Chapter XXI: Rise Above Your Sorrows

Nasuada gestured. "Is this normal?"

Abrienda lay on a bed in the sick bay, a cluster of tents at the back of the camp. She hadn't moved or spoken since the battle. Her wide grey eyes stared at the ceiling, never blinking or moving, completely devoid of emotion; the effect, coupled with the complete stillness of her body, was chilling.

Angela raised her hands helplessly. "There's no way to tell. Most Riders die with their dragons and the few who survive usually go mad, to a certain degree. There's none left alive to ask but Galbatorix, though we can be sure her life as she knew it is over."

A sigh came from Arya's part of the tent. "What was her life? No loving family, no close friends, everyone looked down on her and nobody ever believed anything would come of her."

"After all that fuss about taking you and Saphira alive, I'm surprised Murtagh was allowed to kill Syra," commented Angela, glancing in Eragon's direction.

"Murtagh told me," the Shadeslayer said quietly. "Galbatorix had given up on her. Like everyone else, he also believed she could no longer be useful." An unspoken thought ran its course around the room: was he wrong?

A light but steady rain fell on the Burning Plains. The battle was long over, but there were many injured yet to be cared for, and the healers were overworked without exception. The medical tents were a bustle of activity—and yet, the area around her was silent.

Abrienda sat in the mud outside her tent, leaning back against a pole.

Her eyes had lost none of their horrific blankness. She sat, disregarding the rain entirely, staring at the sky and mumbling under her breath. Nobody dared approach her. A Rider was one to be feared; an insane Rider was terrifying.

Angela slowly ambled over. Ignoring the mud, she too sat and looked at the sky. Straining to hear the girl's words, she leaned closer, but Abrienda's hand came flying and smacked her away. The girl moved a few inches over, trembling madly. Her incoherent mumbling took on a more frantic tone. Angela rubbed the growing redness on her face and quietly muttered a spell to hear what Abrienda was saying.

"Rain comes pouring down again, up up up from the sky, the sky, the big blue sky, never again, never going in the big blue sky, sky is grey, grey today, rain comes pouring down don't touch me no, please don't leave, I'm alone, alone in a big big world without the sky. Syra Syra where is Syra, always alone, never flying again, I'll never see it again, never see anything again, bones and dirt and blood everywhere, world is dirty, not like the clean grey sky…"

On and on it went, always in the same vein, Abrienda would never fly again. Angela held her eyes closed for a long moment, then silently picked herself up and left the girl alone in the rain.

A few days later, Abrienda disappeared. When she was found some hours later, her wrists had long stopped bleeding, and nobody quite mourned her. Yes, she had been an exceptional archer, and yes she might have been a minor asset to their fight. She hadn't lasted, and in wartime you couldn't stop to take the time to miss everyone that fell.

Abrienda was born lonely, lived a desperate life, shattered by Galbatorix and given a false hope, only to be destroyed again. She was not mourned, but she was remembered, and used for decades thereafter as the poster child of Galbatorix's evils, long after the war was over and the false king was dead. Time romanticized her, history was kind to her; she was given an honored place in the records of the elves, and was known thereafter by a nickname she's acquired shortly after her death.

Abrienda Hjarta Jierdaí.

Broken-Hearted Abrienda.

END.

Well, it's been a bundle of laughs, writing this story. Thank you all for sticking with me and reading past the first few chapters to get to the end. It really has changed, hasn't it? Thank you very much!

Emerald Tiara out.