An Interesting Story. Part 4.
Chapter 4.
"Resting".

The Dining Hall was a large cave like building, one build into the side of a cliff, with massive wooden doors acting as its only entrance. The giant room was filled with long tables and several benches at each, several fire places in which to cook the food and many goblets tapestries all over the walls to hide the bare stone behind them. It had just gotten dark outside and as such many of the Vikings had retired to it to have dinner.

Jack was also one of said retired Vikings and had chosen to sit with the older men, having earned the right by reaching his age. He was listening to one of them describing how he and his Gronkle had started encountering rarer and rarer dragons all around the island, ones that they had barely seen just a few months ago. Dragons like the Scrill, the Scauldron, the Thunder Drum and such. He even described what seemed like a Whispering Death gobbling up a sheep while he was flying over head.

The mere description of how this black dragon sounded terrifying to Jack, who had come to get used to the seemingly friendly looking Terrible Terrors and Snaptrappers. Even the Changewings didn't look as terrifying as this dragon. Looking at his food he realized he had lost appetite after finding out about this dangerous kind of dragon and as such decided to ask.

"Can you by any chance tell me where you had seen that Whispering Death?" Jack said, causing all the older Vikings to look over their shoulders at him, as if just realizing he was there. The Vikings that had been talking until now looked at him first and said. "Around that old burial mount. The one that's completely empty. I think the dragons have made that place their home after it was abandoned and the bodies disappeared."

Thanking all the Vikings, Jack got up, picking up his dish of pig ribs. However when he was up he rethought about it and left the dish, taking just the few ribs. Waving the few Vikings that even noticed him leaving, he soon got to the door. Opening it up him was nearly immediately "assaulted" by several Terrible Terrors. Throwing the ribs as far away as possible he quickly ran for it, trying to avoid the rather impressive pile up of scales, claws and fangs that had happened over the meat.

Not sure what to do from now on he started considering his three options. He could either go to the Village Elders house to continue training in the art of working with the herbs he gathered. Or he could either go to Gobbers Smithy and help (And learn) about making and maintaining the various tools everyone might need in the village. Or maybe he could just simply escape on his duties and get to his own house and have the rest of the night off. It really was a tough decision for him…

But he was the work loving Jack after all. And as such he chose the one that would seem the hardest. Gobbers smithy. Heading towards the northern part of the village he tried to avoid any unnecessary attention from both dragons and Vikings alike. This however was easy seeing as if people weren't eating they were either at home getting ready for sleep. The dragons were even easier! After they had come to live with the Vikings, the smarter men had figured that the dragons probably like a roof over their heads just as much as humans. And as such they had built a sort of dog houses, just these ones were meant for dragons. And as such most houses in Berk now had a add on like that.

Reaching the smithy after about an hour, Jack tried to see if smoke was still coming out of the chimney, but was unable to due to the darkness. Seeing the light of the forge from the distance, Jack started wondering why he couldn't see anyone inside. Jumping over the counter he looked around, seeing no one inside and yet the forge lighted. Shrugging he thought "Well at least everything is prepared for me…"

Looking around he could see several things to work on. There were several hammers left on the worktable, each disassembled. There were several broken pieces of metal, which upon closer inspection turned out to be a sword shattered into several pieces. There were also many other things, but Jack decided he would do well to just finish the first two and home for the night.

Deciding to work on the hammers first, he pulled out a long metal stick and left it in the forge to heat up. In the meantime he went to the worktable and started examining the damage. Taking the first hammer in his hands, it immediately fell apart, the handle falling off. Knowing what to do, Jack took a smaller hammer and with several hits knocked out the broken piece of handle. He took a spare that was packed in a small cabinet beneath the table. Sticking it back in, he left the now repaired hammer to the side.

He then took the second one and started working on it. This one simply had a large dent where it was used to hit. Taking it to the grinder he just simply started grinding it away. While it would become a bit shorter, it would also serve a much longer while then it probably would right now. When he finished he left the hammer to the side, next to the other repaired one.

Taking the last broken hammer, he didn't find anything seemingly wrong with it at first. But when he lifted it up he immediately noticed something off. Swinging it a few times from side to side he noticed that it was much heavier then it was supposed to be. Not sure what might have caused this, he decided to leave it there. At least until Gobber showed up tomorrow to show him how or what exactly the problem was.

Finally turning his attention towards the broken sword he started wondering about how to go around fixing it. He would surely need an iron ingot to even think about repairing it… But then again he would probably need to reforge it entirely. Moving the few pieces to the worktable he threw most of them on it.

And he was about to throw the sword hilt there as well when he heard a creaking noise. Immediately turning around, the broken hilt in his hand he was surprised when he saw a scrawny looking boy. He was even more surprised when he recognized Hiccup in said boy!