. She looked even worse than before. Alone in her cell, she shivered naked on a cold stone shelf, her body covered in horrible torture wounds. Whip marks and burns, cuts and bruises. Her veins stood out purple on her skin, surrounded by greenish skin. There was bruising around her neck, wrists, and ankles, like she'd been struggling against shackles and a collar. Out the tiny barred window, a full moon bathed the world in silver light.
The elf's eyes opened, and she looked straight at Harry.
Startled, Harry woke.
Harry's heart pounded. He threw off the covers and let the evening air cool his feverish skin. Still clad in pajamas, Harry ducked outside and stared up at the sky.
It was the same phase of the moon as the woman's.
Saphira slumbered on. Harry lingered outside until he had cooled off, wondering about the elf in his dream.
Why was he seeing her? Was it like the boy with the dragon? Had it happened years ago like those dreams must have, or was it happening now? Harry had thought the dreams he got about Voldemort were from the horcrux, or else from Voldemort trying to use legilimency. Now that it was gone, Harry shouldn't be having strange dreams. Especially when Voldemort did not and had never existed in this world.
He stared up at the moon again. It was not that unlikely a coincidence that his vision was during the full moon. But it had felt important. Harry searched his feelings and found the instinct that still was important.
Wary of forgetting what he'd seen, Harry got out his journal and wrote what he saw in it. He snorted softly. What would Hermione think, seeing him still keeping up with Trelawney's Dream Journal?
Saphira's ears twitched. Harry tiptoed back into the tent, scratching the details of the dream about the elf down. After a moment of hesitation, he scribbled down the same for his earlier dream.
Then he fell back asleep.
The boy stood proudly amongst his peers. At his waist was a royal purple blade to match the scales of his dragon.
"Today is the last day of your training," Emyl beamed. "You have all learned the things you will need to serve as we do in Alagaesia. I want you all to remember that a Rider and dragon are never finished learning. Seek out knowledge and wisdom everywhere you go, and never believe you know everything. This shall be only the first step in making you all into the great people you will become. We have given you tools. It is up to you to use them."
The boy knew it wasn't official until he had a blade. For all that swordplay bored him, it was undeniably the mark of office of a Dragon Rider. But Rhunon was busy and Ellesmera was far. For now, he would make do with the plain steel tool at his side.
Emyl's pride in him kindled a flame in his chest, a fire of pride he wanted to keep alive. Aupho looked over her shoulder, her eyes a solemn orange. He knew his dragon felt the same about Aupho.
Eager to prove himself, he gathered his friends in celebration and made a proposal he knew they would all accept.
With their newfound power, before they were chained by duty, they ought to explore. Walk in the places none but Riders may, see things nobody else had, and share in an adventure to bind them in friendship long after their duties saw them to the four corners of Alagaesia.
AN: Short chapter.