"The caverns below are a dangerous place. I would caution you to avoid them," the dragon spoke calmly, but with a strict warning in its voice.

"What can be down there that's too dangerous for a Rider?"

"Alagaesia has many secrets not known even to the oldest amongst us. I doubt the Menoa tree herself would know what could lie in those caves."

The Rider threw caution to the wind, as was his whim for now. His newfound prowess with a blade overrode his sense of danger. The scales of his dragon, glittering like emeralds in the torchlight, slowly disappeared as he delved into a small crevice where she would not fit.

It was a long time before the Rider found the room to turn around.

The cavern he had entered was larger than the throne room in Illirea. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, dropping water onto his head. Ahead of him was only darkness, seemingly unpenetrated by the light of his torch, even when he strengthened the blaze with magic. He pressed further, ignoring his senses beginning to panic, drawn forward by some mysterious force. He could not feel his dragon's mind, she was too far away. Instead a new voice touched the Rider's mind.

"No one has dared wander in my cave for...I seem to have lost count," the voice was cold, it brought with it goosebumps and shivers down the spine of the Rider, who now stepped forward without his own consent. "Who is it that would so brazenly disturb my rest?"

The Rider tried to speak his name, but found his mouth would not move. His torch no longer provided him any warmth. He could feel the tips of his ears freezing as he continued his forced march.

The source of the voice grew closer as the cavern began to close in. The Rider was soon sideways squeezing through a small gap in the rocks. The voice echoed back to him his worst fears and his deepest secrets; hidden pieces of himself that he had pushed aside long ago and forgotten on purpose. All of them bubbled to the surface of his mind as he fought madly to just stop the movement of his legs. He emerged on the other side of the gap, his torch extinguished and his eyes too poorly adapted to see anything in front of him.

The voice spoke soothingly, as if to a lover. He felt something begin to touch him, grasping at both his mind and his body. It only grew colder. The tendrils coiled themselves around the Rider's legs, his arms his torso, his neck. The tendrils reached inside of his mouth, ears, eyes, worming their way inside of him everywhere they could find an opening. The Rider closed his eyes, the only act of defiance he could still muster.

Eyes opened. They beheld a new world.

Author's Note:

This has been up long enough that I feel its time to discuss whats going on! Not in the teaser here but in the whole story.

Basically the update boils down to: I've been away a long time trying to sort out some life things, away for almost 2 years in fact. And here we are once again, back to the Inheritance grind. I've had some ideas about where the story needs to go, a few changes both from the original vision and the updated vision that I was publishing back in 2018. With that in mind, I'll be rewriting the whole story both to alter it towards its proper course (and probably by no means its final course, I'm sure I'll change my mind once again), and to give myself a refresh on where I left off and where I can logically go. I've gotten better at discovering my own voice while writing and I've learned a lot about how to just write better, more engaging stories. Hopefully some of the fans I had the first time around will return and enjoy where I'll be taking the story from here.

Until my next post: Se onr sverdar sitja hvass!