Author's Note: Sorry for the two-day delay, this one needed a bit more time than usual. We're still on the bi-weekly Thursday schedule going forward.
O-O-O
If there was one lesson the island laid out below Maour had to teach, it was that building things out of stone did not make them invulnerable to dragons.
The island was a tall, cliff-lined natural fortress in the shape of a hammer, one long and narrow plateau being the handle, and towering spires that were too thin to count as proper mountains taking up the head. At its lowest point the cliffs were still high enough to induce vertigo, and the docks were connected to the island proper by an impressive set of carved stone stairs that had to have taken years to dig out of the side of the cliff.
But the docks, stone pillars and wooden planks intermixed, were in disrepair. The once grand staircase was chipped and scorched, missing steps and sporting the remnants of cooled magma lumps to make the ascent difficult and dangerous. The village itself at the top of the staircase was at least halfway to being a ruin instead of a place for the living. Piles of rubble marked the remnants of what used to be freestanding stone buildings, and the tents pitched around the outskirts of the village proper spoke volumes about how the rebuilding efforts were going.
Worst of all, the island looked like this before the attack Drago was predicting would hit it. They had arrived first, for all the good that would do.
'This place feels like death,' Von said solemnly as they flew above the island. 'I don't know why, but it does.'
"It's the stone ruins," Maour explained. "They can't easily get rid of them, and they can't build on top of them. So they leave them." Like dead bodies, left to rot instead of being given a proper sendoff. Dragon attacks usually turned houses into ash, not piles of worthless shattered rock. This was a place of slow, irreversible destruction.
People still lived here, though. The tents were occupied, and there was a small crowd gathered on the ramshackle docks where a few of Drago's flagships were putting in. Most of the village seemed to be there, at that; there was no movement around the tents.
It was a depressing setting for the first task Drago had set him and Von, in return for allowing them to come along on the eventual assault on the ice nest. They were to engage the dragon rider in the inevitable – according to Drago – attack on this very island.
'I don't know whether to hope the attack comes, or to hope it does not, for their sake,' Von said quietly, looking down at the crowd of villagers.
"Hope it does," Maour advised. "From the looks of their village, if it doesn't come tonight it will some other night. At least if it happens now we'll be here to help defend them." Though he was fully aware of the parallel between defending an island from dragon attacks now, and doing so back on Berk…
The dragons had been attacking against their will there, though. The same could not be said for this rider he and Von were supposed to fight.
Not that they were going to open with attacking, if the rider showed up. Diplomacy was still a possibility, whatever Drago might say or think afterward, and he wanted the mystery rider to have a good explanation for all of this. Or even a misguided one.
But helping raze villages to the ground, over and over again, was not a promising starting point for establishing common grounds. He ran his fingers over the haft of his scythe.
If it came to a fight, then they'd fight. Him, Von… and maybe Ruffnut, whatever she was planning on doing. That was a rock he would rather not overturn so long as she stayed out of serious trouble.
O-O-O
"Raise the mainsail and turn it side-on to the sun!" Ruffnut commanded.
"Why?" Eret demanded. "There's no wind." He was crouching on the far side of the mast, fiddling with some important sailing-thingy, and Ruffnut casually walked around until she could see him in all his glory. His less-attractive subordinates rushed around him, doing her bidding.
"Because it's in my eyes and I want shade," she explained.
He stared at her.
"For tactical reasons," she amended. "Can't aim if we can't see, and attacking from the West during sunset would put the sun in our eyes. You're not using the sail for anything else right now."
"Does Drago expect an attack at sunset, instead of the usual middle of the night strike?" Eret asked. He didn't seem convinced, but his crew… well, they were hauling the sail around much faster now.
"Eh, it could happen," Ruffnut said noncommittally. If it did, she'd appear to be in Drago's confidences, and if she didn't, nothing was lost. And all the while, she'd get to stare at Eret whenever he wasn't looking.
Whatever happened, it would be more interesting than what Drago was doing right now. She glanced over at the docks, which were within throwing distance of the side of the ship, Eret's craft being one of the more 'normal' ships capable of docking without accidentally crushing the fragile docks, and thus part of the greeting retinue.
Drago himself was nowhere to be seen, but some big guys with broody armor and skull helmets were escorting a cloaked figure, who was in turn talking to the grizzled old woman in charge of the villagers…
There were a lot of children and old people in the crowd. Few warriors, and fewer in their prime. The entire village had come down to welcome Drago, but there was an air of desperation to the whole thing.
"Is Drago going to take them on?" Eret asked her. He kicked at something at the base of the mast before standing up and walking to the side of the ship. "You'd know better than us."
"He stuck me here to order you around, so clearly I'm not that high up," she pointed out. If that was an attempt to poke at her cover story, it was a stupid one. She wasn't going to claim something so easily disproved. Maintaining a cover as Drago's fictional right-hand woman was impossible; she was just a lackey one rung above Eret on the hierarchy. Somebody who could reasonably be unknown or forgotten by all the other lackeys.
The cloaked figure shook the hand of the old woman, and the crowd on the docks followed the both of them onto the ship.
"And another village falls," Eret said with a grimace, pointedly not responding to her jab at his importance. "This is the third time this year. They won't want to go back and rebuild after tonight."
"I know I wouldn't," Ruffnut agreed. "Not when they'll just keep coming." If things were really that bad here, they might as well leave. Berk had been on the edge of survival with intermittent food-oriented raids. Repeated attacks with the intent of total annihilation would have wiped them off the map eventually. The people getting out now were the smart ones… or the only ones left. Or both.
Shade fell over her and Eret, and she looked back to see the sail positioned as she had demanded.
If this was her home, she'd leave, but it wasn't. It was always easier to get messy on someone else's turf. Especially when they probably weren't going to be coming back no matter how the fight turned out. "Show me your armory," she demanded. "I'm in-between long-term weapons at the moment, and I want to see what you've got."
O-O-O
Clouds came before the sunset, a dense cover blown in on frigid Northern winds. The sun disappeared, and all was shrouded in premature darkness. Soldiers moved throughout the ruined village, setting up choke points, siege weapons, and other infrastructure. Armored dragons sat on many of the still-intact rooftops, accompanied by soldiers with crossbows or pikes. As the ambient light dimmed further, many green lanterns were lit across the armada and the village.
Maour thought he understood now why Drago's armada bothered with those. No common dragon's fire burned green, so it was an easy way to tell at a glance which distant lights were intended and which were fires started by the enemy. In the chaos of a large-scale battle, any additional clarity was good for the defenders.
Von perched on the rocky heights of the bluffs behind the village, looking up at the clouds. There were a few armored dragons spread around her, but none close enough to easily hold a conversation with. Maour sat beside her, his legs dangling over a steep drop. The wind made his eyes tear up and swept his hair back, but he endured. When he confronted the dragon rider, it would not do to be wearing a mask or face covering of any kind, regardless of how cold it was.
A Zippleback with metal plating on both necks and two riders dove down from the clouds. A thin green line trailed from them as they fell, and then the line ignited into a flash of fire.
Two low horns sounded from the armada, echoed by several more a moment later, a sonorous warning that needed no translation.
Maour turned to Von and mounted with a single swift movement, pulling himself up with both hands. "Let's find them," he whispered.
Von leaned forward and let herself be pulled off the cliff, falling long enough to gather some speed before pulling out and swooping back upward.
Out in the distance, from the deepest part of the cloudbank, dark forms began appearing. Differing in size and shape, the only thing they all had in common was that they were flying toward the island. Ten, twenty, and then too many to count, all descending silently.
Von flew high, up into the clouds directly above the island. They wouldn't be meeting the first wave of attackers; that was an easy way to get sucked into the moment to moment struggle of trying to survive. Drago's men and dragons would be doing that.
Maour knew almost nothing about the dragon rider, but anyone who had lasted this long and not been spotted often enough to do away with the mystery of their existence wouldn't be joining the first wave either. They'd be doing exactly what he and Von were now…
Getting a dragon's-eye view. Von coasted in the lowest layer of the icy vapor, just high enough to not be visible from below. She dipped down briefly, long enough to get a look around, then went back up again. The same movements occurred a short while later, and then again some time after that. Skimming for visibility, staying as high as possible so that the dragon rider would have to be below them to see the battle.
Dragons, upwards of a hundred of them all told, swarmed around the island and the ships docked around it. They flew wide circles, avoiding the armada's defenses and screeching eerily, ducking in to strike almost at random. Half of the attacks were tricks, feigned strikes meant to draw out a response, but the other half were real, torrents of fire lancing out in the gloom to strike at hulls and sails. The larger dragons waited further out…
One flew higher than the others and had a peculiar four-winged silhouette. A figure stood on its broad back, tall and completely defiant of the biting winds exacerbated by flying. They were clad in overlapping scale and plate armor, ridges jutting out and overlapping like a Nadder's tailspines. The head was elongated and sported tusks, both masked and cowled. The figure held a polearm like a walking stick, and stood rock-steady even when the dragon carrying them suddenly dove–
An explosion rocked the village's tent outskirts, and the circling dragons closest to it fell in on the decimated tent like flies swarming a fresh carcass. More fire bloomed bright in the same area, and Drago's soldiers fired into the mass. The fight, the real fight, grew from there, standoffs broken by attack and counterattack all branching from the same place.
'Do we go down now?' Von asked, reminding him of their mission.
"Yes." The four-winged dragon and rider were still hanging back, mostly alone in the sky above the shore. None of the armored dragons were flying out to fight them, all more concerned with skirmishing with those directly assaulting the ships and the village, and none of the ballistae or other siege weaponry could fire so far.
Von flew silently downward, circling warily so as to keep an eye on all directions. None of the attacking dragons were looking up, an oversight that Maour couldn't fault them for, given all of the armored dragons were sticking close to the ground.
Then, while he and Von were still quite a ways above it all, the detailed but utterly unrevealing mask tilted upwards, as if on a whim, as the other rider looked up. Maybe to check the clouds, or just to stretch his or her neck after looking forward and down for so long. Or maybe they sensed eyes on them. Whatever the reason, the effect was obvious. The figure continued to stare, and they pointed their polearm up, directly at Von.
Maour rose in the saddle, mindful of Von's movements and the possibility that she might at any moment have to duck or dodge. He stood, empty-handed and mostly sure of his footing, mimicking the rider's stance as Von came lower and closer. His hands were empty, and he wore no mask.
He couldn't think of a less threatening way to approach the rider.
The four-winged dragon turned in a broad, sweeping arc, and Von adjusted to follow the same turn, circling warily. The four-wing had an expressive but grim face.
Neither the human nor the four-winged dragon spoke, though the dragon at least would have had no trouble making himself heard. They all circled once, twice, without shifting from the standoff. The fight raged on without them, far away and yet close.
"We did not come here to fight," Maour called out, trusting that his words would reach both the dragon and the human, as they always did. It could be considered a lie, what he said, but it was also true. He and Von had come out here, tonight, with the intention of speaking first and only fighting if they were attacked. He did not speak for Drago or his men.
The dragon stared askance at them, a heavy brow-plate lifting much like an eyebrow. The human, though…
The human stood stock-still, not so much as tilting their masked head. Maour could have been speaking to a statue for all the reaction he got.
'I'll take us closer,' Von murmured, dipping to the side to cut her circle into something smaller and quicker. She seemed to be of the opinion that Maour hadn't been heard, and maybe he hadn't… But that would mean the rider did not hear him, where the dragon had.
He had not assumed that this mysterious rider would have something equivalent to the understanding his link had granted him, but he hoped. It would be a lot easier to make contact–
The figure moved their staff. Maour could see that it wasn't just a stick, there was an elongated blunt shape on one end, like an oar that had lost most of its blade. Said blunt end had been pointed at him, but now it was being whipped back and forth, and a low, rattling whine could be heard.
The four-winged dragon bared its teeth and snarled at Von.
A small noise from above, a whistle of wind past something hard and fast, got Maour moving before he even knew what he was hearing. "Drop!" he yelled, falling to his knees on the saddle and gripping tightly. Von yanked her wings in and let her momentum carry her forward and down.
A massive, dark shape ripped through the air behind them. Von twisted around and fired, and lightning crackled, and the Skrill that had almost struck them out of the sky rose with bared teeth. The four-winged dragon and rider were behind him, and coming down fast.
The message, such as there was one inherent in a potentially deadly sneak attack, was clear. There wouldn't be any more talking.
Von broke the momentary face-off by stooping into a steep dive toward the tumultuous ocean below, dropping under both of the large dragons in front of her. The Skrill screeched and blasted downward, white-hot lightning striking behind her, but he missed and she was past them before he or the four-winged dragon could do anything else.
Von made for the armada and island under attack, flying with all the speed she could muster. Maour turned around in the saddle, twisting to watch her back. The Skrill and four-winged dragon were in hot pursuit, but the four-winged dragon was faster and in the way of the Skrill, blocking any further blasts of indiscriminate lightning.
"Left, down," Maour instructed as she fled, directing her in such a way that would continue to block the Skrill even as he sacrificed more of his speed to fly out to the side and get a clear shot. Von was faster than both the Skrill and the four-winged dragon, and she cleared some space between them, but none of their three pursuers looked even the slightest bit inclined to give up the chase once she made it to the battle proper, which she would in a matter of moments.
The rider was still standing, despite their dragon's heavy flapping and straining efforts to catch up. Two legs firmly planted, staff pointed forward, they stood as if on a rock in the middle of a field, swaying so slightly with every jerking shift underfoot that they looked more stable in the air than even the dragon carrying them.
A frustrated streak of lightning crossed the sky horizontally a ways in front of Von, slanted downward to end on the cliffs of the island. "Left again," Maour called out, seeing that the Skrill was getting far enough to the side that the four-winged dragon's bulk wouldn't block him for much longer. It wouldn't really be blocking him at all if he wasn't being so cautious about hitting his ally, far more so than Maour would have expected from a Skrill under any circumstances.
Von jerked to the side, and Maour abruptly realized that they were at the Armada as a sail flashed past him. He hurriedly turned around just as Von plowed to a stop on a metal-plated ship, landing so hard that she skidded on all four paws for almost a quarter of the ship's length, digging furrows into the wooden deck and finally coming to a stop by knocking into one of the secondary masts.
The Skrill screeched again, someone close by yelled "kill it!" and something heavy thumped the deck, all within the span of two heartbeats. Von groaned and shook her head, and Maour hefted his scythe as she turned around.
Lightning flashed above the ship, but the Skrill flew out of range above, shrieking his momentarily impotent rage at them. The four-winged dragon was above him, watching. The rider couldn't be seen from below, but Maour knew they were still there.
"Go use your demon for somethin' useful!" a soldier yelled. Only the mention of a 'demon' clued Maour in to the fact that he was being yelled at; he couldn't even see the speaker, as all the soldiers on this ship were bustling around a trio of strange catapult-like contraptions and few were even looking his way.
'I didn't think there would be Skrill,' Von said angrily, shaking her head again. 'We should… I think that was one of the ones who took Toothless.'
"Skrill first, then the rider," Maour agreed. They'd never be able to focus on bringing down the rider while also fighting the Skrill, and the four-winged dragon was flying away, to some other part of the battlefield. "You up for this?"
"I never am," Von admitted, "but I'm more ready for this than anything else this entire trip. Let's bring him down." She snarled balefully at the Skrill – of course, Maour felt much the same – and threw herself into the air with far more force than was actually necessary.
"Come to die," the Skrill roared at them. He blasted a thick bolt of lightning their way, and Von was already rolling aside to dodge.
She didn't notice it, but Mour saw the lightning bolt arc over to strike the ship's metal hull to no effect. He noticed, and he fully intended for them to use it to their advantage if the opportunity came up. Whatever caused such a thing once would do so again, if the conditions were the same.
Von fired at the Skrill, and though he retaliated with another lightning blast, the distraction bought her enough time to get clear of the sparse forest of masts and most of the way to him. She darted to the side as he fired again, then popped a smaller, quicker shot against one of his back legs as she shot past.
He roared in anger yet again, but she was gone, headed toward the village. 'I can land, you get off, lure him in and you hit him from the side,' she hurriedly explained. 'Right?'
Maour paused for a breath, caught off guard. Von didn't usually make the plans, but it sounded good to him, even if it wasn't what he would have done.
He steeled himself to do what he would rather avoid. 'Yes, do it,'
O-O-O
Von had spent most of this miserable unexpected journey feeling inadequate, worried, or useless. She was afraid of a lot of things, many of which she didn't have a chance of affecting one way or another. She wasn't as fast, strong, or battle-hardened as Toothless or even Einfari; her best friend had only fought a Skrill once, but that was once more than Von could claim. She didn't think she was quite as clever as Maour.
But she wasn't helpless. She wasn't a weakling. She wasn't stupid or ignorant or oblivious. And her father had gone to great lengths to make sure that if she was ever in a fight for her life, she'd win.
She dodged the Skrill's latest round of lightning – it wasn't true lightning, it was neither instantaneous nor unpredictable, and there was a sound and feel to it that gave a bare minimum of warning – and propelled herself forward, gritting her teeth as she blasted right through the middle of a lingering explosive cloud a heartbeat before the Zippleback responsible set it alight. It exploded behind her, obscuring her from the Skrill's seeking gaze long enough for her to drop down onto one of the larger piles of stone that marked a former building on the outskirts of the village.
'I will lead him back here,' she suggested to Maour as he dismounted. There were skirmishes happening all around them, dragons swooping in to challenge the pockets of resistance using the buildings and ruins as cover. The human side was far more organized and supplied than they might appear to the attacking dragons – Von had the advantage of having seen them setting up these 'spontaneous' points of resistance long before nightfall – but it was chaos nonetheless, if a more even-sided chaos.
"Careful," Maour told her. "Don't do anything… reckless."
She wasn't reckless, she was angry and afraid and ready to do something. That didn't mean she was going to be stupid about it, though she supposed Maour was justified in worrying. She didn't usually want to throw herself into a fight like this.
But it was something she could do, something she could handle. Einfari had killed a Skrill, not on her own, but Von wasn't even close to on her own here, so it was close enough. Von had been taught just as well by her own father, if not better. She could do this, and she wanted to see that Skrill die. He had kidnapped her brother and Einn and hurt them and was helping attack people even now. He was the source of everything she hated about this entire affair, the reason she was here and feeling useless in the first place.
She leaped up onto one of the intact buildings and roared, then leaped back down into the narrow, war-torn streets. The Skrill screeched and blasted the rooftop she had just been on, then the street she had jumped into, but she was already gone.
She turned a corner and saw two soldiers netting a wild – in every sense of the word – Gronckle, struggling to hold it down as it thrashed and bulled about trying to break free. She didn't stop to help them, stopping was more likely to get them struck by lightning than anything, and her with them, but she did use the Gronckle's head as a springboard, jumping on and letting her unexpected weight crack his head against the ground before leaping off again.
There were more scattered skirmishes, small groups of soldiers fighting off dragons, and occasionally armored dragons fighting their unarmored counterparts one on one, but the tight paths and winding corridors of the mingled standing and collapsed stone buildings kept all of the individual conflicts separated, out of sight of each other and disconnected from the main battle going on over the armada.
Von's own 'one on one' battle was not nearly so direct. The Skrill seemed to have lost track of her after that final lightning strike, but she didn't believe that for a moment. She took a circuitous route around the outskirts of the village, trying to keep close to where Maour was lying in wait without making it obvious. She kept one eye on the sky as often as possible, as befitting someone fleeing pursuit from above.
Her watchful gaze caught a flash of flickering light up on one of the tallest still-standing buildings ahead of her, and she ducked behind a massive stone just before a bolt of lightning struck the ground behind her, lancing right over her cover. It wasn't as strong as any of the previous shots, and the spray of dirt against her flanks was relatively tame.
Unlike in storms, when the weather was fair, Skrill had limited firepower. Just like her. And this one had burned through enough of his allotment that he was beginning to conserve the rest, while she had only used one or two shots so far, though she couldn't remember for sure whether it was one or two, exactly.
'Running and hiding, dumping your diminutive master at the first sign of trouble,' the Skrill drawled, leaping down into the street. 'I hoped for more of a challenge.'
Von ventured out from behind the rock – cover was only good at a distance, and if the Skrill came too close it would only slow her reactions to be hiding behind a rock – and quickly jumped back as another moderately strong bolt of lightning struck where she would have been.
'Stop that and face me,' the Skrill snarled.
Von came out once more, still ready to leap away at the first sign of lightning collecting in the Skrill's maw. She was faster than him and they both knew it, so when he refrained from trying again it was no surprise.
They faced each other, several dozen paces apart in a ruined street made narrow by the occasional jumble of broken stone. He was just as large and intimidating as he had been in the air, and she could feel the absence of a reassuring weight on her back. But she hadn't been taught for years to fight with a passenger, so that was just as well.
'I–' the Skrill began, undoubtedly intending to say something about how he was going to win. Von cut him off the moment she heard him begin to speak, leaping forward and building up a heavy blast in her throat for the heartbeat it took him to react. He reared back and shifted his posture to grapple her, anticipating that she would be stupid enough to bull-rush him.
She had no desire to wrestle a dragon who tended to have little bolts of lightning arcing across his body at random. Instead, she got as close as she dared, running at full tilt, and opened her mouth to fire. The blast she'd built up left her in an instant, crossing the rapidly narrowing distance between them just as quickly, and detonated on his chest, throwing him back and hopefully breaking more than a few ribs.
She ran by him even as he tumbled back into a pile of rubble, ducking to the side as he threw out a clumsily-aimed talon from his place sprawled back in the rubble. She could have jumped him and tried to tear his throat out – she remembered that being how Einfari had killed a Skrill – but she might be shocked if she tried, and she had no backup here.
There was a plan, and she stuck to it. The Skrill roared angrily and thumped the ground behind her as he righted himself. 'Get back here and fight,' he screeched, blasting at her with more lightning. She had already swerved to put rubble between the two of them, so she didn't even bother dodging. The resulting explosion echoed behind her and did nothing more than make her flinch.
He followed her on the ground, either unwilling to fly and risk losing her, or incapable of it depending on how badly she had hurt him. He gradually lost ground, but not enough that she needed to slow to keep him in pursuit.
Maour's rubble pile came into view, directly ahead, but Von didn't know where within it he was hiding, or how he meant to come out and strike. She hedged her bets and ran around it, stopping at the far side.
'Running, hiding, fleeing,' the Skrill hissed as he came closer, taking a left at Maour's pile of rubble, following her path exactly. His breathing was quick and irregular, and he sounded genuinely enraged, more so than before. 'I'll break your legs and wings just so you cannot run anymore.'
Von couldn't see him except as a flash of dark scales in between chunks of stone and the odd bit of decomposing wood, so she didn't know exactly how it happened, but one moment he was ranting and coming closer, and the next–
The Skrill shrieked and flashed with sudden light, so bright Von could see it reflected off their surroundings. A more human yell had her leaping over the rubble pile and rejoining the fight, landing atop a tilted piece of stone and leaping in with claws outstretched.
She hit the Skrill from the side, digging her claws into his chest even as he pulsed with more lightning and made her body clench involuntarily. Maour was there too, his scythe with a spike digging into the Skrill's neck at a shallow angle, and her impact knocked him free, leaving his scythe there.
The Skrill pulled away as her claws sought to part scale and flesh, and she had to retreat as he twisted down to bite at her wings. He retreated until his tail hit the side of a tent, and then stumbled to a stop as the canvas got tangled around it.
She, for her part, took the momentary reprieve to step between Maour and the Skrill while he got to his feet. He was twitching, more outwardly affected by the pulsing shocks than she was, and weaponless, but still he stood.
Dark blood dripped to the ground, seemingly black in front of the irregular white flashes of power that rippled across the Skrill's body. His chest was bleeding, his breathing was obviously pained, and a stream of blood was flowing down his stout neck to mingle with that from his chest.
'Usurpers should all burn,' he spit out, holding himself defensively. 'Whether it is one of mine doing the killing… or not. Die screaming.'
Von readied herself for the final assault. Skrill did not give up, not even when they were losing. She knew that, everyone knew that. His words spoke of retreat, but he wouldn't follow through. Her father had taught her that, and Einfari had confirmed it. If they could restrain themselves to fights they could win, they'd never attack outside of a thunderstorm.
Sure enough, he surged forward, his wings out and lightning leaping from his maw. She fired, intercepting the bolt in a flameless explosion between them, crouching over Maour to shield him–
The Skrill passed over her, his tail slapping at her face he was so close, and then he was up in the air. She whirled around, ready for the turnaround and strike–
'Speak a word of my failure and I will do my best to gut your toy,' the Skrill snarled as he fled.
"Okay…" Maour groaned as he ran as best as he could through his cramps to hastily retrieve his scythe. As he crouched to pick it up, he looked back across the street at Von with a raised eyebrow. "Why does–?"
A four-winged bulk passed the Skrill in a close arc. 'Understood,' the four-winged dragon snarled. 'But I'd kill you for it if you tried.'
The rider remained silent, even as their dragon dropped down to land between Von and Maour.
O-O-O
Maour clutched the haft of his scythe, willing his hands to stop shaking. Even brief contact with the Skrill had put him down, and they were lucky he and Von had hurt the Skrill enough to get him to retreat.
It was decidedly less lucky that he had tagged in somebody else to finish the job. If that was what they were planning on doing.
The dragon rider walked down the four-winged dragon's upper wing like it was a steady ramp. They were slim of build, with overlapping armor hiding anything more definitive than that. When they reached the ground, the four-winged dragon pulled his wings in and growled at Von. His back was to Maour, which would have been a really stupid mistake to make, if the rider wasn't slowly stalking toward him.
"I'd rather not fight you," Maour said loudly. The rider's staff didn't look like that formidable of a weapon, but it mostly depended on the skill of the person using it. The way they walked, stiff and halting, was more intimidating than the weapon or the mask.
'Let us cut you down without resistance, then,' the four-winged dragon retorted.
'I prefer living,' Von huffed warily. 'We just wanted to talk.'
'Those who side with the invader do not intend to talk,' was the retort.
'We're only here with him to find you,' Von lied. 'Come on, Skrill hate me on sight, but you have no reason to feel the same way.'
The rider, as Maour was coming to expect, said nothing and gave no indication that they could even hear the conversation going on around them.
'You are a Usurper, your words are poison,' the four-winged dragon growled. 'No more!'
The rider might not have been able to understand the exchange going on behind them, but they took that final growl for the call to action that it was. Maour stepped back to avoid the oblong end of the staff as it swung through where his head had been a moment ago, then raised his scythe to block the return strike. "Okay, then. Fighting it is."
The rider jabbed forward, but he flicked his scythe to the side and redirected the strike, then drove the upper spike down toward their arm, narrowly missing as they stepped to the side. With lightning-fast strokes, they danced around each other with strike and counterstrike, him taking full advantage of his dual blades, and them moving like the staff was an extension of their body. Each swing cut through the air, and some of the more arcing movements produced a strangely loud rattling from the flat end.
Behind them, Von and the much larger four-winged dragon fought, though it was mostly Von dodging and clawing at whatever appendage had been meant to crack her skull open, over and over again. Maour couldn't spare much concentration, but he got the impression that the two dragons were at a very dangerous stalemate. He wanted to go over and help, but he was much closer to a stalemate of his own than he would have liked.
The rider stepped to the side and did their best to break his knee with a sneaky strike, but he twisted his scythe and stepped with them, letting the staff glance off his side in exchange for the chance to cut across the rider's arm with the blade of his scythe. They stepped back and blocked, but he pressed forward to jab from the other direction, bringing the other spike up even as he twisted their staff away yet again.
His blade bit into armor just below the shoulder, and he shoved hard enough to make them stagger, cutting deeper. The rider grunted and jerked away, disengaging, but not fast enough. The purple blade came out of the armor with a heavy coating of blood, and the rider's left arm hung useless. They were good, but he had practiced with everyone on the Isle for years.
The rider held their staff – he still couldn't tell whether they were male or female, much less anything else about them – loosely in their right hand. He advanced, still wary, intending to disable their other arm and then maybe have a proper conversation at spike-point. Either they'd cooperate then, or he'd have a prisoner for Drago to fulfill his side of the bargain and secure passage to the ice nest.
The rider swung their staff backwards, the same strange rattle coming from it, then swept it down until it hit the ground, producing a double-beat of wood hitting dirt and then wood hitting wood.
'Look out!' Von yelped, a heartbeat before an inferno of billowing red flames instantly swept across the entire area, flowing from where Von and the four-winged dragon had been.
Maour fell to the ground, frantically covering his head with his arms. His armor was reasonably fireproof, but he wasn't wearing a helmet! The flames washed over him like a tidal wave, intolerable heat setting in. His face was pressed to the ground, but that wouldn't be enough–
The flood of flames dissipated with a heavy gust of wind, and then a blessedly cold tongue all but smacked him across the back of the head. He rolled over, uncovering his face, and bore the smothering attack of wet tongue there, too, before getting a proper breath of air.
Von was licking him – of course, he didn't expect any of the other dragons on this battlefield to do such a thing – and the four-winged dragon was flying away, presumably with his enigmatic rider in tow.
'Your hair was burning,' Von told him as he sat up. 'And your face looks bad.'
"I wasn't even burnt, I'd say it looks a lot better than it could," he said wearily. "They're gone?"
'That big idiot just turned and burned the both of you with no warning,' Von explained. 'Maybe he was mad that he only hit me once. Then he swept his wings and grabbed his rider, and I was too busy making sure you weren't on fire to stop him.'
"Not no warning," Maour groaned, finally putting two and two together. "The staff, it makes noises… They've got signals." It was a dirty trick, but one he'd only fall for once… And on the whole, it seemed like he and Von were more than a match for the rider and their dragon. Or maybe it was the dragon and their rider, based on how the Skrill had talked and how the rider didn't talk.
'Well, that won't work twice,' Von growled. She looked unusually fierce, with little splatters of blood streaked across her face and dripping from her claws. She limped around him–
"He hit you once?" Maour asked, seeing the limp but not seeing what was hurt.
'Clipped me on the base-fins,' Von huffed, turning around to show him her right hip fin. It was crumpled inward, alarmingly so. 'He hits hard, with so much weight behind him… I don't know if it's broken or not.'
"I'll look at it…" He stood and looked around, then up. The fight was very much still in full swing, but he didn't think Von was up for chasing the rider down. Or the Skrill, for that matter. "Let's find somewhere to take shelter first."
They were out of the fight for now, but next time, he'd be ready. The rider wasn't a match for him. It was close, but he was better. And it didn't seem like they'd be able to reach any sort of peaceful agreement. He would not let them flee next time.
O-O-O
Ruffnut ducked so fast her borrowed helmet fell off, which was fine by her as the Nadder quill sticking out the front totally ruined the look she had been going for. Clever, skilled combatants didn't walk around with proof that only some hack of a blacksmith had saved them from an involuntary brain-tap.
A second Nadder quill embedded itself in the deck by her feet, and she scowled as she yanked her net away before it could get tangled.
"Hold 'im steady!" Eret yelled as he and two of his crew scrambled over the thrashing dragon. "Net!"
Ruffnut obligingly threw the net over all four of them, men and dragon alike, and ran over to begin securing the sides to some of the many handy rings embedded in the deck at regular intervals for just such a purpose. She was alone in doing so; the rest of the crew was busy pointing crossbows at the sky and making sure they'd only have to deal with one dragon at a time.
There were plenty to go around; the clouds above reflected red and backlit many, many swarming figures in the air. More than there had been when the Nadder flew too low and was brought down, more by a long shot; either they'd gotten reinforcements, or all the ones tearing up the village were taking to the sky again.
"Done!" Ruffnut yelled, straining to be heard over the sound of the Nadder's frantic screeching, barely muffled by one of Eret's men wrapped bodily around her beak. The net was secured at all four corners, tacked down so flat that the Nadder wouldn't even be able to roll over so long as everything held.
It was not, however, flush with the deck. Four more of Eret's crew – not that they all were his crew, some of the grunts from the ships around them had come over once a feisty Gronckle cracked a few too many skulls among Eret's lackeys – piled onto the net and efficiently took over holding the Nadder down so that the men under the net could disengage and crawl out. The Nadder couldn't follow, tangled and far too large as she was, and a leather strap was fastened around her beak.
Then one of the men bounced her head off the deck a few times, until her eyes fluttered shut. That was, apparently, the standard operating procedure of Drago's fleet. No dragon was considered dealt with until they were either dead, or captured and knocked out.
"Six!" Eret proclaimed, standing and straightening his tunic as he spoke. Ruffnut noticed that said tunic was little more than shredded rags from the waist up, undoubtedly from dealing with the Nadder's spines… He wasn't bleeding too badly, so she saw no reason to mention it when she could instead just enjoy the view.
"Six dragons ain't bad," one of his men agreed. They were unhooking the net now, bundling the Nadder more securely in it and dragging her below deck, to sit in the cages with the other five dragons Ruffnut had helped capture over the course of the battle. "We ain't got many more cages, actually…"
"Yes, ever since we refit the ship for combat capture," Eret agreed. "Six cells, maybe twelve dragons if we risk doubling up. Not going to be a problem, the attack has to be almost over."
Ruffnut looked to the sky again, and sure enough, the dragons were pulling back. It wasn't obvious, of course, many were still fighting or flying close enough to take a potshot if an opportunity presented itself, but the majority of them were putting more distance between the armada and themselves, not less.
"Could be a few more hits," one of the men who had come over to assist said doubtfully. "That blasted rider 'asn't been seen tonigh'."
"I haven't seen them yet, so that's no surprise," Eret grumbled. "But that Skrill that was deafening us all at the start is going, so there's that." He pointed at the sky.
Ruffnut looked, but without the obvious sign of lightning flashing, she couldn't tell which of the retreating shapes was supposed to be a Skrill. If it was retreating, that meant Von and Maour had almost certainly torn it a new one, but not well enough to kill it… They were probably fine, Maour would have tried to focus on the mysterious dragon rider, anyway.
"I'd like to hit seven captures tonight, if we could," Eret said thoughtfully. "Drago pays a good bounty for anything over five in a single fight, and I'm sure you'll all want your cut." He nodded to the assisting soldiers.
"You bet your bleeding ribs we do," one said dryly. "But they're going for good now, so you'll pay us from the six we got."
"Bleeding ribs?" Eret looked down at the shallow cuts lining his torso. "Oh, that. Just a scratch."
Ruffnut would have preferred he consider it serious enough to seek medical attention; she'd have leaped at the chance. But instead, he just pulled his tunic tight enough to staunch the meager bloodflow – and hide his chest, much to her chagrin – and said no more about it.
"Whose gonna be the unlucky sap to take the cages to the cell ship and make sure they know who they're from?" somebody asked. "I'm not doin' it."
"I'll do it!" Ruffnut volunteered. Now that the fight was all but over, she was beginning to wonder about the half-dozen dragons she had helped trap… She'd like an excuse to stick her nose in and learn what was going to be done with them. Worst-case scenario, she might need to pick some locks and set some dragons free. Or, best-case scenario, she'd do Eret a favor and get her own cut of the reward. There were a few merchants sitting around on that 'visitor' boat hawking their wares, and she'd seen a nice spear…
Author's Note: This chapter was surprisingly hard to write. Usually, fight scenes are relatively easy to do, at least for me. This one fought back, tooth and nail, until I hit upon giving Von a more active role. As it turns out, depicting a dragon and rider who aren't necessarily used to working together in a fight really limits what I can realistically have them do or communicate in the heat of battle.
But I expect no such issues with next chapter; both parts of it involve scenes I've been waiting the entire story to write...