O-O-O

Scores of dark ships sailed with the driving wind, seemingly spurred forward by the snow and whipping sleet. The weather was relatively mild for the time of year and the sea tolerably choppy, but those things were conveniences to the fleet, not necessities. They were on the move, and their destination was the one every soldier in the fleet had been waiting for since they signed on. Nothing short of a full-on blizzard was going to get in their way.

The word had filtered down to the common sailor that very night, or morning in the case of the particularly lazy captains. The captains of every ship in the fleet had been given a new direction, to be taken at dawn as marked by the lead ship's bells. That direction had them sailing directly toward the ice field the fleet they had been tracking loose circles around for months.

Ruffnut had heard from Maour that night, but she heard it again from Eret when she ambled over to his ship at the nonexistent crack of dawn. She'd never heard the lead ship's bells before; they seemed to be something Drago held in reserve for special occasions. Loud and dolorous, they were just the thing to wake somebody up with a crippling case of ennui.

"Never heard a call to war so depressing before," she said to nobody in particular as she watched Eret's crew struggle with the main sail. Eret paced restlessly around them and shouted instructions that were way too urgent. Sure, the fleet was moving quickly and Eret's ship was trailing back in the pack, and any mistake could see them ramming right into one of the ships to either side of them, and this ship was Eret's most valuable possession…

Maybe he wasn't worried enough. "Try pulling harder," she said helpfully. The wind tugged at the sail with a particularly forceful gust, and one of the trappers was hoisted off his feet for a moment.

"Didn't cross my mind!" Eret yelled as he yanked down on the guide ropes, pulling his crew back to the deck. "Somebody needs to wave the delay flag at the ships behind us, or Drago will have my hide!"

That, Ruffnut was willing to do. She skipped – it was skipping, not repeatedly slipping on accumulated sleet, and she'd kick anyone who said otherwise – over to the rear of the ship and picked through a pile of crumpled flags until she found the dark orange one, then strung it up on the slender pole kept next to the pile for exactly this purpose.

Shouting across to the ships behind them would have been just as effective and a great deal quicker, but that wasn't how Drago wanted it done. As Drago's trusted right hand woman – for real now, so long as nobody told him he wasn't just forgetful – she had to do things by the book. If he had a book. He seemed like the kind of guy to carve his orders onto stone tablets and smite anyone who broke them.

She waved the orange flag, whipping in the wind, and waited until the two ships behind them began tacking to either side, clearing a space for them if they fell any further behind. "We're clear!" she yelled for Eret's benefit.

"Good, because this sail is a worthless piece of junk!" Eret yelled. Ruffnut turned around to see him and his men pulling the sail down. She had thought the ships behind them were getting closer awfully quickly.

"Wind ripped it," one of Eret's smarter minions revealed, pulling at a not-so-small tear in the canvas. "Musta been tearing already."

That, or someone had snuck onto their ship in the dead of night, armed with nothing but a knife and a clever plan, and put some unnoticeably small rips in the sail so they'd spread and ruin it as soon as the wind filled it for any length of time…

"I'll go check the hold for a replacement," Ruffnut volunteered. "You get one of those ships passing us to slow down for a minute and give us their spare, just in case we don't have one." They'd be at the very back of the fleet before long, and the time window for any of the other ships to help them without also getting stuck behind everybody else was closing.

"Good point, good point," Eret agreed, kicking a tangled pile of rope out of the way as he stomped across the deck. He wasn't the most appealing of figures at the moment, clad in a heavy coat and anxiously barking orders. Everything was going wrong on this, most important of mornings.

She might have had a not-insignificant hand in the cascade of issues, so she couldn't exactly blame him. He'd cheer up once he realized that Drago wouldn't care that one trapper ship had fallen behind the entire fleet, so long as it was obvious they were still following and not deserting. It wasn't like Eret's crew would add much to the coming battle anyway. They'd be a lot more useful behind the crowd, and a lot more likely to survive the battle alive and with their ship intact.

That was important. Ruffnut descended into the cramped hold of the ship, wove her way through a scattered maze of empty cages, and quickly located the backup sail. Eret and his crew couldn't captain her getaway ship if they were dead, or if their ship was stuck in the middle of a whole mass of ships. And she needed a getaway ship; Toothless might be getting a tailfin air-delivered today, but there was no such solution to get Einn back into the air.

Or maybe there was; she hadn't asked Maour about it. But she was going to bet that there wasn't, and plan accordingly. One never set out to steal something without having a way to actually steal it. That included ways to transport flightless dragons.

"Got the sail!" she heard from above. It sounded like the ships currently passing them weren't annoyed enough with their slowness to withhold help. Good for them…

She turned away from the backup sail and the bottle of invaluable dragon-incapacitating liquor nestled within it. She was ready for whatever might happen. So long as Drago defeated the ice nest's alpha, and Maour and Von got Toothless and Einn out of wherever they were being kept, she was ready to provide a way home. Just as soon as she figured out how to get Eret and his crew to desert Drago's fleet and take a months-long journey without any pay.

She'd come up with an answer to that at some point. There was no fun in planning out everything.

O-O-O

'Water,' Von called out. She stood in the door of their cabin, blocking the way out. Her saddle lay on the ground between them, splayed out in all of its complex red-dyed glory.

"Three waterskins on the saddle, one tin in the saddle," Maour answered. "Bandages?"

'You put them in the seat as extra padding,' Von answered. The ship rocked to the side, presumably swept by a wave, and he leaned against the wall to stop from tripping over himself. 'Scythe?'

"On my back, ready to go. My cloak is under my armor, and I've got my helmet." He hadn't worn it last time, in an attempt to connect with the mysterious dragon rider. This time he was not going for approachability, so his black-scaled helmet was going on and staying on until the fight was over. If the rider tried to knock him over the head with their staff, he'd hopefully avoid getting his skull split.

'Your boots?' Von asked, looking down at his feet. 'You said something about them not being great for ice…'

"I decided not to alter them," he answered. "I could put spikes on the bottoms, but that would probably mess with my balance and this is not a good time to try new things." Also, the forges were apparently dead while the fleet moved at full speed. Trying to hammer red-hot iron on a ship that was rocking violently didn't sound like a good idea. 'How about you?'

'I have claws,' Von snorted. 'My base fin is fine, if that was what you meant. I'm ready for a fight.'

"Then it sounds like we're ready to go," Maour concluded. He bent over to lift the saddle, and Von came into the cabin to present her back. They worked together to put it on, moving efficiently. It was a quick process, far quicker than putting Toothless' saddle on ever was.

He'd be doing that today, if all went well. The actual saddle component would be missing, there wasn't space for Von to carry a whole other saddle into battle, but the tailfin was disassembled and stored in the various pouches. He had enough to get it on Toothless and get them into the air.

Once the last strap was tightened, he climbed aboard and Von left the ship's confines, trotting down the corridor and up into the driving snow. They took to the air amidst a flurry of displaced snowflakes and cold winds, and quickly soared up above the fleet.

The air was crowded directly above the fleet; armored dragons were everywhere, most carrying a soldier or even two. Said soldiers brandished nets, hooks, spears, and all manner of dragon-fighting paraphernalia.

Von received several greeting roars as she flew up through their domain, and a few of the soldiers called out to Maour. It was strange, sharing the sky with so many dragons and their riders.

Not that Maour would call the soldiers being carried about riders; that title implied one was more than an armed passenger, and he didn't get the sense that any of the soldiers were truly comfortable in the air. They were up here because they were ordered to be, so as to strike at enemy dragons more effectively, and that was all. The dragons were carrying them for the same reasons. There was no love lost between them.

But they were allies, and that was still better than any human-dragon dynamic he had seen beyond the influence of the Isle of Night. He hoped their alliance would survive the coming day's carnage.

O-O-O

The edge of the ice field was not a strictly defined point; the larger icebergs that made it impossible to traverse by ship petered out, but many smaller icebergs floated in the water around them, creating a hazardous warning that one was sailing too close.

Drago's fleet was sailing straight for the ice field, and the leading ships were a few moments away from crashing into the first few smaller chunks of ice littering the water. It was, at first glance, an imminent disaster. The lead ships were metal-plated and could likely survive the first dozen impacts more or less unscathed, but no amount of metal would see them through the small mountain's worth of solid ice that they were headed for.

It looked like a disaster in the making, a ridiculous expression of hubris on the part of whoever decided they would be fine. Von knew better, but as far as she knew, the average sailor or soldier did not. Yet they still sailed, trusting their leader to see them through the seemingly impossible.

The ships' bells rang out, and the dark, cloaked hulk of a person stood at the very front of the lead ship began to swing his bullhook. The scene was curiously silent from so high above the fleet, and took on a menacingly foreboding quality, at least to Von. The bubbling, churning water that sprouted up in front of the fleet, even more so.

The tusks came first out of the churning waters, two white, unsullied spires of ivory spearing up from the depths. The head that followed was a scaled bulk similar to a smaller iceberg on its own, and the hunched back that followed was no different, save for the darker spines running down the middle.

This was the first time Von had seen more than a tiny portion of the King up above the water, and she was grateful for it. She didn't want to fly anywhere near him, and had she known just how intimidating he was, she would never have spoken to him at all.

"He's bigger than the Queen ever was," Maour said softly. "Bulkier. Only the two eyes. I don't think he can fly."

Von wasn't even sure if he had wings at all; the chaotic assortment of rugged scales and dark spines that made up his back was textured and complicated enough that she couldn't tell whether she was looking at his back or messy wings held close. She couldn't imagine something so huge ever being supported by the air anyway, wings or not.

The King tossed his head, massive tusks sweeping through the air in front of him and leaving visible flurries of disturbed snow caught in the wake of his movements. His huge body surged forward in the water, massive waves crashing together in his wake, and in moments he was upon the first of the smaller icebergs.

Said iceberg ceased to exist a heartbeat later, dashed to frozen splinters against his chest. The cracking of ice shattering was so loud Von heard it, high and far away though she was. More cracks followed as the King pushed his way through the outskirts of the ice field, clearing a path all the way up to the first real iceberg.

He stopped there, but only for a moment. Enough time for Von to really take in how, compared to him, the iceberg really wasn't that large. Larger than him, but not by much. Not in height, for certain. Too big to smash outright, but no longer so large as to defy the imagination.

The King dropped lower in the water, swam to the side, and found the place where one massive iceberg met another. He jammed his tusk there, twisting his head to the side to get them both into the gap, and heaved to one side.

Every movement was slow and ponderous, but there was nothing slow or gradual about the forceful widening of a gap large enough for four of Drago's ships to fit side by side. Screeching, ear-numbing crackling rang through the air, just dull enough for Von to tolerate it instead of dropping out of the air. Many of the armored dragons faltered, their helmets likely echoing the noise.

The King paid them no heed; his task had only just begun. He swam into the gap, barely fitting himself, and continued to use his tusks to pry, push, and on occasion break the icebergs to create a zig-zagging passage large enough for a fleet. The noise was truly terrifying, the sort of thing Von would have fled as fast as she could were she not sure the origin was on her side.

"This was his plan all along," Maour murmured to her, only audible because the mental component of his voice could not be drowned out by physical noise. "Drago never needed to worry about getting through the ice field. He just needed to be confident he could survive the attack that would follow."

'The attack that's going to be coming soon,' Von said, shaking her head and trying her best to clear her vision. 'Everyone within a day's flight had to have heard that.'

O-O-O

Einn had never succeeded at anything. His entire life could be accurately summarized solely by listing out his many, many failures. Some understandable, some tolerable, and some unforgivable. He was a miserable excuse for a dragon, and he knew it well. Even when he tried to be self-sacrificing, he failed. It was no wonder that he had decided, upon his latest failure, that if he could not hide and sleep away the rest of his failure-ridden existence he would at least give it his best shot.

The Skrill tried to break him out of his stupor with shocks and taunts, or at least Sadistic had the entire flight back to the ice nest. His failure and subsequent disinterest had told the other Skrill he wasn't worth bothering, and they left him in peace. They didn't even try to enforce the rule against sleeping in the day when it came to him. Such a small privilege… It was still the kindest thing they had ever done for a prisoner. He did his best not to think about it.

Hefnd tried to get him to respond. Day in and day out, his only child poked and prodded at him, alternatively doting and frustrated in turn. They had never spoken much – there was often nothing new that could be said, and nothing worth him saying aloud – but his total lack of reaction was unwelcome. He suspected his son would rather he either have successfully escaped… or truly died as the Skrill thought. Failing that, Hefnd would rather things went back to the way they were, but Einn just couldn't do it. He feigned sleep, or a waking stupor, until Hefnd gave up.

The days turned to weeks, and Einn did his best to be as active as a dragon in a coma. He slept more than was strictly healthy. He ignored the talking, arguing, and the few occasional roars around him. When Hefnd brought food, he ate it and went back to ignoring everything around him.

He was uncomfortable and bored out of his mind, but he was at least not making any more mistakes. Not failing to protect anyone, or failing to give warning, or failing to do the right thing.

If he could have continued like that indefinitely, he might have been… satisfied. Not content, not happy, but neither of those was possible given where he was and who was with him.

But his was a life of failure. Including a growing failure to hide from life and hope, as fragile and foolish as either might be.

Kappi, the young male who had been captured with him, could not be ignored. Not when he was angry, not when he spoke with conviction. There was something to him that clawed at the deepest part of Einn, telling him without words or reason that he needed to listen. Nevermind that he didn't know or particularly care about Kappi. Nevermind that he was committed to ignoring his own son, let alone some stranger. His ears twitched whenever Kappi raised his voice, and he couldn't stop listening.

That cracked his resolve to not think, and other things followed. He missed Eldurhjarta, for one thing. Her well-meaning orders had made him feel safe, and having someone actually looking after his health was a privilege he sorely missed. His chest hurt most days, and he was reminded of her every time it twinged badly enough to take his breath away.

He missed the sun, too. Their island paradise had been terrifyingly open, but now that he was a prisoner again, unable to see the sun, he missed the nerve-wracking openness. His scales itched to be bathed in warmth once more, and no amount of chilled sleep or lethargic lying around could make up for the missing heat.

And then there was the freedom of being on the run. The strange humans he met along the way. The satisfaction that came with waking up somewhere other than an icy pit. Being able to eat his fill.

All things he could ignore. Things he was ignoring… Until Kappi spoke up. Whether it was in defense of Grey, or general frustration, or tearing metaphorical chunks out of Star for her behaviour, he couldn't help but listen and think.

Kappi was planning an escape attempt. Another one, given his first attempt had failed. He got further than Einn had on his first attempt. Or his second, or third, for that matter. He'd been caught a pawful of times before the mounting retribution from the Skrill broke him so thoroughly they genuinely thought they'd accidentally killed him, and that pawful of failures hadn't been his only attempts, just his most serious.

Kappi had a plan that needed them all. Einn was failing miserably at locking himself away from his own life. The conclusion seemed obvious. Something in him was pulling him to heed Kappi anyway. He might as well. Maybe somebody else could make something useful of him.

So when Kappi lectured, he gave up. He looked up, listened, and rejoined the land of the living. It was easier than trying to stay away any longer.

'There are whole groups of humans who don't mind us now,' Kappi said one afternoon. They were all gathered around the pond, save for Grey. Einn was huddled up next to his son, who had Star on his other side. Kappi sat apart from them, looking out at the ice nest through the transparent wall. His voice was low, and Condescending could not properly hear him from her perch. Not that she cared to; plotting was mostly useless in the face of the overwhelming obstacles associated with escaping, and the Skrill welcomed any attempt to kill them as futile and amusing. Or at least some of them did. All probably hoped that they could accidentally go too far if they were genuinely put on the back paw by a surprise attack they didn't see coming.

All of which allowed Kappi to talk about whatever he wanted, so long as he wasn't too worried about the occasional statement being overheard.

'You say now… what was done to make them not mind us?' Hefnd asked. His tone was derisive, and his tail flicked restlessly, but from him that was equivalent to deep respect.

'Lots of boring talking,' Kappi answered, as if talking to humans was something so unremarkable he considered it boring. 'And a war. Or maybe two, depending on how you count them. Turns out, humans tend to like us a lot better when we're helping stop other, worse humans.' He flicked his ears dismissively, and Einn noticed that he was watching the four-winged dragon and his pet human out in the nest proper.

'So you killed their enemies for them,' Hefnd snorted.

'Well, we ended up sticking the crazy leader in a cell…' Kappi corrected, still looking out at the nest. In another time and place Einn would have considered it rude for Kappi to be talking to them without looking at them, but it was a good way to keep the Skrill from noticing that they were talking at all. The less the Skrill knew, the better, even if none of this was particularly important or beating-worthy. 'Not like this, though,' he added after a short pause. 'There is a reason for it, and he is treated much better than we are here. He is in there because of the things he did, and to keep the new leader of his pack from getting too full of himself. Nobody likes the threat of having the last guy brought back to turn the pack on itself.'

'The Skrill tell us they have good reasons for keeping us here,' Hefnd drawled. He was trying to pick at Kappi, but not nearly as aggressively as he had in the past. Einn wondered if his son was feeling Kappi's importance the way he was, or if his mellowing discontent was merely a product of getting used to the other young male's presence.

He shouldn't care… but he had found it impossible to stop himself from caring.

'The difference is I and many others saw him do the things he is accused of,' Kappi retorted. 'I do not go around claiming he is a horrible person and then refusing to explain why or what he did. There are hundreds of dragons and humans who could tell you all he has done and exactly how bad it was. I could now, if you really wanted to hear it.'

'Obviously we do,' Star said with a low huff. 'You cannot tell us you have what sounds like a long, interesting story and then act like we do not want to hear it.' Unlike Hefnd, her dislike for Kappi remained the same, though less openly confrontational. She had avoided the subject of Grey ever since Kappi's rant, but that was the only change in her behavior.

'I'll go over everything I can in excruciating detail, then,' Kappi conceded. 'Might take all day, which I suppose is ideal…'

Einn remembered days spent shivering and listening to others tell long tales. He himself had spoken more often than not, back when the ice nest was new and their imprisonment seemingly a temporary hardship to endure until they figured out their inevitable escape. Back when Hefnd was less angry, Star more open and genuine, and Grey… Grey had not changed, save for bearing Star's increasing disdain as if it meant nothing to her.

It had been a long time since they'd exhausted their supply of interesting stories. There was no such thing as a pleasant day in the ice nest, not for a Night Fury, but if Kappi really did have a long and interesting story to pass the time, this could come close.

Einn shifted his head, turning to the side to look out the ice wall. The constant blur of motion and deceptively carefree life out there was usually a thorn in his heart, but if he forgot what, exactly, he was looking at, it could be a pleasant view to go with the story Kappi was going to tell.

'I'll start with explaining what I know of humans,' Kappi began. 'It's important, because Dagur was human and most of those who fought him were too. I assume you all have at least seen one before…'

The nest was unusually full on this day; Einn supposed that meant the weather was bad. He was thankful the same icy roof that denied them the sky at least protected them from the weather as well. Only a few of the dragons outside were coming or going out the top of the nest; most were lazing around, sleeping late or doing small, unimportant things that kept them inside.

'They walk on two limbs and have tiny heads,' Hefnd said. 'Easily avoided and even more easily killed in small numbers.'

Einn hadn't taught him the killing part. It was always easier to fly away than to stay and fight when the enemy had no wings to follow. That particular lesson was a bitter one now, if he stopped to think about it.

Two bright blue Nadders came down into the nest, their flashy scales and plummeting dives serving to draw his attention. He watched as one flew down to the mountain of white scales that was the nests' alpha, while the other split off to go speak to the four-winged dragon. Something unusual was happening, for the two most important dragons in the nest to be needed.

Unusual, but likely irrelevant. Another raid was probably going to go out today, bad weather notwithstanding. That meant nothing to the prisoners, save perhaps for one of the Skrill going with them. Sadistic had yet to return to the guard rotation, so he was still injured. Maybe he would go anyway, or maybe the Skrill would send another… Or, most likely, no Skrill would participate this time, and life behind the translucent wall would continue as it always had with absolutely no changes.

'In small numbers, yes,' Kappi rumbled. 'When they don't know what they're doing. But attacking their nests is always risky.' It sounded as if he spoke from experience, which he almost certainly did. Einn had never attacked a human nest before; the closest he had gotten to such a thing was his encounter with the helpful humans during a lightning storm while he fled the Skrill, and he knew what had happened there was in no way normal.

Something crashed in the distance.

Einn flinched at the sudden noise, though it was barely louder than the usual background noise of the nest. The other Night Furies flinched too. A noise could be quiet but large, and that one had not come from anywhere nearby… The noises of the ice field around the nest were sometimes loud, and sometimes eerie, but never so gratingly sudden.

'What was that?' Kappi asked, his ears twitching.

The distant crash happened again, and then twice more. It settled into an intermittent thunderous scraping sound, gradually growing louder.

The dragons in the nest proper all heard it too; many began to look around worriedly, as if imagining the ice nest crashing down on them. The sound was not coming from the ice nest, it was distant, but the implied violence of the noise was undeniable.

'Seriously, what is that?' Kappi repeated. 'I've heard quieter thunder.'

Einn didn't have an answer for him, and neither did Hefnd or Star. The King, on the other paw?

The King rose from his place in the water in the middle of the ice nest, a towering mass of pure white scales. 'The humans are coming,' he thundered, his voice so loud the entire nest could hear him, 'and they are led by one of my kind. Prepare to defend our home!'

Outside the prison, the nest exploded into motion. Inside… Inside, nobody moved.

One of the King's kind. Leading humans here.

Einn had given up trying not to care, but that was different from allowing himself to hope. There might not be anything to hope for in the first place; one ruler might be just like the other, if he even succeeded in taking over. He and his son and the others were all still flightless and trapped. The Skrill wouldn't let them go without a fight, one they couldn't win.

'Tolerable, we must fight!' Angry, sparking like a small thunderstorm, flew up to their inattentive guard and shot a small bolt of lightning at him. 'Come, the alpha says we are needed!'

'The alpha is not going to…' Tolerable looked down at them. His eyes narrowed as he saw them all grouped together, save for Grey. 'Use them? To fight?'

'I asked, he said we do not need them,' Angry explained. 'It is too bad, if they fought they might die.'

'That is why I asked,' Tolerable snarled. 'We are to leave them?'

'Sadistic is going to come back here and watch them since he is still injured,' Angry said. 'Come on, lets go! We are going to strike them before they get anywhere in the ice field, if we do not fly now we will be late.' True to his word, dragons were already spiralling up in large groups, headed out of the ice nest and toward the fight. The King was gone, sunk under the water to take his own way out of the nest.

'If he was not ordered to do so directly he won't,' Tolerable said as he leaped off his perch. 'Maybe. But we have been ordered to go, and he has his orders…' He glanced down at Einn and the others as he flew away, but that was all.

Einn knew better than to think Tolerable was showing them mercy. He wanted them all dead and could not kill them himself. He probably hoped they would break out and somehow get killed without him needing to do anything. The fight would begin at the far edge of the ice fields, but it might not stay there.

The safe thing to do would be to hunker down, wait, and hope for a miracle.

'Time to go,' Kappi announced. 'We're getting out of here. Today.'

Einn saw Hefnd nodding, and Star keeping her mouth shut. He saw Grey peeking out from her usual hiding place. He heard the conviction in Kappi's words.

He would follow. Everything he did ended up a miserable failure, but the same didn't apply to Kappi.

O-O-O

Author's Note: Did you know that icebergs naturally make some really cool noises as they scrape together, break, and do other such things? Look it up on Youtube. These are not the same noises as those one would get from a massive dragon smashing and shoving his way through a smaller iceberg field, but they're still cool. I might need to go back and edit some parts of this story to mention the unearthly noises the ice nest must regularly hear from the surrounding ice field. I didn't know about the noises ice makes until today, when I was trying to figure out just how loud the Bewilderbeast would have to be to be heard at the ice nest.

Also, in response to a helpful guest reviewer who just recently commented on Living Anonymously, who I of course cannot hope to answer in any other manner: Yes, Icelandic (from which all of these Night Fury names are taken) probably should be recognizable for the humans in the story. If it is indeed Icelandic… which it is not. Not necessarily in-story.

Why would I say such a strange thing? Well, think about it this way. The average Viking isn't going around speaking mostly modern-day English during this time period in real life, are they? Presumably what we're reading is 'translated' so we can understand it (obviously I write in English to start with, there's no actual translation, but you get my point). So if we cannot say they are speaking English, then we also cannot actually claim the names of Night Furies are Icelandic by the same measure. All we know is that we are not reading it in the languages that would actually be used, and that the two languages involved are not the same. Anything and everything beyond that is unknown. I'm only writing the other language as Icelandic because I wanted there to be a second, partially obsolete language the Furies knew, I didn't want to make a whole language up, and it would be weird to use a second language that was not relevant to the setting.

In another, more grounded setting I would totally address this issue in a more realistic fashion. Much like how I go deeper into dragon culture in Unwilling Flame, where here it's pretty generic. But for the scope of this story, 'it's not actually Icelandic in-story' is my answer to any real-life language complications that might otherwise arise.

You know, I really liked that question / comment. It's an interesting thing nobody else has ever pointed out about this series. Little meta details like that abound in some areas of what I do, but it's very much a 'if it's done right nobody tends to notice' deal.