Again, Jiod thought that Freva might want to plan or something, but apparently she didn't know the word.
"You know I don't know how to do… anything, right?" Jiod growled at Freva. "You will," Freva said, flipping around and gliding upside down. Jiod eyed her warily. "You'll need some… pressure. That's how we learned… uh, Viking stuff," she said, not wanting to reveal too much about her tribe, which, as far as most other tribes were concerned, didn't even exist. Jiod huffed and spent the rest of the flight attempting to fly without jerking around between air currents too much, while Freva tried more and more elaborate manoeuvres.
Their journey wore on until they flew through the mist once more, though this time Jiod's improved vision was able to pierce it easily enough. They paused before the mists ended. The queen was still flying around and snapping at something…
The dome of clear air surrounding the island began pulsing erratically as the queen grew more frustrated, and Jiod, with his lack of control over his new wings, was revealed more than once before he could draw back. Jiod felt grateful that his new silver scales blended into the mist so well, then guilt over Nero's death. Finally he pushed his emotions to the side to deal with later, after the queen was dead and Berk was destroyed. Jiod and Freva hovered, uncertain, until an extra-large pulse caught Jiod off guard, allowing a clear view of what—or rather, who—the Red Death was pursuing. The blurry form of a silarion resolved into a green Monstrous Nightmare, and on top of it, wielding a strangely bright bow, sat Ikhelt.
"It's Ikhelt," Jiod said after hastily withdrawing back into the fog, "what do we do?"
"Nothing," Freva replied, voice gone soft but dark. Jiod looked at her with alarm. "So we just—?"
"Wait 'till the queen gets him or he gets away. Doesn't matter. Then we kill the queen," she said. Jiod couldn't refute her logic, but privately thought she should have been more concerned about her brother. Still, they hovered in short circles as the day drew to a close, the dying rays of the sun nearly completely obscured by the fog, leaving a dark atmosphere lit occasionally by the hellish gleam of the queen's sheets of fire. Ikhelt would stop his mount every so often in order to aim carefully, ever so carefully, at some part of the queen, but seemed frustrated for hours, until one shot seemed to land where he wanted. A triumphant shout drew curious looks from the observers. From then on Ikhelt was content to simply evade the queen, lazily firing from his curiously bright bow, which gleamed even in the absence of other light to reflect, every so often.
Soon the queen grew sluggish, and the dome of fog crept ever close to the island. Jiod internally sighed, knowing what would happen. He hope Ikhelt's death would be quick. But the queen became slower and slower until, in the middle of a charge, she dropped unconscious to the ground. Ikhelt looked around, then, seemingly satisfied, urged the Nightmare away from the island in a direction that Jiod instinctively knew would take him back to Berk.
"Is it…?" Jiod said, almost afraid to ask.
"Only one way to find out," Freva said, and dropped out of the surrounding fog and into the bubble of air, which was now barely bigger than the queen's body. Jiod followed at a healthy distance; she could evade the queen with ease, but he still had to get used to his new body. After Freva fluttered impatiently over the queen, Jiod figured it was safe and descended, straining his hearing for any sign she was still alive, and, unfortunately, found it.
"How do we kill her?" He asked Freva. He supposed they could enter her throat and try cutting it open from the inside, but he really did not want to have to resort to that. In response, Freva fearlessly approached the queen's head and lifted an eyelid, revealing a glazed eye. She gathered up a blast in her mouth at the highest power she could manage and let loose.
The queen didn't even stir. After the smoke cleared, Jiod looked at Freva in awe. In place of the queen's eye was a hollow crater reaching down into her skull. Freva blasted it again, and again. The queen finally began to overpower whatever was in the arrow and stirred with a shudder that Jiod could feel through the air. He abruptly realised he was supposed to help, and set himself to digging into another eye, careless of the disgusting goop he was clawing at.
The queen shuddered again and let out a mighty groan. Jiod slid off her face and flung himself aloft, but Freva was up to her tail in the queen's eyeball. Jiod looked away at the sight; he might be used to corpses, but the sight was too reminiscent of a maggot infesting someone's eye socket.
The queen slowly stood on all fours, shuddering and screeching. Another kind of shout reached him and he looked towards the shores to see the Viking's flotilla run aground, a particular Night Fury chained to one of them. Don't worry, we'll get you Toothless, Jiod thought. He personally thought the name ridiculous; that silarion was anything but toothless. Jiod couldn't believe they'd missed the approach of a whole fleet of Vikings, but then again they had been paying extremely close attention to the Red Death.
A series of enormous boulders smashed against the queen, who didn't even seem to feel them and instead tried to flame her own face. When that failed, she brought up her paws to try to dig Freva out, a fruitless endeavour. The pain looked to be disrupting the queen's judgement, as she then proceeded to bash her head against the volcano. A constant high pitched keening started rising from her throat, shattering several glass items on the Viking ships. With a sudden focus, the queen leapt into the air with Jiod in close pursuit. She soon reached a height that defied logic. The wind suddenly ceased. The air was so cold Jiod shivered even through his new scaled form and inner heart, and they were surrounded by an oppressive darkness. Jiod looked up and saw the strangest sight he'd seen in his life. Spread out above him was a blanket of stars, so many more than he'd seen before, glimmering coldly down at him. He felt a faint disapproval emanating from them, a sense that he'd done something wrong and they were sternly glaring down at him until… and then the Red Death let out a sheet of fire which quickly guttered out against the queer darkness. Jiod found it harder and harder to breathe, and was more than relieved when the queen suddenly dived straight down. She reached the clouds and kept going, and it wasn't until they had almost reached the artificial fog that Jiod realised the queen wasn't stopping.
"Freva! Freva, get out, she's—" was all Jiod managed before the queen hit the ground. An enormous explosion billowed out from the point of impact, sending dust and other flaming debris straight into Jiod's face and outright killing most of the Vikings on the shore.
"Freva, are you…" Jiod began, then trailed off. The skull of the Red Death cracked in two, revealing a charred and broken form curled up where the brain would be, black scorch marks and shattered bone surrounding it, clue to the massive amount of plasma blasts she'd gotten off.
"You'll be fine… we died before, this is hardly new… we won, we'll just be taken to the present…" Jiod muttered to himself, flying over a scene of complete devastation. The roiling explosion from the Red Death was just beginning to clear, revealing only the odd spar or two still afloat in the water, all that remained of the Viking's (admittedly small) fleet. Charred and crushed corpses lined the rocky shore, Vikings who'd been expecting a fight instead faced with their own massacre. Jiod began to panic; how would the entire attack force dying affect the present? He wasn't able to contemplate it for long, as if head began to spin, and the scene disappeared before him…