Part Two – Prologue
Documentation of Events
It has been nearly three years since the arrival of three Night Furies on the archipelagic island known as Berq. Whilst this merited the return of the Chief's dragon and alpha of all the dragons on Berq; Toothless, it also became known, or at least rumoured that two more Night Furies arrived that day. One was the now well-known mate of Toothless', Ace, who aids the alpha with his duties, but there were many that said there was not only another Night Fury, but two, placing the grand total at four Night Furies on Berq. No one has ever seen the other two but it is always a growing suspicion of the people on Berq that the two other Night Furies still live on Berq and that suspicion has made somewhat a legend of them. I, on the other hand, find no merit to these words. Viri, one of those Night Furies, is within public view every day, but is always in his human form. He rarely orients nowadays, mainly focusing on the development of Hiccup's new defences and the training of Ace, Toothless and I. The other Night Fury, of course, is me. Even as I write this now, I am sitting on the other side of the massive island that is Berq, nearly forty kilometres away from the main village, in the house Hiccup built for me himself. To that, of course, I am grateful. No one in the village other than Astrid, Hiccup and Valka have laid eyes on both my human and Night fury forms and I would prefer it stay that way.
Of course, sometimes I go into the outskirts of the village, being Viri's and Hiccup's respective houses, but the closest I go to civilisation regularly is to the cove. Most of our training is held there, where we learn how to fight using our human bodies and also how to use our abilities, as well as experiment with them. Thanks to the experimentation, we have found out numerous things about our abilities. Reconstruction is, in fact, much more than Viri and I had previously imagined. It turns out that we are able to reconstruct not only to places that are in our immediate area, but also to places that we have embedded into our memories. Places like Amicus. I found out I can willingly travel between Berq and Amicus as I please and thus have found myself spending a lot of free time there. On top of that, we found out that I have another ability known as perception evasion, or reality shifting, whichever is preferred, and the reason for that is because of my so-called 'immense' desire to be alone and to remain unnoticed by others. I wouldn't call it immense... This was also the reason why I could reconstruct, even being an even child in Viri and I's family. Only the odd offspring should be able to use it and the theory we've come to is that my other ability offsets the rule. Anyway, another one of the main things we found out was that none of us, being Viri, Ace, Toothless and I, could use our abilities without being in direct line of sight of the stars. It still amuses me some when I think of how Ace said that we shouldn't be able to use our abilities during the day because the stars were gone. Obviously I was sure to remind her that the stars simply become unable to be viewed thanks to the sun and that they were still there. Either way, none of us were able to use our abilities in caves or other places like such. Of course, this also applied to our ability to orient. We could not orient unless we were in the line of sight of a star, however odd it seems.
On the topic of orienting, however, we found that we don't exactly have to recite either of the incantations to either change or revert back. Instead, we can now change between forms instantly through just forming the associations in our heads. Which, as to be expected, was fairly difficult to fully understand. I am currently the only one able to change instantly, though the others have become quite fast they have not yet been able to reach the level I am at. We still don't know everything behind our mysterious abilities to perform feats such as reconstruction or orienting, but at least we do know that whenever we change no one can ever directly observe the change because there is always a blinding flash of white light. Though I can change instantly, I still have to perform the basic means of orienting. This includes tearing a single scale from my body, presumably to retain our dragon forms in them somehow, before we can even do anything. When we wake in our human bodies the only thing that remains of our original form is our eyes that retain the original colour; our binary vascular system, which allow us to operate our bodies at a higher level than regular humans, who only have a single heart; and the single scale that is essential for reverting back. Now, this progress is all fine and dandy, but it's nothing compared to the radical changes that have forged Berq into a defensive stronghold.
Viri and Hiccup worked tirelessly on their plans to improve, and they most certainly did exactly that. Berq now has a large stone wall, two metres thick, ten metres high, surrounding the village. It took the village some time to build and even more time to adjust to it, but eventually it was finished. What came next was the various weapons that defended said wall. Using Zippleback gas, Hiccup was able to create cannons to mount those walls every five metres. Nearly a year later, he refined the design to a handheld weapon with much smaller ammunition, that could be used by the villagers. Hiccup thought he'd taken a step forward with ingenuity, only to find that one of the newer traders, a woman by the name of Arc, had already been trading such weapons – known simply as 'firearms' – through most of her contractors. Arc... I've heard a lot about this woman from Hiccup and Viri's dealings with her. Apparently she's hiding something, however great a trader she is. She visits Berq regularly and stays for extended periods of time, often leaving her ship in the bay and adventuring off into the island. Fortunately she's never gone more than twenty or so kilometres in, so I've been safe. Her existence has certainly piqued my curiosity, which I've found... is rather hard to do. Either way, she's been the trader that hasn't much, if not at all, been intimidated by the fortification and weaponisation of Berq and as such has been one of the best traders.
As far as trading goes, we've become aware that some ships have had stowaways onboard. Stowaways that could possibly have been linked to the Decree. This has increased our security and tightened what ships can trade with us and what ships can't. Over the years we've also had an increase of population by nearly half of the original number when I first arrived here. We've yet to work out if it's because we have become the most defensive island in the whole archipelago, and offer safety and remarkable living quality compared to most places, or if people are simply curious of the dragons that live here. I can't really be bothered figuring it out – I can't be bothered figuring much out these days – as I've become somewhat lazy. If Toothless were to read this I'm sure he would say something along the lines of; "You're not 'somewhat lazy' – you're so lazy that I wouldn't even be surprised if you reconstruct mere metres because you can't be bothered moving," and he's probably right. Not that I do that, because what would be the point, but I have been observed to be... lackadaisical. Very lackadaisical. It almost amuses me how much that word can be related to me. I don't really know what I really want. I don't have any motivations because there's not really anything that deeply motivates me... it's odd. However, I've found that I rather enjoy reading.
Other things that are going on between us Night Furies have mainly been our training, but at times we have our moments just like we did on Amicus when me met nearly three years ago. It's good to just relax and the nostalgia is somewhat wonderful. I'm not one for sentiment but nostalgia is great. Upon those things, I have often heard Toothless and Ace arguing about something. I've still not been able to understand what they are talking about, which is infuriating on my part, but what I've heard have been things along the line of "why don't you go out there? They could be on their own!" with Toothless saying things like, "there's nothing I can do, despite how much I want to find her and find out my past. I just don't have any memories whatsoever." This constantly annoys me. Why don't they ever talk to me about it? It's obvious that Toothless wants to find someone – a she – but has lost his memories. I just don't know who and I don't really want to ask him about it. I've decided that if he wants me to know about it, he would tell me. After all, what effect does it have on my existence?
Anyway, as I was saying before about reading, dragons don't generally have a written language, but the words are the same. I just had to learn the written form of the words. Through this, I've found that I rather enjoy learning and appraising new skills. Such as learning the anatomy of human bodies; something I'm most thankful for, as I am able to use my preferred form of combat. That would be by using 'pressure points'. Another skill I've learned is another form of combat, being combat using weapons. Viri taught me about human weapons and when he showed me his collection of fine steel weapons, there was only one that really caught my attention; a weapon called a 'short sword' or 'combat knife'. It was small and made of the finest material in the whole of Viri's collection on board his own personal ship he had apparently 'borrowed'. He said I had I fine eye. Of course, it was anything but that. It simply looked more... practical. It had a blade the length of my forearm with a silver-lined leather grip and a flat hilt. The blade was one-sided and very slightly curved so that the dull side had the smallest of a curve carved towards the blade's middle like an indent. Viri told me to hold it in my hands so that the blade protruded out between my thumb and forefinger and asked how it felt. I plainly told him it felt wrong before proceeding to try holding it the other way; holding it so that the hilt was between my thumb and forefinger with the blade protruding out behind my little finger. Viri wasn't even surprised when I told him it felt more natural that way, and proceeded to tell me that is known as an 'icepick grip'. He told me it was a grip that was used in fighting styles adapted for agility and speed. I smiled at that. It described me perfectly. So, without and further hesitation Viri up and gave me the short sword, complete with a belt and leather sheath attached so that the sheath rested upon my back, right at the end of my spine, with the hilt on my right hand side where it was easily accessible. Viri then told me that it had a name. 'Shizukesa'. He told me it meant 'serenity' in the foreign language he took his alias name from. Which, of course, only told me how much more the weapon suited me. He then told me the name 'Hakuryuu' meant 'white dragon', and I realised the 'white' was metaphorical in meaning. It was rather well devised on his part.
Anyway, he trained me with the short sword that I now have on my person even as I write this, and decidedly I'm never without it on me. In my human form, I'm left rather defenceless – we all are – despite our hand-to-hand combat training as after all, you can only do so much against one with a weapon if you don't have one yourself. Using fire in our human forms is also unacceptable, as we have to remain undercover and hidden from the Decree. By that, I mean that the Decree must not know that we are able to orient. Anyway as such, we (Night Furies) all have our personalised weapons on us at all times. Toothless has taken a liking to the sword Viri uses, and decidedly now uses one akin to Viri's. Ace however, is slightly different. As well as having a dagger (which she has gotten rather good at, I might add) she also carries one of Hiccup's finest works; a firearm that is a size slightly larger than a hand and intricately designed to fire a small lead projectile called 'shot'. It took him many hours and days to complete it, though is now making more and more with utmost efficiency. He's also begun to hand them out as gifts to his trusted legislative assembly, as well as to Astrid and Valka and most of his friends. He plans to have one in all of his townspeople's possession so they can be assured of their safety if any sign of war begins to emerge. Speaking of which... I believe I should delve into the more darker themes of this soliloquy. The things I have come to terms with and the predictions I have made... about the Decree and the war that is coming. The war... that, I must regrettably confess, will come any day now.
The signs are all there. Deceit. Conspiracy. The people mysteriously appearing on trade ships. The new trade ships that no one has ever heard of. All of it. Lies.
War is coming.
Death will not heed moral convention; death shall swiftly disinherit those from their trespasses and send them awry into the flames.
A/N
And there we have it, the beginning of Part Two. I hope you all enjoyed its intensity ;) Also, did you enjoy my little easter-egg reference to CCF in the chapter previous? Did you even spot it? Let me know in your review :)
Thank you to:
Moonchaser the Night Fury
Tess
King Tyras
Sag1ttar1us
Mordooooh
Skyress1
and Sosuke Tenki
Eh, a small amount of 7 only? Down from 17!? What did I do wrong!? XD
Hope you enjoyed and have a good one!