The beginning...

Waking Dreams

Eragon opened his eyes slowly, wondering what had just happened. He sat up and looked around the camp. The smoldering embers left an eerie glow about the trees around him, and, looking up, the stars were still readily visible in the night sky.

Go back to sleep, little one. It was bound to happen sometime or another. Saphira didn’t even open her eyes as she spoke to him. The brushing consciousness against his mind was comforting in an otherwise unfamiliar and uncaring place. It was times like this, when only he and Saphira loped around this strange land, that he wondered if anything he had done was really worth it.

Growling, Saphira opened one giant blue eye and stared at him. None of that tonight. Go to sleep, forget all this nonsense, and think about other things if think you must. Just stop disrupting my sleep with your incessant human emotions. It’s bad enough out here as it is… Closing her eye, she drifted off once more. Smoke was billowing out of her nostrils, and he thought it best not to cross her.

Sighing, he laid down next to her, and tried his best to erase his older memories, and more unsettling newer trance-like dreams. He knew she felt the same way; she was just better at hiding it.

o0o0o0o0o0o0

The battle field was coated in blood. Eragon remembered the smells of the rotting meat all around him, but pushed it out of his mind as he mechanically chopped his way through the crowd. He could feel the people around him dying. Consciousnesses fading out, like dying stars in mornings first hateful rays.

Still, he pushed on, the lone tower of Uru’Baen looming before him, the final thresh hold before the end. In that tower loomed the fate of Alagasia. In that tower, Galbatorix sat waiting, the cowardly bastard biding his time before he had to fight. Eragon and Saphira had already hardened their hearts to the thought of losing each other; they had experienced it already through the mind of Glaedr, who’s   Eldunari lay embedded in Eragon’s chest. Uttering a few simple words in the ancient language he fused the golden stone into his chest, right above his heart, as he a Saphira thought it belonged. Not only did it protect Glaedr from being stolen, but it made sure that Eragon always had his almost limitless supply of energy to use when Eragon really needed it.

Crying out, he and Saphira charged the gates, opening it easily with Saphira’s massive weight. Inside, soldiers were waiting to ambush them, but the duo was far from helpless. Letting out a jet of blue fire from her massive jaws, the flesh began to fall from the faces and bodies of the painless enemies. A cruel, humourless laugh issued from among the dying soldiers as they continued to advance, never feeling the foul sting of the fire on their flesh. They continued burning, even as the Varden’s forces began pouring into the massive pillar that was Uru’Baen. Galbatorix’s burning soldier didn’t last long, as they began to disintegrate  under the weight of their own armor. As the Varden’s troops, led by Roran, began storming the immense lair, Saphira and Eragon began to climb up the stair, going higher and higher until they reached the top. After what seemed life an hour searching the top level of the tower, Eragon felt a sudden blast of energy coming from on of the doors. The entire castle was immense; obviously it had been created to accommodate to Shruikan’s giant being; Saphira was able to run freely in the massive hallways.

The door in front of them, directly in the back of the hallway emanated one of the most horrifying energies Eragon had ever felt. It felt crazed, completely mad, sucking in all poor souls unfortunate enough to clamber upon it’s unfortunate existence. It took everything he had in him not to turn tail and run. The force behind it must be so menacing….

GO!! Saphira shouted. He could feel her writing in her skin, an abhorring feeling washing over him. Looking at one another, they charged through the door.