AN: Spoilers for the end of the movie.

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My mother told me of them, before she died. "There are monsters", she whispered, "here in the far north."

She drew me close, comforting me, before telling me of the horrible sounds they made. "Their screeches can deafen you before you know what's happened," she said. "They attack in swarms, trying to single out the weakest." Her green eyes, the same shade as mine, bored into me with concern and caught me close. "Never," she whispered, "Never be the weakest."

I tried to hold my head up proudly at that. Weakest, she'd said, not smallest.

But still, to be small is to be weak, and to be small and be of our kind is to be all the weaker for it. I lowered my head and sighed, knowing that while I might not be the smallest, and might not be the weakest, I definitely was small and weak. "If all else fails," Mother smiled, acknowledging my discomfort, "Hide, and hope that they don't find you."

I was excited to go out on my first night watch, alongside her. "Watch closely, my son," mother whispered, as we crouched on the hillside, overlooking the flock of sheep. I huddled close to her side, and as small as I was, I took pains to make myself smaller. Even by her side, I no longer felt safe. Things were lurking in the darkness. Things that creeped through the shadows, that shot through the air, things that I had no name for other than fear.

"Be wary," mother repeated, nudging me in the side. I glanced up at her, standing proudly on the hill, dissecting the battlefield with her gaze. Her battlescars were many, and out of all our settlement it was she who held the title of 'Master of Beasts'. She never missed a kill, never let herself be seen until it was too late for her foe. There was no creature, no monster, no dragon who could stand long under her deadly gaze.

Her eyes and mine, she often said, were the same. There was magic, she often told me, in those eyes. They were eyes that caught and held, that searched out and revealed secrets. Whereas my father's eyes, the color of the disquiet sea, pierced and cut; my mother's eyes made you captive. It was those eyes, she even confided in me one night as we watched over our tiny settlement, that had brought my father to her. The soul breathes through the eyes, she said, and my father would grumble and shake his great head at what he called "excessive mysticism". In any case, once her eyes had you, you were not free unless it was by her will. Some of the elders said that was the secret of how she slew so many of the monsters that hid among the caves and the shadows.

"The large ones will charge you," Mother continued the lesson, nodding at a freshly-erupted fracas in the pasture below. Livestock scattered as the monsters attacked. "The small ones will corral you," she explained, and I caught sight of a number of the hideous host, scampering to corner one of our warriors who'd strayed too far. "But there is one worse than either of those." Mother sighed, and as she turned her face towards me, the moon and belching flames from below framed it with a terrible, beautiful light. Somewhere between ice and fire, life and death, her eyes- the eyes that we shared- catching and holding me still.

"The.. middle-sized ones?" I ventured, only to be rewarded with a soft bark of amusement.

"No, dear one," Mother responded, "The worst of them all is the one that you never see. The one you never hear. Because that is the one who will catch you, and it will pull your throat out. And then it will take you back to their nest and they will eat you up."

I shivered against her, dumbstruck at the very idea.

"They are monsters," she reminded me, "it is all they know how to do. They attack and feast on the spoils, and when they are done they look for something new to attack so that they may feast again."

"Monsters," I whispered, shuddering into her side.

"Monsters," she confirmed, resting her head gently on top of mine as the field below blazed with death and fire and unholy sounds.

It wasn't long after that that my mother didn't come home. The stormy season had come early, and our warriors were lost in the torrential rage of sky and sea. I sat up for three days watching, waiting, barely moving from the spot I'd always waited for her in. 'Surely,' I thought, 'She has been delayed. Surely the seas were too rough, the winds were too high, the night was too dark... Surely she must come home, though.'

But she didn't come home. Not for three days. Not even for five. On the sixth day my father spat a curse to the winds that roared, and the sea that foamed, and the monsters that were always, always roving about. "Mark this day," my father told me, "It will be the last day you spend as a child." I cringed back from him, stung by the words. He had never approved of what he called mother's "coddling" of me.

"From this day forth," he said, "You will learn what you are, and what you have to be. You will stand up and be one of us. We all work together, that is the way of life here."

"But," I protested, my voice betraying my early adolescence, "Why don't we just leave? If life is so hard here, why don't we go over the sea and find someplace better? Someplace where Aegir calms the sea instead of stirring it to froth? Someplace where Hraesvelg's children sigh instead of rage? Someplace where there are no monsters?"

My father turned slowly to look at me, with his eyes like the turbid sea. "My son," he rumbled, sounding more sad than angry, "There are monsters everywhere. There will always be monsters, until Odin falls and all the land slides beneath the waves. And even then, as the world begins anew, the monsters will still exist. One cannot hide from monsters," he said, letting his age-dulled teeth slide into view before snapping them once for emphasis. "One can only eat them before they eat us first."

With that, he spread his aged wings and flew out into the darkening sky, following the others of our den. We were the only ones left, the Nightfury, the immaculate consummation of Nott's grace personified and Mjollnir's ferocious rage, blessed by Odin. Far below, the immense terrible Red Death grumbled in discontent, and I hurried to follow the hunting party into the descending twilight.

There were monsters everywhere, Father said. I could tell by the wary look in his eyes though, the one that worried him the most was the one that we tried to keep contented under our very feet.