Von liked the snow, particularly when there were fluffy, fat flakes that melted the moment they touched anything. There was an appeal to seeing the world coated in white, untouched and beautiful, sure to pass and leave the world unchanged. Well, the Mykers would make it their duty to leave no patch of snow untouched, using every bit of slush as ammunition in their prank wars, but until then it was beautiful.

She would have gladly endured a snowball to the face, back at home, with everything normal as it should be. That could not be so, though, not with her brother captured, miserable, maybe even– No, the Skrill would not fly him so far and then kill him. He had to be alive, she could not afford to believe anything else.

To dampen her spirits more, the swirling snow was not pretty or pleasant. Instead of fat snowflakes, it was fine, gritty like sand that blinded her and stung her nose. It was like dust in her lungs, and her chest ached from the freezing cold with every inhale. Even the heat of breathing fire at nothing only staved off the ache for so long.

"Can't see anything," Ruffnut said, her voice strangely lopsided. Von heard the mental component clearly, as she always did, but the actual sound was whipped away by the driving wind.

"Neither can I," Maour agreed. He was closer to her head, so his voice was less distorted.

Von squinted at the white-specked horizons, drab and grey clouds meeting equally drab seas, and saw nothing at all. Nothing…

An island, in the distance, its silhouette broken up and obscured by the driving snow. 'Straight ahead,' she said. 'On the horizon.'

"I give up," Ruffnut yelled. Von felt her slumping back. They had tried to make the saddle a little more comfortable for two people, which mostly consisted of Maour shoving it around and trying to work as much padding as possible under the part Ruffnut was sitting on, making it lumpy and misshapen. The end result was something she could feel against her lower back every time Ruffnut moved, annoyingly enough. "I can't see anything!"

"Take us in," Maour requested, ignoring Ruffnut. "We have to get out of this storm before it gets worse."

Von had already been planning on landing regardless; she didn't know exactly how long it had been since her last rest on a sea stack, but she was tired. Her wings weren't shaking under the effort – flying around with two humans on her back was making her stronger, slowly but surely – but they would be by the time she made it to the island.

O-O-O

Her wings were shaking, but not just from the cold. She was shivering from fear, too.

"I don't know what could do this, but I don't look forward to finding out," Maour said quietly as she glided over ice made violent.

There was no other word for it, none that fit. For all that the ice was still, unmoving, it had been formed with some sort of malevolent intent. Spears longer than she was and twice as thick stabbed into the ground of the island, jabbing like claws into flesh. Boulders of ice interspersed in a slick torrent had frozen in the act of pulverizing wooden buildings, solidifying them halfway between normal and nothing but splinters. The ice was not white, it was a speckled, untidy grey, brown, and blue, dirt and wooden bits and other things poking out from some surfaces and strewn on top of others. All was coated in a separate layer of gritty snow, but even that was discolored from the smoke rising from the other buildings, many of which had burned and were even now still smoldering. Worse, this was clearly a place of living, not fighting; there were no obvious weapons smoldering in the ruins, no catapults or more complex siege engines, no cages…

There were humans, down amid the wreckage. She could see a few bonfires that were placed in clearings, and she could see huddled shapes clustered around them. But this was not a village, not anymore. There wasn't enough left to call it that. A few buildings managed to avoid becoming a charred wreck or the site of an ice spire, and some of those stood in the shadow of the ice, in imminent danger of being crushed by falling pieces as it melted. She didn't need Maour's expertise to tell her that this place would need to be rebuilt from scratch.

She set down on the shore furthest from the village, though the island was small enough that the distance amounted to a very short walk. 'What now?' she asked. This island had no source of shelter except destroyed buildings, and even that was lackluster at best. She could sleep in the open, but it wouldn't be pleasant…

And more importantly, it seemed they had found exactly what they were looking for. The roaming dragon horde had struck this place, she would have bet her saddle on it. If this wasn't dragons, then there was something else even scarier lurking somewhere nearby, and she didn't even want to consider that.

"We're going to check that out," Ruffnut said, dropping down to stand on her own two feet. Her boots crunched in the snow and sand as she shuffled around, working the feeling back into her legs. Or so Von assumed, given how loudly she usually complained about that very thing at every other stop. Not this time, thankfully; whining about sore legs seemed foolish now.

"Definitely," Maour agreed solemnly, "but I don't think we're going to get any supplies here. The ice hit all of their storehouses and their great hall, if they had one. The only buildings left to burn were the huts."

'It sounds like it was targeted if that is the case,' Von noted.

"It was," Maour confirmed. "None of that was random. We'll ask someone about it, but I could tell as much just by how neat it was. Not a single ice blast hit anything outside of the village, and none were wasted on less important targets."

"Who was doing the blasting?" Ruffnut asked. "And can we get walking already? I'm going to freeze if I stand still too long."

"Von, if you stick to the ruins and stay out of sight…" Maour wiped his face of snow and grimaced. "They'll block the wind, at least."

O-O-O

Ash and snow mixed underfoot, slinging out as grey slush as Maour walked. Ruffnut was somewhere else in the destroyed village, seeking information, a place to get out of the wind, or just anything she found interesting. Von was shadowing her, or him, he hadn't asked. He tried to pull on the link to Toothless – he'd done so countless times, it was like an itch he couldn't scratch – and got nothing, same as every time before. There was nothing there, and Toothless was still far away, captive somewhere.

He had to be a captive, alive and safe. Maour refused to consider the alternatives, though they were possible, likely even. He wouldn't even entertain the possibility until he was standing in the middle of the Skrill lair, or wherever they made their homes. Even then, he'd be skeptical.

For now, though, he was stuck investigating this destruction. It bore no signs of lightning or anything Skrill-related, and the ice, though immensely worrying and something he would have been all over in different circumstances, was also irrelevant.

A piece of cloth, stained and torn, whipped back and forth from a spike of ice rising from the ground, moving like a flag. A macabre one, given he didn't think it was originally dark brown in color. The ice beneath, a massive hunk that was mostly opaque, sheltered a small fire and two women, one his age and one much older. They were huddled around it, holding their hands out and sharing a ragged blanket.

He approached the fire and sat opposite them, briefly looking around to confirm they were alone. The ice made a formerly flat and somewhat open village layout into a dangerous, confusing maze, and he couldn't see very far in any direction.

"Anyone see the dragon that did this?" he asked bluntly.

One of the women looked up; both had seen him approaching, but neither acknowledged him until now. She grunted rudely and glared at him. "Too busy hiding somewhere?" she accused.

He thought about saying that he had just arrived, then realized that the docks were trashed – ice and fire both, in different places – and that he hadn't seen any ships at all. "Heavy sleeper," he lied instead. "Woke up to smoke and wreckage."

"I'd say yer lucky," the woman spat, "but that's just 'cause you didn't live here, foreigner. We ain't comin' back from this. Not like last time."

"Last time there was no ice," the younger woman said quietly, poking a stick into the fire and letting it burn. "Just fire. Never thought it could be worse…"

"We weren't going to go for anything less," the old woman said. "Guess the demons knew it after we rebuilt the first time. I hope Drago gives 'em Hel when he gets 'ere."

"He follows them around," Maour said, recalling what they had learned at the last island. "Will he stop here, or just keep going?"

"Don' worry your scrawny behind," the older woman said condescendingly, "'E always stops on the islands that get attacked. Gonna be a lean few days 'till he gets 'ere, though. Got no food, no clean water…"

The younger woman shivered, pulling the blanket tighter around herself.

"The food storehouses were frozen over?" Maour asked sympathetically.

"Blown apart and then frozen," was the bitter reply. "No fancy meals for you. No meals at all. Hopefully Drago is as generous as the rumors say. Anyone who survived is going to have to beg for mercy and hitch a ride, if they're still lucid enough to do it."

"I might be able to go fishing for something," Maour offered, feeling oddly guilty. None of this was his doing, not even by association; he had no connection to the dragons doing this, even if he was more capable of understanding them than the average Viking.

"That would be nice…" the younger woman said quietly. "But fish don't bite around here. Nobody knows why."

'I could melt my way into a storehouse and find something edible for them,' Von offered from somewhere nearby. Maour resisted the urge to look around for where she was; she would be hidden well, so he wouldn't see her even if he tried.

"If you can do it without being seen, but wait for me," Maour muttered. "Then the storehouses," he said aloud, addressing the two women. "Maybe there's a way to break in."

"Go find someone with arms thicker than a toothpick," the older woman scoffed. "Freeloader."

"Maybe I will," Maour shot back. "But back to what I asked in the first place, did either of you see the dragon that did all of this?" He needed that information, and if Von could melt her way to enough food that these people wouldn't starve waiting for Drago, they would have questions he'd rather leave than try to answer.

"No, I was too busy staring at your ugly face and fake scale-armor," the old woman said, straightening up to more effectively glare at him.

"Big, bigger than any ship, white," the younger woman said at the same time. "Like a living mountain."

"Thank you." Maour left them to their fire and… whatever else they would be doing. Probably just sitting there feeling miserable.

He worked his way between a spike of ice and the burnt remnants of what looked like a market stall. The storehouses would be in the ice-struck part of the village, so he headed toward the middle of the icy maze. The occasional black blur leaping from place to place ahead of him indicated that Von was around, but she was silent. He didn't feel much like talking either, so he didn't mind.

A massive white dragon comparable to a small mountain that breathed ice… Or maybe freezing water that solidified after being spat out, given the way some things were frozen in the spikes he was walking past, not just smashed under them. It was a horrifying weapon at this scale, but he could imagine a smaller version being useful as a nonlethal weapon. No Viking could fight very well if his boots were frozen to the ground, or his hands frozen together…

But that wasn't what was happening here, not even close. This dragon was obliterating buildings and rendering islands uninhabitable, presumably travelling with the rest of the destructive horde. If he had ever doubted the tales he and Ruffnut had been told, this put those doubts to rest. There was no question that it was dragons doing the damage.

As for why they were attacking… Not food, not like back on Berk. Freezing the storehouses was the opposite of fighting for food. Unless they had melted their way in like he and Von were about to…

The wind howled, suddenly picking up, and Von revealed herself, walking out in front of him. 'Is this a storehouse?' she asked, nodding to the rugged chunk of ice to his right.

He turned to look at it, struggling to make out anything other than fractured wood and opaque ice. "Maybe, but I can't tell," he admitted. "Why do you think it might be?"

'It's bigger than most, and the other side has a few empty barrels that missed being frozen,' Von explained. 'We are going to melt enough for all of them, right? Not just so we can resupply?'

"Of course," Maour agreed. "And yeah, this one's worth checking." He began walking around it, looking for a wall or something else recognizable. Now that he was thinking about it, the violence with which the ice – or freezing water, as was his running theory – had struck would crush most edible things, but if they could find a mostly-intact barrel of fish, or yak jerky, that would be perfect.

'I did wonder,' Von murmured as she followed him. 'Every moment we spend here is one more we are not spending looking for him…'

"I'm not even sure where we should go next," Maour admitted. "It might be better to wait for Drago and find out where his fleet is headed. Or maybe we should just keep going North until we run into the iceberg field." They didn't know that Toothless was being held captive in the nest there, but it was the place to look. On the other hand, he didn't think Skrill usually hung around with dragons of other species, and Drago would be much more likely to have kept track of such dangerous dragons in particular… Not that he wanted to deal with the man, or his subordinates.

"Here," he suggested, slapping her tail against a face of the ice that was mostly flat and contained what looked a lot like a shattered, mangled doorway. The frame had buckled, smashed in from one corner, but he could crawl through if the interior was melted. The touch of this ice on his hand stung more than he expected, and he quickly stuck it under his other armpit to warm it up.

Von leaned forward and let out a searing blue-white flame, forcing Maour to look away. Water pooled around his boots and her paws. He looked around, checking that they were still alone, but all he saw was more ice.

O-O-O

A fat drop of water hit Ruffnut in the face. She ignored it.

When another drop of water landed perfectly on her upper lip and fell into her nose, she sneezed and ignored it too.

The third one hit her on the eyelid. She struck out blindly, aiming for Tuffnut's stupid hand.

She hit waterlogged wood and almost broke her wrist. That got her up, cursing under her breath and narrowly avoiding smacking her head on the same wooden beam. She crawled out from her makeshift shelter inside a collapsed blacksmith's forge, glaring balefully at everything and everyone in her path, especially the tarp covering a big lump in the far corner.

"Don't say a word," she warned as Von's head poked out from under the tarp. Maour was under there somewhere with her, but Ruffnut had elected to take advantage of their circumstances and find her own place to sleep. She had bragged about it being warm and comfortable and roomy, whereas Maour was stuck under Von's wing.

'A word,' Von murmured halfheartedly. 'Is it dawn?'

"No clue," Ruffnut retorted, looking up. The many holes in the roof – including the newer one Von had created when she landed on what she mistakenly thought to be a stable perch – showed nothing but dull grey sky. "Is there any of that seal jerky left?"

'We still do not know whether it is actually seal,' Von warned. 'It's over with the rusty spears.'

"Oh, yeah," she said, remembering that she had slung it in that direction. The night before was a miserable blur of wandering around, seeing beaten-down people giving up hope, and then being found and told that Maour and Von had already done the only interesting thing on the island, and dug into a building to get food for the survivors. She had felt more than a little useless.

That was old Ruffnut. Today's new Ruffnut wasn't going to let old Ruffnut's frustrations get her down. It was a bright – well, dark and cloudy, but in her mind it was bright and if Von took them above the clouds it would be – new day, and she was going to do something awesome. Either to help Maour and Von, or just because she could, either worked.

"Did any of the guys you two met last night seem like they could use a charismatic leader to rally them?" she asked.

'A what?' Von huffed.

"Nevermind," she would take that as a yes. "See you later! Don't leave without me."

'The building is surrounded by ice,' Von reminded her.

"Every day should begin with a climb," Ruffnut retorted, hefting three of the old spears. The water damage was going to ruin them in a few days, but for now they'd do as climbing aids. She jabbed one into a fat ice boulder, then another, hauling herself up like she was practicing Thorston getaway tactics. A couple dozen stabs and lifts more, along with a few near misses to get the heart pumping, she was up on top of one of the taller spires blocking in their refuge. Her hands were going numb, and she had lost all but one of the spears, but she didn't care. Getting back down could be a problem for later. For now, she stared out over the ruined village, at the choppy ocean beyond…

And the massive fleet sailing by them. More than a score of grey, iron-plated warships were passing by, and a few had broken away to drop anchor by the ruined docks. She could see a small crowd of survivors there, clamoring and presumably requesting to be taken anywhere else.

"Hey, Drago's here!" she yelled down for Maour's benefit. His fleet certainly looked like the sort to be able to take on a dragon horde that came with a big ice-spitting dragon, but she wouldn't be sure until they saw it in action. Hopefully they would; flying around asking questions on islands was getting boring, and they had only done it twice. Either Drago or the dragons in the mysterious nest, someone was going to have some answers for them, and it wouldn't be a random villager who did nothing with his life.

O-O-O

Toothless had intended to ask Grey about the Skrill first. Then their fellow prisoners, then the other inhabitants of the ice mountain, and then to go from whatever she told him.

Now, though, he had one far more pertinent question. He stared at the white mountain rising from the formerly much larger pool of water in the middle of the ice mountain, thrusting upward with spikes and mottled grey patches and no apparent order. It wasn't ice, far too opaque, but he had no idea what it actually was. The Queen looked nothing like this; her body had been recognizably dragon, albeit large. This looked like the egg of a mountain itself.

Grey wasn't even looking at it; she had just retrieved her meal and was cracking a few jokes Toothless didn't really get. Star and Hefnd had their backs to it, and Einn's eyes were closed, but Grey had to see the massive movement in her peripheral vision, like he had. The Skrill weren't reacting either, and the dragons out in the free part of the mountain were ignoring it even as they flew around it, though most gave it a respectful distance likely born of pure self-preservation.

He knew, logically, that their lack of reaction meant this was not some totally unknown thing happening for the first time. That didn't stop him from gaping at it for far too long, even after it stopped moving, a smaller mountain of white spikes amidst the verdant greenery and muted colors of the larger mountain that surrounded it.

'What is that?' he said.

'A three-legged honeysuckle bird,' Grey assured him. 'It just looks bigger than it actually is.'

He turned his disbelieving stare to her, unwilling to accept that. She snorted at him.

'It's just the biggest idiot of their happy nest,' Hefnd huffed irritably. 'Basically scenery that moves around and keeps things frozen. Not important.'

'Anything big enough to step on you and not notice is important,' Star said seriously. She cast Toothless a smoldering look he did his best to completely ignore. 'Though he might notice stepping on you.'

'I'm not that much bigger,' Toothless muttered. If this was the dragon that kept the ice mountain from melting… Well, he could believe it. He had assumed it was an entire group of them, a new kind he didn't know, not just one, but that assumption was based on the idea that one dragon couldn't make and maintain a mountain on their own. This one was a small mountain, so keeping up a slightly bigger one was entirely possible.

'It doesn't matter,' Hefnd said with a huff. 'That's that.'

'Grey?' Toothless asked, moving over to stand as close to the ice wall as possible, so as to get a better look. She followed him over, her movements oddly hesitant. 'What do you know?'

'Not much more than what they said,' Grey admitted freely. She pressed her nose to the ice and exhaled loudly, eyes locked on the massive white and grey form. It was shifting around, moving in the water. A trio of tiny dragons he didn't recognize were hopping from spike to spike as it moved. 'Big, does not talk to us often… I cannot say more.'

'Cannot?' he asked.

'No, I cannot tell you anything about him, because he told me not to,' Grey said quietly.

Toothless twitched, his muscles clenching involuntarily as the implication hit him. She wasn't just unwilling, but literally unable, which meant something was stopping her, and he knew what sort of compulsion made one unable to speak freely. This was a Queen, a different kind but still a Queen in the way that mattered, and everyone was under its control.

A Skrill – he didn't recognize which at this distance, though he doubted he could tell them all apart yet regardless of distance anyway – flew up to the Queen and cracked like thunder, lightning lancing up from its body.

The Queen turned, massive tusks plowing out of the water to arc up on either side of the flying ball of lightning, massive torrents of water following them up only to crash back down again. The Skrill landed on one of the tusks.

Toothless wanted to flee, melt a hole in the ice and run, but he knew it was pointless. He was well and truly trapped here, now more than ever. The tusks were turning toward him; the Skrill had brought him up.

'Looks like an early day for most of you,' the Skrill that had been watching over them announced, dropping down to land in their enclosure. Toothless turned just enough to look at him, while keeping the ponderous, slow-moving bulk of the Queen in the corner of his eye. 'Prepare for being dumped back in your holes, I do not want to smell your stench just because you were not prepared.'

Hefnd and Star made for the waste pit at the side of their enclosure, but Einn simply tensed and crouched, like he always did before they were picked up. The Skrill leaped forward and grabbed him, taking him back to his cell.

Toothless considered his options while the Skrill was busy, and by the time it had arrived he was crouching and doing his best to look like nothing interesting was happening. There was a tiny chance that if he was taken back with the others, the Queen might forget about him-

'Not you,' the Skrill huffed, grabbing Grey with his cruel talons. 'You're the reason for this. Get ready to face someone much more dangerous than either of us.' There was a resentful lilt to his voice, a cold mockery that did nothing at all to reassure Toothless.

The other Furies were removed from the area, one by one, as the massive white dragon turned and leaned forward. Toothless was left with nothing to do but watch as the two tusks, each large enough that they looked more like oddly shaped boulders than anything natural, one with a Skrill on top, approached rapidly.

The Skrill flew away as the tusks drew near, and Toothless backed up once he realized they weren't slowing down. The two points smashed through the thin ice wall, shattering it into countless shards, and came to a stop on either side of him, thumping down on hard stone.

Two large, black eyes appeared on the massive face, deep and dark. He immediately averted his gaze, as that was how he was formerly controlled by the Queen that he and Maour had killed years ago, but he knew that it was pointless if this Queen really wanted to enslave him. His only hope was that for some reason that wasn't about to happen.

'Another,' the massive dragon rumbled. The noise was a physical vibration that rattled Toothless through the tusks resting on the ground he was standing on. The mental component of the voice was soft-spoken in comparison, merely making his head ache. 'Like the others. Powerless.'

'In comparison to you?' he asked, desperately trying to appear less afraid than he was, more confident. He had no clue what attitude or response the Queen was looking for, so anything he said or did would be just as likely to be the wrong thing.

'To all, to your predecessors, to any above you,' the Queen said. 'You are a Usurper, and you are powerless under me. Trapped here, because I will it. Kept alive, because I will it.'

'Why bother?' he asked, doing his best to ignore the feeling that he was a gnat biting a dragon. If the Queen – though the mental voice was clearly male, so that would make this one a King – attacked, he could leap away and try to dodge, or he might be instantly smashed to a pulp, but that wasn't the same thing as being helpless, he had yet to lose his ability to act.

'I have power,' the King said, as if that explained everything. 'Power to make all do as I say. I say your kind should not be killed, they should be forced to suffer. I say it, so it is done.'

'Why us?' Toothless demanded. He bared his teeth at those dark eyes. 'I've done nothing to you.'

'Your kind has done everything to mine,' the King said firmly. 'To all of ours. Others may have forgotten, but I have not. Those who live here have been… informed… of what their predecessors failed to pass down. You have no allies here, no power, no hope. That is my will.'

There was a sudden crackle of lightning from right behind him, and he didn't dodge in time. A shock hit his behind, and while he convulsed the Skrill knocked him onto one of the massive tusks. He immediately closed his eyes, but talons pinned him down, forcing him to keep contact.

There was an earth-shaking growl, one that made his bones vibrate and his head ache abominably. 'You know,' the King ground out.

'Not my first time under a King with control issues,' he managed, suddenly hoping that this King would take that explanation and assume that was all it was, that he could keep Maour and his other forays into mental connections and the link secret.

'Where and when,' was the harsh response. 'Tell me!'

'West,' he said, lying through his teeth, 'and they're dead now. Someone better than me came in and killed them.' The last thing he wanted was for this new King to head down South and pick up where the last one left off, though a volcano really didn't seem like this one's preferred territory.

'Open your eyes,' the King ordered.

'I'd like to not repeat the experience,' he said.

'Now, or lose a limb.' The Skrill jabbed a talon into his hip, digging in near his back left leg. 'And then you will open them anyway.'

He hated to give in at all, but he wasn't willing to be permanently injured for nothing. Being controlled was, by comparison, relatively easy to fix. He didn't need another prosthetic, no matter how good Maour was at making them.

Even with all of the good reasons to comply, he still had trouble fighting through his disgust to force himself to open his eyes. When he did, he saw the black pits that passed for eyes… And he felt the link in his mind, a one-way connection that sickened him to his core, nothing at all like what he'd had with Maour, and all too similar to what the Queen had done to him.

'No speaking of me to others of your kind,' the King ordered.

He wouldn't be able to, now. Every order the King gave would be followed. It wasn't as invasive as being controlled directly, but it wasn't something that would go away when the King was distracted, either. A flood of orders were about to follow, stopping him from doing a dozen different things-

'You are powerless,' the King said again. Toothless fell to the ground as the tusk he had been pinned against lifted away. The King pulled back. 'Remember that.'

The Skrill grabbed Toothless and lifted him up, pulling him into the air, but Toothless couldn't care less. He held his breath until he was deposited into his cell, and even then he had a hard time believing what had just happened.

Not the order to not talk, or being controlled; those were obvious. What surprised him was the lack of more orders. He hadn't been told not to kill himself, or not to work against the King, or even not to try and kill the King or the Skrill. Most importantly, he hadn't been told not to knock himself out and be rid of the control, which was the first thing he intended to do…

When he could get away with it. There might be some trick, and just in case, he was going to be a little more subtle than ramming his head into the ice until he lost consciousness. But removing the control was going to be the first thing he did.

The second would be finding a way to never be controlled again, which would be much trickier. He was going to have to think about that.

Author's Note: Now we're getting into the thick of it all; the next few chapters are going to be fun. I've done some final planning, and I think this story will be roughly 34 chapters, including the epilogue, so we're about one third of the way through now.