Wandering Path

[Deleted]

The leaves were unturned by footfall, still lying in decaying clumps at the base of their trees. Towering, twisted trees, so unlike those of Du Weldenvarden. Not that she cared to compare them. Du Weldenvarden was painful, for her. Most of her memories of the forest were not her own, taken from a mother who had long since taken refuge in the same trees. Those that were had become associated with failure. No, she did not care for the homeland of her people. Their looks of veiled pity and, sometimes, disgust, were enough to keep her at bay. She preferred the company of those who did not look at her with such sad eyes.

Slender fingers plucked idly at a low branch as a melancholic gaze took in the forest around her. There was nothing of interest here. At least, not what she was searching for.

Varda realized, with the same sinking sense of resignation, that her search had lacked fruit. As had her previous searches. Tales of her twin’s rampages and slaughters reached her ears from the battlefield, and rumors of a purple dragon flowed along trade routes and through taverns. Either the rumors were just rumors, or Eladan was keeping ahead of her, striking and disappearing like a ghost.

She would say it was unlike him, but, after his time in Du Weldenvarden, sixteen years that were meant to heal his mind, she couldn’t say what he was like. When serving Galbatorix, he’d been unpredictable at best, prone to outbursts and rages. He had been a weapon to be pointed at the enemy and set loose. Sixteen years had given him time to curb his own madness, making him more deliberate, but no less cruel. He no doubt still wished her dead, but…she did not know if he had a scheme in his actions or if he was still like a spell gone awry, his path unable to be predicted even by the caster.

Blizzard’s rumbling could be heard a short distance away as he finished devouring the product of his hunt. A dragon as large as he, and as brightly colored, often had difficulty catching prey, but, he had mastered the tactic of dropping down suddenly from above, like an overgrown cat leaping from a high perch. Varda glanced back and saw his white bulk in the trees behind her, some distance away. He was the size of a dragon at least twice his age, after having been subjected to the torture of growth acceleration and adding sixteen years of natural growth. A monstrous male with wide, powerful jaws and impressive, hornlike protrusions on the top of his head.

The dragon unwound his serpentine neck, raising his large head to turn one silvery eye in her direction. Blood stained his white scales red and a reptilian tongue flickered out to clean it away. A questioning thought probed Varda’s mind and was met with a negative response. Blizzard huffed and stood fully, shaking himself.

Has he become an insect, able to hide himself beneath the rocks? he rumbled.

Varda shook her head, unmoving from her crouch.

It is difficult to say what he can and cannot do now. If he is allied with the Shade, he may now know magic that we would not enjoy even considering in passing.

The white dragon snorted, wings extending upward, above the trees, in a languid stretch.

[iapetus]

The trees grew close together here, crunched next to one another like vertebrae of the Spine on which they dwelt. Their boughs twisted and intertwined, blocking out large patches of the sky.  If anything here could have grown closer together than they did now, it would have.  Every crook and bend of the trees stole as much light as it could from the ground, and all the underbrush fought for survival in what patches of sunlight remained.  A living cave formed of bark and leaves, it was a claustrophobe's waking nightmare of space disappearing from the emptiness of the outdoors.  It was a blessed confinement, as far as Karzhan was concerned.

I greet you horned ones.

Even in memory, the voice roared through his head as loud as the first time he had 'heard' the dragon speak. An amethystine behemoth filled his inner ear, demanding to be heard.  Drowning out everything else, it was like an immense thunder that heralded the deepest part of the storm. But it didn't cover and suppress as a storm did. It stripped away every strength and defence he thought he had. It met him alone and naked in a vast void, where he and it were the only things that existed. Then it left, leaving behind a world infinitely larger than before.

Nothing had seemed so small in all his life as he himself had then. No matter how closely he pulled himself, it was simply not enough. The scars of the first touch his mind felt from another left a barren wilderness imprinted on his thoughts.  The bareness of that never-ending void haunted him from the moment Abbadon first greeted him.  Once shown the wideness of the world, his mind's eye could not close itself back into the little corner it had been imprisoned in all his life.  He was changed, but not necessarily for the good.  Since then, his normally effervescent attitude had been steadily eroded until he knew that a facade could no longer be held. With his family focused on his elder brother's circumstances, he left on a tenuous excuse into the deepest parts of the Spine.

This month-long hunting trip was, even at its advent, only the barest semblance of a reason to escape the openness of his home, as meat was not needed. But nothing was yet close enough so he would continue seeking tighter and tighter spaces, till he was buried underneath the very mountains if need be. Anything to stop this terrifying awareness of space. Karzhan paid little heed to where he walked.  His skin was torn by brambles until he left a trail of blood drops.  The pain did not matter, except to focus his mind on something else.  The only thing that mattered was seeking the most choked way forward. The dense undergrowth cheated him, however, leading straight to an open clearing containing an immense, bloody mess of white, clacking scales and ravenous teeth. Karzhan stared in startled shock, his eyes inextricably following the snaking tongue as it stripped the last chunks of meat from what used to be part of a skeleton.