A Wandering Soul - Rider 1.1

It was dark when I finally woke up again. Well, it was dark in the cockpit. The crash had buried the viewport in dirt so I had no real way of telling what outside looked like at the moment. All I had were some emergency running lights and a pounding headache.

I brought a hand up to my forehead and it came away wet, so at the very least there was a cut there.

I fumbled blindly across the control board until I found the ignition switch and flipped it. The Azure Horizon groaned and spluttered as lights flashed on and off before something popped and everything died again. Well that was fantastic.

A small ball of fire appeared in my hand as I climbed to my feet and made my way back to the engineering room. Thankfully despite the landing nothing big had broken free. There were a few cables that had detached but that was the worst of it, at least in terms of visible damage. The truly bad part was when I opened the reactor to see if anything had been damaged there. Inside the durable casing something must have shorted out, because the core was a slagged piece of junk now.

The worst part was despite having the tools to make a new one, even if I had to power them myself, I didn't have enough of the special alloy needed to make another. So I was stuck wherever here was until I had the chance to track some down. If I was lucky, I was on a more modern world where I could simply hack enough money together and order the alloy from a foundry. If not...I could be here for a while.

-o-

It took several hours to fully check over the Horizon. By that time I had cleaned myself off, fixed what damage I could, and scraped together a travel pack; it was already dark. I set up a basic Bounded Field, just enough to deter the casual interloper should they find my ship by accident.

Considering nothing had come looking this way other than some wildlife I was either too far away from people to be worth the effort, or there was simply no one around to notice at all. Given that my quick look outside confirmed that I was deep in the mountains. Mountains I wasn't entirely sure existed on Earth going by how tall they were. Given that I ended up skipping through realities, that wasn't much of a surprise but it was still neat to see.

But sitting around marveling at the scenery wasn't going to help, so once there was enough light to see (I couldn't really call it sunrise since the mountains blocked a good amount of light and it was well into morning by the time I could see the sun) I shouldered my pack and set out.

For a few days it was fun.

I couldn't say I had ever really been mountain camping before. Certainly never to the point where I only had what I could carry, even if I was cheating by tracing whatever tools I needed. It was relaxing and peaceful. But even the wonder of nature grew normal after enough exposure, and soon enough I was just hoping to find some sign of civilization and a soft bed.

So when I heard voices up ahead one night right before I was about to set camp, I was cautiously optimistic about finding a way out of the mountains.

Of course that didn't mean I was going to walk out and announce myself. Magic might be unknown or reviled, so I traced a hunter's bow and a simple dagger with a wind enchantment. Enough to defend myself in a pinch and also fully justifiable for me to have on hand. After all, bow hunting remained a popular enough hobby or needed skill that no one would think much about it….unless hunting was illegal here, but I would rather have the weapons than not.

I edged through the trees and saw two men in a rather heated conversation with a pair of horses nearby. My heart sank at the sight of them because while they weren't in rags, the clothes they were wearing definitely came from a pre-industrial society. And considering the younger looking one of the two had a rather ornate looking sword on him, all red and silver with a large ruby on the pommel, they likely came from some sort of prestige.

The only immediate good news was that there was a gently flowing river past them, so at the very least I had found a good water source if I decided not to introduce myself.

One of the horses shifted uncomfortably and drew my eye to the bound figure on top of it. The woman's long black hair covered most of her face but she didn't look conscious or consenting about her situation considering that she was quite literally tied into place. A captive. Which meant possibly slavers or criminals at the least. Now I was left with how I wanted to handle this. I couldn't just kill them, if the captive woman was seriously hurt getting lost in the mountains could be a death sentence. So I would either need to capture one and use that to force the other to surrender or stalk them until they fell asleep and capture them that way. Well, I suppose I could just attack head on but that risked the horses startling and running off, captive still in the saddle.

That choice was taken out of my hands when the older, angrier of the two men stormed a bit off and grabbed a stick from the ground. I was still checking out the horses and wondering if they would run off if startled when that same stick smashed into the tree next to me and elected a hastily cut off curse. But the damage was done and the two men had noticed someone was watching them.

"Who's there?!" the angry one called out and drew his sword.

Well sneaking and hiding were off the table now. I guess that left head on…

Fuck, I really hope the horses don't run off.

I nocked an arrow to the hunting bow and stepped out of the treeline, making sure I could snap between targets as needed.

"I guess that really depends on you two." I called back.

"We don't have time for this." the younger one hissed. "We need to get moving before the Urgals catch up."

"And I told you I wouldn't go to the Varden!" the angry one hissed back. "Why didn't you tell me this was a dead end?"

The younger one bristled, but I cut in before they could keep arguing. "Hey! Pay attention! You can go back to fighting later, but I want to know two things. What did you do to the woman on the horse and how do I get out of these mountains?"

"We didn't do any-"

"And why would we tell you that?"

Their voices overlapped, but the angry one's tone made his words easier to pick out. Even over the dull sound of nearby thunder. Was there a storm on the way? That could be a problem.

"Because then I'll be nice enough to leave your packs. I don't like slavers. And considering you already have people on your tail about it, I think I'm being rather generous."

"Slavers?! No, we need to get moving. We are not slavers, Arya's hurt, and- wait! Saphira stop!"

That nearby thunder? It was suddenly much closer and the ground trembled a little as something big moved behind me.

I managed to turn around before something large, blue, and scaly smashed into me. I caught a flash of some incredibly large teeth before I was slammed into the ground, hit my head on a rock, and blacked out for a second.

Not for long though, and I was a little confused about what I woke back up to. The giant fucking blue DRAGON that had smashed into me had a forepaw pressed against my chest so I wasn't getting up anytime soon, especially with the two probably very sharp claws on either side of my head. The good news is that the dragon wasn't looking at me, it was distracted by something going on over by the two men from earlier. The bad news was it had its teeth bared and I could feel the low rumbling growl vibrating down its leg.

I really hoped it wasn't hungry.

Not wanting to draw the giant lizard's attention for the moment I turned my attention to the conversation the other two were having even as I was indexing all the anti-dragon Noble Phantasms in my mind. Would I even be capable of tracing one right now?

A horn echoed out behind us, causing the dragon to flinch and step down a little harder on my chest and making me gasp at the sudden increase in weight. It's head swung around to stare at me for a second before swinging back towards the two men, both of whom had run to the horses and started gathering the reins.

"If you don't want to be killed by an army of Urgals you better come with us!" the younger one yelled at her. "There's no time to talk! Murtagh, run with me."

Both of them started jogging beside the river and after a final glance from the dragon, she stepped off me and started after them too.

Well, I finally found out where I was.

Two young men in the middle of the mountains wouldn't tell me anything about the world I was on unless they happened to be three feet tall and be very cautious about jewelry. But two men, an injured woman (who I would bet money was an elf) and a blue dragon being chased by an army? That was much more specific.

I was in the Inheritance Cycle. A lovely fantasy world of magic and dragons that could generously be called fantasy Star Wars and would definitely NOT have an easy way to get the metal I needed.

I would've started cursing, but the threat of an army just around the corner was significantly more important than venting my feelings at the moment. So I gathered the bow from where it had fallen and started sprinting after the others.

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