Galbatorix... A road to madness

Chapter six- Confusion and failure

Who was he? Why were his scales black? How did he get here? Who was the boy-man breaking his mind and forcing him to do his bidding? He did not even remember hatching, he was just here, in this warm-sandy-cave-mountain. Around him were strangers and spirits. The older-ruby-scale dragon was the only one that was friendly. He would talk to him, and even share the occasional horned-stripped-deer with him. But the lifeblood colored spirit in 'man' form was pure evil. The spirits were straining to get out, wanting to just rip it's prison-body to shreds along with everything near and far. Thus the spirit-man was angry, always angry. He never ate, never drank, he had never even seen him sleep. He just sat in one corner if the cave, studying various pieces of thin-trees, as day by day passed.

The larger-ruby-scale dragon's partner was cold. Never spoke to him, never acknowledged him, never even looked at him. He just threw the occasional meat scrap for his larger-ruby-scale dragon, which in turn got passed down to him. His 'master' as he was ordered to call him was mad. His mind was filled with many terrifying images that made both Shruikan and Galbatorix unable to sleep. No matter how hard his master tried the flashing images never went away. The just came every time he slept.

When Shruikan slept though, bright sunny places floated in and out of his mind. In his dreams a green hatchling sat by, followed or sat on a short, young she-elf's shoulder. The she-elf had curious hair. Opting out for the racial black or starlight, hers was short, light brown and slightly curly. Curly hair was a trait completely unheard of in elves. Only 'half-breeds' has such hair. This woman or she-elf was a mystery to him though. She was always appearing in his dreams with the little green dragon. He felt a connection to these images though, as if they were his only life line. He did not know why, they were simply dreams... Yet they seemed like déjà vu. He recognized this woman and her little green dragon. He simply could not place them anywhere in his limited memories though.

It was a strange existence he was living. Each day, he was trained in the most brutal tactics for dragon fighting before his master forced his education into his mind. He was literally forced to learn the ancient language and about the war with the elves. And in the evenings his master would word-will him to sit and listen to his mad ravings about how it was all their fault he was doing this.

He grew constantly though, the bones in his body constantly aching from the rapid growth spurts, natural and not. He was soon larger then the ruby scaled dragon. Now he was the large one. Yet... it seemed so foreign... far too large for him. He found himself knocking things over constantly, crushing his prey in his giant talons. It had only been six months since his first memory, yet he was the size of a dragon a century old. His master had been forcing him to grow, via the evil-dark-black magic he learned from the spirit-man.

One day while he was out flying and stretching his wings, he saw two other dragons on the western horizon. One purple and the other a green ruddy brown, a very ugly color in his opinion. He started to fly back to their cave-home. Not minutes after he landed they were also there. The she-elf one with the ugly dragon approached his master, she took to one knee before him before standing back up, bowing, then finally speaking. Her light lyrical voice rang in his ears and hurt his head. "Master, we preformed as you asked, the Elder was dealt with and will no longer be a problem."

"She is lying." The Spirit-man rasped, before returning to his studying.

"Kilandi, come forth." His master ordered while all three other dragons lined up next to him, each following his example and sitting and staring intently at the scene happening before them. "Morzan, bring me forth the rod from the fire. Kilandi, Formora... explain to me, how could you fail at a task so easy? All I asked of you was to kill that annoying elder and his dragon. How in the world could you fail?" he roared, his temper increasing. "Morzan give me the rod." He barked.

Morzan handed his master the red hot metal fire iron before stepping back to observe. "Stick out your left hand, both of you." In sick parallel to the gedwèy ignasia he burned the letter 'f' into Kilandi's left palm. You could see him biting his lip as the hot iron first touched his skin, obviously trying to not cry out in pain and show his weakness. The she-elf was next. Having seen her partner go through the ordeal already, she had worked herself up. As soon as the fire iron touched the skin of her palm, she screamed as if her body was being torn to millions of pieces by the second. His master handed the Iron back to Morzan who put it back into the fire.

"Now tell me, what happened?" His master demanded.

Through gritted teeth, Kilandi replied. "He did something we did not predict, he got out of our spells somehow, Formora gave chase, we even chopped off the golden dragon's front right forearm, but they escaped."

"Formora, do you have anything else to add?" His master asked politely, his moods switching around oddly.

"The only way I can think that they escaped is that they changed their true names, but... that is not possible so quickly. Is it? "

"No it is not, nonetheless you failed and you will be punished. Go forth and bring me more competent followers, ones who have brains inside their heads and not rocks, as you two obviously do."

With that, they got on their dragons, carefully not using their left hands before departing.