Author's note: I should probably stop writing the same kind of stories... besides, I'm losing faith in my own writing style. Anyway. Another introspective.

Disclaimer: I do not own or claim to own any part of Eragon or the Inheritance series; all of that creativity can be attributed to Christopher Paolini.

Post Lucem

He drifts. Like wood in calm water, he coasts, silently, ghostly, for he is nearly that now, is he not? Translucent. Dead. But he is, in fact, undead. Technically, alive, but he is sure the word does not apply to what he sees each time he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror—something he tries not to do—or each time he lets himself truly breathe and sucks in old pain with the air. No one should be able to live through this.

But, he endures.

That, too, is questionable. He's there, but he seems to flicker; in, out, fading into the blackness as the world dampens him, soaks him up and absorbs him until he sinks into the cold iron and shards of sword that cage him. Anemic like the bodies but he doesn't care about them; he does not want to be one of them, and that makes the difference.

The water drowns him, and then…then, there is the brisingr, fire, scorching his tongue as he reaches out and smells the burning, like torrid sulfur sparks that run through him but he, he is not the source. The weak noise of the light rings only slightly but the sight is blinding, and it magnifies one bright eye with a droplet of hope that falls from the match and gods, no, nonono don't give me anything, nothing like hope, because everyone knows that it's the expectation that can shatter the soul into fragments of dust, dirt, into the ground where you came from.

Sometimes he can close his eyes and imagine; that maybe suns will blaze paths across insipid skin and show the way, but then it vanishes when he breathes in his reality, for everything tapers off into the blue pallid spectrum which slims and slides back, and behind the flame there always will lie an ochre sky that reminds him of where he is, who he is, and who he will always be.

He wonders, briefly, if it is a sin to feel so little (if any) remorse. Callouscasualcoldcalculated—he doesn't care. What are—were—those lives to him? He did not know most of them, and if he did, he still has never hesitated, for that shows weakness (but you did hesitate, that once, the Plains, and it comes to your mind when there's no morphine to dull the bad tastes and agony, do you still want to endure?) and weakness is a plague, a dirty word he never dares utter. It is true, anyway, that he does not care; if nothing else, he has not allowed himself to get close enough with a single soul to fuel any such care that could hinder his fatal blow (but, but. The mind is a funny place, isn't it, and you can try to repress but it seems to sit there and grow stronger as you gulp it down, down, again, but someday the throat will clog with the lies you tell yourself and you will vomit your soul into the sand where it should be—).

Murtagh closes his eyes, swallows, half expecting to choke, cough, until there is no more air, but still the oxygen travels smoothly down to his lungs that are slightly charred but altogether whole. Disappointing, really. One short laugh, then several more, following each other in an easy procession that leaves crazed echoes to fall against the stone walls and die before they slip to the ground. Truly, insanity seemed so enticing. If only his mind would just…fracture.

He stands—vertigo takes hold like usual and he knows, prepared like always, to brace his trembling hand against the wall to steady himself. It comes not from anything lacking, the vertigo; he is not too thin or too hungry or too lonely (never too lonely, always room for more, isn't there, as you clutch your sides and fight to feel whole) but rather from a sensation of too much. Too much nothingness. It engulfs him. Maybe, maybe to scry would alleviate it just for a moment…

Almost cautiously he treads over to the basin of water that sits near the far wall and he kneels, as if in worship—a wry smile crosses Murtagh's lips for a fraction of a second before that, too, is swallowed by that which he has been forced to become—and with some feeling he cannot describe sitting low in his stomach, he mutters the spell and—

His breath catches and he nearly does kill himself coughing, this time, but not now, nono, not when Murtagh can see him in an image much realer than anything his dulled imagination could create. At first, it's overwhelming and terrifying and it feels as though his heart has stopped and yet it beats so forcefully against his rib cage that for the first time since the Plains he feels…alive. He cannot swallow. It's been… too long. He presses the base of his palm to his forehead, shuts his eyes, focuses on the more tangible pressure on his skull than the one in his chest.

But he looks closer, then, and rather than seeing what he wants to see (do you remember like I do? Do you close your eyes and see the fire and the wide sky and two horses and nothing else in the world?) he sees—well, like he'd said once before on those wretched plains, they were mirror images of each other. Then and now. Forever and always. A dry laugh falls from his cracked lips and he smirks briefly (but there is no humor, never any humor in this tired, tired face these days) and it does not reach his dull eyes. More than anything, he had not wanted this, this destroyed creature that looks like a man and talks like a man but is not a man or a soul, just fire and black and empty. His own creation, in a way, and he swallows the bile quickly—always swallowing, so acquiescent both in prison and out.

A question crosses his mind—shouldn't he be protected from scrying?—but he is barely curious, never curious about anything anymore. Emotion is so foreign and yet he can still feel this. The world had a horrible, insane hilarity to it. And then…then, the figure in this precious glassy image that ripples with Murtagh's shallow breaths glances up, around, seems to look straight into his eyes as though he knows—impossible.

No one knows.

He'll take it to the grave, to the dirt, and no one will dig it up.

He is the opposite of Murtagh, and it's so funny; funny in the way that really means irony and incredulity and anger, hot bloody anger that he drinks down like wine and that gives him nearly the same sort of buzz.

He drifts in blood. Water is pure, for the pure, for the clean and the martyrs, and gods, he is certainly not that. Unlike Murtagh, he feels guilt, and that in itself is pure in true form, for it eats at him with an honesty that he cannot even find within himself anymore. The world is built on lies that get stacked like bricks from the core to the heavens and they are cemented and even the fire cannot penetrate them.

If he were, perchance, to lay just a finger to the water, he knows it would turn to oily mud and burn.

He could be made of ashes, by now.

Even the blackest, deepest water that he wishes he could immerse himself within and throughout until the end of time—even that, he cannot touch, though he wants it so desperately. Wants to be swallowed by it, caressed with the cool swaying currents that carry him through the glass and the bodies, to the darkness that he wishes would consume him, choke on him, take him. His scorched soul can rest in these onyx waters, in this dreamland where all he sees is that wide sky and nothing else in the world and not even stars, just—

Water and fire were never meant to mix.
Murtagh is not so much water as the darkness itself, but the two seem to go hand and hand, and to differentiate would not matter, for both could extinguish the fire.

He wants it.

The flames lick at his insides, mostly around his heart, that abject thing that is torn to shreds and scorched and scarred and horrible, and the fire he feels there, well, that is the very worst kind.

If he closes his eyes he can focus on the black there, but even in its darkest hours, the world is tinted with evil red suns that blind him.

(I stagger on, stumble, snag on the rocks that like to tease and the world wears me thin as I journey on to the end, to the end. Can't ever stop because duty binds me and hate finds me and love blinds me and death confines me.)

The mirage made of steel is impenetrable, like the dead and where they go, like blistering blackening heat that still cannot melt.

And yet…

As he lies on the grimy cot, soiled with earth and blood (and nonogodsno I can't kill anymore but my arms seem to move of their own accord and all is in my hands and I let it slip let it fall, crucify me but never pity) he senses it. Doesn't matter how, really, for reasons stopped mattering long ago when he realized that everything was relative and maybe he was just as evil, maybe the intent was irrelevant. Besides, if he believes anything is possible, then death is still possible, and really, he wants that more than anything in the world.

Oh brother, where art thou.

Violent eyes shut, then open, narrow and blazing, their depths dark with the obsidian swirls of hate and need and that last unnamable thing that Eragon had forced himself to forget, to hide at the edges of his subconscious. He sits quickly, legs moved over the side until his feet rest against the ground of dead grass…tries to breathe, but inhales dust, dust that fills his lungs like fire (always fire, must escape it) and in some ways he would prefer this pain to the other.

Too bad there's never really a choice.

He's almost tempted to reach out (reach…foreign to me, because to reach is to hope and I stopped such nonsense so long ago that it's not a memory, it's a distant dream…) and try to grasp that other half as if it were tangible, suspended invisible in front of him, close enough to taste. But he knows he's a fool for the thought. His lips twist into a grim, crooked smirk, his eyes indistinguishable in the dim tent but behind them there is sorrow and pain and anger and despair, all so strong that in another life he would have cowered on his knees before them. But not this life.

How many miles away is he?

Eragon tries to guess, but then again…he doesn't want to reaffirm the distance, acknowledge that there is a difference between reality and fantasy.

If only he could sleep forever, disappear into the land of the dead where he belonged with the rest of his friends and enemies; there really was no difference between the two anyway. (I'm whole but I'm broken and here I fall, down, forever falling like I was destined to, you can't hear and you can't see but you can always feel and that is the worst part of it all. The world sucks me into its nadir because I was never meant to surface anyway.)

Fix me, Murtagh. I know you can see.

It's a desperate thought, and he knows it will never reach the ears that are so, so far away, but maybe if he thinks it, he can will it to be true. Maybe, maybe darkness and light were meant to be. One cannot exist without the other, they say. But that's his desperation at its finest and it's all ridiculous in the end because one is here and the other is there and the sheer impossibility is devastating like his own perilous fatality.

It's like a whisper in Murtagh's head, so light it could have been his insanity talking, but he knows it's there, and real, realer than anything he's heard or felt or needed in a long time.

As though there was another hand there to grasp, to hold, Murtagh's fist closes around air.

Stupid to hope, really.