Smidvarg Chapter 1
A/N
Over the past couple of years, many reviewers have asked my opinion about "Race to the Edge." I've always told them the same thing: I'm apparently the only HTTYD fan who doesn't have Netflix, so I haven't seen it, and I'll have to wait until it comes out on DVD. Well, the first four seasons are out on DVD, I've got them, and this story is the first-fruits of that.
The idea for this little story hit me while thinking about a totally unrelated batch of dragons (namely, the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey). I'm making it up as I go along, without a coherent plan or plot, just a general overview. It's both a prequel and an alternate point-of-view retelling of the RTTE episode "When Darkness Falls." We'll see how it turns out.
o
From the moment he hatched, it was obvious to everyone that he was destined to be different.
His father, Terror-with-a-gray-spot, couldn't help but notice his son's pale-white color. He frowned. "White? White? What kind of color is that for a Night Terror?"
"I'm sure it'll darken as he gets older," his mate, Terror-bent-tail, tried to reassure him.
Terror-with-a-gray-spot shook his head resignedly. "Maybe. Or maybe it's a sign that he'll be the next Alpha. Or, more likely, he'll be picked on and teased for his whole life. I hope that doesn't happen, but you know how dragons can be." He sighed. "This kind of thing never happened on my side of the family."
His parents called him Terror-white until they could think of a better name, but a better name never came to them. Among young dragons, differences like those didn't matter. His normally-colored brother and two sisters, who hatched at the same time he did, thought nothing of his unusual coloration; he was just their brother, and that was that. Other young dragons would meet him and say something like, "Hey, you're white! Want to play tag?" And they'd play all night. That was what young Night Terrors always did, and young Terror-white's color didn't change that. The only exception was if they played hide-and-go-fly. Terror-white preferred to be "it" when they played that game, because hiding at night was nearly impossible for him.
The first sign of his destiny came during one of those games of hide-and-go-fly. Terror-white was "it," as usual, and much practice had made him good at the game. He had also made a point of learning all the likely hiding places on their island, so he could usually find the less imaginative dragons in the first five minutes. But this time, half a dozen of his friends had somehow eluded him. He'd looked everywhere! He honestly had no idea where they could be hiding. He was on the verge of doing something he almost never did: give up.
But his frustration boiled up inside of him. Instead of shouting, "I quit! You win," which was the prescribed way to admit he'd been beaten, he angrily shouted, "All of you, fly up and show yourselves!" To his complete astonishment, all six of his hidden foes flew straight upwards out of the leafy tree they'd hidden in. At the same time, all of his friends whom he'd already found also flew straight up into the air.
"What are you guys doing?" Terror-white asked, puzzled.
"How did you do that?" his friends demanded.
"All I said was, 'fly up and show yourselves!' " Terror-white said defensively. "Why did you all do it?"
"I don't know," they said, one after the other. "I just felt like I had to do it."
"Well, I guess that game is over," Terror-white shrugged. "Let's play something else." He didn't think much about the episode. But it bothered some of the other young dragons. They told their parents about it when they gathered as families to sleep the day away. That night, the moon had barely begun to show itself when the nest's Alpha, Terror-pale-blue, approached Terror-white's family.
"Tell me what happened last night," he ordered the young dragon.
"Am I in trouble?" he asked fearfully.
"What's going on, son?" his father demanded. "Whatever it is, we need to know the whole story." So Terror-white told them about the game of hide-and-go-fly, and how he'd gotten frustrated when he couldn't win, and how all the dragons had obeyed the order he'd shouted out.
The Alpha looked thoughtful. "You know what this means, don't you?"
Terror-white had no idea. "Does it mean the other dragons won't play hide-and-go-fly with me anymore?"
"No!" his mother burst out proudly. "It means your father was right about what he said when you hatched! It means you're going to be an Alpha dragon!"
"An Alpha? Me?" Terror-white wasn't ready for that.
"Your mother is right," Terror-with-a-gray-spot nodded with the beginnings of a smile. "The ability to command other dragons and compel their obedience is the first and most important sign that a dragon is destined to be an Alpha."
When Terror-white looked lost, the Alpha added. "That means you can tell other dragons what to do, in a way that makes them do it. Only an Alpha dragon can do that. Every nest has an Alpha, but we Night Terrors need our Alphas more than most dragons do. If our Alpha can't get the flock to look like a huge dragon when we're attacked, then the big predators will tear us apart. You are going to be a very special dragon."
"Oh." The young Terror nodded hesitantly, then looked even more nervous. "Does that mean I have to fight you for dominance?"
"No, not today!" the Alpha said with a chuckle. "You're much too young and too small to be a threat to me. By the time you're old enough and strong enough to try and take my position, you'll probably do the smart thing and leave this nest, and find another nest that needs an Alpha and doesn't have one. For now, you need to work with me and learn to master your ability. An untrained, undisciplined Alpha is almost as bad as no Alpha at all." He turned to Terror-with-a-gray-spot and Terror-bent-tail. "With your permission, I'd like to take your son as my apprentice and teach him how to become an Alpha someday."
"We'd be honored," Terror-with-a-gray-spot said without a moment's hesitation, and his mate nodded.
Thus began Terror-white's formal education in the mysteries of dragon leadership. No one knew why some dragons had the innate ability to command others. It was a rare ability, and much prized among dragons, especially the Night Terrors, whose very survival depended on their Alpha's ability to command them in flight. Terror-pale-blue was not a particularly skillful teacher, which surprised no one, inasmuch as he had never had a student before. But some skills cannot be taught, only honed and improved, and no one but another Alpha could guide that process.
As for Terror-white, he was reluctant at first. He had always been different because of his coloration, but most of the dragons were willing to overlook that. Now he was becoming different in a way that none of them could ignore. In order to test his abilities and his control, the Alpha made him give orders to parts of the flock. The dragons willingly accepted orders from their Alpha, but who was this pale young Alpha wannabe who was suddenly bossing them around? Terror-white soon found himself a social outcast. None of his former friends wanted to play with him anymore. The adults resented his heavy-handed attempts to control their formations while they were flying. He spent time with the Alpha because no one else wanted him around.
As he grew more practiced, he took his future responsibility very seriously. He learned not to push individual dragons too hard; he didn't try to force the slow fliers to keep up with the others, but simply gave them the places in the formation that formed up last. If one of his unscheduled form-the-giant-dragon drills came at a bad time, he apologized to all the dragons who were involved. He was soon acting more mature than many dragons twice his age, and the change did not go unnoticed. Many of the other dragons were still uncomfortable around him, but they no longer made excuses to go elsewhere the moment he appeared. His parents no longer hung their heads and made excuses for their misfit son; now they were visibly proud of him.
Time passed; Terror-white became a yearling with no sign that his color was darkening; and the Night Terrors went through another round of mating and laying eggs. As sometimes happened, one family had a miscolored hatchling. This one had white scales randomly scattered all over his black body. Someone suggested that he looked like he had specks of sea salt on him after an ocean bath, and he soon became known as Terror-salty. He was an aggressive little dragon who dominated all the games his friends played. The Alpha watched him carefully; he knew that miscolored dragons were especially likely to possess Alpha gifts. His suspicions were soon confirmed.
"You've got to do something about that Terror-salty!" an indignant mother protested one day. "He lost a race to my daughter, and he told her to go soak her head in a tide pool... and she did it! She says it was a stupid idea and she didn't want to do it, but she did it anyway. She couldn't stop herself. My daughter never did stupid stuff like that before, and I won't allow her to be treated that way just because she's the fastest flyer in her age group!"
"I'll take care of it," the Alpha promised, and he soon had two apprentices instead of one. Terror-white was more experienced by a year, and naturally had better control over his power. Terror-salty's stronger will promised to yield better control over the flock, once he learned how to apply his will properly. Both apprentices showed promise; if the Alpha had had to choose a successor at that point, he would have been hard-put to prefer one over the other. But the younger dragon saw the situation as a competition of some kind. He was determined to be their Alpha's number-one apprentice. He constantly tested his control over the other Night Terrors, to the point where he was disrupting the normal rhythms of the nest, calling up their giant-dragon formation in the middle of fishing time, sleeping time, and (in one unfortunate case) one couple's mating flight. Terror-pale-blue had to restrict him to using his power only while supervised. But he couldn't maintain supervision over an unruly Alpha trainee and meet all of his other Alpha obligations at the same time. His solution was to put Terror-white in charge of Terror-salty's basic training.
Bad idea. Really, really bad idea.
The younger dragon ran roughshod over his slightly-older supervisor. "You're not the boss!" he repeatedly told Terror-white. "We're both in training, so you aren't any better than me! Don't give me orders, Pale-scale!"
"But the Alpha said -"
Terror-salty made a gagging noise. "Someday, I am going to be the Alpha, and then I'll tell you what to do!" he snapped. "If you're smart, you'll stay out of my way. If you're stupid, then you'll fight me for dominance, and I'll probably injure you for life. Either way, I don't care what you think, Pale-scale!"
These disruptions and disagreements didn't escape the Alpha's eye. He kept meaning to do something about it. But this year's hatching had brought an unusually large number of new dragons into the flock, and they needed more guidance and supervision than normal. Every time he meant to address the conflict between his two apprentices, something more urgent came up, and he never quite got around to it. The flock was suffering for it, to say nothing of Terror-white. But nothing ever got done about it... right up until the awful night when the Alpha flew too close to the surface while tracking a school of herring, and a fast-moving tuna got him.
When the flock's initial shock began to wear off, Terror-salty tried to take charge. "As you all know, I was Terror-pale-blue's first choice to be his replacement someday, and so I -"
"Hey, wait a minute!" Terror-bent-tail interrupted. "He never said anything of the kind! In fact, I think my son was -"
"Be quiet, you!" Terror-salty ordered. Terror-bent-tail felt her mouth snap shut and she couldn't open it again.
"What?!" Terror-white wasn't looking for trouble, but he was angry now. "You can't do that! That's not what the Alpha power is for! That's abusive!"
"What are you going to do about it, Pale-scale?" Terror-salty snarled. "Are you challenging me?"
Terror-white emphatically did not want to fight. Not only was fighting against his nature; he suspected that his rival would cheat somehow. But he'd been taught by Terror-pale-blue that the nest needs the security and guidance that only a benevolent Alpha can provide. Maybe his friends didn't want to play with him anymore; maybe some of the adults still mistrusted him; but he knew he'd be a better Alpha for them than Terror-salty would be. He had the power that his nest needed. He owed it to them to be their Alpha. Backing off was an option he could not choose.
"Yes, I challenge," he quavered.
"Good!" his rival grinned. "In the end, there can be only one!" He rushed at Terror-white, jaws wide open. That was too obvious a ploy; Terror-white expected it to be a feint, and he was right. At the last moment, Terror-salty pulled up and to the left while reaching out with his hind leg to rake Terror-white's wing with his claws. Terror-white folded his wings for a moment and ducked under the blow.
"Ha! First blood!" Terror-salty shouted. "I win!" The other dragons began to crowd around to see if he had dispatched his foe already. Some began to cheer for him.
"Liar!" Terror-white shouted back. "You can see there isn't a drop of blood on me!" For the first time in his life, he was glad for his unusual coloration. Blood on a black wing might be hard to see; blood on a white wing couldn't be hidden. The cheers died away. The two combatants circled each other, looking for an opening.
"Now you can see what kind of Alpha you'll get if you choose Terror-Salty," Terror-white called to the rest of the flock. "He's abusive, he's a liar, and all he cares about is himself."
"Be quiet!" Terror-salty ordered in a commanding tone.
Terror-white could have grinned if the situation wasn't so serious. "Your power doesn't work on another Alpha! Did you forget about that? Maybe I should add 'ignorant' to the list of your disqualifiers."
"Hey, you!" Terror-salty called to a nearby Night Terror. "Bite his tail and make him hold still!" The dragon obediently closed in on Terror-white from behind. The white dragon climbed and spun away from the ambush. Terror-salty ordered other dragons to bite his rival's tail; Terror-white quickly found himself surrounded in all directions except straight up. He desperately rushed upwards, trying to gain height so he could think of some kind of attack plan.
But what could he do? Terror-salty was breaking every principle of Alpha-hood, manipulating individual dragons for his own benefit. Terror-white had the power to do that if he chose, but it would violate his training, his principles, and his own sense of right and wrong. Could he live with himself if he did that? Was the position of Alpha worth it?
No.
He kept climbing, but slowly curved over until he was headed out to sea, turning his back on the only home he'd ever known. He had no destination in mind; he didn't even know if he was headed toward any other land. He just had to get away from this unwinnable fight. After a moment, he glanced back over his shoulder. Terror-salty was accepting the reluctant plaudits of the other dragons; they had a new Alpha now, for better or for worse. He thought he could see his father and mother sadly waving 'goodbye' with their wings. They knew they would never see him again.
The new Alpha took a quick break from his gloating to glance up at his fleeing rival. "Keep flying, Pale-scale! Failure! Loser! If you ever come back, we'll kill you!"
Terror-white kept flying. Soon, his home island was out of sight; there was nothing but water. For most of his life, he had felt alone. Now, he really was alone.