Dagny: An Inheritance Cycle Fanfiction.

1. The Scars of War

This takes place roughly thirty years after the prologue and roughly fifty years after the events of Inheritance.

Sverrir winged his way across the expanse of the battlefield, letting the warm southern air currents support him. He flew low enough to make out the indistinct figures of humans moving over the destroyed, battle-scarred land, collecting the dead and tending the wounded. The fields outside Belatona were stagnant after the raging storm of battle, only a day ago.

It was strange to him, remembering the battle. The fighting had been one of the most disconcerting experiences of his life, and of Dagny's. The two of them had been involved in small skirmishes before, of course, but nothing on this scale and always alongside other dragons and Riders. Yesterday, he had been the only dragon on the field and Dagny the only Rider. Everyone had looked to them for answers. Even the prince, who had been given command of the royal army, looked to them to turn the tide of battle.

They had done. Sverrir had fought with the wild ferocity of his race, and there had been a blazing joy in the sight of his slaughtered enemies, of half a battlefield razed by the fire from his maw. Blood spattered his silver-grey scales and he roared his victory to the skies. He was a dragon. Such was his nature.

But his nature was not his Rider's. Though Dagny fought with the skill and power of a Rider, though every flash of the blade Evaríni brought death with it and her spells vanquished many of their opponents, repugnance and horror waxed stronger in her mind with every man she felled. Sverrir himself became affected by her emotions, until it sickened him to watch his own teeth and claws tear into flesh.

He pulled his mind from the disturbing memories. The very nature of the bond he and Dagny shared compromised their individuality, but her emotions had never before made his own being seem alien to him. It troubled him, for he knew it was unfeasible for a dragon and Rider to forever avoid conflict. Nor was he a coward, that he would want that.

He could only hope Dagny's reaction would not be so strong the next time, or the after that, until experience dulled it to nothing. He still didn't fully understand what had upset her.

The city of Belatona grew out of the ground before him and he altered his course to swoop low over the walls. The people cheered as he flew overhead, the sunlight dancing from his scales to paint the buildings in patterns of light. Their joy was incomprehensible to him. Many of their fathers, sons and brothers had fought in the army he crushed, yet now they cheered for him. Humans baffled him, odd creatures that they were, and these citizens of the Broddring Kingdom were stranger even than the human Riders he had known in Vera-trür.

All creatures that walked on two legs baffled him, in honesty. Humans, he allowed, were not so strange as dwarves. Urgals he could understand better, creatures who accepted the simple nature of life at its heart - the savage beauty of war, the pleasures of a warm nest and good hunting. The laughing elves had something of the dragons in them, a result of ancient magics, and he had lived among them as a hatchling. Sverrir understood them better than Dagny did. He knew she often relied on his knowledge of elves in her dealings with them. Despite the years they had lived in Du Weldenvarden, the Fair Folk seemed foreign and often forbidding to her. Even here on a battlefield, amongst total strangers, she was more at ease than she was with elves she had known for years.

Why she chose to pursue a relationship with Arne was beyond him. But then, humans were strange creatures.

Sverrir wheeled like a comet in the sky, away from the hordes of senseless humans, back towards the Prince's camp, towards partner-of-his-heart-and-mind Dagny. When he reached for her thoughts, he could feel frustration and growing anger, and he thought it would be best to rescue her from the prison of politicians and diplomats before she lost her temper and bit someone she shouldn't.