Spitefic: The Eyes of Madness
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antishurtugal_rebornSpitefic: The Eyes of Madness
So, this is my attempt to offer a possible point of view Galbatorix may have had on canon events. I didn't actually intend to write this at all, but Calliope wouldn't let me go. Trigger warnings for suicidal ideation, and…whatever I’ve done with depicting seeing and hearing things that are not there. I hope I've presented these topics without sensationalizing them or disrespecting folks who suffer from mental illness.
----
The first time he heard a voice he definitely knew had never been spoken, he was holding Jarnunvösk’s lifeless head. His tears shimmered on her beautiful purple scales, adding layers to the reflection of the weak sunlight of the far north. The voice, little more than a hoarse whisper in his - right ear, he thought? - said “Go south”.
Even though he knew he was now cursedly alone, he looked for the source of the whisper. His eyes roved over the urgal corpses, his dead friends, and returned to Jarnunvösk’s corpse. As he expected, there was no one. A second whisper, slightly higher pitched, said “Stay with her”, even as a low and gravelly third whisper ordered “Make a funeral pyre”.
He shook his head firmly to try and silence the whispers, then drew his sword. Oromis-elda may claim that there was no afterworld, but he didn’t know. He’d honor his friends even if he couldn’t burn them. He carefully nicked one of his fingertips - enough that it would bleed, not so much it’d be a danger - and started as the whispers came again.
“Fall on your sword.”
“Just a little bit further down, your wrist”
“Stay here with her.”
He dropped his sword and clutched his head. He carefully averted his eyes from the blade, which seemed to sing of possible insertions into his own flesh. He reached out with his hand and drew a rune on Jarnunvösk’s cheek. It wasn’t proper, but it was a warrior’s blessing. A sign the Old Folk should bear her to the afterworld without payment and a promise to pay them the difference on his own death, for he could not pay them right now and remain alive.
Jarnunvösk winked. His heart soared with hope even as his head screamed it was impossible. She was dead, impaled through the heart by an urgal spear. He couldn’t feel her anymore. She was dead, dead, dead. But it was as if his eyes refused to believe it.
“Stay, there won’t be any more.”
“She was more worthy than you.”
“You can’t pay.”
He forced his numb limbs to move to his companions and without hesitation took their debts upon himself.
…
The 92nd time he heard a voice he definitely knew had never been spoken, he’d been walking south for some time. His traitorous body screamed out for rest - the rest Jarnunvösk would never know until her debt to the Old Folk was paid. He didn’t deserve to rest until she could, and for that he needed wood and flame.
“There’s a cave. Rest.”
“You’ll never make it this way.”
“Go back for your sword.”
He stubbornly put one foot in front of the other, until, until…
He woke up in darkness. So, so cold. He must have stopped for a moment, and slept in the snow. He laughed humorlessly. He should be dead. Why wasn’t he dead?
…
He no longer knew how many times he’d heard voices that definitely were never spoken. The voices came to him often, and rarely said the same thing. Sometimes they pointed out useful things - edible roots here, shelter there - and sometimes they said nonsense or spoke of blood and death that was never evident.
The first time he’d seen Jarnunvösk poke her head around a tree like they used to do when they played together had put him into a dead run towards her. Then he remembered she was dead and cried yet again. This didn’t cause the image of her to fade, but when he finally approached it disappeared.
When she showed up again on his journey, he tried to look away from her but then he felt as if she was creeping up behind him with malevolent intent. Was this a spirit tormenting him?
The fourth time Jarnunvösk appeared, he knew immediately on seeing her that she wasn’t really there. He would have given anything for her to actually be there.
Though he was among trees now, he told himself he needed an axe first to pay the debt.
…
The Rider council examined his mind. They claimed it was a requirement to consider granting him a second dragon.
“Don’t the dragons choose?” The voices whispered
The council claimed he was mad and refused to allow him to be presented to the dragon eggs. But he wasn’t mad. Someone who was mad would not know it when he saw something falsely, or that the whispers had never been spoken. What gave the all-elven council this authority? The dragons choose, and there were no humans on the council.
He reached out to old friends, and in time and plots, a new egg chose him.
…
Shruikan was nothing like Jarnunvösk.
Where Jarnunvösk was endlessly patient and relentlessly kind-hearted to the frustration of her tutors, Shruikan was impatient and prone to seeing threat in everything.
Still, they bonded. Shruikan became another voice in his head, albeit one that was real, and the whispers subsided somewhat. Shruikan would never grasp that not all of the threats his Rider saw or feared were real, and others would read this as cruelty and a disposition towards violence.
When Shruikan asked about Jarnunvösk, his Rider had no words. When they spoke of Jarnunvösk, the two spoke in the language of dragons - memory and impression.
…
A hundred years later, he sat upon a throne. His agent, Durza, reported the existence of a new Rider that threatened to challenge the king. He resolved to order the Ra’zac to the new Rider’s last known location. They would find him. The Ra’zac were the perfect hunters of man and their methods were more reliable than the shade’s in this situation.
But before the hour was out, he had no memory of this interaction and thus the Ra’zac were never dispatched. Had they been, perhaps Eragon would have been intercepted over the Hadarac Desert.
In later times a collection of dead dragons would claim to have manipulated events, but they had nothing to do with the failure of memory an aged man afflicted with visions and voices can display now and then or with Shruikan’s complete disinterest in matters of ruling.
Shruikan always cared more about chess than ruling. It was the only thing he ever showed real patience for. The king set apart an entire garden for pieces large enough for Shruikan to move.
…
Not long after that, Murtagh returned to court. He’d run. He’d joined the rebels. He didn’t understand what was at stake. He needed to die as an example, but then the dragon Thorn hatched for him.
So now the king looked into Murtagh’s mind, looking for some key to preventing Murtagh from restoring elven dominion over Alagaesia. He found little evidence of Murtagh’s true name, until the voices spoke. Two of them gave him possibilities, and the third wanted to use cake as shampoo. He tried the possibilities, and one of them was indeed Murtagh’s true name.
He wasn’t surprised. His voices had helped him crack the minds of Riders far older and stronger than Murtagh.
…
He sat upon his throne, looking at the people - and the elf - before him. Arya Drottning, Eragon Shadeslayer, the dragon Saphira, and the child Elva. He introduced the children, laid out a threat upon them. The voices wondered what their dead bodies would look like, but he had no intention of harming them. He just needed this to be a conversation of some kind and he doubted anything less would get some kind of courtesy from Eragon (The lack of an emissary before the battle was a sure sign).
Theatricality sometimes meant there wouldn’t have to be bloodshed. He’d learned that over the past century.
It wasn’t working here. Eragon was eager to fight, even with children in the room. Murtagh at least could be relied upon not to kill randomly if he eluded control. He’d have to keep a close eye on Eragon and dispose of him as soon as there were female dragons other than Saphira.
He ordered Eragon and Murtagh to fight while he concentrated on unraveling Eragon’s true name. The boy’s mind was frightening. Ruled by anger, laziness, love of violence, and entitlement but not of any of those things. What word defined Eragon’s life, and would define his future if he didn’t change? He didn’t know.
It probably had something to do with the boy’s tendency towards murder. He tried a few that translated to “destroyer of mankind”, but they didn’t take.
“Wyrdskyldr”, suggested one of his voices. Nonsense, the boy didn’t have the humility.
He tried “False Hero”, and that didn’t work. In the midst of his pondering, something changed.
He was burning. No, he wasn’t. But it felt like it. Like he was burning and had been stabbed and crushed and was being torn apart. Pain lanced down through his teeth, into his skull from his eyes, every aspect of himself afire with pain.
Afire…the Old Folk. He owed them. This must be Jarnunvösk reaching across the divide, letting him know what it felt like to be unable to rest. He’d allowed himself to be diverted for a century. He’d bonded with a different dragon, made friends, lived it up, all while Jarnunvösk was denied rest because her debt had yet to be paid.
The Old Folk took payment in the smell of burning flesh. He’d give it to them, and be lost.
So, this is my attempt to offer a possible point of view Galbatorix may have had on canon events. I didn't actually intend to write this at all, but Calliope wouldn't let me go. Trigger warnings for suicidal ideation, and…whatever I’ve done with depicting seeing and hearing things that are not there. I hope I've presented these topics without sensationalizing them or disrespecting folks who suffer from mental illness.
----
The first time he heard a voice he definitely knew had never been spoken, he was holding Jarnunvösk’s lifeless head. His tears shimmered on her beautiful purple scales, adding layers to the reflection of the weak sunlight of the far north. The voice, little more than a hoarse whisper in his - right ear, he thought? - said “Go south”.
Even though he knew he was now cursedly alone, he looked for the source of the whisper. His eyes roved over the urgal corpses, his dead friends, and returned to Jarnunvösk’s corpse. As he expected, there was no one. A second whisper, slightly higher pitched, said “Stay with her”, even as a low and gravelly third whisper ordered “Make a funeral pyre”.
He shook his head firmly to try and silence the whispers, then drew his sword. Oromis-elda may claim that there was no afterworld, but he didn’t know. He’d honor his friends even if he couldn’t burn them. He carefully nicked one of his fingertips - enough that it would bleed, not so much it’d be a danger - and started as the whispers came again.
“Fall on your sword.”
“Just a little bit further down, your wrist”
“Stay here with her.”
He dropped his sword and clutched his head. He carefully averted his eyes from the blade, which seemed to sing of possible insertions into his own flesh. He reached out with his hand and drew a rune on Jarnunvösk’s cheek. It wasn’t proper, but it was a warrior’s blessing. A sign the Old Folk should bear her to the afterworld without payment and a promise to pay them the difference on his own death, for he could not pay them right now and remain alive.
Jarnunvösk winked. His heart soared with hope even as his head screamed it was impossible. She was dead, impaled through the heart by an urgal spear. He couldn’t feel her anymore. She was dead, dead, dead. But it was as if his eyes refused to believe it.
“Stay, there won’t be any more.”
“She was more worthy than you.”
“You can’t pay.”
He forced his numb limbs to move to his companions and without hesitation took their debts upon himself.
…
The 92nd time he heard a voice he definitely knew had never been spoken, he’d been walking south for some time. His traitorous body screamed out for rest - the rest Jarnunvösk would never know until her debt to the Old Folk was paid. He didn’t deserve to rest until she could, and for that he needed wood and flame.
“There’s a cave. Rest.”
“You’ll never make it this way.”
“Go back for your sword.”
He stubbornly put one foot in front of the other, until, until…
He woke up in darkness. So, so cold. He must have stopped for a moment, and slept in the snow. He laughed humorlessly. He should be dead. Why wasn’t he dead?
…
He no longer knew how many times he’d heard voices that definitely were never spoken. The voices came to him often, and rarely said the same thing. Sometimes they pointed out useful things - edible roots here, shelter there - and sometimes they said nonsense or spoke of blood and death that was never evident.
The first time he’d seen Jarnunvösk poke her head around a tree like they used to do when they played together had put him into a dead run towards her. Then he remembered she was dead and cried yet again. This didn’t cause the image of her to fade, but when he finally approached it disappeared.
When she showed up again on his journey, he tried to look away from her but then he felt as if she was creeping up behind him with malevolent intent. Was this a spirit tormenting him?
The fourth time Jarnunvösk appeared, he knew immediately on seeing her that she wasn’t really there. He would have given anything for her to actually be there.
Though he was among trees now, he told himself he needed an axe first to pay the debt.
…
The Rider council examined his mind. They claimed it was a requirement to consider granting him a second dragon.
“Don’t the dragons choose?” The voices whispered
The council claimed he was mad and refused to allow him to be presented to the dragon eggs. But he wasn’t mad. Someone who was mad would not know it when he saw something falsely, or that the whispers had never been spoken. What gave the all-elven council this authority? The dragons choose, and there were no humans on the council.
He reached out to old friends, and in time and plots, a new egg chose him.
…
Shruikan was nothing like Jarnunvösk.
Where Jarnunvösk was endlessly patient and relentlessly kind-hearted to the frustration of her tutors, Shruikan was impatient and prone to seeing threat in everything.
Still, they bonded. Shruikan became another voice in his head, albeit one that was real, and the whispers subsided somewhat. Shruikan would never grasp that not all of the threats his Rider saw or feared were real, and others would read this as cruelty and a disposition towards violence.
When Shruikan asked about Jarnunvösk, his Rider had no words. When they spoke of Jarnunvösk, the two spoke in the language of dragons - memory and impression.
…
A hundred years later, he sat upon a throne. His agent, Durza, reported the existence of a new Rider that threatened to challenge the king. He resolved to order the Ra’zac to the new Rider’s last known location. They would find him. The Ra’zac were the perfect hunters of man and their methods were more reliable than the shade’s in this situation.
But before the hour was out, he had no memory of this interaction and thus the Ra’zac were never dispatched. Had they been, perhaps Eragon would have been intercepted over the Hadarac Desert.
In later times a collection of dead dragons would claim to have manipulated events, but they had nothing to do with the failure of memory an aged man afflicted with visions and voices can display now and then or with Shruikan’s complete disinterest in matters of ruling.
Shruikan always cared more about chess than ruling. It was the only thing he ever showed real patience for. The king set apart an entire garden for pieces large enough for Shruikan to move.
…
Not long after that, Murtagh returned to court. He’d run. He’d joined the rebels. He didn’t understand what was at stake. He needed to die as an example, but then the dragon Thorn hatched for him.
So now the king looked into Murtagh’s mind, looking for some key to preventing Murtagh from restoring elven dominion over Alagaesia. He found little evidence of Murtagh’s true name, until the voices spoke. Two of them gave him possibilities, and the third wanted to use cake as shampoo. He tried the possibilities, and one of them was indeed Murtagh’s true name.
He wasn’t surprised. His voices had helped him crack the minds of Riders far older and stronger than Murtagh.
…
He sat upon his throne, looking at the people - and the elf - before him. Arya Drottning, Eragon Shadeslayer, the dragon Saphira, and the child Elva. He introduced the children, laid out a threat upon them. The voices wondered what their dead bodies would look like, but he had no intention of harming them. He just needed this to be a conversation of some kind and he doubted anything less would get some kind of courtesy from Eragon (The lack of an emissary before the battle was a sure sign).
Theatricality sometimes meant there wouldn’t have to be bloodshed. He’d learned that over the past century.
It wasn’t working here. Eragon was eager to fight, even with children in the room. Murtagh at least could be relied upon not to kill randomly if he eluded control. He’d have to keep a close eye on Eragon and dispose of him as soon as there were female dragons other than Saphira.
He ordered Eragon and Murtagh to fight while he concentrated on unraveling Eragon’s true name. The boy’s mind was frightening. Ruled by anger, laziness, love of violence, and entitlement but not of any of those things. What word defined Eragon’s life, and would define his future if he didn’t change? He didn’t know.
It probably had something to do with the boy’s tendency towards murder. He tried a few that translated to “destroyer of mankind”, but they didn’t take.
“Wyrdskyldr”, suggested one of his voices. Nonsense, the boy didn’t have the humility.
He tried “False Hero”, and that didn’t work. In the midst of his pondering, something changed.
He was burning. No, he wasn’t. But it felt like it. Like he was burning and had been stabbed and crushed and was being torn apart. Pain lanced down through his teeth, into his skull from his eyes, every aspect of himself afire with pain.
Afire…the Old Folk. He owed them. This must be Jarnunvösk reaching across the divide, letting him know what it felt like to be unable to rest. He’d allowed himself to be diverted for a century. He’d bonded with a different dragon, made friends, lived it up, all while Jarnunvösk was denied rest because her debt had yet to be paid.
The Old Folk took payment in the smell of burning flesh. He’d give it to them, and be lost.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 08:39 pm (UTC)I like it, and I also like it specifically as a regional belief, since the place where Galbatorix is from is canonically "no more." It makes the lack of this system of belief in the series make sense, because only one man still lives who was raised with it.
I'm not 100% sure what the Old Folk are, but I was thinking of fairies when I wrote it.
I did sort of get that impression, what with how similar the name is to Fair Folk. I do like me some good old-school faeries.
So I wanted to portray the auditory and visual hallucinations Galbatorix is experiencing in this fic as part manifestation of one emotion or anything (guilt, fear, missing Jarnunvösk, suicidal ideation), part subconsciously noticing things (Patterns in the mind that point to a true name, the power issues associated with the elven council deciding for the dragons), and part intrusive nonsense thoughts he can't get out of his head (Cake-as-shampoo lived in my own head for a blessedly brief few hours).
I like this. It really is a nice departure from Hollywood Schizophrenia.
One thing I was unsure about when writing this was what exactly the empathy spell does.
Going by the description in canon, it makes you feel everything you've ever made someone else feel. So if, say, Vanora got hit with it, she would feel the pain one of Serrill's bullies felt when she punched him in the face, but she would also feel Serrill's relief and sense of being protected.
Is he having this experience because the spell is forcing him to suffer the pain of his subjects, who are being brutally murdered by the Varden as this happens? Or is he having this experience because by his religious beliefs this is what Jarnunvösk would be going through every second her debt is unpaid and she cannot fully pass to the Afterworld? In short, is the spell forcing him to experience real pain and trauma or is it reacting with his mental illnesses?
I think the scene works with either interpretation.
Leaving things up to interpretation is always fun, and yes, I think the scene does work whichever way you interpret it.
I probably should have included this line. But I'm satisfied with the story as it is.
Honestly, I think it's good without it. For people who've read the books, the line will naturally come to mind.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 09:05 pm (UTC)Huh. That's pretty interesting. I suppose the next question is to what degree are figures in authority considered to be responsible? Galbatorix is high king. The buck stops with him as far as anything happening the Emprie goes. Does that mean he's responsible for the pain his soldiers feel when they execute his orders to defend their homes from invaders and lose? Does that mean he's responsible for the agony someone in a small village feels because there aren't enough painkillers available and Galbatorix could theoretically have improved supply lines so there would be some available?
Granted, though, Galbatorix has personally killed enough people and made enough Name-slaves that the spell would cause him ultimate pain however his role as high king played in or didn't.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 10:18 pm (UTC)Very true. I don't think Galbatorix is anywhere near the complete monster Paolini tries to portray him as, but he's certainly done some evil things. Primarily the mindbreaking.
One thing I do know, though, is that if Eragon ever got hit with the Empathy Spell, he would get wrecked. And that statement is very much rooted in canon. Because canon includes a certain character who feels lots and lots of pain, which Eragon is explicitly responsible for.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 10:55 pm (UTC)Yep. So Elva's just been storing up ammunition for the empathy spell without knowing or wanting to. Which is also horrible.
I don't think you're going to hit Eragon with the empathy spell, though. I think Eragon's going to use it against Vanora, and it's going to make her stronger instead of weaker.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 11:01 pm (UTC)The worst part about it is, Elva doesn't just feel people's actual pain. She feels their potential pain. And before the spell got "fixed" in Brisingr, it directly caused her pain if she tried to ignore said potential pains. It's like exponentiating pain.
I don't think you're going to hit Eragon with the empathy spell, though. I think Eragon's going to use it against Vanora, and it's going to make her stronger instead of weaker.
In the words of Christopher Paolini, "no comment." ;)