Hi, for the ask prompt thingy: Brom reflecting over ”the good old days” with Morzan and their relationship, romantic or platonic? Maybe throw Murtagh in there as well for extra angst
I hope you don’t mind, I kind of ran away with this idea. Hope you enjoy!
Whoever had said that your life “flashes” before your eyes as you die is a stars-damned liar. There was no “flash” of the past century, no “flash” of his childhood or his adolescence or the grieving, rageful agony of his unnaturally long adulthood.
No, Brom’s past came to him slowly, creeping in the night with his death on its heels. From the moment the Ra’zac’s blade struck him, from the moment the world went dark, time splintered, and Brom knew only pain.
He came to wakefullness with a sickening lurch. His waist was soaking wet, his clothes clinging stickily to his torso—a fine elven-spun tunic beneath mail and surcoat, the rich aquamarine now stained black. Saphira stood above him—his Saphira, his beautiful, brave Saphira—wings outstretched, head held high in defiance. But with each breath, her shoulders heaved; with each heartbeat, that Brom could feel beside his own, gouts of blood fell in dark streams. Curls of blue flame flickered in her bared-open jaws as blood trickled from her teeth.
Head spinning, Brom tried to rise, to raise Undbitr—but when he reached for the hilt, his fingers closed on empty air. His feet could not find purchase beneath him in the blood-slick mud, and he fell upon his hands.
Cold laughter, achingly, sickeningly familiar, snaked into his ears, and Brom’s stomach clenched. Saphira’s snarl grew fiercer. A shadow approached, backlit by terrible flame, and the red blade with a wicked gleam rose above Brom’s head—
—and with the precision of the finest ballroom dancer, Morzan quite neatly cut Saphira down.
Everything was burning, enfolded in black fire that bloomed from the grief rooted deep in Brom’s heart; but no sooner did he have the thought than a cool wind passed across his face, scattering the fire as one dashes away prints on the sandy shores of the sea.
He remembered his mother’s face, her cheek smudged with ink, smiling warmly at something he said; he remembered his father’s hands, fine and ink-stained, calloused from years spent over manuscripts, detailing a single intricate scene. He remembered long summers in the crystalline lagoons, helping his mother mix a paint that might capture even a fraction of that rich, incredible blue; blue water became aquamarine scales, warm to the touch, surrounding deeply intelligent eyes that looked at him and knew his very soul.
Morzan cast him curious, worried glances from the shadows. Something about his face wasn’t quite right. Too soft, too tired, too kind. He was asking Ebrithil a question—it must have been Ebrithil he was talking to, Ebrithil who had tried to give him water, for Brom was sick and sore from… from… a training exercise? It must have been.
Brom was young, and he had Saphira. He would be fine. He would heal.
Everything was fine… even if Morzan seemed to be out of sorts.
Brom was unsure of what to expect when he arrived in Illirea and was led to his teacher’s quarters, but it certainly wasn’t to find a boy, who couldn’t have been much older than Brom himself, sprawled across an elegant armchair, and seeming quite thoroughly bored with the book floating above his chest. Awestruck, Brom took a timid step into the room, his knuckles knocking thrice on the doorframe of their own accord. At the sound, the boy’s eyes—one blue, the other black—flicked to Brom, eyed him up and down, and then somehow looked even more bored before turning back to the book, which idly flipped a page without the boy even raising his hand.
Closely followed by the blue dragon hatchling—dragon hatchling!—who had shadowed his steps from the moment she had left her egg, Brom quietly hurried to another chair, one of a pair that faced the armchair occupied by the other boy. Neither of these were as well-padded as the boy’s chair, but Brom couldn’t bring himself to mind, and was quickly absorbed with watching the boy read, trying to figure out how and why his book seemed to hover in the air, unsupported by any physical means.
Brom stared for quite a while.
So long, in fact, that when the boy glanced at him again, there was a sharp look to his eyes, and his voice was rather haughty as he asked, “What are you staring at, Illuminator?”
Brom’s eyes widened. “How do you know I’m an Illuminator?” he breathed.
The boy raised his eyebrows. “Your sleeves are edged in black. Only Illuminators wear those. Now what are you staring at?”
“Your book,” Brom blurted out. “It’s just—I’ve never seen a book do that. And I grew up with books!”
Now the boy smirked. “I’m using magic,” he said importantly. “See? I can make it do what I want.” And to demonstrate, he glowered at the book, muttered something strange under his breath, and then returned to proudly smirking as the book traced a lazy circle around his head.
“That’s amazing,” Brom gushed. “Will you teach me? Oh please, will you teach me?”
The other boy raised an elegant eyebrow, and opened his mouth to reply, but another cut across him, “Morzan, you most certainly will not.”
A tall, fine-boned man with silver hair that reached his waist strode into the room, levelling the other boy—Morzan—with a stern look. “I believe I gave you strict instructions, Morzan. Return to your seat.”
With a bored sigh, but without protest, Morzan rose from his chair. He barked a word that Brom no longer knew, and a gangly, red-scaled, winged creature burst from beneath the chair and shimmied up Morzan’s side, perching on his shoulder and coiling a long red tail around the boy’s throat. The red dragon was about half an arm longer than Saphira, and warbled curiously at her. Saphira warbled back, and Brom could feel her pleasure to meet another one of her kind so close in age.
Morzan dropped into the chair beside Brom’s, and the tall man—no, the tall elf, Brom realized, catching sight of the pointed ears—claimed the seat Morzan had left, and with growing excitement, Brom realized that he would be a student alongside this boy, who was clearly already so accomplished and refined.
“Ebrithil asked about you,” Brom said nervously, fiddling with his sleeves. They were no longer edged in black, and he no longer knocked on doorframes as he passed them. Whenever he did, before he broke the habit, Morzan always called him weird, or laughed at him.
Now, Morzan was far from laughter. He scowled at Brom’s words as he descended from his dragon’s saddle. “And what did you say?” he asked harshly.
“That I didn’t know where you were going,” Brom said. They were speaking in the Ancient Language, unable to lie, so Morzan knew it was the truth. It was also the truth that Brom really had no idea where his friend spent long hours outside the Dragonhold, unaccompanied save for his dragon.
“Well, it’s going to stay that way,” Morzan said haughtily.
“Oh,” said Brom. He really shouldn’t be so disappointed; Morzan had said the same thing the last five times Brom had seen him return.
Then Morzan smirked, his black eye glinting with mischief. “But I have something new to teach you.”
Excitement bubbled in Brom’s chest. “You do?” he asked in a gleeful whisper.
Morzan shushed him, glanced around to be sure they were unnoticed, and then beckoned for Brom to follow.
Dragon’s blood once again slicked the ground beneath Brom’s boots, but this time he wasn’t the Rider who had lost his footing. At his feet, Morzan had scrambled back as far as he could go, his back pressed against a wall, and his two-toned eyes flashing with ugly hatred. He had long since been disarmed, and Zar’roc now turned on its former master, the red blade still dripping with the Unnamed dragon’s heartblood.
Brom had won. The blue egg—a deeper, truer blue than Saphira’s—was now tucked underneath Brom’s arm. The sword which had rent his life in two was now his to turn on his wickedest enemy.
And Morzan… Morzan had the gall to give a hoarse laugh. “So, now you’ll do to me what I did to you, Illuminator?” he taunted.
Brom looked down at him. “No,” he said quietly. “I’ll do worse. Hvessa blod.”
Morzan’s eyes widened in horrified recognition of the spell he had once taught Brom, before he was lost to screaming, screaming, screaming—
—and choked into silence, as his flesh was rent asunder by his own blood.
He told Eragon about Saphira—his Saphira, his brave, beautiful Saphira—and offered his blessing. There was a shadow, hovering uncertainly behind Eragon; Brom wondered if it was Selena, come to guide him away from this slow, torturous death.
He thinks she did come, eventually. He must have hit his head; she hovered over him in double, worried, weeping; before stilling into a single silhouette, smiling, warm, and welcoming.
And so was the passing of Brom.
