A/N: So I promised myself no more Nightfall crossovers and to finish the three I already started but of course it isn't actually panning out that way lmfao.
Some people already know that I roleplay - a lot. And in making a HTTYD!Verse of one of my OCs for that purpose, I thought... "I HAVE to do something related to Nightfall with this guy", primarily just because of his circumstances and exactly how different he would be from anyone else Hiccup and Toothless have been alleged to have encountered at any point in either Nightfall or Stormfall.
I'm not going to spoil exactly what I'm talking about just yet (albeit there's a lot of things that make this interaction interesting, there's one very SPECIFIC thing not immediately spelled out that makes it a little more of a unique dilemma), but it should become clear what it is by part 5/6 at the latest (this was going to be a one-shot at first but I decided on breaking it into three parts and then I got a little carried away with writing and its probably actually going to be somewhere at least around 10 parts instead because I literally can't be trusted to write anything short whoops).
Happy reading!
The Human Dragon and the Estranged Crow
A How To Train Your Dragon fanfic
Based off of Le'letha's "Nightfall" and "Stormfall" fics
Faulklin Kråke-tunge was a person who few liked and who liked none in return, and that was exactly as he wanted it.
Too long he'd been compliant to the whims of others, and too many times that had gotten him hurt and nearly killed. There had never been a sense of trust - no, that had always, always, been off the table - but he had kept his head down, done as he was told and made no complaints for being punished for mistakes, or simply because someone was in a bad mood and he had happened to be in their way, a small and easy target.
One day he'd simply stopped being tolerant, every shred of restraint and passivity breaking in him like a worn and neglected bowstring drawn too tight.
He should have died that day, but he hadn't. He should have found a way to take hold of his own fate since surviving, but that had not come to pass either. In either case, he was determined to let nothing stop him. He was already damned; had already lost everything he had to give; a draugr cursed with undeath and bound by wicked sin to treacherous serpents who viewed themselves like gods.
He had not won his own fate back (yet), but so long as someone else held the key to his chains, he would snarl and bite and ravage with all the ferocity of Fenrisúlfr the monster wolf himself.
Ironic - he always muses - that he should be superstitiously attributed to both Fenrisúlfr and Odin at the same time, since legends speak so often that Fenrir will one day slay the god king.
Yet it is still not unbefitting to attribute both to him, in their own ways.
As a blacksmith who had lost one of his eyes, people already whisper their suspicions, but for him to also converse in the tongue of crows is what sells the belief the most. Two ravens who have bonded more personally with him he's even named Huginn and Muninn, if nothing else simply to revel in the psychological power it holds over most people. He may as well be casting them under a spell, and he enjoys every moment of uneasiness this brings about. Its a long-deserved rush that he never knew the taste of as a child, but its the last light that sustains him now, seeing cruel men shake in their skin and dodge someone less than half their size, intimidated by just one well-placed look.
He's learned, albeit hard-won, just how serious of a weapon a mere glare or glance can be, equally sharp as any blade or arrow, though it helps to be proficient in both of those skills as well.
Still, while these things make his life a little more tolerable now, they still don't make up for the fact that he is, without doubt, a thrall, answering to others who own his very life, and it means that they both have the societal right to do with him whatever they please and to force him into things he doesn't want. He is an asset - but not an individual. Not his own person.
This is simply his reality. Its the only thing he's known throughout all of his life. He's learned to play the game, to manipulate for better results that he wants, but he is still, inevitably, at the mercy (or more commonly the lack there-of) of others who regard him as less than human.
Out in open waters, Norse dragon hunters and trappers are common, as are ships from Wessex, Francia, and Asturia. He's had dealings with all of them and yet others still, some significantly more than others. He's been traded around more times than he cares to keep track of, and none he would call good experiences. This time he's among trappers, as he has been for about two years, he guesses - the second longest group he's ever been with.
It's especially frustrating, because he's done everything in his power to make his current "masters" tire of him and be rid of him, and most have and are ready to. But their leader is patiently stubborn and clever, and he hates to acknowledge that even privately.
Faulklin tends to hate everyone, but there are a few individuals who earn something even worse than hate, something that goes beyond what his vocabulary can describe. Loathing doesn't quite cut it. One of those people is dead (his handiwork, he's proud to say), but others yet continue to draw breath, no matter how much he's tried to remedy that.
Viggo Grimborn just so happens to be at the top of the list.
He never thought he'd find someone who so phenomenally manages to trump how much he despises the person who took the sight of one eye from him, but somehow he's found that one person, and its not even due to finding someone excessively more cruel than that. Viggo is not someone who acts unreasonably, and its exactly that which he hates so much.
Viggo is a brilliant strategist, and that makes him Faulklin's own impossible foe.
Faulklin had always been clever. He outsmarted all others around him on a near-daily basis, saw possibilities where others saw nothing, and used resources no one else knew how he managed to use to his favor. He could speak to crows and ravens, and he could understand them. He could make them do what he wanted. He could beat opponents much larger than himself through alternative, underhanded means.
But Viggo falls for none of this. Viggo can predict him so well the man may as well be reading his very mind, hearing his thoughts, and that frustrates him to no end.
He laments how much he knows he's outmatched by Viggo, how much every single strategy he comes up with inevitably fails, and how much he can't scare the man into wanting to be rid of him like everyone else. It revolts him how much potential Viggo sees in his ability to outwit others, and that no matter how many underlings he manages to kill or maim or wound, how many things he damages, or how much effort has to go towards keeping him on a leash, Viggo sees him as valuable enough to overlook all that and keep him around. He reviles being stuck with the one guy in the world who can so coldly calculate exactly when all other pieces really can be sacrificed except the one that gets him results, and that piece just so happens to be him.
Viggo isn't wrong in assuming those results, either. He truly values the way Faulklin can think through problems and he knows how to force him to perform, unlike most others. He's the kind of persuasive man that even Faulklin's stubbornness - albeit begrudgingly - eventually submits to, and it takes no cages or whips or chains for the man to accomplish.
Still, while Viggo may not stoop to the level of mindless brutality, there is never any question as to whether or not Faulklin is considered a free man. He most definitely is not, and there's no intention of making him one. Freedom is something he has to take with his own hand, and one day he will, or die trying.
Its with begrudging but temporary acceptance of these circumstances that he's out here now, trudging through snow that easily reaches up to his knees in most places and up to his hips or even chest in others. The fact that he's in the lead of the band that's been assigned to guard against escape as they check traps, rather than following in the footsteps of the larger, burlier men, is no accident. Its rather difficult to run when you're exhausted by clearing the snowed path for everyone else to follow, especially when you're barely pushing five feet in height.
He chatters his annoyance in a language that is solely his, a tongue that he shares only with his black-feathered companions sitting on his shoulders, as he wades arduously though heaps of frigid white powder. Everyone has long since given up trying to make him cease his bird-chatter out of fear that he's plotting something new and wicked against them, as he's learned to do just that when challenged or punished for it, following the logic that if he's going to suffer for doing something he hasn't, he may as well just do it anyway to make the punishment one that was earned.
No human understands him, but the crows and ravens do, and they listen and reciprocate. He hates people, but birds and dragons and other animals, he can at least stand, and most he likes, even the ones that want to kill him because that's just what their species does to humans.
Mostly now he's only ranting, croaking harsh sounds that roughly translate to Stupid, stupid, clumsy Hunters. Kill-hate-hate-hate-hate-hate. Stupid. Worthless. Long-rot uneatable won't-touch-it worthless. Hate-hate-hate-hate-kill-hate. Its a saying among the corvids and other wildlife themselves that being so soured even a crow considers it inedible is one of the highest insults, as they eat virtually everything and love it all the better if its rotten. Suffice to say, it is used only for the worst of enemies. For Faulklin, that just so happens to be everyone who is human.
As they make their way through the snow that blankets nearly everything, they check traps. Many are empty. That's to be expected - dragons and deep winter don't get along very well, even self-heating dragons stay inside during a blizzard if they can help it, and most settlements stop raiding altogether until spring. It makes him wonder why exactly they're out here and who decided it was a good idea, then figures that the trickster god Loki must be impersonating someone of authority or passing along orders that don't exist to go trekking out into the wilds in the dead of winter.
He'd like to think that his luck could run in the direction of everyone freezing to death, but knowing his life instead he'll just get frostbite and end up a cripple when they have to take a dead limb off with an axe, and then he won't be running off anywhere quickly to get away. Or maybe that's Viggo's thinking. Perhaps Viggo even gets all his ideas from sharing a keg of mead with Loki himself when no one is looking and his ideas are not his own at all, and maybe that's why Viggo needs him alive and under his thumb.
He scoffs at that idea, knowing its completely ridiculous but choosing to get some amusement out of it anyway. Anything he can think of to dethrone Viggo of any respectability, acknowledged or otherwise, is a godsend in his book.
As they're checking traps though, he notices some of them are empty of dragons, but not untouched. A number of them are deliberately sabotaged, which gives him a few moments of pause. They aren't sabotaged in any way that any dragon he knows of can accomplish. When it comes to trapping dragons, there are trappers who know what they're doing and ones that don't - Viggo's Hunters, while tending to range anywhere from brain-dead to dim (not counting Viggo himself), one thing they do know well is their traps, and they know them well. The damn things are escape-proof for pretty much all known species, and the Grimborn's are some of the only true experts on every last species.
No, these traps were sabotaged by human hands. He knows this with only a glance because normally he is the one sabotaging traps.
Sometimes its sabotaging the traps of competing tribes. Other times its against the Hunters themselves, when he can get away with it. He doesn't know of anyone else who would sabotage traps, except maybe other trappers looking to send a message, but even that is rare. He's done it though, so it wouldn't be a huge leap of imagination to guess that someone else may have also developed the tactic. Maybe even one of the tribes they'd done it to themselves before, trying to take revenge.
He doesn't draw attention to it though, hoping no one will notice. He has a history all his own with doing this, and he'll be the first one suspected and blamed. The dull, pulsing ache in his back is reminder enough of the last time he took blame for something, and he is certainly not eager for a repeat.
One of the traps they come across does have a dragon in it, cold and tired with snow scattered and disrupted everywhere to show its struggles from before they arrived. It takes a good number of men still to restrain the beast and to start bringing it back with them towards camp, and Faulklin uses the time they're dealing with the dragon to slip away and continue on to the next ones.
Making a break for it is always on the forefront of his mind, but he knows how to bide his time and learned the hard way what happens when he loses patience. He won't run when the odds aren't in his favor, but he'll continually watch for an opening and assess his options. For now, he'll play good boy, but only because he's waiting for that opportune chance.
He finds more traps further out, empty or otherwise sabotaged, but with a surprising lack of anything like footsteps of a person that could have come through, or even sometimes a lack of dragon prints, as if done by a phantom... or someone very clever and badly wanting to flaunt it.
Finally he locates a trap with a catch in it - a Gronkle. Its nowhere near as tired as the last beast, and this time he's alone. He checks over his shoulder just in case, and there's no one else following him. He knows his options already. He could call for help in rangling it, wait for the rest to catch up to him (despite the very obvious snow-trail, it might take them a while, as they aren't the cleverest bunch and are more likely to retrace their own snow-trail than to correctly identify his), or he can set the thing free while no one is there to see it and accuse him of doing so.
Being that he always favors anything non-human over humans, the choice to him is obvious.
Watch. Hunters See-Approach-Warning he croaks to the birds perched on his shoulders, who both take to the air and perch in the trees, keeping an eye out for any of Viggo's approaching men while he approaches the trapped Gronkle. Expectedly, the dragon snarls at him, struggling against the trap that has it trapped while it warns him to stay away.
Faulklin is unafraid, and about to offer reassurances, but he stops, not because of the dragon in the trap, but because of a second one that wasn't there before, and now it is, prowling onto the top of a small cliff and wriggling in warning of an incoming pounce. Its big, sleek, and black as night, which make its glaring green eyes appear to glow menacingly in contrast.
There's only a split-second before it leaps, and only honed, instinctual reflex allows him to move out of its way, though the deep snow drastically impedes how much distance he's able to put between him and it before whirling around with a short, single-sided sword already drawn.
He goes over a list of species in his head, and settled on Night Fury. A rare breed, which would explain why he hasn't ever seen one this close before, but from what is known about them, it makes the most sense. Its not the Fury that manages to catch his eye the most, though. Its the thing - the person - on the Fury's back. His eye doesn't miss it for even a blink.
There is a human, a man maybe a couple years older than himself, riding atop the dragon's shoulders, dressed in black... scales? ...and snarling as if he were a beast himself with all the wildness in his eyes of a frenzied animal. He is easily and quickly enough distinguishable as a human to Faulklin's single eye, but it comes as a surprise, albeit somewhat of a milder one since he saw the broken traps. Now it makes sense why - or at least partially so.
There are certainly some questions that go through his mind, an itch of natural curiosity that he suspects anyone would have being faced with such an adversary as this, but he doesn't devote a great deal of time to thinking about it. Whoever he is, he is still only human, and Faulklin swore he would be fearful of no man ever again. He spent all of his childhood being afraid. He was not going to let anyone put fear into him again so long as he could help it.
"Do you want something?" he snarked, tilting his head cockily with a light of challenge in his eye. His steps were circling, slow but deliberate, and the Fury mirrored him with a low growl. It was an unnerving sound, and certainly, he might let himself fear the dragon itself just a bit, but its rider - whose green eyes, green just like the dragon's, he met unwaveringly - he would not be intimidated by. Not now. Not ever.
There was a similar motion, the rider haughtily lifting his head so that his throat showed clear as day, his own hues alight with a mutual hatred. The man uttered a sound, something that was barely discernible, heavily broken Norse, but still at least trying to speak intelligibly,
"Pfikingr kkko!" There was a motion, like violently smacking away an annoying insect that buzzed near someone too many times and refused to leave. "Drakkkn here. Pfikingr nuh!"
It took a bit of concentration and thinking to decipher the words, but he's learned to decipher more difficult, nigh indiscernible sounds from other species, primarily his feathered friends, so it isn't impossible.
If this were an actual dragon that had learned to speak broken Norse, he may have abided without a second thought - but this command comes from a human, and people always and without fail manage to bring out an unhealthily rebellious spark in him that wants to do the exact opposite of what he's told.
Part of him thinks that maybe he's picking enemies with the wrong person - because that person is backed up by a shrieking Night Fury, but more because it seems to want to take its rider's side in this confrontation rather than because its a loose dragon that could easily kill him - but just because he has a dragon following his command doesn't mean he is any sort of decent person, just as Viggo not leaving physical scars on him like most do doesn't make the Hunter's leader a morally sound human being.
Humans, as is his experience, are solely self-serving and only use others as a means to an end. He sees no reason why this dragon-rider should be any different from anyone else in that regard.
Idly twirling his blade in one hand, taunting, he lifts his own head in a similar fashion, mimicking and not backing down, and motioning slightly with his free hand.
"Come and make me."
Not unexpectedly, they choose to fire a blast at him rather than charge in towards his blade, and he leaps out of the way of it and into the snow. He's quick to get back to his feet and dashes for cover, since it would be decidedly bad for him to get maimed by a direct hit from one of those. Maybe it would instantly kill him, which wouldn't be such a terrible thing, but he can only imagine the pain of surviving something like that. Night Fury's are legendary for their blast-power, and he's not taking his chances.
Another incoming blast forces him to throw himself to the ground, simultaneously rolling. He can feel the heat of the blast that misses by mere inches, flying off somewhere into the woods and hitting the branches of a tree instead. Scrambling into hiding behind a boulder, he gropes for something he can use to his advantage and finds a sizeable stone caked in ice, which is better than ending up empty-handed.
He hears snow crunching, wings flapping, and an angry yowl. Clearly, its coming for him, but now is his best chance. He pops up out of hiding and hurls the stone in hand, nailing the mid-flight dragon straight between the eyes. Its not much, but it catches the beast by surprise and offsets its course back to earth amongst the snow and head-first into stone, enough to stun it.
The rage that ignites in its riders eyes, all of it directed at him, is genuine, and the man leaps off the dragon's back, arching and roaring. The man isn't dumb enough to leap straight at him when he's still armed with his sword, instead pacing on all-fours and eyeing for some kind of opening. For all intents and purposes, he almost does look like a dragon himself, if not for the very-human face twisted into an ugly snarl.
Normally the man's position on the high ground would be to his advantage, but Faulklin can see the calculation in his eyes and the awareness that leaping now could see him jumping straight on top of a deadly blade and skewering himself. There's no way to tell exactly how far his intellect reaches, but clearly he at least isn't that stupid.
At this point, its a standoff, and Faulklin considers that maybe the man is waiting for his dragon to recover its senses and merely distracting him. In any case, he isn't interested in fighting or killing the Fury, but he will gladly put an end to the one using it as an alternative beast-of-burden.
Finally the man leaps down, somewhat away from him so as not to be immediately lunged upon, then turns and springs straight for him. Its a little too quick for him to use his blade effectively, and before he knows it they're both tumbling through the snow, blinded by a flurry of white on all sides. He feels claws - claws that shouldn't be - rake his stomach. Mostly it catches thick winter clothes, but some of it hits and lacerates flesh.
The slashes don't go entirely unreturned. One of the man's hands - gloved, he now realizes, which also explains the claws, sewn into the leather - is tightly twisting his wrist, but he manages a shallow slash with the tip to the dragon-man's shoulder that has him instantly recoil and leap away to gain distance before the blade can cut too deeply.
Faulklin likewise scrambles to his feet, but he doesn't wait to attack, immediately lunging with his sword. The very tip grazes from one cheek to the bridge of the dragon man's nose as he dodges back, flecking the snow with blood, but there's nothing beyond superficial damage done. Its then that the dragon man stands up fully. He's thinner than most other people Faulklin is used to, but he is - inevitably, as most people are - significantly taller, and fully knows it.
It irks him somewhat, but he is also used to it. The simple fact of the matter is that he's come to expect he is and will always be the smallest person of any group or in any fight. For some moments, the hunched posture had been enough to make him hope that he would be the taller one in this confrontation, but that was much too much to hope for. In size, he's outmatched by both the dragon and the crazy wild-man, and he knows more than anyone how big of a difference size can make in a serious struggle.
The thought flees quickly when he hears shouting and snow crunching under many pairs of feet. Seems Viggo's hunters have finally caught up with him, which turns the tides drastically. Angrily spitting, the rider retreats a little, then turns fully for his dragon, which has begun to properly recover at this point. The movement climbing onto its back once more is practiced and fluid, effortless even, and the Fury is more enraged than ever.
Faulklin licks his lips apprehensively, dropping his posture only slightly in second-guessing, but he isn't backing down out of being afraid so much as being strategic. The approaching Hunters have yet to fully realize what's going on or what they're now up against, and if he manages to retreat at just the right moment, he can escape both problems at once - the Hunters as well as the furious black dragon.
The dragon is focused on him for now, but he can see that attention waning little by little as the men come charging in, drawing its eyes away. There's no way it can single him out at this point without sacrificing its own safety, and he knows it. Its only a matter of holding his ground until that one split second. He doesn't break eye contact with either dragon or rider the entire time, watching and waiting, looking for that opportune cue to make a retreat at the best moment, when all Hel would break loose between Hunters and Fury.
He saw it, a quick snap of its head and snarling teeth, men all just barely passing the line of trees before the small clearing, and then he was gone, plowing through the snow in as much of a sprint as was humanly possibly. He heard the shrieks and shouts behind him, the sounds of dragon-fire and ringing metal - none of that was his concern any longer. Let dragon and Viking kill each other for all he cared. By the time either of them turned their attention on him, if any of them survived at all, he'd be long gone and well on his way to somewhere where he answered to no one but himself.