His head hurt. His wing shoulder hurt. His heart hurt. One old injury and two new ones. One caused by neglect, and two by blind stupidity. The three wounds ached in synch, throbbing in perfect time.

Nóttreiði was awake. He had been for a while now. Einfari didn't know, because he was acting as if he was still asleep. She said she was still there for him, but he didn't deserve it.

Heather was there too, like it or not, because his sister wouldn't see the truth about humans. She didn't know he was awake either. How could she? If she so much as laid a slim paw on him, he would pull her in and rip her head off. Humans were bad, just like him, and he knew Heather had to be planning something.

The alternative was too horrible to contemplate. He didn't want to consider the possibility she was better than him. The possibility that Einfari, in picking Heather and keeping her around, had made a smart move. A smarter move than not disowning him and leaving him to rot like she really should.

'I don't know what to do,' Einfari whined softly, clearly not talking to him. She didn't seem comforted by whatever Heather said. 'Yes, he's injured, but I mean about everything else.'

He was causing her distress simply by being miserable. How ironic, that absolutely nothing he did was good for her, when all he wanted was for her to be safe and happy.

'Clean the wound. I think he would hurt you if you tried,' Einfari said sadly. 'But I can help with that, and you have fingers. You can actually clean the wound instead of licking it and doing no good.'

He was torn between wanting to pull back, away from the possibility of a human touching him, and wanting to remain 'asleep' so that Einfari wouldn't try to help him, wouldn't have to deal with him. Lethargy and a lingering headache won out, and he remained limp. He didn't even know how long it had been since receiving the injury; the time spent on this sea stack was both fleeting and vast. It could have been minutes or days, and he wouldn't know the difference. It didn't matter.

Einfari was over him, now, leaning across his wings and pinning them to his body. Her paws hooked around his and held them back, and her chin pressed his face into the stone, firmly forcing his mouth closed. She was restraining him. He knew what was coming.

And he really wanted to buck her… but doing so might hurt her. Which was more important? Hurting the human, or not hurting his sister? The latter won with no contest.

A wet, cold drop of water ran down the side of his face. He could feel a heat by his head, one only amplifying the pain from his open wound. Then cold seawater began running around the wound, not yet actually getting into it. Washing the blood away before tackling the actual injury.

Then it began to sting, salt in raw open flesh. He groaned and writhed, slapping his tail against the sea stack to distract himself. Forget trying to throw his sister off, he just wanted the pain to stop. It was never going to stop, and now his sister was helping a human hurt him further.

Agonizing jolts of fresh pain ran through him as whatever the human was using to apply water ran carefully over and finally inside each open cut. There was a huff that came from a small body; the human exclaiming over something.

'There was a small rock stuck in that one,' Einfari whined. 'From the kick, I think. It must have been on the human's paw before he hit you.'

Nóttreiði didn't care; he just wanted the pain to stop. He humiliated himself by whining softly after every small but sharp jolt.

'She's almost done,' his sister said soothingly. 'Almost. It looks much better now, much less serious. You will be okay.'

All that mattered to him was the promise of the human being done with him. He groaned softly as the human withdrew, taking its cold water and painful cleaning with it, and Einfari let up on pinning him to the ground.

Here was where he could strike. He could slide out from under her loosened grip and bite down, tearing the human into small parts-

-Just like he had one of the humans on the ship-

He lurched forward, but not to strike. To hang his head over the side of the sea stack and empty his stomach of any and everything that might have been in it. Humans were bad, but the very memory of what he had done was worse, far worse. That was what crossed the line. Striking to rend and tear, fighting to kill for no reason other than he wanted to. It didn't matter who he was attacking. What mattered was why, and how. With what attitude, and what strategy.

Mindless death and agony had been his strategy, and his attitude that of a monster. So he was one. The line had been crossed.

Einfari couldn't see it. He could; he needed to do what had to be done, to leave her. She wouldn't leave him. His family wouldn't leave him. But he didn't want them to know him like this, to see him and to know what he had done. So he had to go.

He flexed his wings under the guise of stretching and heaving forward to spit up more bile and tried to think. Where could he go? Straight forward and down? No, that was death, drowning in the ocean far from home. He did not want to die, he just wanted to crawl under some forgotten rock on some unknown island and never see anyone again. Never let them see what he had become.

But he couldn't; she would just follow him. So he pulled back and sprawled out on the sea stack, frustrated and nauseous, and so very, very ashamed of himself.

'Brother.' Einfari's voice was close. She was right beside him. 'Do you hurt anywhere else?'

How painfully ironic. She cared, and that hurt, because he knew his agony was distressing her. Better if she callously discarded him. 'No.'

'Are you sure?' She hummed calmly. 'Good. Then you can listen, and listen well. I know you.'

She thought she knew him. He hadn't known himself, hadn't known he was capable of being so horrible without even thinking it so. There was no way she knew him any better than that.

'And I know you're not in a good place.' She put a paw on his back, right at the base of his neck. 'You're not listening, and that's not okay. If you still love me as your sister, at all, then you need to listen, and listen carefully.'

He would. That plea had a pull to it that could not be refused. He loved his family, his sisters chief among them. They were his counterparts, his allies, his best friends, his only friends. His mother and father were above them, which separated them by the slimmest degree, but he was on equal footing with his sisters. They were as close as siblings could be… or they had been.

'Will you listen?' Einfari whined. 'Please?'

'Of course,' he huffed quietly.

'Thank you.' The paw was moving now, pushing the loose skin of his neck back and forth. It was not an unpleasant feeling, but he could not honestly say he liked it either. 'You've done a terrible thing.'

He whined, entirely agreeing with that. Here it came. She had seen the truth, or maybe just accepted it. This was her way of casting him aside.

'And I let you do it.' She growled angrily. 'I blame us both. And Heather, but this is not about her. We share the blame. So if you condemn yourself, you have to condemn me too.'

No, he didn't. She wasn't speaking sense.

She had told him to listen. He had agreed to do so. He would not throw aside what she was saying, no matter how much he wanted to.

'My fault. I was not down there with you, but I might as well have been.' A soft huff. 'But you know what I'm going to do? I am going to admit fault and move on. I want you to do the same.'

She moved away from him, her paw leaving his back. 'I allowed something terrible. I let my own brother attack humans for no reason other than he wanted to. It doesn't matter who they were, or whether or not the deserved to die, which they probably did. What matters is that I did not stop it. I knew it was bad for you, and I knew it was immoral.'

He turned, opening his eyes to see her hanging her head, looking out at the sea below them.

'I didn't do anything but talk. I wanted to stop you, but I wasn't strong enough.' She looked up, out at the island in the distance. 'I am at fault. That was a horrible thing, and I will not forget my part in it.'

She looked back at him. 'What about you?'

'I can never forget what I did,' he moaned.

'No, you cannot.' She nodded at him. 'That will scar. A reminder that will never go away.'

'I am a monster.'

'Only if I am. Call me one.' She walked over to him, her eyes stern. 'Try.'

He shook his head wildly. 'I cannot.'

'We are equally guilty. Do it. Or stop thinking of yourself as one.'

Her words made sense, but he did not see how she could mean them. 'I was the one doing the killing. I was the one…'

'What?' Her voice was apprehensive. 'Tell me the truth.'

'I did not enjoy it,' he admitted. 'Not at all. I enjoyed the feeling of actually doing something, of taking revenge, but once that wore off…'

'You hesitated.' Einfari purred loudly. 'See? A mistake, not who you are. You regret it?'

'Yes!'

'You won't do it again?'

'I cannot even think of doing that again.' He felt like trying once more to clear his stomach at the very memory of what he had done.

'So you are not a monster. Just a stubborn person who latched onto an idea and got more and more frustrated as time wore on.' She walked right up to him and pushed her nose into his chest as if seeking comfort. 'Tell me you're going to keep going. Promise me you'll do better.'

'I promise.' He still felt immensely guilty, but she was making sense, and he was listening now. Truly listening, not just dismissing her and everyone else as being wrong and blind. He was wrong, and he had been blind, not them.

And if he had been blind, if they were all right… then she was right about this too. He could keep moving. He was only a monster if he chose to be. Why had his father's story not taught that lesson instead?

Maybe his father didn't know it was a lesson that needed to be taught. Or maybe that past version of his father had not known. He might know now.

Nóttreiði leaned in, returning the gesture. 'Sorry. Sorry for not listening, sorry for being so stubborn and stupid, sorry for everything.'

'I forgive you.' She pulled back, staring into his eyes. 'This time. Don't do it again. You've learned the lesson, and failing to improve is much worse than failing to understand.'

There was the sister he knew. He grinned wryly, unable to stop himself. 'I'll try not to.'

'And you know…' Einfari shook her head slowly. 'No. Too much, too soon.'

He knew what she meant to say, the large issue in the air, the one that had originally set them at odds. Another thing he was wrong about.

But he still felt hate. It was a weaker, uncertain hate, but hate nonetheless. 'I still believe they are bad.'

'And so do I. But you must also believe they are not all bad,' she commanded sternly. 'I am demanding it, as a condition of my forgiveness.'

'Give me time to adjust,' he requested plaintively. 'Father took years. I still do not truly believe it. You cannot expect me to change in a day.'

'No, but I can expect you to try.' She gestured to the water all around them. 'Now, food or sleep? I think your head is fine, given you've been able to have this conversation with no difficulty.'

'Sleep.' His stomach was still rolling and churning, empty but not settled. 'Again.'

'Take as much time as you need.' She gently pushed him down until he was lying on his side. 'And don't forget or go back on any of this. I'm not going to be happy if you need a second talk.'

'One is enough.' He would rather trust her than his own feelings, now, having seen how terribly his feelings could lead him astray. He really was going to try.

Sleep did not come easily, but it did come painlessly. His heart no longer hurt quite so badly.

Einfari sighed, almost collapsing where she stood. Nóttreiði was asleep again, finally.

Heather poked her head up above the edge of the sea stack. "Is it clear to come up?"

'You know he is asleep.' Einfari waved her over with her tail. 'Why ask me?'

Heather clambered up from the tiny secondary ledge she had been hiding on at Einfari's request, to give them some semblance of privacy. "I was just being sure."

'And I don't mind.' She was just glad all of that had worked. 'You were listening. What is your opinion?'

"I think you were brilliant." Heather paused for a moment. "But I have to ask. How much of that was real, and how much was just saying what he needed to hear?"

'About half and half, but it's not that simple,' Einfari explained honestly. 'What was real was that I wanted him to be able to move on and not hate himself, and that I love him. He's my brother, and he's more than capable of being a good person. But all that about taking the blame for myself? I made that up on the spot. The feeling, the intent, was real, but the wording was what he would need to hear. I think.' She wasn't one to mess with the mind and its afflictions, that was Maour, but she did know some little of how her brother thought.

'Basically,' she concluded, 'it doesn't matter how much of that was designed to make him feel better. I meant to do that, so I meant every word, and still mean every word.' Cynical but caring, when it came to family. That was what being a Nótt meant.

"Sounds like something I would do," Heather admitted. "What now? Dagur is still out there."

'I don't really want to keep chasing him. Nóttreiði needs a good example, and trying to kill a human right now isn't one. But,' she sighed, 'you deserve revenge. We will keep trying. Nóttreiði will not be participating in any kind of fighting.'

"Of course not." Heather glared out in the general direction of Berserker island. "As soon as Nóttreiði is well enough to fly, we will keep trying for Dagur." There was real hate in her voice.

'Yes. His men tortured my brother. Yet another reason to hate him.'

"You know, I think I know why they did what they did," Heather said slowly. "That mark on his head, it's familiar. It's a tally mark. Each line means one of something."

'There are five lines. He killed five men.' She saw the connection. 'Please, don't tell him what it means. He doesn't need that specific of a reminder. I think.' Maybe he did need to know. She was grasping at straws here, far out of her depth when it came to dealing with mental issues.

"You think?"

'I don't understand why he reacted like that. It's good, better than the alternative of not caring or enjoying the killing, but…' She was at a loss to explain any more than that. 'It just doesn't feel like that is how he would respond to all of this.'

"I mean, it makes sense to me," Heather countered. "He's like you. You didn't like killing that Skrill, but it needed to be done. This is just how someone like you would react to killing people for fun, and then realizing they were making a horrible mistake."

'You say people, but you heard him. He still hates humans, for some reason.' It was just her luck that the only thing her brother didn't change was his irrational hatred. On the other paw, he at least did not seem to hate humans any more vehemently than before, and had promised to try and change.

"Maybe this will be the push in the right direction that he needs." Heather reached down onto the ledge she had hidden on and pulled the long stick and cylindrical bag up. "Just to be safe, don't tell him what this is."

'A bow, you said. A weapon that throws sharp sticks a long distance.'

"I don't have my ax, and I need something in case we end up in a situation like that again. I figured range was a better idea." Heather strung a line across the stick, bending it a little, and drew another small stick from the bag, turning it over before putting it to the string. "Arrows are easy to come by, especially if we'll be taking on more Berserkers, but I'm not going to waste this one."

'How would you fire?' Maour had not made anything like this in the last five years, at least to her knowledge. She had not kept up with his creations, so it was possible she missed anything like this apparently common weapon.

"Pull back the cord and let go. Aiming is the real difficulty, and I can count the number of times I've used a bow on one hand. I won't be very good, but at least a bow will let me strike things out of my reach." Heather put the arrow back into the bag it came from, looking into it as she did. "And I've only got a dozen arrows, so right now this really is a last resort weapon."

'Better than not having a weapon at all.' And far better than having a weapon her brother would recognize as such. The stick and bundle didn't look at all menacing even now that she knew what it was, so Nóttreiði would never know what it was for until Heather had to use it… or told him.

That brought something else to mind. "Heather, we know we're going after Dagur once Nóttreiði is up for it. But do you know how we're going to get Nóttreiði to like you?'

Heather laughed sadly. "If I knew that I would have my ax with me right now because I would have done it long before this trip."

'I mean now that he has promised to try and get over his hate,' Einfari specified with a short growl. 'You knew that.'

"Yes, it just struck me as ironic." Heather grinned slyly. "I might have a few ideas, but we'll have to wait and see what he does."

Nóttreiði woke to the sound of laughter, a sound he had missed. His sister was laughing happily, and close by.

All that had been said and done was at the forefront of his mind, and while he felt a heavy guilt, he could bear it. Would bear it, for Einfari's sake.

There was foreign, human laughter too, but for Einfari's sake, he would try and tolerate that, too. How could he possibly put aside that hate? Even if it was wrong, it was basically a part of him.

It had been a part of Father, too, but was not anymore. Nóttreiði felt a fresh wave of guilt at that thought. He had ignored and scorned his father for the thing he now knew to be difficult but probably right, and his father had let him. So stupid, so disrespectful.

Another set of apologies to make, as little as he would enjoy doing so. In the Nótt family, when things went wrong, apologies were drawn-out, laborious affairs. What had he done wrong? How could he have avoided it? Did he know what the consequences were? A million probing questions designed to drive home exactly what lessons should be learned.

That was for minor offenses, like when Joy clawed at one of the Myrkurs for startling her and drew blood. Nóttreiði didn't even want to imagine how severe the interrogation would be for something like this.

'I got you food to make up for what you lost,' Einfari called out, still giggling quietly. 'It's right next to your head.'

She wasn't kidding about how close it was. He swung his had around to try and locate the overpowering smell and smacked the uninjured side of his head right into the pile. Said pile disappeared, but he didn't even taste the fish in his haste.

'And now that you're up, come over here,' Einfari instructed, patting a spot on the other side of the sea stack with her tail. 'We need to discuss strategy. The two-step plan we went with before had… mixed results.'

'Are you still determined to do this?' he asked incredulously. His sister was usually far smarter than that. 'It's far too dangerous.'

'Not too dangerous for you to drop onto a ship and fight,' Einfari retorted, clearly using what she claimed as their mistake to support her argument, which was just like her. She would flaunt her own humiliation if it won her a debate.

'Clearly, as I did not win that fight,' he retorted uneasily, 'we misjudged the danger. Neither of us knows warfare, and we are aiming for the human who controls all the rest.'

'We need to do it better, obviously,' Einfari agreed. 'But at least let me tell you what's happened since the attack.'

'I'm all ears.' This, he could handle. Any memory of the attack still sickened him, but the rest was just strategy and planning. He enjoyed planning things with Einfari.

Not so much with the human, but he didn't see it. It had to be somewhere nearby, he had heard it, but not out in the open.

There was a suspiciously large bulge under one of Einfari's wings, which were partially spread and touching the stone to either side of her. 'What are you doing with your wings?'

'It is called stretching them,' Einfari blithely retorted. 'Try it sometime. Now, look out at that island and tell me what you do not see.'

He knew what she wanted to do, but for the moment there was no point in calling out her misdirection, so he answered the challenge. 'The ship I attacked.' A small flash of guilt that quickly subsided. 'It went back to the place it came from.'

'Another ship came and brought it back, but the same end result, so yes. And that was yesterday. This is the second morning since the attack.'

He had slept… well, the first time awake after was in the day, and he might have gone all the way through the night the second time. It was not so strange. 'We missed the chance.'

'There was no chance. No patrol ship went out last night,' Einfari explained. 'We misjudged. He's too paranoid to take the attack at face value. Even though Heather and I,' and she stressed their names as if to ensure he knew she was not speaking of his actions, 'left no survivors to tell what happened aside from "a Night Fury attacked." So I think his paranoia beat out his bloodlust.'

'No chance of luring him out, then.' It had all been for absolutely nothing. 'Why are you still contemplating this?'

'To tell you the "why" I first need to change the subject. You need to make amends.'

'For what? If there is still some harm done between us-'

'None,' she said lightly, cutting off his growing worry. 'But there is harm between you and Heather, and I am not about to let it linger now that I have your promise you'll try and improve.'

'Eventually,' he clarified, knowing she wasn't going to take no for an answer, not when he really had promised.

'Now is a great time to start.' She shot him a disapproving glare. 'Brother, if you're stubborn about this I'll stop playing nice.'

'Fine.' If this was playing nice, he didn't want to see anything else. 'What do you want me to say? Sorry for being properly worried about homicidal creatures killing my sister and betraying my people?'

'How about, sorry for holding my hate and not listening to my family. Sorry for completely ignoring you and acting like a total jerk.' Einfari stared angrily at him. 'You get to come up with the rest, but that's a good start.'

'Seriously?' He was struggling to not hate the human, let alone apologize. But his sister wanted him to, and he didn't have to mean it…

'Fine.' He stared deliberately at the lump under her wing. 'Am I going to be apologizing directly?'

'You might as well,' Einfari laughed and lifted her wing. Sure enough, the human was sitting beneath it, looking down at the water below them. It in the very least did not look smug, seeming more thoughtful than anything.

'I hate its kind,' he began truthfully.

'Not it, her,' Einfari interjected. 'You're speaking to her, not me. And she's a person, so talk about her like one.'

He didn't have to mean it. That was fast becoming his mantra today. 'I hate your kind, but I am assured you are different.'

The human spoke, its high-pitched voice grating on his ears.

'She says she also hates many of her kind,' Einfari relayed helpfully.

So what? He resolved to continue quickly enough that it wouldn't have a chance to comment any further. 'And I was sure you, along with your friends on my island, were no different. I am still sure, but smarter Nótts than me have been convinced you truly are as harmless as you claim.' Of all of his family, he was the only one who had done something so stupid and terrible as thinking he could kill for fun, so everyone else was smarter than him. He could easily admit that.

The human squeaked something else out, defying his intention of keeping her silent. 'She says she's not harmless. She killed to protect me, remember?'

'Fine. Non-aggressive,' Nóttreiði growled disagreeably. 'So I am sorry for holding my hate and not listening to my family. Sorry for completely ignoring you and acting like a total jerk. Not sorry for hating your kind, and definitely not sorry for suspecting you of being a horrible traitor.'

'You really do like pawing the line between cooperating and spiting me, don't you,' Einfari griped. 'That was no more an apology than growling at her would be.'

'I tried.'

'You didn't try; you're just saying what you think will get me off your back.'

The human spoke again, as if trying to annoy him. 'She says not to press you on it, because you probably can't actually mean it since you don't think she's any better than the Berserkers,' Einfari reluctantly announced. 'Even though they gave you that terrible wound, and she cleaned it. They're about as different as can be, you know.'

'Different?' He laughed scornfully. 'Please. She's literally one of those same Berserkers. Just a smaller, weaker one.'

The human stood, clenching its small paws angrily, and yelled something at him. He growled right back at it. Good, maybe if he provoked it he could prove it really was bad. It would be the height of irony for him to be proven right just as he was beginning to believe otherwise.

'Take that back,' Einfari snarled. 'You hit a nerve, and believe me when I say you don't want to hear what she said in response.'

'Tell me, word for word,' he suggested coldly. 'I think I do want to hear.'

'You asked for it. She said, "you're just as bad by that measure. You're a dragon, and so was the Skrill that tried to kill your sister. And I didn't see you helping stop the Skrill, which is more than you can say about me."'

'It's going to die for that,' he growled, utterly enraged by the insinuation that he had anything in common with the miserable monstrosity that wanted his sister dead.

Einfari was in front of him in an instant, growing right back. 'You wouldn't be able to do it. And if you could, then I've misjudged, and you really are as bad as you were saying earlier.'

'Stop throwing that in my face,' he complained, feeling like a fledgling constantly being reminded he had soiled the cave. 'I am trying to do better.'

'No, you are not.' Einfari sounded absolutely serious. 'Stop the death threats. Stop comparing her to the people who killed the ones she loved. And stop acting like nothing has changed!'

'Nothing has changed!' he exclaimed, feeling like they were right back where they started, but angrier. 'It's still here! Still dangerous!'

'And so are you.' She took a step back, flaunting the fact that she was protecting the human. 'I'm starting to wonder whether I'm safe standing between my own brother and my friend.'

'I would never hurt you,' he whined, pained by the accusation.

'And neither would she. She has literally killed to protect me, and this isn't the first time I'm having to remind you of that. Right now, she couldn't kill me if I let her try. She has no claws, no teeth, nothing. Nothing that can be used against me.'

To illustrate her point, Einfari stuck her tail into the human's thin front paws, almost knocking it over. 'She can't hurt me right now. So stop acting like she's the most dangerous one here. Of the three of us, only one has killed for any reason other than necessity.'

The human murmured something short. Einfari blinked, obviously surprised, and tilted her head. 'Really? They're that fragile?'

'What?' Nóttreiði hated being left out of the loop when it concerned the human correcting Einfari about whether or not it had killed before.

'She says she killed a Berserker by accident once, while trying to escape the ship that brought her to our island, but that doesn't count. That was necessity.'

By accident. He couldn't even make himself continue that line of accusations, if an accident was the worst the human would claim. He had killed out of stupid rage and the belief that it would make him feel better. He was worse.

He was worse, and his sister was trusting him. He wanted nothing but her safety, and she knew that, but she was beginning to wonder whether he would hurt her…

He hated the human, but Einfari had stopped wondering whether it would hurt her long ago. She trusted it more than him right now, and that was a fact.

It had done more to earn her trust than he had. He took it for granted. The human worked for it.

How bad would he feel if he had to deal with an antagonistic human every day, one that openly despised him? Wanted him dead?

The human might be just as bad as him, but it could not possibly be worse, when it came to how they treated each other. And if it was just as bad, it was at least hiding that. He could not even hide it, which he really should be able to. He was a Nótt. Since when did that mean wearing his feelings on his back like any other dragon?

He had stopped acting like his father, his best role model, weeks ago. His father would have never taken this at face value, but also would not have just kept openly defying and antagonizing the human.

His father had, after being convinced the human meant no immediate harm, worked to regain its trust. Let it get close, and examined it. Nóttreiði didn't know what happened at the meetings his father and the first deceptive human had, but he knew how his father probably approached them. Let it get close, let it drop its guard, and see what the truth was.

He was a terrible Nótt. But if he was improving, he could improve that too. Starting with this moment and this argument.

'You're right,' he whined, lowering his head and drawing upon the real guilt he did feel to make his words sound realistically pained. It was not hard. 'I am the danger here. I am the antagonist, the provoker. I am sorry for that.'

A real Nótt would take this chance to get close to the human and see once and for all what it had in its heart. He would get close to it and wait for it to betray him, as he should have done from the very beginning, what Einfari had done. He would fake remorse.

And if it turned out Einfari was right, which he was now able to admit was a possibility? The faked remorse could become real, and nobody would ever know just how cynically he had began.

Had Nóttreiði really just said that and meant it? Heather didn't buy it. She was getting used to living among schemers and cynics, and taking this at face value might be fatal.

Einfari certainly believed, judging by her soft purr, but Heather didn't hold that against her best friend. It was her brother; she would want to believe the best of him.

Heather personally suspected Nóttreiði had just decided to stop openly defying her in favor of quietly waiting for her to show her 'true colors' and betray them.

She was fine with that, as her true colors were already on display, as black as Night Fury scales and grey like a Nótt's eyes. She wanted Dagur dead, her family avenged, and her friend safe. Nothing more, and certainly nothing any Berserker could offer. Nothing Nóttreiði could take as hostile.

So, she would play his game and wait for him to realize playing the game, for her, just meant being herself. "Tell him I said thank you for the apology, and that I am not blameless myself."

Einfari relayed that comment happily, though she seemed skeptical about the last part. Heather had added that more to console Nóttreiði than because she felt she shared the blame for their animosity. It was all on his side; she would be happy to add another Nótt to her list of friends if he would let her. That would make his father the only one she had yet to get close to.

And that promised to be a whole other task. Right now, she needed to focus on the two tasks at hand, not the one she had put on hold to come out here.

'Let us focus on our shared enemy, then,' he asserted awkwardly, turning to look out at Berserker island. 'And whether or not it is worth the risk of going after him.'

"It was worth the risk two days ago," Heather remarked, unwilling to let a suddenly reluctant Nóttreiði stop their mission. "Nothing has changed."

'We learned we are not as smart as we thought,' Einfari countered. 'We thought this was a relatively safe move. None of us can deny we were wrong, and woefully under-informed. We did not expect the ship to have more men below decks, and in retrospect, that should have been obvious.'

"I guess we're kind of lucky Dagur wasn't one of them." Heather wanted him dead, but if he had been on that ship, something told her all three of them would be dead of captive right now. "But we can be more careful. He needs to die."

'Heather, let me remind you of something that I believe slipped all of our minds. We are not experienced.' Einfari warbled sadly. 'This is my first trip out into the world, and the same goes for my brother. All we know of warfare comes from our parents, and that is not enough. We do not know fighting, and we have repeatedly overestimated our capabilities. Next time might be fatal.'

'The human we are trying to kill, on the other paw,' Nóttreiði added, 'is a dragon-killer and a hunter, by what I have been told. One with an entire nest to command, and a mind that cannot easily be predicted. We are hunting out of our league.'

How had she become the one least confident in their capabilities so quickly? Maybe being a Nótt also meant admitting weakness. Wait, no, that was just a dragon trait in general, one she still wasn't used to. Freely admitting weakness and fault.

Regardless, she needed to get them to see that they could do this. "But we're learning. You're learning. And we have plenty of advantages Dagur can't predict or counter. This isn't a fair fight; it was never supposed to be. This is an assassination. We just have to catch him once, not beat him in some grand battle of wits."

'And if catching him turns out to be flying into a trap, we will die. We are not experienced enough to know what is really vulnerability and what is not.' Nóttreiði spoke plainly, not even arguing so much as explaining why they were done, in his opinion.

"He's not invincible, not invulnerable, not even all that clever," she retorted. "I evaded his men for months on end. Barely, but still. A smart person would have never gone after me with force in the first place. He values strength, not intelligence. We're more than capable of exploiting that, and again, we only need one win to end this."

'Heather, my brother is right, it's too dangerous. It was always too dangerous.' Einfari was sure, too.

Heather had to face the possibility that she might not win this argument. "Look… I need this to happen. Now more than ever. And if we go home now, we're not coming back out here any time soon. You know this is our only chance." The parent Nótts would make sure they didn't do this again. As it was, Heather was sure the punishment for lying and going after a maniac was going to be a severe one, especially now that Nóttreiði had gotten hurt in the process, and was only alive because the Berserkers had decided capturing him was worth the risk.

'It is, but we could spend months here waiting for a chance that does not exist. That is if we are so careful we do not fall for a false opportunity.'

"Then let's compromise," Heather offered, grasping at straws now. "Two weeks. If we get no good chances, and I mean really good chances, not stupid risks, we go home after two weeks." Dagur had to die, but she needed to buy time now that her companions were no longer so enthusiastic about it.

'One week,' Einfari countered. 'Because if we get home after Maour, our punishment will be even worse, for making them worry.'

'Three days,' Nóttreiði growled at the same time, offering no explanation.

"One week," Heather exclaimed. "Done."

'One week it is,' Einfari hummed thoughtfully. 'And it has to be something we really can do, not some outlandish plan.'

'I said three days, but fine,' Nóttreiði grumbled. 'And I have to sign off on any plan that risks Einfari.'

Heather was fine with that condition. She didn't want to risk Einfari either. This was vengeance for her, and worth spending her life on if necessary, but not for her friend.

Besides, she was sure an opportunity even the now-reluctant Nóttreiði would agree to would appear soon. Something told her Dagur wasn't going to sit around while an entire ship of his was decimated by a dragon, no matter what he thought had really happened.

'Well, that's annoying.' Einfari huffed in discontent. It was an hour after dark, and a horn could be heard all the way up the mountain they had returned to as soon as it was too dark to be seen flying. Someone was sounding off every minute or so.

"Something's definitely happening." Heather was looking through her friend's eyes to try and get an idea of what was going on. Nóttreiði was watching the forest behind them for unlikely danger, content to hear about what was going on second-hand. "Everyone's swarming like ants, and Dagur's in the middle of it."

'It does look like the whole village is being turned out,' Einfari agreed.

Nóttreiði chuffed. 'Anything going on at the docks?'

'...Yes, actually. All the ships are being prepared. A total of eight of them, all heavily armed if those contraptions on the sides are all weapons. But why are they doing it now?' Einfari asked worriedly.

Heather had a pretty good idea why. "He's going after the Night Fury; it just took this long to get all of that ready. He doesn't have a high opinion of dragon intelligence if he thinks a lone dragon would take on eight heavily-armed ships." This was not the opportunity she was waiting for.

'So this night will be wasted looking for us,' Einfari concluded. 'Maybe tomorrow.'

Einfari, the guard for the first half of the night, woke Heather shortly after midnight. 'Heather, come look at this.'

Instead of physically coming over to the overhang Einfari was watching from, Heather just switched her vision over and remained where she was. "What's going on?"

'They circled the island, but they are not going back to the docks. What are they doing?'

Heather stared through her friend's eyes at the obviously departing fleet of ships. "I mean, it looks like they're leaving the island entirely. But why go anywhere in the middle of the night? Unless it's a hunting trip, and he just decided to leave at the right time to maybe run into the Night Fury…"

'In which case, we have no chance of catching him unaware; he's going to be expecting an attack at any moment,' Einfari concluded.

"But we can follow him. You gave me a week; I'm not going to sit here and hope he comes back in time." She still had the feeling that this was going to work out. So much bad luck had hounded her for so long; surely there had to be a balance, a run of good luck to counter it?

Or, as she was far more inclined to believe, she was just hanging on to this chance because she wasn't going to accept defeat. Luck was not a factor.

'We will follow. We'll have to do it from high in the sky, and it may be difficult, but it can be done.' Einfari glanced over at the boulder Nóttreiði was sleeping on. 'And he won't argue. He's really trying to change.'

Heather didn't contradict that with her view on the subject. Einfari did not need to know what she thought. It would just serve to depress her if Heather was convincing enough, or annoy her if she was not. "We're not done yet."

The next morning, upon confirming that Dagur really was leaving Berserker island in the midst of a dense, totally defended fleet of ships, Heather and her dragon companions took up the chase. They became a shifting pair of dots in the sky, never visible for long, always moving through clouds. Specters of death for one man, trailing persistently, always just far enough behind that nobody could possibly notice them.

Secrecy aside, the actual journey was not an easy one. A little searching once night had fallen always yielded somewhere they could at least set down, though that somewhere was often only just large enough for the three of them. Freshwater was just barely not an issue, thanks to the occasional island with a stagnant pond or running stream. They refilled the large waterskins at each possible place, and in such a way just barely managed to scrape along. It was in no way a comfortable journey, but it was doable.

During that time, Heather and Einfari talked, and as the days passed Nóttreiði joined in more and more. Heather noticed that he still had a short temper, but he had become adept at squashing it. If she didn't know better, she would think he no longer harbored an irrational hatred for her, or humans in general. That last bit was the biggest evidence he was faking it; there was no way he had changed so much so quickly.

Einfari had told her he was different when no outsiders were around to put his defenses up, but this was proof. A cynical kind of proof, because she knew under the cover of acting normal he was still the same suspicious, angry dragon, but proof nonetheless, because Einfari confirmed this was how he normally was.

Einfari also claimed he was capable of dry humor, smart, and considerate, but Heather had yet to see any of that. All Heather saw was what he wanted her to see, a still suspicious dragon trying to lower his guard on his sister's behalf.

If only he would really lower his guard. She wished he really meant to get to know her and let go of his hatred. She also wished another dangerous male would lower his guard, for a very different reason.

Dagur's small fleet remained an untouchable target, highly alert and totally ready to fight at all times. The week came and went, but nobody suggested going back. They all wanted to at least see where Dagur was going, after this much effort put into following him.

Then, one evening, they caught up to Dagur's fleet after a long break at a convenient island to refill their water skins, and found that he had reached his destination. Most of the ships were putting down anchor in the water a distance away from a simple, treeless island. Dagur's had gone ahead to dock at the island itself.

'Why this hunk of rock and grass?' Einfari sounded mystified. 'So many ships, and no reason to be there.'

Heather was shocked. "Those are all from different tribes. Berk, Berserkers, Lava-Louts, Outcasts, and more I don't recognize. This is a meeting of some sort." She paled. "We need to stay far away from there. There's no way we're getting to Dagur with representatives from every big tribe in the archipelago on an island that size with him."

No matter how much Heather wanted Dagur dead, she could easily see that this was even worse than attacking him on the ship would have been. The island was crawling with the archipelago's most important and by extension most dangerous men and women.

'Say…' Einfari squinted down at the island, which was ringed with flickering torches, night just beginning to fall. 'Is that Toothless?'

Author's Note: How not surprising! This arc was so short, I almost wish I could have put it before we went to Toothless and Maour on Berk, but the spoiler of seeing them here would have been too much, and cutting away without showing Toothless and Maour would have been a little pointless. Besides, there's something to be said for breaking up the pre-meeting and the meeting itself with a short interlude. (A funny bit of writing strategy: In the last Maour chapter, I introduced a crap-ton of new characters, some of which I don't plan to use at all, but who by nature of the scene needed to be named. By then immediately switching over to somebody else and spending a few weeks away from those characters, I'm almost certain the names have faded from the minds of most readers. This way, I can re-introduce the important people as needed and leave the background characters in the background, despite having introduced them as supposedly important earlier. Something of a technical narrowing of the cast.)

I think that makes sense, anyway. This chapter was a very difficult one to write, especially given how much I had to drop, postpone, or change in terms of tone and Nóttreiði. I might have to come back later and improve it, as much as I don't want to.

Want an idea of just how much changed? Imagine I took the plot device of the attack to neuter everything I've ever established about Nóttreiði's character and force his character to make a total about-face turn in his views on humans. Now imagine I did it really, really badly, and tried to turn him into a totally different person in the space of a single chapter.

And if you can't imagine that, don't worry, the most offensively bad scenes will make it into the deleted scenes extra I'm putting at the end of this story, because that really was the first version of this chapter. This section of the story had a lot of problems in the first draft, and you'll get to see them eventually.