A month's journey down the Az Ragini from the eastern edge of Alagaesia was a lush, fertile valley. It was nestled between the shear peaks and cliffs of some unnamed mountain range. This valley was also inhabited by many thousands of beasts, some as small and unthreatening as a shrew, and others which were near the size of a Nagra, so prized by the Dwarves. What made this particular valley so interesting was not the splendid spectrum of tottering furry things, not even the largest ones are worth much mention. The particularly interesting thing about this valley was those things that lived in the valley which could, with a flick of their tail, demolish any other beast yet discovered. They were The Dragons.

At present there were 8 such dragons inhabiting the caves and hollows. Galdok, a proud, golden dragon of 7 winters and his rider, Telaine, shared a cave upon a proud cliff only 5 minutes' ride from the river which flowed through the valley. Slightly above and to the left was a cave owned by Todor and his brilliant partner of mind and soul, Ian. Almost directly across the valley and a bit lower, on a cliff overlooking a beautiful meadow lived Kaine and his deep green dragon, Foresta.

Roughly thirty leagues upstream from this meadow, the Az Ragini turns northward. Therefore, the valley is situated north-to-south which creates a very fortunate property of the sun to always be slightly behind something. In one of the few places in the valley where one could stand and see the sun's full arc, There is a cliff, only 300 feet high, that provides a lovely vista which includes all the other caves and hollows which house the dragons and their riders. In a cave atop this cliff lives a dragon that is by far the oldest in the Farrah Valley. Her name is Saphira and as we begin our story, she is sleeping comfortably with her wing draped lazily over her celebritous rider, as was their tradition for nearly 43 years.

The man asleep on a small bed under her wing was nearly 60 winters into his nearly infinite life, and yet looked only to be about 25 by human standards. His chestnut brown hair fell across his brow noncommittal as if it weren't sure whether it should stay put. This man was, of course, none other than Eragon Bromsson, Kingkiller, Shadeslayer twice over, vanquisher of snagli and leader of the New Order of Dragons and Riders.

He tossed uneasily in his hybrid linen and dragonwing bedding. He was reliving a particularly bitter moment in his life, the same moment he had tortured himself with remembering each night for forty years. In this particular memory there were moments which could make the tips of his leaf-shaped ears turn red, and there were moments where he nearly abandoned his waking dreams in favor of tossing himself from the cliff 100 feet from the cave entrance; But still he carried on in this wretched cycle of bliss and misery all in the pursuit of maintaining his hope, however fragile, that he may get to right those wrongs made so many summers ago.

As an educated reader could guess, the memory which haunts him so is of a particular night in late summer 40 years ago. It was the night when last he se saw the elf Arya. They exchanged feelings that had gone so long unspoken, memories of friends passed on, and shared parts of themselves so sacred that they had nearly wept upon hearing the other's.

A small jet of flame pierced the darkness as Saphira was aggravated by her partner's dreams. She suffered nearly as severely as he did from memories obtained in almost the same moment. Her forest green mate, Firnen had been absent since that dreamt of night on the shores of Az Ragini on the edge of Alagaesia. She had borne 3 eggs from that coupling, two of which had found their riders and were now her students. Firnen had only met one of them, who had hatched for an elven boy.

Silence echoed deafeningly through the halls of the small castle which nestled in the cliff face below the great rider's cave. If one were to wander through the halls in daytime, they might find any of the riders who attended training there, or even any of the several elves, dwarves, urgals, and humans who roamed the halls either performing duties to support the dragon-related students or working for their own study. For as much as Farrah was the stronghold for the New Order of dragons and riders, it was also a thriving university where those select scholars who would better themselves at the expense of most social comforts could come study and teach.

The silence filling the dark castle was broken by two sharp raps on the front doors, carved ornately from oak in the style which adorned King Orik's throne room. There was no answer. After two more attempts, the source of the disruptive noise decided that it was "better to ask forgiveness than permission", and entered cautiously. Raven hair fluttered in the wind as it slipped in the door just behind the head of its owner. Incidentally, as the raven-haired intruder entered the elf-sung entryway, someone looked down upon the castle, noting that it appeared to have grown, rather immediately, an extra wing, which appeared to be somewhat greener than the others.

Viktor was a small boy of dwarfish heritage. He was so young that his beard had not yet come in. His dragon, Terra, was a dull brown color, the same as the walls of the great city of Tronjheim, where he was born. On the eve of his fifteenth birthday, the elves that were charged with ferrying the brown egg, recently released from the Vault of Souls to the Riders, arrived.

Viktor had been in the crowd receiving them when they entered Farthen Dúr. The lead elf, Forrwin had bent down and let Viktor lay a hand on the egg, smiling warmly as he did so. The young dwarf had felt an energy surge through him at the moment his finger touched the cool stone.

He had spent hours after the meeting thinking about it, possibly that's what everyone felt when touching such a powerful magical object. After countless attempts at falling asleep, he resolved to go see the egg. He snuck out in the middle of the night, quickly finding the room in which the egg was kept during its stay in the dwarf city. Upon entering the room he heard a noise, a soft crackling and an odd, foreign sort of cooing. What Viktor saw next made him question his sanity for a brief moment.

Protruding from the top of the egg was a tiny reptilian head, shaking shell fragments and fluids off of itself. He stepped closer and the infant dragon took notice of him. Instead of reacting fearfully as he would expect a newborn creature to do, it silenced and stilled, looking at him curiously. It seemed to be studying him, curious as to what he was just as he was curious about the dragon.

He realized it was struggling, as if it could not work out how to break the remaining shell. The dragon began to make the adorable cooing sound again, asking Viktor for help.

"you promise you won't hurt me?" Viktor asked cautiously

The small reptile nodded in a comically awkward fashion. The young dwarf's eyes widened in surprise at the unexpected response and he hurried across the last few feet, helping the dragon break the rest of its constrictive shell off.

The Gedwey insignia appeared on his palm as he touched his new partner, sending icy chills through him.

There was a rattling slam as the doors to the chamber were suddenly thrown open by a pair of angry and embarrassed elves.

"What are you doing in here!" One asked, obviously letting his emotions overtake his normal composure. Just as Viktor was about to stammer out a predictably unsatisfying answer, the elven guards noticed the egg shards on the floor, and the tiny, cooing creature nestled against Viktor's chest. Their breath hitched as they struggled to regain their previous sureness of mind.

"He's hatched for you," One stated lamely.

Viktor only nodded in response, still too stunned to really participate in any conversation. All eyes were affixed firmly to the small reptile in his arms.

The next days were filled with council meetings, blessings, gifts, feasts, adornments of both religious and secular nature, and well wishes from nearly every earth-kin denizen of Farthen Dúr. After a tearful goodbye to his immediate family, he left with the elves for the shores of the Az Ragini which would take him and his newly christened partner, Terra to Farrah Valley.

As they grew together and bonded, it had become a tradition for the pair to take late night flights, as a sort of tribute to the scenario of their meeting. One such flight was taking place as the raven-haired intruder snuck into the entrance hall of the university. It was Terra who noticed the apparently sudden growth of a new wing to the castle. He and his Rider considered it for a moment, mulling over and jesting about possible explanations for its sudden appearance; possibly a spell gone wrong, an elf who very much enjoyed hearing themselves sing a new song, a dwarf with a bit of whimsy for late-night construction.

All this guesswork was put to rest, however, when from the new addition spread a literal wing, then another; both a deep, forest green in the moonlight.

Foresta? Viktor considered, before Terra and he both realized the size of the dragon, far too large for one of only 3 winters. But the only other forest green dragon is Queen Arya's Firnen. They would not possibly be here. They left to wake Master Eragon and Saphira to alert them to the visitors whether they be of benign intentions or not.

For all the rationalizing that was happening half a league up in the air, if one were to wander through the entrance hall at that moment, they would in fact see Queen Arya of the elves, sneaking in like a common villain thief. Her lithe grace seeming almost out of place for the tattered rags she wore over her slender frame.

Arya was searching for Eragon's chambers, which she had wrongfully assumed would be in the main keep itself. She could not be blamed, information about Farrah Valley, especially information so precise as where the leader of the Riders slept, was rare and often very inaccurate in Alagaesia.

As the elf searched fruitlessly, the man she was looking for was being frantically roused from his waking dreams by an harried Viktor, who's dragon had alighted on the cliff moments earlier.

In Eragon's mind, he was gently cradling a contentedly smiling Arya's head in his lap, threading his fingers through her silky black hair. She glanced almost nervously from his eyes to his lips and back again, her own features sharply accented by the wan light of the evening sun. She leant up as he leant down, both with eyes fluttering closed. The beating anticipation echoed through his head, and just before the electric spark of lips meeting…He was jolted awake by the young dwarven rider standing at his bedside.

He sat bolt upright, fierce gaze locking on the obviously frightened young lad, "What in the bloody savages is so important to have woken me!?". As the dwarf began to stutter out an answer, Eragon realized his anger was quite misplaced and only due to what he had been forcefully removed from in his dream. "My apologies, Viktor" he added lamely.

"It's…err….It's no matter, Ebrithil".

"Well, what is the matter?" He relaxed his shoulders a bit, reclining slightly against Saphira's supportive wing.

"Sir, there is another dragon here," Viktor visibly relaxed as well.

"A hatchling?" Eragon replied, genuinely surprised. He was normally notified via scrying mirror about anything regarding new riders.

"No," the dwarf replied, still looking a bit concerned, "large green one". Eragon's heart leapt in dangerous hope that he dared not show.

"You're sure it's not Foresta?" he asked tentatively, his hope swelling in time with his trepidation of what a potential meeting between himself and the rider of a certain green dragon might bring.

"It was far too large, and, I cannot be sure, but Terra thought it appeared to be male". By this time, Saphira was evidently paying rapt attention and Eragon was forced to support himself as she shuffled her wings in excitement.

Although he tried desperately to restrain his imagination, his stomach still unsettled itself in the same sort of way it did when Saphira dropped into a steep dive.

"Where?"

"By the keep, on the west side, come, you can see it from here."

Saphira, let's get down there He thought. Before the thought was finished, she was perched on the edge of the cliff, her movement accompanied by a large rush of air which unsettled the sparse furnishings in the cave. She grabbed the nape of her rider's tunic carefully between her enormous teeth and tossed the 60 year-old Master of the Riders and Savior of Alagaesia gracelessly onto her back. She leapt from the cliff, her rider on her back with no saddle or straps, firing herself in a ballistic arc , directly toward the west end of Farrah keep.

As he was catapulted through the air on Saphira's back, he could feel equal excitement and apprehension coming from her usually consistent and harmonious mind, now simultaneously turbulent and perfectly focused. They were only vaguely aware of the brown dragon following them at a somewhat less dramatic pace.

Firnen glanced up at the sound of rushing air overhead. He saw Saphira, with her rider precariously clinging to her spines, at the same instant he felt a long-missed and insistent prodding against his mind.

Arya, until now, blissfully unaware of the goings on outside, felt a similar, familiar pull against her mind's barriers. She instinctively allowed it in, knowing for certain who it was. She didn't even have time to berate herself on her lax control before the connection wiped all useful thought from her brain. The intensity of emotions and thoughts flooding into her from Eragon and Firnen simultaneously caused her breath to hitch, her stomach to flutter, and her steps to falter at an incredibly inopportune moment. She was near the top of a staircase when her feet caught together, sending her tumbling down, not stopping till she reached flat ground. Her head struck stone, and her world went black.

A/N: If I get a decent response, I'll update quickly. I'll probably update quickly anyway, but I still really appreciate your feedback. There is a long way to go with this plot and this chapter is more of an introduction than anything. Also, I normally wouldn't do this, but don't worry, Arya will probably* be fine.