DragonInk (Eragon Writing Competition)

Round Six: Entries

'Eran!' I cried, before the storm caught the tip of my wing and pulled me in.

I roared in pain as I felt my wings explode with pain, and that's the last thing I remembered.

When I woke up the first thing I noticed was the absence of a presence in my mind. The second was the excruciating pain of my left wing. I let loose a groan of pain and rolled to my four feet.

I looked around for Eran, and tried to reach out with my mind for him.

'Eran?' I said hesitantly, 'Eran, this isn't funny, where are you?'

I looked around frantically, and tore up a tree that I must have crashed into, but no matter how much I searched I couldn't find my rider.

'Eran!' I roared with both my maw and mind.

There was an answering roar in the distance, one that sounded familiar.

'Farran,' came the feminine voice in my mind.

'Saphira!' I replied in relief.

I tried to open my wings to fly up and join her, but stopped when I realised I couldn't move my left wing. I looked over to it and winced. There was a pure white bone, starched with red, poking out of my wing. It looked almost like a spear, with a shattered end.

'My wing is broken,' I said to Saphira, 'I need help.'

'Show me where you are,' she said.

I sent her an image of my surroundings, and the direction, as well as a picture of my badly broken wing.

'That looks bad,' she said, 'Stay still. Where is Eran?'

'I...I don't know,' I stuttered.

She was silent after that. It took a few minutes but eventually the large feminine form of Saphira landed in front of me. I smiled a week grin at her. The human-elf Eragon was sitting on her back. He quickly slid down her back and ran up to my wing.

"Keep still," he said, "This is going to hurt."

I nodded and kept my wing taught. Eragon put his hand on the protruding bone and started to gently push it back into the wing. I hissed in pain, snorting out some fire, and had to keep myself from whipping my tail around at the source of the pain.

It took almost a minute for Eragon to reposition the bone and after that another minute of spell enchanting to fix it. This was by far the worst brake I had ever had.

When he had finally finished, I flexed my wing. Satisfied that it was as good as new, I looked towards the two ebrithils and took a deep breath, ready for the question I was sure going to come.

'What were you doing in the storm?' said Saphira.

I gulped slightly, 'Me and Eran were put flying, and the storm suddenly came upon us.'

'In the ancient language,' said Saphira, narrowing her eyes.

I sighed mentally, there was no getting out of it.

In the ancient language I said, 'We were going to fly the storm. We always do when a big storm like this comes around, and this was the first one for almost a month.'

'You disobeyed me,' growled the female dragon, 'And now look at what's happened.'

'I'm sorry ebrithil,' I bowed my head towards her, 'But it wasn't the storm that brought me down. We have flown many storms bigger then this one. I believe we were attacked.'