Murtagh

Whirling darkness swallowed him, and in the center of it, at the bottom of an impossibly deep hole, at the very heart of the widdershin void, lay a formless horror—ancient and evil and from which emanated a constant, merciless hunger: never sated, all-consuming, with a particular glee for the sufferings of creatures caught between the gnashing of teeth.

His mind fled the horror, but it was a deadly riptide, more powerful than the Boar’s Eye between the Southern Isles of Uden and Parlim, and the harder he tried, the slower he moved….

Fear filled him. Icy, coursing fear that froze his veins and chained his limbs and turned his stomach to acid. His heart fluttered, and for a moment seemed to stop, and in the grips of his terror, he cried for help as he had when a child: “Mother!”

Then Thorn’s mind touched his own, and the gaping horror receded, and for a time Murtagh felt himself lost in the vast landscape of Thorn’s thoughts.

They were flying, higher and higher, until the ground faded from sight, and above and below were the same: a perfect sphere of sky, with nowhere to land and only clouds for cover. A flock of eagles screamed past, talons extended to tear out eyes, and then they were gone, and it was impossible to tell which direction was up and which down.

A timeless while passed, and then a thunder of dragons rose about them: dragons of every shape and color, their scales flashing, their wings thudding until all the air vibrated like a drum. For an instant, hope and companionship, but only an instant. The dragons turned on them and attacked them and tore at Thorn’s flesh until his wings were tattered remnants and he plunged from the pale sphere of the sky into the heated depths of the earth, where the dirt was heavy and pressing and the only solace was pain and hate and the steady drip of their own hot blood.

Nasuada stood in front of him. Her dress was ripped and stained, and across her forearms, he saw the cuts and bruises Galbatorix had forced him to inflict upon her, and with them, the bloody tracks where the burrow grubs had chewed their way beneath her skin, and his guilt knew no bounds. “Why?” she said. “Why, why, why? Tell me…why?”

A disjunction, and then a battlefield stretched before them, from their feet to the smoke-smudged horizon. Humans and Urgals and elves struggled in their thousands: a sea of heaving bodies intent on inflicting pain on one another.