Rapunzel: the war with the Fomorians

Hello everyone. This is an idea I first had after reading PrincessLuka Vocalzal's story Sleeping Viking and the Snow Wings(for those of you who don't know, it's a HTTYD/Frozen crossover, based on the plot of the 2014 film Maleficent). When Luka organized a poll to decide which film the plot of her next story should be based on, the options included Jack the Giant Slayer. I voted for this one, since it was the one I liked the sound of most, and then thought "why don't I give it a try myself?" So, here it is, my own unique Big Four adaptation of JTGS, with Hiccunzel as the main couple(though not in the roles you might imagine)….

Chapter 1: The tale begins

When they first came to the island, it was a dismal place, twelve days north of Hopeless, a few degrees south of Freezing to Death, located solidly on the Meridian of Misery.

Bjërck.

That was its original name in the Nordic tongue. But after generations of enduring the pests native to the island, the settlers decided to change its name to "Berk". It wasn't that the land was barren; they had good fishing grounds, hunting grounds, and a charming view of the sunsets.

No, the real problem with Berk was the pests. Most islands have small, commonplace pests, like mice and mosquitoes. But Berk had pests of an exotic and terrifying variety.

Dragons!

Great, flying, fire-breathing dragons. They gathered here in greater numbers than any known to man, and as soon as the settlers arrived, they brought with them new and interesting meats for the dragons to taste in their sheep, goats, chickens and cattle.

Now, if you're living year-round on an island infested with dragons, most people would want to leave. But not these settlers. They were Vikings, warriors by nature, and afraid of pretty much nothing. And they had strong stubbornness issues.

So at first, the Vikings dealt with the dragons the same way they had dealt with anything that annoyed them: by fighting them. But fists and axes only did so much good against creatures with powerful wings, skin like iron and dangerous breath, so eventually one curious Viking thought that perhaps they were going about this the wrong way. Instead of fighting the dragons, they should try to make peace with them.

A mad suggestion, perhaps, but a successful one. Within a short time, dragons and Vikings became close neighbours, even friends. A few choice Vikings then hit upon the idea of training the dragons like other animals, and soon every Viking on Berk was riding dragons into battle. Their power and political status increased greatly, their small tribe widened to accept other branches, their chiefdom grew into a kingdom, and soon, from being a disbanded battle ground between men and mythical creatures, Berk had grown into a massive state, accepting not only Vikings from other tribes(the Berserkers, the Outcasts, the Lava-Louts, and the Uglithugs to name just a few), but also people from completely different cultures- Saxons from Germany, Slavs from Russia, Celts from Scotland and Ireland, and even Huns from Central Asia, all of whom brought their own cultural skills to the kingdom's community.

With all those different cultures mixing together, those aspects most commonly exchanged were their ancient legends of the past. But the most common legend in all of Berk was not, surprisingly, a Viking one, but a Celtic one, the tale of the Fomorians. It was commonly used by parents to scare their naughty children into good behaviour, but legends are lessons; they ring with truth. It's just that no-one knew how much truth.

No-one, that is, until the birth of the girl around whom this tale revolves. She started off a farm-girl, but became a warrior. And her name was Rapunzel.

Rapunzel and her twin brother Jack were born to a very curious mixed family. Their mother was a Celt from Inverness, but their father was a Saxon, so their parents had both raised them with tales of the Saxon gods and the Celtic ones, the Tuatha de Dannan(pronounced "Tootha Day Donnon"). The kids didn't mind, they were equally willing to listen to one side as the other. They'd lived a peaceful and contented life on a small farm only a short distance away from the citadel of Berk, up until their mother was killed in a wolf attack when they were just five. Now it was just them living in the little thatched hut, along with their beloved farm animals, a chameleon from Morocco, a single dragon and their loving father, Nicholas.

To look at them, you wouldn't believe that Jack and Rapunzel were siblings- you wouldn't even believe they were related. Where Jack was skinny and pale-skinned, Rapunzel was slender, fair-skinned and freckled. Jack's eyes were a pure, icy blue, Rapunzel's eyes were large and bright green. Jack's hair was short, unkempt and white, but Rapunzel's hair was blonde-no, more than blonde, golden- and so long it reached the ground and trailed behind her like a snake when left unbraided. And their physical differences extended beyond appearances.

Jack and Rapunzel were born with magic. One time when the two children had been out playing in the forest, Rapunzel tripped and grazed her knee on a branch. To try and ease the pain, their mother had started singing a little Gaelic song which her daughter had joined in with, only stopping upon noticing that her hair was beginning to glow like daylight along the ground. In shock, she scooped all her hair up and onto her knees, then continued singing to make her hair glow more. And the more she sang, the more her hair glowed, and the less painful her grazed knee felt: at last, she removed her hair to discover that the graze in it had completely disappeared, as though she had never cut it in the first place. From that point on, she realized that her hair had magic healing powers, which could only be triggered by singing. It was in fact her hair which had earned her name; when she was born, her father told her that her golden hair spread out onto the pillow beneath her head like a flower's petals, more specifically, like the petals of a Rapunzel flower.

Jack, in contrast, had been born with the ability to fly and create ice and snow. When he was four years old, he accidentally fell off a small cliff in the forest while hunting for hedgehogs. But instead of hitting the ground, he felt himself stop in mid-air and removed his hands from his eyes to find he was floating a few feet above the ground, almost like the wind had formed a cushion to support his weight. He then found that he could direct the course of the wind just with a little concentration, and then gently pushed himself through the air and back towards the house. Another time, he met a brown bear by the river plunging its paws in the water to try and grab fish. He imitated it, only for the water to suddenly freeze solid around his fingers. After he struggled to pull his hand free, he then replicated the feat on the trunk of a nearby tree, and laughed with joy upon seeing frost grow in fern patterns across the bark. In the same way as Rapunzel, his powers were the reason for his name: his hands were so cold(yet not unpleasantly so) and his hair so white that he looked very similar to Jokul Frosti, the Viking winter spirit, better known by his Anglicized name, Jack Frost.

But the night our story begins, the now eight-year old Jack and Rapunzel were not playing with their magic. Instead, they sat upon the bed at night, with rain falling on the roofing and thunder cracking outside, reading through one of the books their mother used to read to them, a book of Celtic legends. Jack wore a rustic pair of brown trousers and a similar shirt. Rapunzel wore a little lavender nighty, and they held the book between them as Pascal, the little green chameleon, perched on Rapunzel's shoulder with his brown eyes wide with awe.

"Fei, fie, foa, fumh," the two children read aloud the Gaelic oaths their mother Aoife had taught them.

"Ask not from whence the wolf-winds come,

Ask not why the sea-birds cry,

Nor where the dragons never fly.

Run from the sea when waves are red,

For monsters live in Magh Tuiredh."

A clap of thunder illuminated an imposing figure standing in the doorway, making Rapunzel shriek in shock and withdraw beneath the bedclothes. But the figure who stood there was not a monster, but simply their father, Nicholas. Born in the north, Nicholas had a massive beard that flowed down his chest like a waterfall of snow, yet regardless of this, he was in fact quite a young man, only in his early forties. His cheeks were rosy, his eyes clear blue, and his build tall and muscular, framed by a red coat lined with black bison fur with the sleeves rolled back to display his impressive arms.

"Not asleep yet, children?" Nicholas chuckled in his deep German accent, his hands wet with straw from the stables.

"Sorry, father," Rapunzel replied, no longer as timid as she slid upwards out from under the sheets. "The Fomorians woke us."

"Ah, it is only a thunderstorm, Rapunzel," North smiled gently at his daughter.

"Well, mother used to say the Fomorians made the thunder," Jack pointed out, holding up the small book in one hand.

"Ah, you've been reading her old books, have you?"

"Yes," Jack nodded. "We found it among the rest of her old things. Will you finish reading it for us?"

Nicholas had a downright jolly expression as he ambled over to climb onto the bed between them, allowing Pascal a place on his shoulder. "All right, then. What point are we at?"

"It was the druids!" Rapunzel brightly squeaked. "The Celtic druids were attempting to find the kingdom of their gods, so they created-"

"Ja, magic flowers, I remember this," Nicholas held open the book on an intricate image of swirl patterns, in the shape of a tall green stem leading into the clouds. He continued to read aloud the rest of the poem.

"In an attempt to discover the kingdom of the Tuatha, a group of Celtic druids asked for the blessing of Lugh, the god of light. And in response, he instructed them on how to enchant the seeds of a golden daffodil, which they then placed in a water-filled field. No sooner had the seeds been planted, than they grew into numerous gigantic flowers with such tall stalks that they reached into the clouds above the druid's heads. The druids climbed up the stalk of the flower, determined to reach the Tuatha, but they ran into a horror that lay between the kingdoms of gods and men."

He stopped on a page with the detailed image of a gigantic man with a bear's head raising an axe over the head of a terrified man in druidical clothes. The beast was black, scarred, and monstrous.

"This land was Magh Tuiredh, the home of the Fomorians. The Fomorians were a tribe of bloodthirsty sea-giants, with the bodies of men and the heads of animals. Centuries ago, when Magh Tuiredh still lay beneath the sea, the Fomorians battled with the Tuatha, but the gods ultimately won the battle, and to ensure the Fomorians could never threaten anyone again, they lifted Magh Tuiredh out of the ocean and fixed it in the sky, separating the Fomorians from the water in which they were strongest."

Rapunzel shivered in her blankets. She had liked this part of the story the most, admiring the twisted architecture of the huge stone mass being raised out of the ocean by the Tuatha, water still running over the sides along with fish, while the Fomorians watched in fear and anger as their enemies banished them from the world of men.

"But now that the druids had created a bridge between the sky and the earth, the Fomorians could escape from their prison. Killing the druids, they descended down the flowers and returned to the human world, where they returned to a life of chaos and brutality. The Fomorians were evil in many ways. They stole gold from villages and cities and hoarded it to themselves. But their worst trait by far was their appetites…"

"For the Fomorians were carnivores with a passionate love of eating human flesh."

"That is completely disgusting," grimaced Prince Hiccup as he sat up in bed listening to the story.

Prince Hiccup was the future heir to the throne of Berk, and the third Viking prince of his name. His name was a shameful one, admittedly, but there were worse names. When Hiccup had been born to his mother Valka and his father Stoick, he hadn't been what most Viking fathers wanted from their sons. He was a small boy with unkempt auburn hair that was browner than either of his parents, sharp forest green eyes, and his muscles were too small to lift an axe. But his ancestors of the same name had proved to be the most persistent of Vikings even against far stronger opponents, so he had been named Hikke Forfaerdelige Kuller(Hiccup Horrendous Haddock) almost as an ironic display of confidence in the heroic reputation he would have to live up to.

Beside him on the bed sat Queen Valka. A tall, slender women in her early 40's, Valka had a keen pair of emerald eyes like her son and her husband, a slender, narrow nose, and long red-auburn hair done up in two loose braids behind her head. She was currently dressed in long royal robes of grape red with blue and yellow trim, and atop her head she wore a small silver crown shaped like beating dragon wings. Also on the bed sat Toothless, Prince Hiccup's own dragon. A cat-sized black dragon with round jaws like an alligator, wide viridian eyes and a pair of piscine fins attached to his long, powerful tail, Toothless wore a red leather cuirass over his torso with two large plates removed to make room for his wings: appropriate armour for a royal dragon. Currently he was reading over Hiccup's shoulder with an open mouth, exposing his impressive white teeth(being a Night Fury, Toothless could retract these teeth into his gums to avoid breaking them by biting something harder than dragon skin, hence his name).

"Oh, sorry, Hiccup," Valka apologized, her warm voice lilting with her gracious Danish accent. "Is it too scary for you?"

"No, the Fomorians aren't scary," Hiccup replied, with that admirable trait of Viking stubbornness.

"Not even their leader, a witch-giantess with the legs of an octopus who rode upon a colossal moray eel with two heads?" Valka asked teasingly. "Or their general, Mor'du the dreaded Demon bear?"

Hiccup smiled innocently. "It's only a story, mother. Please keep reading."

"Oh, it's more than a story, my son," Valka chuckled softly, before continuing reading.

"In order to combat the Fomorians, King Bork the Bold, a Viking ruler, made peace with the Celts and introduced them to his own troll wizards. Combining Celtic magic with arcane troll power, the two sides managed to capture and kill a Fomorian and empty all the blood from its body. And from that blood, they magically forged a great iron crown, bright red and unbending, like Viking spirits. And so they named the crown Blodfed, Bold Blood, a weapon which would help them defeat the Fomorians."

"This is my favourite part of the story," Rapunzel whispered to her brother.

Nicholas continued to read aloud,

"Whoever wore that crown upon their heads could force the Fomorians to obey whatever order they might give. Naturally, King Bork took up the crown, and he stopped the Fomorians from rampaging and killing. He then sent them back up the giant flowers and into the sky, returning to Magh Tuiredh yet again. As soon as the last giant had disappeared into the clouds, King Bork commanded his soldiers to cut the flowers down, so that the Fomorians might find no way down again.

As soon as the damage sustained by the Fomorians had been repaired, King Bork then found the remaining magic seeds and took them with him to ensure that no evil minds could find the seeds and use them to start another war between giants and men. And such was the Celts' respect for the great king that they not only allowed him to keep the seeds, along with Blodfed, but they also placed both crown and seeds inside his tomb to ensure no-one could ever steal them again. And so great was this feat of King Bork's that as time went on, eventually history turned to legend, and the Fomorians were never heard of again."

Nicholas closed the book gently, while his children looked on in awe.

"Father, what will we do if the Fomorians come back?" Rapunzel asked timidly.

"They're not coming back, Rapunzel," Nicholas comforted his daughter by patting her shoulder.

"But suppose they do?" she persisted.

Nicholas sighed and shook his head gently. "Well, I suppose King Stoick's Dragon Guard will need to take axes to their legs to rid them of the unfair height advantage."

"Cool! Can I join the Dragon Guard, father?" Jack pleaded, pulling one of his father's large tattooed arms.

"Can I, too?" Rapunzel was almost bouncing in her eagerness.

Nicholas laughed gently. "I don't doubt that you're both brave enough to join the Dragon Guard, children. But they're very selective in the Guard. They only accept those who are both noble and pure-blooded Vikings or Celts. There's no place among them for half-Saxon peasants like us."

Rapunzel visibly pouted at this. Her father sighed yet again at his daughter's expression.

"It's only a story, Rapunzel," he said. "The Fomorians aren't real."

"But King Bork was real, wasn't he?" Hiccup persisted, as his mother got up from his bed with her book.

"Indeed he was, Hiccup." Valka agreed. "And in many ways, he still is, for he lives on his descendants. Which include you."

"I've been to visit his tomb," Hiccup added, slightly uncomfortable with revealing this information.

Valka's eyebrows raised. "You mean you've been entering the royal catacombs? Clearly you've been starting your own little adventures."

Hiccup's eyes widened in concern. "I'm not in trouble, am I?"

"Of course not," Valka smiled warmly. "I want you to have adventures, my son."

"But why?" the small prince asked.

"Because if you have adventures, you'll get to learn about the people you will one day rule over. You'll learn how their community works, and how neither the king nor the people should have complete control over the other. For one day you will be the strongest king of all. You have the heart of a chief and the spirit of a dragon. That is how you will make the world a better place, my son."

Hiccup smiled at his mother's praise.

"Now, off to sleep you go," Valka gently spoke. Hiccup wriggled down into the bed, while Toothless chirped and folded his wings over his own body.

"Good night, Hiccup," Valka whispered to her son as she placed a kiss upon his brow. She then turned and gently exited his bedchamber, rightly daubed with wooden carvings and bright tapestries.

Back in Rapunzel's family's cottage, Nicholas gently extinguished one of the small candles by his children's bedside. He moved over to another one, but Rapunzel reached out in gentle protest.

"No, please leave that one for us, father," she said nervously.

Nicholas agreed to his daughter's request. "Alright, get some sleep now, Rapunzel," he soothed. "We have to get up before daybreak tomorrow if we're to herd the caribou."

He got up and was about to leave to his own room when he heard a call from his little daughter.

"Father, how do you know the Fomorians aren't real?" she asked.

For a few moments, her father was silent, the lightning illuminating his serious face.

"To tell you the truth, Rapunzel, I'm not sure," he replied. "Some of us used to think dragons and trolls weren't real too, remember? Perhaps some day, you and Jack might find that out for yourselves."

And with that said, the huge white-bearded farmer exited their bedroom. As soon as they were sure he was gone, Rapunzel quickly turned to nudge Jack awake. They then slipped the book out from under their pillows and read aloud the rest of the story.

"But always our people must be on the lookout, for the Fomorians look down in hatred upon the lands of their enemy. For though they were defeated once, they have sworn vengeance upon those smaller ones who humiliated them. And they plan to return to the human world, where they shall devour those of the lineage of King Bork and finally win the battle they have fought since ancient times."

And far above, in the midst of the hiss of rain and the snarl of lightning, a horrific roar of bestial anger echoed down from among the clouds. Yes, Jack and Rapunzel would one day find the Fomorians themselves…

So there you are! The first chapter in what I hope to be a complete and impressive adaptation of JTGS featuring the Big Four! Yes, Jack will be playing an original character, because you just can't have a Big Four story without every member of the Four. In the second chapter, the Four will be all grown-up, and we will get to meet the Lord Roderick of this story, as well as the charming Merida.

Hiccup: Still, though… a magic crown which controls an unstoppable army? Where have we heard that before?

Me: Not now, Hiccup. Anyway, hope you like this idea! If you like the story, please write and review. If you don't like it, DON'T write or review, or even read, because the last person who sent a negative review made me quite annoyed.

P.S. to Princess Luka Vocalzal- hope you like what I'm doing with this story. If there are a few character changes, I'm sorry about not updating the cast list before, but I had another story to finish beforehand. Anyway, please review if you like this.

Bye for now,

Sammael29