A/N: Hi! I'm not sure if the alerts worked properly for the past two chapters or so, so if you haven't read 6 and 7, you should probably do that before reading this…
I woke up and saw that my skin had turned blue.
Well, it wasn't really blue. I opened my eyes when the birds started to sing, to find that I was still under the wing of the Monstrous Daymare, and the morning sun's rays filtering through cast a blue light over me.
I started to sit up, and the dragon lifted its wing, the chilly morning air rushing in and waking me further. It was cold, but as it was no longer rainy and windy and my clothes had mostly dried, it wasn't so bad. The Daymare was already awake, looking around the campsite. I stood and patted its nose, and it closed its eyes lazily.
I looked over to the other side of the camp to see the silvery-grey Day Fury, one wing lowered, and its tail and head curled around it, eyes still closed. I assumed Halfrida was under its wing. I joined the Daymare in looking around at the crisp new morning, and absentmindedly laid a hand on its wing, only to find it was icy cold.
I turned to the dragon and frowned. "I could have sworn your wing was warm earlier."
The Daymare nudged my arm and I put my hand back on its wing. It went from icy to warm in a few seconds, then back again.
"You can control your body heat… at least close to your skin, anyway," I marveled. The dragon nudged me away, then suddenly burst into blue flame. I threw an arm over my face, but felt no heat radiating from it- the air seemed even colder than before.
I took a step forward and the Daymare growled a warning.
"Don't worry, I won't touch, I'll be careful," I soothed. I stepped closer and waved my hand a foot from the flames, feeling the cold. I looked around and found a stick, still wet from the night before, and I laid it gently on the dragon's skin. Frost spread slowly up the length of the stick as the water in the wood froze.
"Cool," I said. "Pun intended."
The Daymare gave me a look.
I spun around as I heard a soft roar, but the Day Fury was only yawning, stretching out its claws and wings, and shifting to a pale blue. Halfrida was still curled up, back pressed against the dragon's belly. The Day Fury turned its head and snuffled her hair, nudging her until she sat up.
"Morning," she muttered sleepily. The Daymare's head appeared over my shoulder and it gave a puff of cold air to her face.
"Gah!" my sister yelped, standing up and brushing little bits of frost from her face and clothes. I snickered and the Daymare joined me, rumbling deep in its throat.
Halfrida glared at us. "Very funny, you two."
The Daymare and I glanced at each other in surprise- 'you two'? As in she thought we were a pair? That we were equals, or at least almost equals?
But as I thought about it, I realized my subconscious had been going the same way- the two of us had laughed together, glanced at each other after my sister's statement.
I shrugged and started scratching the scales around the Daymare's horns. It rumbled in its throat and nudged me in return.
The Day Fury grabbed a small log in its mouth and dropped it in the previously empty fire pit. It then breathed out a green gas, similar to a Zippleback's but paler, and more blue than yellow, and the gas settled around the log. The dragon took a step back and breathed out a small shot of fiery sparks, which exploded when they came in contact with the gas, and Halfrida and I jumped. When I looked again, the log was blazing.
"Instant campfire," Halfrida said, sounding pleased. The Day Fury also had a rather pleased look on its face. "Can you breathe fire normally?" Halfrida asked, and the dragon opened its jaws and breathed a tongue of flame into the sky. It didn't go as far as a Night Fury's, but it seemed to be just as hot from its appearance. When I looked at it from a certain angle, I could see that it was really a thin stream of the gas lit by sparks in the dragon's mouth.
"So, sparks and gas, sort of, like a Zippleback, and color changing, like a changewing," I mused. "I've only seen it do blue and grey, can it do anything else?"
The Day Fury proceeded to change color, one hue flowing into the next- a pale blue to a bright sky blue, a vibrant summer ocean blue, a dark, deep blue that was nearing black, a dark and stormy grey, a silvery grey, and a pale, almost white grey, and everything in between.
"Huh. Only blue and grey."
As if to protest my statement, the dragon exhaled a cloud of white, which spread over and blanketed the campsite. I ducked, thinking it would be set aflame, but when the Day Fury released the sparks of fire, they quickly fizzled out. The fire in the pit remained steady, only flickering a little.
"Is this… fog?" Halfrida said in wonder, though I couldn't see her through the thick white. The Day Fury let out a quick burst of green gas and sparks, and the resulting small explosion heated and scattered the white mist.
The dragon, now pale blue, again looked pleased with itself and hummed contentedly when Halfrida rubbed its head.
I turned back to the Daymare, who was now covered in icicles. I snickered and moved to brush them off, but they melted off a second later as the dragon brought heat to its skin.
"Very talented, aren't you, Starfire?" Halfrida murmured, now scratching the dragon's neck.
"Starfire?" I asked in confusion. "You named it?"
Halfrida shrugged. "I figured I might as well. She liked the idea."
"She?" I asked again.
Halfrida smiled. "They're intelligent, they understand most of what we say."
I turned to the Daymare, which was looking at me curiously. I considered it, wondering if I should give it a name. To my surprise, when I thought about it, I liked the idea of spending more time- possibly the rest of my life- with this dragon nearby.
"Well? Are you a he or a she?" I asked the Daymare directly. It snorted in the direction of Halfrida and Starfire, then nudged me.
"Uh… Male?" I guessed, and the dragon nudged me again. "Okay… Now for a name… any ideas?" I aimed the question at my sister, but it was the Daymare who responded, bursting into pale blue flames.
"Okay, something to do with fire? Like your friend," I guessed. "Bluefire would be weird… but you and your flames are cold… so how about Iceflame?"
The Daymare cocked his head, then let out a pleased snort.
"Iceflame it is," I said cheerfully. I grinned as I realized I was now the sort of owner of the literal coolest dragon around. I couldn't wait to show my friends, and maybe even Hiccup and his friends would be impressed! But we still had a ways to go before that could ever happen, so I needed to prioritize. "Let's have breakfast."
Halfrida got up and went to check the traps, Starfire following her. I set up the forked sticks that would let us roast whatever she came back with over the fire.
Iceflame, meanwhile, wandered over to the bag where we kept the smoked deer meat, flipped it open with one of his talons, and proceeded to swallow half the meat.
"Hey!" I protested, shooing him away. He flew to the other end of the small clearing and licked his claws.
I shook my head. Extremely intelligent though dragons may be, they were still animals.
Halfrida returned soon later, with two rabbits, and Starfire flew down with a fish in her mouth, and offered it to my sister.
"Umm… thanks," Halfrida replied, a little confused as she took the fish, which was partially coated in dragon saliva.
I snickered at her look of bewilderment before hurriedly snatching the bag of smoked venison away from Iceflame again.
Did we really know what we were getting into?
We ate breakfast at a leisurely pace, I had rabbit while Halfrida fried the fish on a hot rock, graciously heated by Starfire. We both had berries, and offered them to the dragons, but they seemed distrustful of them.
We then decided to go along with our plan to move on to the more edible side of the island. I took down the snares, and we packed up all we had, tying what we couldn't easily carry to Starfire's back, which wasn't much. We decided that, as neither of the dragons were used to carrying anything besides food, and weren't used to carrying anything on their backs, it was safer to tie our things to the dragon that couldn't accidentally freeze them. After sniffing curiously for a minute, both dragons accepted the arrangement. While they could understand the gist of what we were saying, that didn't mean they totally understood us as humans and all our fancy tools.
The dragons followed us in the air as we walked and jogged to the other portion of the island, gathering some food along the way. We reached the stream and followed it downwards, looking for a place to stop and camp.
"How about here?" Halfrida suggested, setting down her pack in a safe-looking clearing, surrounded by trees and bushy plants that would keep away animals that didn't enter by the stream.
"Sure," I agreed, setting down my own pack. The clearing was a little small, but it would do. I saw the stream became a waterfall a bit ahead, so I decided to see if there was a pool at the bottom. I followed it to to the end, Iceflame walking behind me, and I stopped, gazing at the sight below.
"Hey, Frida… you might want to see this."
My sister jogged up, her eyes widening when she saw the sight. There was indeed a pool at the bottom of the waterfall. The pool was in an almost bowl-shaped valley, cliffs going down to the floor on three sides, while the fourth side was a cliff itself, opening to the air above the ocean.
"It looks like… it looks like a long time ago, there used to be a lake here, but the cliff wall broke away, and it all drained to the ocean, except for that pool… see, there's a waterfall at the end, falling into the sea," Halfrida guessed.
"Someone must have lived here, though." I replied. From where we were standing at the top of the first waterfall I could see that, on our right by the cliffs that dropped to the ocean, a path slanted down one side of the valley, ending near the bottom of the waterfall. The side of the valley open to the air was also blocked by a line of trees. We walked to the top of the path, and I saw that part of the land at the bottom of the valley closest to us jutted out over the ocean- an excellent lookout place. From there, a set of fairly dangerous looking switchbacks led to a beach further down a ways on the left, part of the path actually going behind the waterfall.
"They must have left… or been attacked… probably attacked, or their houses weren't very strong at all, because there aren't any remnants," Halfrida reflected. Below us, the dragons flew down into the valley. It was fairly large- you might be able to fit a longship at its widest point. For two Vikings and two dragons, there was room to spare.
"C'mon," I said, and we jogged back to the previous small clearing to grab our packs, then started down the path. It was old, and a bit eroded, and we had to watch our step in a few places, but we made it down safely. To our surprise and glee, there was a cave beneath the pathway down. It didn't go too terribly deep, there were no offshoots or other caverns, but it went deep enough to hopefully be good shelter for the four of us if a normal amount of rain or snow fell.
We put our things in the cavern, and built a fire a little ways away so it didn't fill with smoke. The sky began to darken, and we sat by the fire as the dragons landed.
I frowned as the dragons began to fold their wings. "Hang on, they're hurt."
Halfrida stood up and walked over to Starfire, gently lifting one of her wings. The dark grey dragon shied away, growling softly.
"Let me see," my sister said sternly, and the dragon obeyed. Starfire had a gash on her side- one of the wolves had clawed her. Iceflame had a similar injury, but on his opposite side, and closer to his wing joint.
"Why didn't you say anything?" Halfrida sighed sadly, dropping the Day Fury's wing.
"They're dragons, I don't think they're used to being fussed over," I replied, examining the scratch Iceflame had. I was sure the only reason the two had been injured was because they were protecting us from a whole wolf pack of eight- if we hadn't been helpless on the ground, they could have stayed in the air and easily picked off the wolves.
By the look on Halfrida's face, I could see she had come to the same conclusion. Fortunately, though one could argue it was our fault the dragons were wounded, the two of us were more practical minded than most Vikings and accepted that while we were the ones who put the dragons in that situation, the overall situation was out of our control, and there was no point worrying about it if we could better spend our time fixing it. Most Vikings, however… I grinned to myself. Most Vikings would spend hours stubbornly blaming it on someone else, and the party that actually received the scars would display them proudly and over exaggerate their heroics in the retelling of the battle.
Halfrida and I gathered herbs we had seen growing a ways up the stream- my sister and the other Viking girls had all been taught about edible food and medicinal herbs from a young age- and crushed them between two stones, then bound them to the dragons' injuries using the vine rope.
Iceflame cautiously sniffed at the herbs when I had finished, then wrinkled his nose and snorted.
"Leave it," I said sternly. "It'll help you heal faster and stop whatever might have been on those wolves' claws from spreading." Or at least I was pretty sure it would. Neither of us had treated dragon wounds before, though Halfrida had helped people with injuries received because of dragons.
Iceflame sighed a great breath of cold air before nudging me in thanks and lying down in front of the fire, a wing open in invitation.
I grinned and laid down next to the Daymare, quickly falling asleep.
The next morning, after Halfrida and I ate breakfast, the two dragons seemed to be having some sort of conversation or argument with each other. I glanced at my sister as we sat on a log near the fire, and she had an eyebrow raised, apparently just as confused as me.
"What's going on?" I asked after a few minutes. Iceflame turned to look at us and jerked his head in a 'follow us' motion, before the two dragons walked to the edge of the cliffs, turning their heads back to stare at us. I exchanged glances with Halfrida and shrugged, and we got up and followed them. The dragons leapt off the edge, hovering and flying back and forth along the path carved into the cliff.
"Okay… apparently they want us to go down the path… here goes nothing," I muttered, starting down. The path was narrow, and crumbling in some places, but what's the life of a Viking without a little danger? My sister and I were still small for Vikings, so we carefully picked our way down, hugging the cliff when the wind gusted.
After about half an hour, we made it all the way down to the pebbled beach. Iceflame roared and continued to fly down the beach. Halfrida and I jogged after the two dragons. They kept flying ahead of us for about five minutes. The beach soon ended with another cliff jutting into the ocean, so we went through the forest up and around it. We came out on another beach-a beach with a ship grounded on it.
I grabbed Halfrida's arm and pulled her back, but the two dragons landed on the boat fearlessly. I noticed the sail was limp, and falling apart, but bore the symbol of the Bashing Barbarians. The ship was clearly old and abandoned.
"What happened here?" I asked, walking forward. Iceflame let out a jet of cold air and Starfire shot a small firebolt at the beach.
"Got it," I replied, and Halfrida chuckled at their self-satisfied expressions. I clambered over the edge of the ship, my sister close behind me. I grinned at the sight before me.
"This ship hasn't been pillaged at all… Look! Rope, glorious rope!" I picked up a coil of the stuff and spun around.
Halfrida laughed at me but slung her own pile of rope over her shoulder. I went to the back of the ship. Not watching where I was stepping I stepped on a rotting board that broke from my weight.
"Halfrida, watch your step. You don't want to fall" I warned. "Hey, Iceflame! Can you pull me up?" I hollered
The big Daymare flew around me. His claws grabbed my shoulders and yanked my leg out of the hole.
"Thanks… Hey, Frida, did that count as flying?" I whispered to my sister.
She rolled her eyes. "No. Keep looting."
I dropped the rope on the ground outside the ship and then wandered carefully to the prow. I knelt and pulled up the boards, beaming at the large bundle of weapons I found. I hauled them up with help from Halfrida, as the dragons were still a little wary of the Barbarian weapons.
"We'll sort through them later, take a few we like, and the rest we can make into tools," I decided. Maybe we could bang them into more useful shapes with the help of dragon fire.
Halfrida's eyes lit up. "Tools! I'm going to see if I can find the repair tools for the ship." She ran off, nimbly leaping from board to board, carefully stepping on the most solid-looking planks.
I started looking in the rowers' chests. There were some useful things- bedrolls of leather and furs, needles, thread, and cords, which I tossed down to the beach. I also found bows, arrows, and spears, while Halfrida found good extra wood, along with the tools for fixing the ship.
I went to the other end of the ship and lifted the planks there, but I found a not-so-welcome sight.
"Dragon nets," I reported. "And chains."
The dragons growled softly and Halfrida peered down. "Let's just leave those there… if we need nets for anything we can make our own with the rope."
I nodded in agreement and replaced the planks. Once I was sure we had taken all we needed- or at least all we needed for now, as we could always come back later- I jumped over the railing, Halfrida again behind me.
I stared at our pile of loot. "Wonderful… Now to get this back up the cliff." I turned to the dragons. "Would you mind carrying this up the cliff? It might take a few trips."
"Wait," Halfrida said. "Let's get these all into manageable bundles first."
We wrapped piles of weapons, tools, and wood in the leather and furs, then tied them with sections of rope, cut with the nice metal daggers we had found.
We had everything, including ourselves, back up the cliffs in an hour. We had lunch, then started sorting through everything, putting things in various places in the back of the cave, deciding which weapons to keep and which to dismantle for their parts, and which wood was good to use and which was better to burn.
We finished the task to our satisfaction by sunset, then, exhausted but happy, fell into a deep sleep.
A/N: Thanks for reading so far! Review if you have any feedback, questions, comments, suggestions, constructive criticism.
On another note, I've started writing another httyd story, this one an AU and centered on Hiccup, not any OCs. I'll post it soon once I have a bit more of it written- I just finished the first chapter today.
