Brisingr

The most distinctive feature of the cavern, however, was the mixture of odors that
pervaded it. The smell of cold stone dominated, but underneath Eragon discerned whiffs
of damp and mold and something far worse: the sickly sweet fetor of rotting meat.
Undoing the last few straps, Eragon swung his right leg over Saphira’s spine, so he was
sitting sidesaddle, and prepared to jump off her back. Roran did the same on the opposite
side.
Before he released his hold, Eragon heard, amid the many rustlings that teased his ear, a
score of simultaneous clicks, as if someone had struck the rock with a collection of
hammers. The sound repeated itself a half second later.
He looked in the direction of the noise, as did Saphira.
A huge, twisted shape hurtled out of the lancet passageway. Eyes black, bulging, rimless.
A beak seven feet long. Batlike wings. The torso naked, hairless, rippling with muscle.
Claws like iron spikes.
Saphira lurched as she tried to evade the Lethrblaka, but to no avail. The creature crashed
into her right side with what felt to Eragon like the strength and fury of an avalanche.
What exactly happened next, he knew not, for the impact sent him tumbling through
space without so much as a half-formed thought in his jumbled brain. His blind flight
ended as abruptly as it began when something hard and flat rammed against the back of
him, and he dropped to the floor, banging his head a second time.
That last collision drove the remaining air clean out of Eragon’s lungs. Stunned, he lay
curled on his side, gasping and struggling to regain a semblance of control over his
unresponsive limbs.
Eragon! cried Saphira.
The concern in her voice fueled Eragon’s efforts as nothing else could. As life returned to
his arms and legs, he reached out and grasped his staff from where it had fallen beside
him. He planted the spike mounted on the staff’s lower end into a nearby crack and
pulled himself up the hawthorn rod and onto his feet. He swayed. A swarm of crimson
sparks danced before him.
The situation was so confusing, he hardly knew where to look first.
Saphira and the Lethrblaka rolled across the cave, kicking and clawing and snapping at
each other with enough force to gouge the rock beneath them. The clamor of their fight
must have been unimaginably loud, but to Eragon they grappled in silence; his ears did
not work. Still, he felt the vibrations through the soles of his feet as the colossal beasts
thrashed from side to side, threatening to crush anyone who came near them.
A torrent of blue fire erupted from between Saphira’s jaws and bathed the left side of the
Lethrblaka’s head in a ravening inferno hot enough to melt steel. The flames curved
around the Lethrblaka without harming it. Undeterred, the monster pecked at Saphira’s
neck, forcing her to stop and defend herself.
Fast as an arrow loosed from a bow, the second Lethrblaka darted out of the lancet
passageway, pounced upon Saphira’s flank, and, opening its narrow beak, uttered a
horrible, withering shriek that made Eragon’s scalp prickle and a cold lump of dread form
in his gut. He snarled in discomfort; that he could hear.
The smell now, with both Lethrblaka present, resembled the sort of overpowering stench
one would get from tossing a half-dozen pounds of rancid meat into a barrel of sewage
and allowing the mixture to ferment for a week in summer.