Ruffnut strolled down the empty, dark street, her boots clunking against the motley array of stones that made up the ground. She eyed the buildings she passed, taking in the important parts. Window, boarded-up window, door, flying body-
She ducked, but the lanky man's heels clipped her shoulder anyway, sending her sprawling in the narrow street. She tucked, rolled, and sprang back up with no trouble at all, of course, years of being knocked around made that second nature, but the man who had been flung out the door of a ratty, nondescript building wasn't nearly so competent.
"Work on your flying drop kicks," she told the groaning body twitching in the gutter. He responded by puking and crawling away. This was already looking to be her kind of island, all right. She had clearly found a tavern of some sort, and rough enough that they were throwing out the drunkards the right way. None of the taverns on Mahelmetan did that, their idea of 'throwing' someone out was a brisk shove and maybe a punch to the face.
She liked the literal interpretation of things, so she approached the sturdy wooden door and pulled it open. This would be her first stop of the night, and hopefully not her last; it wouldn't be any fun if she found what she was looking for right away.
The door squeaked ominously as she shoved it open – and where was that squeak when it could have given her warning a few moments ago – but she didn't let that stop her. What she saw inside was worth going for. It was indeed a tavern, but she was betting it was the one meant for locals, not foreigners. Everything was worn, but nothing was dirty, and everyone in the room was giving her a stink eye.
She tilted her head and stared challengingly at the three younger men crowded around a table far too nice for any tavern that didn't have its patrons' respect already. She was tall, her hair was messy, and she knew for a fact that she could look unnerving when she wanted. Add in that they probably weren't sure who she was, or even if she was male or female, and they were too uncertain to say or do anything.
"Closed," an old man said from behind the counter. He hefted a mug as if contemplating whether to throw it at her, a polishing rag dangling forgotten from his other hand. There was a jagged gash across his forehead, not new but not even close to fully healed, and another running down the bridge of his nose. He looked like exactly the sort of person she was looking for.
"Eh, I don't mind," she said, pulling out a chair at an unoccupied table, of which there were quite a few. "Visiting family round here, heard this is the only place that doesn't suck Gronckle boulders." One of her primary roles back home was infiltration, and infiltrating a place like this was child's play. Toe the line with the attitude, make the bartender feel good about himself, imply 'in' status as family of a local, it was easy. She just had to make being thrown out seem like more trouble than it was worth.
"Wha' family?" One of the women by the counter asked suspiciously, setting her oversized mug down to turn and stare at Ruffnut.
"No clue, looking for them, got told they lived here a while," Ruffnut lied. "Might not live here now, but who knows." She wasn't a local, not quite, but she just needed a plausible excuse for them, not a full backstory. Also, there was a chance some busybody would demand to go see her relative or otherwise pick her apart if she gave them anything checkable… It was a subtle art, and thus one she innately failed at, but she'd had lots of practice because Tuffnut was insufferable if he could consistently beat her at anything.
"Name?" the other woman asked, and Ruffnut sensed the rest of the tavern's occupants relaxing. It was subtle, one man going back to his food, another leaning back in his chair, a group of people resuming their muffled conversation… She wasn't in, but she was tolerable and someone else was making her their problem for the moment. So long as the woman questioning her didn't raise a stink, she wouldn't be thrown out.
"Last name Thorston, she changes the first name but always keeps the last," Ruffnut reported. She wasn't here to find her mom, who was off looking for her husband, and Ruffnut doubted he was anywhere so relatively close to home as this. It was a good cover, though, and one she didn't need to fake and have trouble keeping straight. "Looks like me, longer hair, rough, searching for a guy so she can knock him out and drag him home."
"Never seen 'er," the woman admitted. "I could ask around, though."
"Don't bother, I'll do it," Ruffnut said, waving her hand. "You can help me out in another way, though. Got any Skrill round these parts?"
The woman stared at her, brows furrowed, then slowly rose from the bar and stomped over, dropping into the sturdy chair opposite Ruffnut's table. "Why'd you ask? Mother go messin' with dragons?"
"Hah, no," Ruffnut scoffed. "This one's all me. I wanna get a few impressive kills under my belt, and this Berserker dude back home kept braggin' about how Skrill are the best o' everything, so I'm gonna stab one and bring back the skull to spite him."
The woman leaned forward. "Wha' makes ya think there're any of those around here? Or that ye'd have a chance in Helheim of gettin' close to one?" Her reaction didn't seem quite right to Ruffnut; a little too serious, far too specific, redirecting with questions…
"I'm amazing," Ruffnut said truthfully. "Now, Skrill. What do you know?"
"Nothing you need to hear," the woman scoffed. "Blood yerself on some lesser dragons first."
"Been there, done that," Ruffnut shot back. "Gronckles, Zipplebacks, Whispering Deaths, all easy pickings."
"Yak dung," someone from a nearby table contributed. Ruffnut turned to give him a glare, but he was already slouching his way up to the counter for something, his ratty brown cloak hanging down over hunched shoulders.
"Even if I did believe you," the woman said carefully, drawing Ruffnut's attention back to her, "Goin' after a Skrill alone is a fancy way to die with nothing to show for it."
"Not even glorious death in battle?" Ruffnut asked. She had the feeling the woman was building up to something, and was curious as to what it was. An offer to come along would be awkward, to say the least, but if the woman intended to give her a contact of some kind, mercenaries or some other sort of paid assistance, Maour might just be willing to follow it up.
"It's not so glorious if you fail," the woman said darkly. "Ye need help, backup, supplies… There're Skrill around 'ere, but gettin' to one means gettin' past everythin' around it."
"Hit me with that sweet knowledge," Ruffnut requested, drawing an annoyed grimace from the other woman. "Where, when, and what?"
"I'm not tellin' you exactly where, you'll just go and get yerself killed, but I'll tell you what it's like and who to go to if you really want a chance." The woman huffed. "Up North, way up North, there's a field of icebergs. In the middle, there's some kind of dragon nest, but nobody's ever seen it and lived to tell the tale."
"Sounds familiar," Ruffnut said thoughtfully. The icebergs were new, but they served the same purpose as sea stacks… "Does this iceberg field have some kind of fog?"
"It's plenty hard to sail through without," the woman said quietly. "No fog, but storms are common, and perfect weather still means you're takin' chances on mountains o' ice. Tha's not the problem. All the islands closest to it are constantly under siege, there's nowhere to stop and resupply, nowhere to retreat to. Dragons o' all kinds fly over, destroy, raid, ruin everything. They do it over and over until nobody bothers living there, and then another island, further out, starts comin' under attack."
"So there are a bunch of dead villages and islands with nobody on them around, why's that matter to me?" Ruffnut asked. "I go in, hang out at the latest place to be under siege, and wait until lighting strikes."
"That'd get you killed," the woman informed her. "Seen plenty of idiots try it. There aren't real raids, not like the weaklings down South get, these are attacks. Not for food, for destruction."
"But there are Skrill." She had a general direction and a landmark to look for; a nest in the middle of a field of icebergs, surrounded by dead islands? Easy to find even without getting it marked on a map for her convenience.
"Some, and worse things," the woman said, staring at her. "Far worse things. You'll need help. That's where he comes in. Want my advice?"
"Can I get away with not hearing it?" Ruffnut asked sarcastically.
"You remind me o' myself, back in the day, so no," the woman informed her. "I was young, stupid, hunting dragons seemed like fun. It ain't, not up 'ere. Either go down South and try yer luck there, or join up with the ones makin' a difference up further North."
"Who are…" Ruffnut said, hoping to drag out a few names, maybe a description or two.
"Ain't got a name, but they're big and organized," the woman said. "Led by a big man wit' black hair and a polearm, they go 'round fightin' off the dragons and tryin' to keep the islands alive. Thor's work, what they're doin'. Join up wit' them, you'll get your fill of killin' dragons, and you'll do it with plenty o' allies and get paid, too."
"The big guy got a name?" Ruffnut asked. "So I can ask around, make sure I got the right people when I sign up." Not that she intended to, but if there was some meathead running around killing dragons near where Toothless had been taken, he might be useful. This woman certainly had a high opinion of what he was doing, though she was also of the opinion that the dragons were attacking for the sake of it, so she might not be all that reliable.
"I don't quite know," the woman admitted. "Seen 'is people in action, seen 'em defend the village I was stoppin' in, but never seen 'im myself. Somebody told me 'bout him, but I'd taken a Nadder tail to the helmet and don't remember much other than that description… His name was somethin' close to stupid, somethin' funny."
Ruffnut eyed the mug in the woman's grasp, and wondered how she seemed to be getting drunker as she spoke… without drinking from it. Maybe the mead was only now kicking in. Or maybe she was secretly amazing at sneaking drinks without being noticed.
"Dragon, but not dragon," the woman continued, staring over Ruffnut's shoulder at nothing in particular. "Drago, I think. Or Ragon, or Drag-man, or Ragged Anne, but that'd be really odd…"
"Drago, then," Ruffnut concluded, as that was the only name that sounded even somewhat plausible. "You're telling me to look for a guy called Drago and his band of merry men."
"They're not merry," the woman muttered, giving her a strange look.
"Nah, but I'll be sure to lighten them up." She crossed her arms and leaned back, refraining from putting a boot on the table solely because the old bartender was giving her the stink eye again, somehow anticipating that urge. "Tell me more about this head-banging good time you had fighting dragons with the drag-o man."
O-O-O
The sound of metal on metal had drawn Maour in from a few streets away. He watched the open-air blacksmithing stall from a distance, leaning against a stone building and feigning disinterest as well as he could… which wasn't very well. He felt like a wound spring with nowhere to go, and thinking about forging things led him to thinking about Toothless, which just made him more tense.
Seeing a blacksmith didn't make him feel any better, but he decided that if he was going to be gathering information, he might as well start with what he knew best. Blacksmiths tended to collect a lot of dragon-related news anyway, what with being the ones stuck replacing melted, shattered, or otherwise broken weapons. He knew from experience that dragon-fighting damage was mostly different from weapon-on-weapon damage.
It was the middle of the night, though, so he was cautious in approaching the burly man working iron against an anvil that had definitely seen better days. "Got time for an appraisal?" he called out.
"No," the blacksmith yelled back, far louder than necessary. He punctuated his refusal with a particularly hard slam of the hammer. "Only open between noon and dusk, don't give out orders after dusk either."
"This is more me seeking a second opinion," Maour said. "I've got this weird metal, you see, and I'm trying to find someone who has seen it before."
"Don't care," the blacksmith grunted, still not looking at him. He was working on something thick and tapered at one end, though that was all Maour could tell from the shape of the hot metal.
"Well, I'm-" Maour cut himself off when the man whirled, hoisting a forge hammer up to point at him.
"Get off my street," the blacksmith grunted.
Maour knew a waste of time when he saw one - unless that waste was in the form of a totally impractical invention, though Toothless usually helped him find uses for even the weirdest ideas - so he turned away and quickly put some distance between himself and the blacksmith.
"Well, I guess it makes sense some random guy working after midnight isn't going to be too happy," he muttered. "Back to the first plan, go find somewhere people get drunk and talk to them." It couldn't be said that he liked that plan, but it had more promise than annoying an already-angry blacksmith.
In the quest to find the hammering sound he had strayed into a part of the island that consisted mostly of storehouses, some barred and some with open doors betraying empty interiors. He wandered down the street, away from the hammering, until he found signs of life in one of the empty warehouses.
A group of men, ten in total, were throwing down little blocks of wood onto a crate, staring at each other and occasionally gathering them up again. Maour wasn't so out of touch with normal Viking interactions that he didn't recognize that a game of some sort was going on, but he had no idea what kind of game it was. The flickering light of a few lanterns set around on other empty crates didn't help him see what they were doing, either.
One of them looked up, saw him, and promptly waved him over. They seemed to be in a good mood, a stark contrast to the last person he had met, so he went over to them.
"We've got room for another," the man who had waved him over said jovially. "Ante's ten or a good story, twelve is the lucky number."
"I've got plenty of stories, but no idea what you're playing," Maour said, staring down at the chunks of wood. They were somewhat uniform in shape, all being little cubes. He might have thought they were dice, Fishlegs had a few of those, but none of the cubes were marked.
"Game of skill," one of the men drawled with a strange accent. "Take turns rolling, aim for marks on crate. More in marks means more points. Bet on results." He gestured to the crate, which did indeed have a bunch of shapes carved into the top.
"Or just hang around and talk while those of us who have money to spare give it all to Uldir, here," the man next to him offered. "He always wins."
"This is because I am expert at all things thrown," the man bragged, scooping up the half-dozen pieces of wood.
Maour watched as the game went on for a few rolls. It was somewhat simple, but still more complicated than he would have expected. They had a whole system of betting, who was allowed to add in currency - of several different kinds, none of which he knew - and who won what depending on the outcome. There was more nuance in the system of betting than the actual game, really.
He lingered for a bit, but he had come to this somewhat miserable island for information, not lackluster entertainment, so he soon backed away during a heated argument over whether one of the men had kicked the crate right as another rolled. To his surprise, one of the others went with him, following him out of the warehouse.
"You look like you're looking for work," the man said without any prompting.
"What gives you that idea?" Maour asked, genuinely curious.
"No money to gamble with, foreign, wandering around a shipping port in the middle of the night," the man said confidently, gesturing to him. "You came in on a ship with an overenthusiastic captain, I'm guessing, and when he didn't make ends meet on his cargo, laid you off. Am I right?"
"Close enough," Maour lied. It wasn't like he could say how he had really got here; the last time someone didn't understand how he had gotten onto an island, he had ended up taking an arrow. For Toothless…
"Bad move," the man said, taking a step back. "Yeah, I get that. What skills you got?"
"Plenty, but what would you be hiring me for?" he asked. "I'm not looking to go just anywhere. I'm out here for my own reasons."
"Didn't say otherwise," the man said with a grin. "Come on, walk and talk." He headed out onto the street, headed toward the other side of the island, and Maour walked alongside him.
"The thing you gotta understand about business out here is that it's dying in most areas," the man told him. "Your ship was some sort of normal cargo, right? Food, wood, something necessary to live off of?"
"Pretty much," Maour confirmed.
"Worth less and less every year," the man said. "Because there's less and less people out here to buy it every year. No, there are only two trades worth following now. Mercenary and dragon hunting."
"Which are you?" Maour asked carefully.
"Eret, son of Eret, finest dragon trapper alive, at your service," the man said. "You may have heard of me."
"Nope." He definitely hadn't heard of someone who claimed trapping dragons was his profession, and a profitable one at that. They just didn't have that down where he lived, possibly because there was no nest concentrating dragons into one general area. That apparently wasn't the case here…
Which meant that he wasn't about to walk away, not yet. Trapping dragons meant finding dragons, which meant knowing where dragons were. It was probably better for his search that Eret wasn't a mercenary… even though Maour would have liked him better if he were.
"Pity," Eret said. "Well, I've not heard of you either. Anyway, we go out, do sweeps of the Razed Isles, catch the scavengers hanging around there. Drago pays well for every one we bring back, and we keep far from his main fleets most of the time, so the Terrors don't rip us limb from limb."
"Terrible Terrors?" Maour asked, seizing on the one term he thought he might understand without any further explanation.
"No," Eret said, proving him wrong. "Not just them, anyway, those little pests aren't what I'm talking about. Around here, we call the massive clouds of bloodthirsty dragons that attack islands Terrors, like you would call a group of fish a school, or a group of crows a murder."
"Never heard that one," Maour murmured, working to fit that explanation into his understanding of the world. He could maybe see a raid like those against Berk back in the day called a Terror, though no self-respecting Viking would say it with the subdued fear and respect that Eret said it. But that had been solved, it had stopped happening with the death of the Queen… Which meant there might be another Queen out here.
"What causes these Terrors?" he asked.
"Depends on what rumors you want to believe," Eret laughed. "Living mountains of scale? Icebergs treated as gods by the dragons? A lone human directing a campaign of vengeance against their own kind? A simple, bestial need to destroy? Odin's wrath? The start of Ragnarok? Take your pick, they all have as much evidence for them."
"Which is to say none, or none credible," Maour said. Some of those rumors sounded a lot more plausible to him, given what he had seen in the past. A mountain of scale could very well describe the Queen, and he himself could have been misinterpreted as a lone human among a pack of dragons if he and Toothless had ever been seen flying with other dragons… He wasn't willing to dismiss any of that right away.
"You're catching on," Eret said with a grin. "Whatever the cause, they're out there, they left a bunch of charred hunks of rock in their wake, and they tend to follow Drago around, or he follows them, so staying clear of him until it's payday keeps us safer than most. Interested?"
"Where is all of this happening?" Maour asked. "Maybe, if it's closer to where I want to go…"
"Where do you want to go?" Eret asked. They passed a building with bright windows, and he turned to look inside. "Crowded tonight," he commented as they passed.
"I'm looking for where Skrill nest," Maour said. He hadn't meant to give that explanation, that was more Ruffnut's cover story, but Eret was more likely than most to actually have an answer. "Heard of some flying this way."
"Well…" Eret looked his cloaked form up and down. "You don't do so well at hiding what's under there, so I don't doubt you've got something to back that up," he said dubiously. "But Skrill? We don't go after the big targets often, but Drago's bounties would make it a big payday…"
They walked in silence for a short while. A series of docks came into sight in the distance, masts towering above the rooftops.
"No, not worth it," Eret said regretfully. "I like breathing more than spending potential riches. Don't know where they would nest, anyway. Probably with all the rest, and that's a fool's errand."
"Where do all the dragons nest?" Maour asked. "Since you won't be going."
"Just follow a Terror, or sail into one, the results will be the same," Eret scoffed. "The only one who can take on a Terror is Drago, and even he doesn't follow them home. He wouldn't take well to you trying, either. He's got some sort of vendetta and a hatred for fools wasting their lives in the pursuit of glory."
"So he likes you?" Maour asked sarcastically. "You know, since you won't take any risks."
"Oh, he does," Eret assured him, though his grin took on something of a sickly slant. "Mind, he's not exactly all there himself. He's the reason 'crazy dragon rider' is a theory people bandy about without laughing themselves silly."
"Any proof?"
"You like to ask questions, don't you?" Eret shot back. "He says he's seen them, half his men say so, but if the boss says to lie, they lie, and I've never seen it. Never been stupid enough to get close enough to find out. If you do, do me a favor and keep it to yourself. I like sleeping at night."
"And where do I find him?" Maour asked.
"Nah, I'm done answering questions," Eret quipped. They had arrived at the docks proper, and he pointed out a somewhat rickety old ship. "This one's mine, if you decide you want to sign on for some low-stakes dragon trapping. We're headed out tomorrow night. Aside from that, get lost." His voice was jovial, but Maour was pretty sure he had hit a nerve somewhere in his line of questioning, because there was no chance he was going to be allowed to hang around. There was something hard in Eret's gaze, hard and frightened.
"I might take you up on that," Maour said.
"You do that," Eret called back, having made his way up his ship's gangplank. "But I'm not taking you to meet Drago if you do. He doesn't like people who ask questions."
O-O-O
Von didn't like this island – it reeked of human waste, among other things – but she had to admit that the large, stone buildings were very nice. Not because they were nice to look at, or because they were useful, but because they had large, flat tops with plenty of space for her to prowl.
She leaped from rooftop to rooftop with no worry, confident that there was nobody below to see her, and that even if there was, the buildings were clustered so close together that she wasn't visible for more than a heartbeat at a time anyway. They were so high, too; she didn't think a normal Viking would be able to hit her with anything thrown, and most Vikings tended to default to throwing first.
Still, she checked the ground whenever she got a chance. She wasn't following Ruffnut or Maour, Ruffnut had gone inside almost immediately and Maour had lost her, but if she passed over them she would know.
In the meantime, she wasn't doing anything of importance. She was just the transportation; Maour and Ruffnut were doing the actual information-gathering. It wasn't like she could go down, toss on a cloak, and talk her way into something. Though that was an amusing mental image, and she could almost believe that some of the particularly inebriated Vikings would fall for it, were she able to speak their language. They came in a variety of body sizes, after all, and she could hunch over…
A light on a rooftop off to her left caught her attention, and she crouched down when she saw movement in front of it. Thin, tall shapes crossed the flat roof, stopping at an edge. There were three that she could see, one holding the torch, one holding something reflective, and the third standing closest to the edge, holding nothing at all.
Curiosity warred with caution, and curiosity won as she remembered, again, that she wasn't going to be able to do anything useful. Maybe eavesdropping would be useful. Maybe it would even help her find her brother. Put that way, she couldn't not try and listen in.
But the rooftops were flat, and what had seemed such a great advantage when she was the only one up here turned into a decided disadvantage now, when she was stalking prey on the same elevation as her. Taking off to fly over would be foolish, and going on paw wasn't much better. Being dark and quick gave her a chance, but if they looked the wrong way they would see her silhouette against the night sky, ruining her attempt at stealth and maybe making it hard for her to pick up Maour and Ruffnut later.
She settled for leaping around to approach from the side and hoping really hard that they were too wrapped up in whatever they were doing to look around and see her. By the time she was close enough to hunker down and listen, she was sure they were distracted; the voices weren't quiet at all.
"Two crates of swords, three of maces, and a dozen halberds," the man holding the light said loudly. "That's all you've got?"
"Business has been slow, and my suppliers dropped a shipment," the man nearest the edge of the roof said quickly. "There's no need for this intimidation, I am good for my word. I just need time to go back and obtain that which my suppliers lost. If you want to do good with your intimidating ways, come with me and lend a frightening face."
"Got guts," the man with the weapon said in a gravelly voice.
"Got our employer's gold and little to show for it, you mean," the one holding the torch corrected. "Drago works on a tight schedule, he doesn't have time for your delays. For all intents and purposes, the rest of this shipment is worthless to him because it was not delivered on time."
"The hazards of doing business out here," the cornered one laughed. Von was no expert on human emotions aside from Maour, but she was pretty sure he was thoroughly worried. Being backed up onto a ledge with no ability to fly and two angry men would do that. She had the occasional nightmare about falling off a cliff with broken wings, she was sure he would share that fear.
"Your hazards, not his," the man with the torch said. "We'll be taking the paltry amount you did procure…"
"Of course, of course," the cornered one agreed.
"... And all of your payment," the other finished. The one with the sword hefted it, turning it so that it flashed with reflected light. Von winced.
"That's totally… Reasonable." The cornered one held his hands out as the weapon menaced him. "Reasonable. Fine. Remuneration for any inconvenience. I would be nothing if it were not for my excellent customer service."
There was a little more to that conversation, but it was just a bunch of veiled threats like the ones Von had already heard. The cornered one, the seller of weapons, eventually descended down a trapdoor in the roof, but the other two didn't immediately follow.
"Now, Mush, we wait," the one with the torch said. "Do you know why?"
"So he can get the payment and bring it to us," the one with the sword, Mush, said.
"And why are we waiting up here?" the other asked patiently.
"To make him think we're not worried about him running," Mush answered. "You taught me this already."
"Repetition is the key to understanding," the other said sagely. "For us and scum like him alike. That and knowing who just needs killing, too. The boss is big on that."
"I'm still not sure on that one," Mush admitted.
"What isn't clear?" the other man asked.
"So, we're fighting dragons," Mush said. "Which I get. But we're buying trapped dragons. Which I would get if we ever did anything with 'em, but we've never been sent to shake down any buyers, so we're not sellin' 'em or sellin' the parts."
"It's not our place to question the boss, Mush," the other man warned. "It's our place to beat up the guys who ask too many questions, among other things."
"But shouldn't we know all the secrets we're protecting?" Mush asked. Von thought that he had a good point, and not just because Mush having all his organization's secrets explained to him now would also clue her in.
"Nah, can't give up a secret ye don't know." He thumped his boot on what Von thought was the trapdoor, though she couldn't quite see it. "Let's get down there now, while he's startin' to think about runnin' but hasn't done it yet. Fun to let 'im squirm, but don't want to let his nerve build up so far he actually tries."
"Aye, got it," Mush said as he followed his superior down. Von was reminded of Eldurhjarta teaching Eldurberg basic healing; they had the same dynamic, with one giving out advice and the other doing his best to absorb it all.
She returned to her exploration of the rooftops, hoping to happen across more clandestine meetings. The roofs weren't as empty and lifeless as she had thought.
O-O-O
The sun did not show itself that morning, instead sending a heavy cover of clouds and rain in its place. Von wasn't about to tolerate that; the moment she had Ruffnut and Maour in her saddle, she made for the sky, the open sky, powering through the clouds to get there. She wouldn't have risked it in a storm, not with her fear of lightning so prominent in her mind, but simple sheets of rain posed no risk except wetness, and the reward was worth it.
"Sunlight, my greatest bane," Ruffnut hissed.
"Are you drunk?" Maour asked tiredly.
"Nope, just blind," Ruffnut quipped. "Hear anything useful?"
"Plenty, but I'm not sure what to do about any of it," Maour admitted. "You?"
"More than you," Ruffnut shot back. "You first."
'Me first,' Von intervened. 'I learned things too. There is someone named Drago buying weapons and dragons, and his own men do not know what he is doing with the dragons.'
"You sure his name wasn't Drag-ann?" Ruffnut slurred. "Or Draggin' Anders? My informant didn't know for sure."
"It's Drago," Maour confirmed. "I heard about him too, from a trapper who sells him dragons. Apparently, he's fighting a horde of dragons that are going around attacking for some reason. I also heard he thinks there's a dragon rider in that horde, but Eret didn't believe it."
"Stop stealing my thunder," Ruffnut complained. "Did you know there's a field of icebergs with a dragon nest in the center?"
'I did not hear that,' Von offered, mostly for Ruffnut's benefit. She was happy to feel useful, but not at the expense of making Ruffnut feel pointless.
"Yeah, it's crazy and impossible to get into with a ship," Ruffnut elaborated. "She wouldn't tell me where it is, exactly, but it's North of here."
"And so is Drago," Maour murmured. "If there's a whole nest as hostile as the Skrill, or even another Queen, this just got a whole lot harder to deal with."
'Two Skrill was already hard enough,' Von huffed. She was almost relieved to find that it was more complicated than that; with just the two Skrill, it had felt that any failing would by default be her own, because she was the only one able to fly and effectively fight them. Now that things were bigger than that, Maour could shine and she didn't have to worry so much about being the one to let everyone down.
"We've got hints, bits and pieces of knowledge, but not enough to understand what's going on," Maour decided after a short while. "The Skrill are probably involved in all of this-"
"Definitely, I got confirmation of that," Ruffnut interrupted. "Come on, that was my whole thing. I wouldn't be telling you about this place if I didn't know the Skrill were there."
"Anyway," Maour said firmly, "we need to know more. If there's a Queen, what the Skrill are in relation to the rest of that nest, why the dragons are attacking, whether we should expect them to be enemies or allies… We need to question a local dragon, and we should probably try and find the flock attacking everyone, in case there really is a rider to talk to."
'Are we going to be solving all of the problems around here before we find Kappi?' Von asked doubtfully. 'I want to save him, not help others, even if that makes me selfish.'
"The moment we know enough to make a good plan, we'll do it, but we need to know what we're flying into," Maour said. "Nothing more. We're not wasting any time."
"But if there is a Queen, Toothless might need some help of the legend-making variety," Ruffnut added. "I call being the one to kill the mountain-sized dragon!"
Von nodded agreeably. 'Yes, you do that. Maour and I will watch from a safe distance.'
"Nah, I meant me and you," Ruffnut said, leaning over to pat Von's side. "Maour already got his."
They flew onward, headed North, to find a place to rest, information, and Kappi, in that order. Von just hoped they weren't going to find out they were too late. That would be all her fault.
Author's Note: Lots of hints toward bigger things built into this chapter. Anyone looking to infer things, keep in mind that our sources here aren't exactly reliable on their own, and that I'm not bound by the laws of canon on what might be up with any named characters you may recognize… Suffice to say I'm having fun with my interpretation of certain people. That'll become much clearer soon enough.