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modern-inheritance · 2 months

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Modern Inheritance: Escape, Part 1: Encounter

(A/N: I just want to get some of this out there. I'll be editing and cleaning the rest of the first big half over the rest of the weekend and will hopefully have it out soon. But for now, have this first true encounter between Eragon and Arya in Gil'ead.

A quick reminder, though. This is the first time I've delved into truely rewriting canon, fleshed out scenes from IC into MIC. We aren't quite there yet with this part, but know that it is happening in the rest of this whole Escape series, and I had difficulty with that. So it's not my best, but I'm trying. Cheers mates!)

“There is someone who is just dying to meet you, my young Dragon Rider.” Eragon stood, wary as the Shade unlocked his cell door. It had been hours since their first conversation, and Eragon could still feel the same twist of unease in his stomach. He had hoped the Shade would have given him more time, enough that the drugs would have been out of his system and he would have been long gone from there.

True to his word, the Shade was not alone when he entered. He pushed another prisoner inside before him, holding their hunched form by the back of their neck and the shackles secured around their wrists. With a cruel yank to the black braid at the base of their skull, the man shaped monster pulled them up.

Eragon sucked in a breath. Her. It was her. The woman from his dreams.

Her emerald eyes were filled with fire, hair wild and teeth pink with blood clenched in a snarl of pain. When she saw him she tensed, shoulders hunched in preparation for something, anything, as if about to strike out at him or the man that held her. The Shade saw this just as Eragon did, and with a growl he twisted the short chain connecting her shackles together. Blood began to ooze from the reddened flesh surrounding the metal’s edge. A pointed reminder for her to stay still, not to try whatever she came up with.

“This…” The Shade’s lips curled, his smile all malice and pointed teeth. “My dear Rider, is the source of all your problems and tribulations these last few months.” A white hand slid from where it held the woman’s braid to grip the front of her throat, tilt her chin up slightly. “Isn’t she a pretty thing? This little elf has been a guest of mine for some time now. Fighting to keep the location of you and your dragon a secret, despite my…best efforts.”

‘Elf?’ Eragon felt his stomach lurch, gaze shooting to hold with hers. Sweet Sera, her ears were pointed. The tilt of her eyes, sharp eyebrows, cheekbones, the second tip of hidden canines in her bared teeth, there was something other about her. The woman was still, eyes locked to him, jaw clenched. ‘Source? What is he….’

“You see, little elf? You’ve failed this mission.” The Shade was at her back now, what had to be uncomfortably close and whispering in her ear. She didn’t even twitch, kept her gaze steady with Eragon’s. She was trying to tell him something he was sure, but he couldn’t understand her silence.

“Show her your hand, Rider.”

The elf’s sharp brows lowered slightly, eyes suddenly hard. In a rush Eragon suddenly understood the look and felt a spark bolt between them that felt both familiar and alien. Not a mental thread, not words, just a vague understanding of her subtle movements.

Don’t comply.

He kept his shellshocked expression, ripped his gaze from her to the Shade. He did his best to look confused, drug muddled, almost dumbfounded. It wasn’t all that hard, considering.

The woman was suddenly on her knees, a dull crack in Eragon’s ears and harsh growl of pain from her as the Shade placed a hand on her shoulder, dug his thumb into the flesh beneath the dark grey tunic. Seized the base of her braid again when she doubled over and forced her to straighten, arch her neck back to keep looking at Eragon.

The young Rider surged forward. “Stop! Stop, please, she didn’t do any–” Alarm flared in the dark green eyes, she tried to shake her head but was rewarded by the tip of a boot against the small of her back, digging in while he forced her to remain upright. “Stop! Please!”

“She has done plenty.” The words were deadly cold. “Show her your hand, boy.”

Eragon held his hands out, tried his best to apologize through his eyes to the elf before him. The gedwëy ignasia glinted dully in the low light from the cell window. She stared at his palm, and when she looked up again there was only fire.

For some reason, it chilled him. There was something hard there, a conviction and purpose that wasn’t there before despite the pain.

“There’s a good lad.” The Shade’s smile had triumph in it as he leaned in, again getting close to the kneeling woman. “Do you see now, little elf? The totality of your failure?” The fire brightened. The dark being merely laughed, the sound of bone on bone and underlain with what Eragon swore were screams. “We still have time, you and I, and there is much left to discuss.” He ended in a low growl and took her by the neck again, yanked her to her feet. Her right leg buckled, but he did not give her the slack to fall. “Say goodbye, little elf.”

She didn’t. Only stared hard at the youth in the cell, eyes steely and bright, before being led out.

In the silence that followed the crash of the door being closed and locked, Eragon slid to the floor, mind whirling. He had finally found her. She was here, alive, and she was an elf. He had to free himself, had to free her.

But the Shade. How could he get past a Shade? He’d need help, and the elf was injured. Could she even walk? He was sure the snap he had heard was her leg, and her arms were covered in bruises and half healed cuts. Who knew what else was hidden under the prison greys, what injuries he couldn’t see. She was determined, there was no question about it, but could she fight, or even run, in that condition?

Again, his heart ached. Saphira. She could help. She’d bat the Shade away like he were no more than an annoying fly. He still couldn’t feel her, even after half a day of starving off the drugs.

Eragon put his head in his hands with a groan. A headache was building at the front of his skull, same as the one that would come when he spent too long in the fields without water. He seized fistfulls of hair over his forehead and tugged hard, trying to distract himself from the discomfort.

How much longer would it take for the drug to leave his blood? Hours? Days? His tongue felt thick and sticky, filling up his mouth. The more he tried to ignore it the more it demanded his attention, threatening to close his airway if he swallowed wrong.

The pitcher was agonizingly tempting, full to the brim and just waiting for him by the cot.

The headache surged again. Frustrated, Eragon yanked off one of the stupid canvas slip ons and whipped it at the pitcher. It connected with the handle and spun the pewter vessel, sloshing the tainted water onto the floor and rattling the stool before clattering back to level.

For some reason, his failure to knock the pitcher over made Eragon want to flip the cot over and scream in frustration. A lump rose in his throat.

Helpless. Pathetically, utterly helpless.

The spilled water began draining towards the small drain at the center of the room. The movement drew his gaze, and finally landed on the splattering of red where the elf woman had been.

Blood. There was more than he had initially thought.

Heat, sharp and burning, rose in his chest. That Shade. He was hurting her. Just for protecting Eragon and Saphira, if his word was to be trusted at all.

Eragon grit his teeth. He was not going to let it continue. He had to escape, there was no question about it. He would escape. He would escape and he would rescue the elf and he would get back to Saphira. To Saphira, and Brom, and Murtagh, and they would be fine. They would all be fine.

But for now.

Eragon sat up and drew his knees to his chest. He forced his eyes to stay locked to the drying blood, away from the pitcher.

For now, all he could do was wait.

Durza healed her leg.

Arya had long since stopped questioning why he healed what he healed. Why he sometimes chose smaller wounds rather than the larger ones, why he sometimes gave her a few hours of respite even when the previous session had been relatively lenient, why he had stopped asking her about everything else and instead started asking her who she would serve.

To be honest, she half thought he healed her legs whenever he broke them because he just hated dragging her around rather than making her walk. He damn near strutted like an overconfident peacock when he pushed her in front of him, showing off a prize rather than dragging her around like a broken toy he no longer had use for.

This time, though. This time, Arya nearly let the edges of her lips curl up in a hard won grin when he shoved her forward.

This time, healing her leg was stupid. Showing her the Dragon Rider was stupid. Was he truly so dim that he thought it would break her will to see the Rider captured? There was no dragon here, that would be impossible to hide.

So there was hope. She would only fight harder now, tooth and nail and every ounce of her remaining strength.

Well. She would fight as hard as she could. The last…week? Month? Time had no meaning, no rhyme or reason to exist here. The last span had been…bad. He used the magic more often, set her body thrashing as every nerve increased in sensitivity and pulsed with feedback loops of pure pain.

It felt as though he were throwing everything at her again, testing her new limits after so long with him, trying to find any crack, any opening. He had started simply beating her again, completely at random, striding into her cell when she was unconscious and ripping her from the blessed darkness. Wearing down what rest she got. Was using the brands once more, the whips, the shackles, cycling through all the methods he had used.

He was acting…desperate. Something had changed, even before the Rider arrived.

He stuck to the magic this time. Mostly. He ripped open the wounds across her back, set everything ablaze with fresh pain before he began that damn spell. Lifted her half coherent, limp form by the throat after the first few rounds and pinned her to the wall. Forced her back to full consciousness, yanked her head up when her eyes rolled back in excruciating pain as the remnants of the magic coursed through her nerves and the weeping wounds across her body.

“Our remaining time is short, little elf.” His words hissed with displeasure, disappointment. “You have three days. Three days to come to your pitiful senses, and join me. I will not give you the chance while we travel to Urû’baen. You should know, Galbatorix does not suffer disappointment lightly, nor is he as…forgiving…as I am, when it comes to resistance.”

He let her down, slowly, settled her feet on the floor to weigh on broken limbs. Eased his grip, let her breathe ragged pulls of air and blood from scream-torn vocal cords. “Should you join me, convince the young Rider to do the same, then I shall be the balm you so desperately crave.” His lips curled, a mix of displeasure and bloodlust. “If you choose to submit yourself to Galbatorix, then know this.” He pressed forward, pushed his forehead against hers, gripped her jaw tight when she tried to turn away. The hissed whisper was a deadly promise. “Your pain, will never end. I am not some mindless servant to his will. I will keep hurting you, no matter his orders, no matter what he does, no matter how useful you are to him. You have a choice to make, little elf. Be sure it is the right one.”

He dropped her then. Stood over her and healed the tears in her vocal cords, the bones she had broken in her agonized seizing. Started over again when she looked up at him with vehement hatred in her eyes, mute as always.

Time. Time had no meaning here. Not with magic like that, with pain like that.

Time wasn’t a problem before. But now it was.

That boy. The Rider, the one she and everyone else had been searching for, he was right there. Arya’s eyes wouldn’t focus when she was pulled back through the hall, of course he made the guards do it, made them drag her half dead body instead of doing it himself. She saw his cell door, though, the dark eyes, intense, bright, the sun, peering out.

The cell floor was cool when the guards dropped her to the smoothed concrete. It pressed against her cheek, soothed some of the residual burning along her arms and in her face. Escape hadn’t exactly been on her mind before. Survival, keeping her mouth shut, keeping her mind locked, that was all Arya really cared about till now.

But time was not on their side. And there was a real, solid, living reason just down the hall, probably on his way to Galbatorix in three days right along with her. She couldn’t keep track of how long the days were, how much longer they had.

So escape it would be. The sooner the better, and there was never any time quite like the present.

She tried to get her arms under her body, push up off the blood stained ground. No. That didn’t work. Work, damn it! It’s time to fight, it’s time to

time. time to. time t

Everything fell black.

Time to rest.

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