A.N: since I was on vacation, I unfortunately neglected to update the story here. Sorry about that. The first part of this chapter was written while listening to the Death Stranding soundtrack, so if you want the full vibes listen to that, and enjoy! Reviews would be greatly appreciated.
Traveling, Murtagh thought, was more pleasant when one wasn't already road weary.
Thorn had pitched them straight east, flying high enough that any shepherds or travelers they passed saw no more than a speck in the sky. Not that they encountered many, for by daybreak they were already nearing the fringes of the Hadarac desert, and by nightfall all Murtagh could see around was endless arid earth and a few withered plants.
They set up camp by a small outcropping of rocks and Murtagh wasted no time in pulling up the water hidden in the earth as Eragon did on their last journey in the desert. Thorn was glad to be able to drink his fill and once sated, curled up in a glittering pile of ruby at the base of the rocks. One glimmering eye followed Murtagh around their makeshift camp, half lidded and sleepy.
It was easy to fall back in the habits of the road, and Murtagh's hands seemed to know of their own accord what needed to be done. A couple of wiry, windswept bushes quickly made up a campfire, and soon a simple dinner of stew out of his provisions was bubbling happily on the coals. While the food cooked, Murtagh rummaged through Thorn's saddlebags for the compendium of spells, now augmented by a few sheets of parchment and charcoal to scribble down his spell ideas.
Would a map not be a better occupation than your magic experiments?
Thorn's observation startled Murtagh, and he looked askew at his companion. "We already have a map."
The dragon growled softly, not even bothering to stir.By my reckoning, it will take us four more days to cross the desert. Six, if the winds are unfriendly.
"So?"
So,Thorn said,your brother never flew this distance himself. Beyond the last dwarf-city, he and Saphira-of-Bright-Scales said that they took months by boat on the Edda. There might be 500 leagues between here and Mount Arngor.
"We're faster than a boat," Murtagh commented.
Iam faster than any boat, but a week's flight, this is not. Not unless we fly as if Galbatorix himself is chasing us.
"Hmm." He liberated the book and writing implements from the spare cloak they were wrapped in and balanced them on Thorn's massive forepaw. "Serves us right to go on another fool's errand because Eragon can't figure out his distances."
A flash of memories of their mad race through the desert courtesy of Thorn brought a fleeting smile on Murtagh's face. It was an easier time, despite the miserable heat and constant pounding of fear of discovery and the scorn that awaited him with the Varden.To think I believed I was hated back then.
With that sobering thought, he also pulled out his bedroll, setting it close to Thorn's belly as he always did. Dinner was eaten in silence, and once the pot and bowl were rinsed with water he pulled from deep within the earth, Murtagh sat down with his compendium of the Ancient Language. Thorn's breath was even with sleep soon after, lulled by the scratch of the charcoal on parchment and the soft rustle of pages flipping. When the dying light of the evening became insufficient for Murtagh to decipher the cramped runes he debated lighting a werelight. One more glance at his latest attempt at reworking his wards shot that idea down: even he could tell that his grammar would send an elf screaming at the butchery and his head pounded from the mental gymnastics he had put it through.
He got up, shaking the stiffness from his limbs, and tiptoed past Thorn to stow the book in the saddlebags. Out of reflex, he stretched his consciousness to the sleeping dragon. Thorn was dreaming of chasing a young buck at the edge of a blurry forest, though by the needles on the branches he could tell it was likely a recollection of their time around Ceunon. His companion's excitement bled through their bond.
Affection flooded Murtagh; large as he may be, Thorn was still young. He fervently wished the dragon had had the opportunity to bound after deer in the forest like the hatchling he had been instead of being used as a tool in a madman's war, but he couldn't bring himself to fully regret the circumstances that bound them together.
He patted the dragon's ruby snout on his way back around to his bedroll, feeling the day's riding in all of his joints. Thorn barely stirred, but once his Rider burrowed under his blankets he brought his wing down. Enclosed in velvety darkness, with his back against the solid warmth of Thorn's scales, Murtagh fell asleep with an odd feeling that the world was somehow setting itself right again.
Four more days of flight had Murtagh and Thorn arriving to the end of the sandy dunes and barren crags of the desert, and into the grassy plains that bordered it. Murtagh straightened into the saddle and looked past Thorn's neck in the distance, trying to find the telltale glimmer of Az Ragni snaking down from the Beors.
There,Thorn said, gently turning Murtagh's eyes southeast.We'll reach its nearest bend soon.
Then Hedarth.
Then Hedarth, the dragon agreed,And then the unknown. Excitement bubbled in Thorn's mind at seeing what lay past of the edge of the maps they had studied before their departure.
By unspoken agreement, Thorn took them high in the sky, where the air was thin and Murtagh had to bundle in his woolen cloak and pull a scarf over his face so the cold wouldn't sear his lungs. His hands felt stiff with frost in his gloves and hoarfrost gathered on his lashes and the tips of his hair soon enough. Thankfully, a tailwind helped them pass Hedarth inside the span of two hours, but the nervous knot in Murtagh's stomach didn't lessen until the dwarven town sat at the fork of the Edda and Az Ragni was only a speck behind them.
So twitchy,came Thorn's quip when Murtagh looked back for what was probably the hundredth time.
I'm only cautious around a whole race that wants our heads,he defended.And for good reason, no less.
He could feel the dragon's growl through the saddle.Would it help if I ate them all?
A proper dragon answer to one's anxiety if he ever heard one. Exasperation and amusement mingled, and he put on his most long-suffering tone as he recited,No eating any sentient beings, Thorn. We discussed that.
But why are they so bite-sized if they are not for eating?!
Thorn…
The stuttering growl of dragon laughter vibrated his thighs and he couldn't help but grin at Thorn's antics. For all his wisdom and proud ferocity, and despite all the love the dragon bore for Murtagh, he got the distinct impression that most of the two legged beings Thorn met were first sized up for snacks and only later for their worth. Saphira, for all of her size and prowess, had given less of an impression of constant hunger and even less so for the sentient races of the world.
The land in front them opened up in a massive plain of windswept grass once they passed Hedarth, as vast as the eye could see to the north and bordered by the easternmost reaches of the Beor Mountains to the south. Close as they were still to the dry expanse of the desert, the grass was short and withered from lack of rain and few trees tall enough to be called such dotted the landscape. The river Edda, more than a mile wide at this point, shimmered like a great ribbon of silver in the sunlight as it snaked its way deeper in the plains.
What hit Murtagh most was the emptiness of the plain. Even when Thorn dove lower to have a better look he couldn't spot neither wisp of smoke nor any signs of life apart from herds of gazelles grazing by the river. Not even a trace of any other humans, dwarves and elves was to be found as far as the eye could see, only leagues upon leagues of dry grass.
Even sat atop of Thorn's glittering back, princes of the sky and wind, he felt small and humbled at the sheer enormity of the world.
The ruby dragon echoed his feelings, taking in the sights while he flew on with strong, steady flaps of his massive wings. Something indescribable rose in Murtagh while they followed the river east, mingling with Thorn's awe until he had to dry his eyes with a corner of his cloak.
The world is much larger than we thought,Thorn murmured in his mind.
Why did we fight for dominion over scraps of land then?
Neither had an answer, and for hours on only the beat of Thorn's wings pierced the silence.
One day mingled with the second, then with the third.
They landed once the sun almost touched the edge of the plains behind them, camping next to thickets of willows bordering the river banks. Murtagh always ate a meager supper out of his provisions, and some evenings Thorn hunted gazelles from the bountiful herds that roamed the grassy fields. They entertained themselves with riddles and tales, and occasionally Murtagh was persuaded to sing a ballad or even the odd raunchy sailor song for Thorn's amusement. Every night, he worked on his magic some more with mixed results.
A change to their usual routine came with the realization that since there was nobody else around for miles, Murtagh could give relaxing his mental barriers a try without fear of discovery or invasion. The first time he fully unwound the iron walls around his mind and rolled out his consciousness, the visceral wrongness of the exposure sent him cowering behind his mental protections like a frightened rabbit. He spent the better part of an hour huddled in a miserable ball under Thorn's wing, fighting the terror of laying himself bare to the world for anyone to find.
Once his racing heart had settled and his hands no longer shook, he cursed at his weakness and tried again – only to retreat after a few seconds longer than his first attempt.
The third and fourth tries brought no more success, only frustration and a headache pounding behind his right eye.
"Bah! This is hopeless," Murtagh growled, kicking at the campfire in a fit of childish pique. He picked up Ithring and his cloak and strode away from the campsite, cursing as he went.
Thorn's vermillion eye followed him as he went to the bank of the Edda and sank on a large stone, dropping his head into his hands. Old insecurities rose back to the forefront in a tidal wave of self-loathing. Every time he felt he made a step forward, he managed to take two steps back in turn.
After the misfortunes we had, why did you think opening up your mind would be easy?Thorn's mental tone was unbearably kind, cutting through the roiling darkness of his Rider's thoughts.Calm yourself, and once you are calm, try again. I won't let anyone catch you unawares.
A few breathing exercises taught by Vanir finally soothed the pit of unruly emotions in Murtagh, and he felt his dragon's warm approval through their link when he let his walls down again. When the sixth attempt to feel the spark of life in the fauna around was finally successful and without the blood-curdling terror that first accompanied it, Murtagh's crow of victory startled a throng of rabbits his mind was touching and he nearly fell of the rock he sat on at their echoed terror.
He kept at his rudimentary meditation for the following evenings, right before he went to sleep curled up under Thorn's wing. In the mornings, they packed up camp and continued due east, following the Edda river for trackless leagues ahead until the short vegetation of the dryer steppes gave way to a sea of vibrant green tall grass. The clouds rolling off of the snowy cliffs to their right started to solidify into thunderheads in the distance, and on their fifth morning Murtagh woke to a cold droplet of water splattering on his face and the patter of rain on Thorn's scales.
Resigned to a cold and miserable day of flying, he grumbled his morning greeting to his dragon and got out from under Thorn's wing to check if anything got wet in the saddlebags. Once satisfied of the integrity of his supplies, he climbed up Thorn's foreleg up into the saddle, muttering an oath when the wet leather thongs strapping his legs slipped through his fingers. The fiddly buckles properly chastised into submission, both man and dragon looked at the overcast skies with equal apprehension.
"We can't fly above this, can we?"
Murtagh expected Thorn's answer but dreaded it nonetheless.Not if we want to use the river to guide us.
"Wonderful. Just wonderful." He sighed heavily. "How much longer do you thing we have to go?"
Not far, I reckon.
"It better not be far, or my dearest brother and I will have words on our arrival."
Then, a few hours into the trip – by which point the world had dissolved into a colorless haze of chilly rain, biting winds and the muffled rhythmic thud of dragon winds:Look, ahead. These are no ordinary rain clouds.
Murtagh's mind felt as numb as his fingers gripping the point of the saddle in front of him, and it took a few heartbeats to comprehend what Thorn was showing him. He squinted against the rain, peering at a rolling wall of clouds ahead. It looked much like a curtain had dropped from the heavens, curling under itself lower than the rest of the grey ceiling above. From its bottom, sheets of rain connected the sky and the earth like great ribbons obscuring the land. A flash of white lightning split the bulk of the clouds, followed by a clap of thunder strong enough to hurt his ears and the hairs on his arms stood up on end with apprehension.
We have to fly… through that?!
A faint undercurrent of tension colored Thorn's feelings. The dragon was just as nervous as Murtagh was to head into the gale.My instincts tell me we're close to our destination, but we would need to cut straight through the storm.
We would as easily splatter on the side of the damn mountain as find it in that!Murtagh cursed when another peal of thunder set his teeth clattering. The storm front was less than a league away from them, but they were already reaching the area of strong winds at its edges. Gusts of air tore at Thorn's wings in each and every direction, slowing their progress and making them pitch and bank suddenly on occasion.
Have you ever flown in a storm before?
No,came the quiet response.
Another gust of wind lifted Thorn's left wing high up, and they pitched right abruptly. If he wasn't strapped securely in the saddle, Murtagh would have fallen off with the violence of the turn. Before he could get his bearings, another gust tossed them to the left. To make it all worse, the rain picked up until up or down, forwards and backwards were impossible to discern. Lightning struck again, close enough for Murtagh to taste metal and for the thunder to feel like an icepick to his brain.
"Land! Get us down!" He yelled with both his voice and his mind, leaning forward in the saddle. He felt Thorn's approval as he tilted towards the ground, but a few flaps of his wings later an updraft stronger than any they had encountered slammed the dragon up several hundred feet. Thorn beat his wings harder, trying to break free but it was useless. They were at the mercy of the wind and it sucked them up higher and higher into the sky.
I… I can't get free!Thorn roared with effort, but they barely moved a few feet forward.
They struggled like this for what felt like hours, buffeted by the storm. Thorn's terror was palpable as the winds either forced him up or down, and every muscle in his wing arms burned with exertion as he tried to keep them in the air. One moment they were tossed high inside the thunderhead, surrounded by lightning and thunder, the other they were plummeting to the ground at frightening speed. After one near miss with a bolt of lightning, the ensuing thunder was so loud that Murtagh shrieked in pain and the world grew oddly quiet. He could still feel the rain and hail whipping at him and another thunder vibrating in his bones, but nothing else made a sound. The fingertips of his glove came off red when he touched his ear, and he murmured a spell of healing to repair his eardrums.
This is it,came a detached thought.This is how we die.
If it wasn't for Thorn, he doubted he would have been too troubled by the concept.
It was sheer dumb luck that when a downdraft spat them out of the clouds, near delirious with exhaustion, Murtagh caught a glimpse of a gap in the mountains to his right. A wide valley split the rocky bulk of the range from a singular peak, capped in white snow. The gusts picked up again, rain obscured his view, but Murtagh could have sworn on Thorn's life that he saw a few yellow specks of light dotting the lonely peak.
In a moment of desperation, he stretched his mind out as far as he could, uncaring that there were at least couple dozen miles separating him and Thorn from the single mountain. He searched and searched, until he barely saw with his inner eye the unmistakeable blaze of life that marked a larger life form. Hoping despite hope it was Saphira and not a Shrrg, he only managed to touch the other mind and utter the word,Help!, before the connection fizzled out between them.
Please, by all the gods in the heavens and below, let it be them… we can't hold on for much longer…
The attempt at contact had sapped whatever strength was left in Murtagh's limbs, most of his energy spent already providing whatever support he could to Thorn. The wind and soaking downpour did little to help, and he sagged in the saddle, limp like a rag doll in a child's grasp. The ruby dragon had stopped talking long ago, completely focused on the struggle to keep them aloft, but he banked wordlessly to the southeast towards the general direction of the sole peak Murtagh had seen. A few more minutes passed, marked only by Thorn's ragged breathing and the tired flap of his wings, feeling like an eternity – until a faint roar reached them, clear even against the backdrop of howling wind around them.
A scrap of blue, shimmering with the dancing lights of thunder above, solidified into the familiar shape of Saphira as she dove from the cloud cover a few hundred yards in front of them. In the hollow of her shoulders sat Eragon, wet like a half-drowned cat and about as irked – or was it worry scrunching his half brother's elvish features?
A mind touched Murtagh's and he could have wept in happiness when Eragon's voice, frantic and tight with worry, rang inside of his skull:We have you. Tell Thorn to open his mind to Saphira, and she will guide him to the keep.A rush of energy restored the warmth in his blood and after a silent pulse of thanks, he prodded at the edge of his link with Thorn, conveying his brother's request. He felt the immediate flow of Saphira's vitality helping soothe the exhausted dragon and the exchange of images and sensations as she coached the male through the basics of flying in such a gale. They had been closer than Murtagh judged, for in about an hour Saphira landed gracefully in the courtyard of a well-appointed keep, sending a spray of droplets either side from the tips of her wings.
Thorn's landing was… less graceful. The dragon dropped to the ground like a sack of rocks from up high, his legs giving out from under him when he touched down. The momentum sent him skidding on his chest and snout for a few yards and it was only by the grace of his wards that Murtagh didn't die an undignified death impaled on the neck spike in front of him. When he stopped, Thorn heaved a sigh and just lay on the stone pavement, barbed tongue hanging limply from between his teeth.
We're here, the dragon deadpanned tiredly, and Murtagh couldn't help but bark a hoarse chuckle while he fumbled with the leg straps and slid down Thorn's side.
A moment of distraction was enough to miss Eragon charging at him like a battering ram, but he managed to open his arms to receive an armful of excited little brother before he was tackled to the ground. They both hit the cobblestones, and Murtagh's shout of surprise was barely heard over Eragon's laughter.
"Nice to see you too, little brother," he croaked breathlessly, patting at Eragon's back.
The younger man's grin only grew brighter and they disentangled, pulling themselves upright. Saphira snaked her head behind her rider and gave Murtagh an affectionate nudge with her glittering snout, before padding to Thorn and nuzzling the sprawling dragon's side. A tiredwhuffwas the only reply she got for her trouble.
"You utter madman," Eragon crowed, pulling Murtagh into a more dignified but no less heartfelt hug. "You almost scared us into an early grave when you contacted Saphira moments before the Eldunarí warned us of your trouble. What possessed you to fly throughthat?!"
Despite the rain still pouring on them and the way his legs seemed to not work properly, Murtagh didn't want to let go. He shrugged sheepishly. "By the time we figured out in how much shit we were, the storm had us." A faint echo of the terror of their ride through the storm came back, and he clung a little tighter to the warm, solid form of his brother. "May Thorn forgive me, but I've never seen a sight more glorious than Saphira diving from those clouds."
If he got a bit misty-eyed when Eragon's arms twitched and pulled him tighter in silent understanding, none but Thorn would know. He felt in the bond between him and his dragon a great rush of energy flowing through Saphira to Thorn, rousing the ruby male from his stupor. Eragon stepped back from the hug, and both men went to check on their respective dragons.
Thorn had managed to get back on his feet with a bit of assistance from Saphira. The ruby dragon lowered his head to his Rider's level, who immediately hugged as much of the scaly snout as he could, as tightly as he could.Thank you, Thorn.Murtagh poured all the affection he could through their bond, and he felt the same coming back from his closest friend.Coming here might not be the foolhardy idea I thought it would be.
One vermillion eye blinked with a swish of scales in silent agreement, before the dragon sniffed at him hard.You stink of wet sheep and I am tired. If we stand here much longer I am going to fall asleep.
Eragon made a sound reminiscent of a dying seagull, and Murtagh realized that Thorn had projected his thoughts so all could hear. He turned to see Saphira shaking herself of the rain that clung to her scales like so many glittering diamonds right over Eragon, who swore and jumped aside to avoid getting drenched some more.
"Where are my manners, keeping you both here in the rain" his little brother said with a sheepish grin, shaking the wet hair from his eyes. He waved Murtagh and Thorn to a cavernous doorway dug into the side of the mountain. "Welcome to Mount Arngor."
