The Fury in the Night
Chapter 24
-Near the Coast-
It was a rather lazy day for two brothers of the soul. Hiccup had taken to cleaning his equipment and oiling it for the third time that week while talking on and off with Toothless as the two flew over the vast blue of two fronts. The upper winds had changed course on them, going too far south for them to continue to use them for now. Thankfully the coastline was in sight, giving the two a good maker to where they were going. The two had no idea how close the two hunting parties were; just six hours and eight hours behind them respectively, just to expect them eventually. All was peaceful.
That, however, was quickly changed when Toothless spied something odd.
'Hey, Hiccup, look up from your stuff for a second. Do those look like warships?' Toothless inquired as he squinted at the faint shapes in the distance.
'What!' Hiccup's head snapped up. He quickly put his equipment away and grabbed his spy glass. He looked into the instrument and what he saw horrified him.
Three warships, and all of them belonged to a certain well-known and mad warlord, Drago. Someone Hiccup, up till this point that was, thought was dead. Perhaps he was and one of his lieutenants took over the campaign. If so, then why were they…..?...!
'Shit, its Drago's ships and I think their after Salutemea! Toothless, we have to push it! If their still here, so is she! I'm going to go get ready for a fight, so try to be careful,' Hiccup ordered lowly as he began to get dressed for battle.
Toothless nodded and sped up. They needed to hurry, time was now of the essence. If those ships left with Salutemea it could mean the end of the very world as they knew it.
Toothless then dove down and flew low to avoid detection for as long as possible. It wasn't night, so he didn't have the advantage of blending in with the midnight black. As soon as they landed behind a hill, Hiccup quickly leapt off and ran up the hill to scout.
The ocean cave that held Salutemea had guards posted on it and several busy camps were around. There was easily over two hundred men on the ground. The ships were also had guards and sentries with their catapults at the ready to launch at a moment's notice. The middle ship held a large cage that would occasionally shake savagely.
Hiccup cursed, they had gotten Salutemea's guardian, Ladon. He was a big dragon with six wings and seven heads, with each head able to fire either poison, fire, ice, boiling water, plasma blasts, or acid.
Hiccup had heard the Greek legends of Laden as well as the legend of the Hydra and figured that the legends were based off Ladon. How they got so close to the actual name was beyond him, but they had. The pair had been to many places in their very long lives, or perhaps their ancestors had, Hiccup wasn't really sure what the extent of Salutemea's water had on extending life. If the legend of the Golden Apples that Laden protects was anything to go by, it seemed likely that she could prolong life for a very long time. It wasn't his place to say though.
Finally the young man sneaked back to his brother and reported his findings to the dragon. The two argued back and forth for an hour about whether to go in and kill everyone or wait till night and try and sneak Salutemea out of the cave. Hiccup argued the first plan as it was the one with the least risks and might actually work, plus they were on a time table, Berk was gaining on them just by standing there arguing the case. The two eventually compromised to kill everyone when it was dusk and the two were harder to see.
With that, the two scouted the perimeter of the camps, as well as avoided sentries for an hour looking for week points in the camps' defenses, which was basically sentries with several lamps and troches that around the area, something Hiccup could use to his advantage.
The two then waited an hour and prepared either by eating, drinking a few drops of Salutemea's water, or preparing equipment.
When it was finally dusk, Hiccup got up and began moving through the forest as quietly as possible. Toothless left the hill and was walking up to a small hill where he would take out two of the three ships with plasma blasts, then get in the air and assist from there.
Hiccup snuck over to the line of lamps. He then proceeded to grab and throw the light at one of the tents. The lamp shattered and the oil that was powering it splashed all over it, which when combined with the small lit and hot wick of the lamp caused it to go into flames almost instantly. The fire spread rapidly among the cloth tents.
While camp one was distracted and the men of the other camps rushed over to help kill the fire, Hiccup snuck into the third camp and slit the throat of the four men that had woken up in the confusion but hadn't rolled out of the beds fast enough to catch someone that knew what was happening. He then capitalized his opportunity and set the rest of the camp that he had lit up on fire with the men still inside it. He also burned the second camp to try and keep the chaos going.
The men on ships though quickly realized something was wrong and began to look for a target to kill, but were unable to see due to the light of the fires and the darkness that was made stronger by the bright light. They weren't looking for long though as four powerful plasma blasts hit the bottom of the two side ships, capsizing one of them and began to sink the other as it filled with water. Toothless then flew in to kill the surviving humans and rescue any captives.
Alarms began to ring, men ran around looking for either a bucket of water or armor and weapon to defend their camps with. The men on the one remaining boat got very skittish as they scanned the hill side from where the shots came from and the sky, as those were Night Fury blasts.
Hiccup, meanwhile went into the camp he had lit on fire and started to mercilessly destroy the men there. Stab, dodge, upper cut, parry, dodge, kick became Hiccup's main body movements as he strolled through the camp killing the survivors. When no more were seen for him to kill, he ran for the cave, whose guards had coincidently joined in trying to put out the fires and all but one had burned or suffocated in the fire, and that poor guy wished he had died in the fire.
Hiccup quickly ran down the passage way that opened up to a rather large cave. Sitting far in the back was a small freshwater pool of water. He scanned the cave, but didn't see anyone, however, that didn't mean anything to him as there were several small caves and ledges around.
His eyes scanned the area, falling on several traps that had yet to be sprung. However it was the metal work that surprised him the most.
'Fury hunters,' came his low growl. Hiccup then switched to Norse. "Come out cowards! Face me like men and with the so called honor you fight with!"
Several men popped up with crossbows aimed at him. They had it patterned so there would be no friendly fire. It was a well-planned trap he had to admit. Three men entered Hiccup's view as they got up and walked up to confront him. The front one began to clap and smile slyly.
"You finally showed up Fury, I must admire your courage, battle lust, and your wits. To get by 200 men and three boats by slaughtering them was indeed a good show. Lighting one of the camps on fire was ingenious I must say. Lured them in and burned the majority to death then used the smoke to cloak yourself and slaughter the lot of them, plus set fire to the other camps to kill the survivors. You must really not anyone to say a word about this cave," said the man at the front with the same sly grin.
"This secret could destroy the world as we know it. Humanity would abuse her, fight over her, and eventually kill her," Hiccup growled.
"I do not deny this, which is why we will take good care of this dragon. No one will know about her, just the ones present," the man replied with a nod.
"You would force her to give her healing to you and your men?" Hiccup tensed at this idea.
"If she would not give it willingly, yes," came yet another smooth reply.
"I will not stand for that, you will leave this place, forget it exists, and I will not kill you," Hiccup glared at the man as he readied his mind for what was to come.
The man scoffed at the claim. "I think not, kill him."
Ten cross bows went off and every single one hit its mark. Hiccup fell to the ground with a loud thud. The man's smirk grew as he approached his downed adversary.
"So sad that the dragons poisoned your mind, you would have made a brilliant fury hunter."
"Too bad I have this thing called integrity," came a growled response. The man's surprise showed as Hiccup lifted himself off the ground, then proceeded to tear out the three bolts in the chinks of his armor around his chest as the rest had bounced off.
"No, that's impossible!" The man cried as he backed away.
"I am the impossible!" Hiccup roared as he grabbed his swords, drawing them in an instance and slashing at the same time. The only thing to keep the man alive was a quick sword that blocked the two twin downward strikes. The man's guards had seen the threat and reacted quickly. A broadsword of beautiful of making intercepted the strike.
Hiccup quickly disengaged from the locking of the blades and struck out at the man, only to have one of his blades parried and the other kicked his sword away from its maker. Hiccup spun past the man on his feet, grinding his momentum with one sword less in his hands.
"Your fast, but can you last?" Hiccup challenged.
The man offered no reply, only a strike with his blade, one that Hiccup dodge to the side of, grabbed the man's hands, stopping the man in his tracks as he realized his error of underestimating his opponent during his attack. His throat then grew a hole the size of the one his mouth made as Hiccup jammed his sword into the side of the man's neck. The first guard died there in a pool of his own blood.
The other fury hunters had by that point grouped together, creating a wall of shields with four spears at the top and eight swords under it. It would have been effective too if they had been dealing with a regular man, but Hiccup was far than normal.
He charged the shield wall, sheathing his sword and popping his claws and gauntlet shields out. As the spears leveled to his chest, he pivoted on his ankle and then pushed off the ground with the other foot giving him some spin as he jumped. Three spears suddenly lost their pointy ends as he cut them from the air.
The three men looked at the sticks in shock then tossed them aside and drew their swords with new steel in their eyes. They may the last of their current breed of man, but they were determined to live.
Hiccup landed on one foot, bent to his knee as he softened his landing before jumping again, continuing his pivot in the air. His claws racked their shields, shredding the metal. The men jumped back a bit from the surprising force of the blow, but quickly made up for it. They pushed back, trying to force Hiccup away from them. Hiccup, though, just rolled over the top of the shields, body slamming the men.
Hiccup rolled and then flipped up, striking at the closest ones. Two more Fury Hunters died to his blades. The leader of the group called a retreat, but the entrance was cut off by none other than Ladon and Toothless. The group backed away slowly in clear understanding of their disadvantage. On one side, they had a guy they couldn't kill and on the other were two of the most fearsome dragons with open grudges against them.
This would not end well.
-End Chapter 24-
Wow guys, it's been a bit. About six months I think? Well, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and more will be coming over the course of the year. I know some of you are like, "Dude, update some would you!" and to be fair, your kind of right on that. I have a lot of unfinished projects (such as revising and continuing the Ancient and the Flames series), and I also added a new project (cue groans), yeah, I know, I'm dumb, but it wouldn't leave me alone till I wrote it. Thankfully I was wiser than when I wrote this story and the ones before it. I update rather often for it, but not like six chapters in under a month. That was insane and I need to edit Flames….yeah, it's a wreck, but I promise I will be fixing it…eventually. I want to get this story some place I can rest it for a bit, well, more than I already have. You'll see what I mean in a few chapters I suppose. Yes, I have started to plan out my chapters, only took me three years, but hey, I'm human.
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