A/N:
Thanks for joining me, and thank you VigoGrimborne for betaing! I'll post the next chapter in a little over a week, on Saturday, then I'm back on track for weekly releases.
Dragonrider's Fury, here's a little more action to make up for the last chapter. Just a little. I'm almost past the bits of time-jumping back to the battle with Grimmel, essentially act one, so things will pick up soon.
Deadly-Bagel, yeah, I think the idea of healing Light Furies was seeded by a slew of fanfics based on the books or something like that, but you can thank Vigo for bringing things back down to Midgard with the hack-job surgery to give the scene some vibes of lizards regrowing their tails. And since I decided that I'm not giving cloaking to Light Furies (the Changewings would get jealous!), but she definitely had some sort of lightning ability in the movie, and it was just silly to think that Toothless' prosthetic tailfin could hold up without any maintenance for years let alone days, and Night Fury saliva is known to have healing properties, it all sort of led to having her hock a horrendous healing loogie.
Oh, and I didn't think the Toothless/Frost scene was that wild, hardly more than Dreamer and Wanderer burning off their zoomies. :P
Shocked
A dragon perched on a high rocky ridge, idly surveying the land below. Dragons of all colors flew in lazy patterns through the sky, some with riders and some without. Land-striders walked around, always busy, always with the pressing need to be somewhere else. Little mink dragons chased each other around or flitted from land-strider to land-strider or laid out on an elevated perch to spread their wings and bask in the warm glow of the sun – a rarity, it seemed.
It was just like he remembered from a couple of years ago, though there were definitely more hatchlings scampering around. This place held many good memories. Some bad, some heart-stoppingly terrifying, but so many more good.
That was why he wanted nothing more than to perch here while he could, wings splayed out, simply doing nothing at all. Even though he was a special dragon, far superior to the others, he was content to let them all go on with their little lives.
With nothing else to occupy his mind, he allowed it to wander over his past, what had driven him away from here and back again. It was both painful and warming.
He was reared by Stormfly and Toothless and their riders, and they held no secrets about his origin. While he was still in his egg, before he even held the wind of life in his lungs, his sire and dam had attacked Toothless and Firefly. Dragon and rider fled for their lives, using a dense forest as shelter from the deadly lightning raining down from above. Yet, against all odds, through wit and determination, they managed to turn certain death into certain victory.
Such was revealed to him as soon as he was old enough to comprehend, but it didn't bother him. It was how nature worked, lightning dragons against black dragons, each capable of flying into almost any dragon nest and usurping the alpha. The theory was that this natural drive to be in control over others led to these two types of dragons developing an instinctual desire to hunt each other down.
The more he thought about it, the more intuitive it seemed, two species that could not coexist, each striving for dominance. Their astonishing success rate in killing each other did not exactly help either thrive or proliferate.
Striker, as he was aptly named for his tendency straight out of the egg, was an experiment to fix this problem.
He was shown what had happened after his sire and dam were defeated. The nest was found, the eggs gathered. It was Striker's egg, as indicated by the unique mottling on the shell, the first of three, that the rider held above his head with every intent to slam it down onto the ground to break it. However, at the last instant, when Striker would have died before he had even lived, the rider had a change of heart, a moment of insight and compassion that seemed to define land-striders – well, some of them.
While there was no taking the black dragon out of Toothless, Firefly did have an impact on him over the years, showing him compassion and mercy, fighting against his burning rage and desire to rend and shred at every affront in that Firefly way that drove them both crazy at times.
With three lightning dragon eggs, their sire and dam dead, Firefly did not see an evil to be destroyed but an opportunity to fix a problem. He would be able to guide them, form them to fit his desire to teach them how to see their natural enemy and not instantly decide that killing them was absolutely necessary.
Striker knew all of this so early in his life, and it didn't bother him then, or in the following years as he developed. He loved Toothless and Firefly and Stormfly and Zealot. He loved playing with their offspring as they all grew together, Striker much faster than the land-striders, of course, and he remembered the terror and a desire to stop breathing when he accidentally hurt those little land-striders.
He learned how to tolerate his two clutchmates, Howl and Stalker, and even how to cooperate with them when competing in games against other dragons. That was one thing land-striders were very good at, finding ways that dragons could compete and prove who was faster or stronger without actually killing each other by playing games instead.
It was too good to last.
Striker had seen the leaves grow and fall from the trees three times in his life. He was playing with Toothless – with his ever-present rider – and other dragons, a game of keep-away, which never got old and always left all participants exhausted in the most marvelous way by the end. However, storm clouds drifted in.
There was no rain, and the wind wasn't too strong, but it was a little too late when Firefly decided that they should all land. There was no way he could have known. He was only a land-strider, and Toothless had no reason to suspect that it could occur so soon.
The storm was energized in an alluring way, and Striker felt the instinctual pull to embrace what it had to offer. He had recently started to spark on his own, weak jolts of lightning developing within, but this storm made his little sparks look like a drop of water in an ocean. He embraced the storm, and it embraced him, filling him, energizing him.
The burning all over his body was amazing! He felt like he died and yet had never truly lived until that moment. Raw, unequivocal, incomparable power flowed all around, building up, accumulating like snowfall on the land but in a torrential rush.
It was hot!
It was empowering!
It was too much!
Not enough, and yet too much!
He had to release it, pass this gift on to another, give what the storm had given him. His body gushed with new life, unfamiliar yet comfortable, everything he never knew he absolutely needed.
It was overwhelming, and he had to release it. All of it!
Toothless could not have recognized the signs. Striker wasn't that old, his body was still developing. The black dragon saw the threat a moment too late, and yet also just in time. In a single violent move, he bucked his rider clean off his back and turned on Striker with a deathly snarl.
Looking back, it was obvious why Toothless shot his wings in front of him at just the right moment. The lightning struck, and if it had hit his head, it would have fried something important, probably killed him. Instead, it flowed through his wings and torso, leaving him to spasm helplessly and plummet towards the unforgiving sea below.
As Striker watched the limp body plummet, he wanted to stop breathing. He loved Toothless! This was a dragon who had every reason to smash his egg when the chance arose, who had every reason to hate all lightning dragons but instead was a caring but stern sire.
He tried to catch Toothless, or maybe Firefly instead as he was also falling, but the many dragons in the air warned him off with snarls and fire, forcing him to flee. Fortunately, some of them also had the presence of mind to catch the falling dragon and rider.
Two days later, the storm long gone, Firefly found Striker huddled in a hole in the ground, weak and starving, terrified that if he moved and sought water or food, he would once again give in to the overpowering desire that almost killed Toothless and Firefly. Toothless knew where he was the whole time, a talent of black dragons, but who could blame him for refusing to reveal where to find the one who almost killed him?
For a while, things went back to normal for the most part, but every time Striker felt the alluring pull of power in a storm, he felt only terror. It helped immensely when he discovered a small cave that he could hide in, trapped inside until a land-strider would let him out after the storm had passed. Those small caves had once been used to hold dragons captive, back before there was peace between dragons and land-striders.
However, the protection of that small cave wasn't enough for long, denied the storms too many times, the allure too great. He needed the storm, but he was terrified of it, of what it would make him do. It drove him mad, and he ended up smashing his head repeatedly against the stone in sheer frustration.
When he woke up with a headache, the bright sun shone through a clear sky. He had been dragged out and watched over by a very worried Firefly. Striker's clutchmates were there too, having fared no better.
"I wanted to help you," Firefly told him, "but despite the best of intentions, I'm only hurting you. I'm worse than Dagur, worse than Drago. I've tried to hammer you and your sister and brother like hot iron on an anvil, and all I'm doing is creating stress fractures. If I keep this up, you'll crack!"
Striker hunched over so he wasn't looking down on Firefly. He knew it was true. He loved Toothless. He loved Firefly.
One way to express one's love was to remove those who were a threat to them.
Without the worry of accidentally harming Toothless or Firefly, either directly or indirectly by harming someone they cared about, the storms no longer held any terror. Instead, they were empowering, intoxicating! Striker started out flying with his clutchmates, but they drove each other away, as all lighting dragons always have and always will, living solitary lives.
The more he embraced the lightning, the more he felt the drive to share it with others. The more he struck other dragons who foolishly flew too close to storm clouds, the more he hated them for being so foolish. The more he hated them, the more he needed to display his power and assert his dominance over all that flew in the sky and crawled on the land.
The leaves fell from the trees.
The leaves grew back again.
The leaves fell.
The leaves grew.
Then, the strangest thing happened. While he was stretching his wings and basking in the warm jolts of a storm, he saw a black dragon, but it wasn't Toothless. The dragon had a rider, but it wasn't Firefly. The dragon was annoyed and apprehensive, but the rider radiated a calm confidence that seemed unnatural for a land-strider in his predicament.
From afar, the black dragon projected his thoughts at such a distance that only his kind could. {My brain-damaged and suicidal rider thinks that you would be able let alone willing to help us.}
Striker pulled his wings up for another thrust to ascend and allowed a large spark to arc between the wingtips. {He must be brain-damaged indeed.}
The two dragons settled into flying a wide circle, both separated by a comfortable distance. To break the pattern and cut towards the other dragon would cause him to instantly attack or flee. To fly away would be to invite a chase.
Striker felt a strong tug towards them, to light up that black dragon with the full might of the storm at his disposal, but the thought of doing so brought up memories of how he almost killed Toothless and Firefly. Maybe, not all black dragons were evil, at least when they had a land-strider to keep their bouts of rage in check.
The black dragon suddenly snorted. {I would not have thought that Toothless and Firefly would rear up a lightning dragon, but the memories you're projecting leave little room for doubt.}
That got Striker's attention. He had spent so long alone, after having grown at a nest where he could trust others so deeply, that it was never a habit to exercise any discipline over what thoughts he was projecting. After leaving there, any dragons he would come into contact with were killed quickly, so there was never a consequence of allowing the idle musings of his mind to project outward.
He let lighting arc all over his body and to the clouds around him, and the black dragon flinched and snarled at that. For how sensitive they could be to pick up the projected thoughts of others from far away, it was also their weakness for how the lightning could cause pain from afar, forcing them to shut out the world around them.
The land-strider on the agitated dragon's back yammered, the words unknown even if they were audible, and the weakly projected thoughts lost over the distance. The rider looked over at Striker and held out his hands, palms up, a land-strider plea for peace. Such was an impossibility between lightning dragons and black dragons, though… Except for when it wasn't.
Striker allowed the sparks to die down. Even though he was restraining himself from killing this black dragon who seemed to be fond of Toothless and Firefly, causing him pain and forcing him to react was satisfying enough. For now.
The black dragon gave a deathly glare. {You wear my patience thin for the petulant behavior of an overgrown hatchling.}
Sparks flew again. The black dragon snarled and shot away from the storm clouds, his eyes to his tail in case Striker pursued. No, that would not be wise, to leave the safety of the storm, especially when he still was not yet fully grown. He knew how large his sire and dam were from memories shared by Toothless and Firefly, and that fight between them would have gone very differently were it not for the land-strider's clever trickery. Striker was far from weak, as evidenced by the fate of any dragon that dared fly in his storms, but there was still a ways to go.
He flew along the edge of the storm clouds, roaring and taunting them, but they flew farther away… until they suddenly turned around. The black dragon approached and they settled into a wide circle again. They continued like that in silence for a while, and Striker was content to wait and see what the other dragon would do. He had the advantage here, and he knew it.
The black dragon was seething with rage, that much was clear, but he finally flicked his eyes over to Striker with repressed anger as he hastily projected a memory of something he had seen. Many, many land-striders rode on their sea vessels, seen from afar, moving to wipe out all dragons in this area. They had managed to kill a massive sea dragon with ease and were moving towards the island where Striker had cracked his egg. Their overwhelming numbers, with or without their advanced weaponry that was specially designed to disable dragons, made them seem unopposable.
{Toothless and Firefly will soon die, and your end will not be delayed for long as these invading land-striders will continue to hunt all dragons in all places if they are not defeated. If you care at all about Toothless and Firefly, or if you'd rather not face such a force alone in the near future, you will find your clutch mates and convince them to join you in returning to your spawning grounds. There will be plenty of killing to come.}
With that, Firebrand shot off again, back out of the storm. {This better be worth it, Confident, or I will bite off both of your legs!}
Striker huffed in amusement at what just happened. Black dragons were as explosive as their fireballs, easily set into a rage that consumed them wholly. Firefly had a knack for stopping his dragon from killing everyone around him whenever he was agitated by some minor offense. It seemed that this other land-strider, Confident, was working a similar trick.
It was very tempting to do what the black dragon told him to do, except that would be obeying the black dragon. Then again, the storm was blowing that way anyway, and it would be nice to see Toothless and Firefly again. Once the storm passed, Striker might even trust himself to land in their nest without the overwhelming desire to strike out at the nearest moving thing.
There was no need to bother with finding his clutchmates, though. They would only get in the way.
And how did that black dragon know I have clutchmates? he thought to himself for an instant before he realized that dragons often laid multiple eggs in a single clutch. It would have been a very safe assumption.
He wasn't even halfway there when the storm clouds flashed white with lightning as his clutchmates, Howl and Stalker, flew some distance away. He snarled at them and shot out lighting, and they did the same but continued flying on.
Striker groaned. He forgot how tiring it was to be surrounded by others.
That was how he had felt back then, before all the fighting, before he had to force himself to cooperate with other dragons. It was only seven days since his first encounter with Firebrand, but that experience changed him, and he was forced to admit to himself that it was a good change. He hadn't noticed, back then, that he had felt so much hatred and loathing all the time, and it felt empowering to choose not to feel that way, now that he could.
That was why he was sunning himself above Firefly's nest, looking down at the land-striders below. Just the thought, I could kill any one of them at any time, but I don't have to prove what is already known, felt more fulfilling than performing the deed. It was nice to relax and know that he didn't have to prove himself.
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"An impressive sight, is it not?"
Ragnar whirled around in surprise, his sword almost out of its scabbard before he realized that he wasn't being attacked. He had been staring at the Skrill up on the rocky ridge far above the Great Hall doors and was caught unaware by the Viking approaching him.
Said Viking stood there, impassive, lanky arms crossed over his narrow chest, a bored expression on his tall face as he watched Ragnar shove his sword back into its scabbard.
"Not wise to sneak up on people!" Ragnar snapped. "I was… lost in thought."
"Don't worry," the Viking said in a rough voice as he brought a hand up to his chin. "You didn't hurt my beard, so no harm, no foul."
Ragnar stared at the blonde "beard" the Viking was stroking. "That's… your hair, braided underneath your chin–"
"Beard," he insisted impatiently. "But your confusion is understandable, a strange man from a strange land with strange customs. To suddenly behold such a powerful man with such a thick, luscious beard must be daunting." He stuck out his hand. "Name's Tuffnut, but you can also call me Big Beard".
Ragnar shook his hand, opting to chuckle at what must be some sort of joke. "Ragnar," he responded. He had given up trying to maintain the guise of Gerald, and that seemed to improve the attitudes of those who knew it was a guise.
The Skrill's gaze suddenly shifted from Ragnar to the sea, where a Night Fury was streaking in like an arrow. The Skrill leaped out of the way, and the Night Fury flared its wings and leaped off the rocky face. The two dragons tangled, lighting and fire flying, partly airborne, partly clinging to the rock, striking and dodging. As instantaneously as it began, it ended when both dragons suddenly stilled and looked at each other for a long moment before the Night Fury shot down towards the village, leaving the Skrill to ruffle its wings and settle down again.
The Night Furies on the ground, the dam and its adolescents from earlier, greeted the new one with bared fangs and claws that turned into a tightly-wound tangle of limbs and snarls. One of them – impossible to discern which – bit the neck of another only to receive a hard thrust into two more dragons, knocking them all about. Teeth clamped around the scruff of one, which was hauled backward and used as a meat shield against the ones leaping back into the fray.
A teal Nadder hopped between a nearby gaggle of children and the ball of fury, squawking and flapping its wings, and the Night Furies drifted away without any pause in their fighting.
The tangle quickly unraveled into the two mature dragons nuzzling and licking each other as the four adolescents hopped around and on them. The Nadder returned to its previous activity, closing its eyes and giving a chirp, apparently a signal for the kids to run towards it until it chirped again, a signal for the kids to stop and freeze before it opened its eyes.
Tuffnut followed Ragnar's stare "I know, crazy, right?"
Ragnar shrugged, gesturing to the Night Furies. "No surprises there, aside from the part where they don't try to kill everyone in sight." Dogs would play-fight like that all the time, though they would usually sniff each other for a moment first. Dogs didn't take the lead in playing an organized game with children, though.
He flicked his gaze up to the Skrill again. "But that… I've seen many things that are not easy to believe, even with my own eyes, but that takes the cake."
"Oh, that's nothing, I mean it's crazy how that Skrill ended up here. Did ya know we raised him right here on Berk?"
Ragnar's eyes snapped to the man.
"Is this the first you've seen so close?" Tuffnut asked nonchalantly.
Ragnar shook his head. "There was a village being harassed by dragons, and I was among those sent to help. The dragons always follow a pattern, see–" He suddenly stopped and looked at all the dragons around. The less logistics he shared, the better.
The small raids led up to a big raid, the usual pattern, and a Skrill was among them. There was stormy weather to feed it all the lightning it wanted, which was easily dealt with by long iron lighting rods stuck into the ground. The Skrill ended up shrieking in frustration, which it relieved by turning its lightning-laden fury on the raiding dragons instead.
That suggested a potential domestic use if such a dragon could be raised and trained. Even if it couldn't be trained, if it could be released on a dragon raid and then captured again afterward, it would do more harm to the dragons than the village. Skrill eggs were obtained at a cost of human lives, and the hatchlings that came from them were raised by handlers in Norway. After a few years, the experiment was terminated when the handlers got fried and the Skrills were killed on its subsequent rampage.
"I just never would have thought I'd see such a sight," he finally said, gesturing to the Skrill that was peacefully sunning itself.
Up on the ridge, the Skrill shuffled its wings and stared down at Ragnar, making eye contact. Ragnar held the stare.
"Dragons were never meant to be tamed, never meant to be… used," Tuffnut said quietly, reflectively. "Yaks, goats, sheep, dogs, but not dragons."
Ragnar snapped his attention to the young man. Again with practically reading his mind. He would get to the bottom of this.
"If that is so, then what do you call this?" He gestured to the Zippleback perched on a rooftop nearby, all four beady eyes fixed on them.
Tuffnut followed his gaze with a yawn and a shrug. "A mother hen."
"You may be accustomed to it, lad, but this is not normal. I saw how your beast was on the tipping point of launching an all-out assault on me if my blade got one hair closer to you."
"Bah, that was just for show. Barf and Belch already respect me as the most deadly weapon in the world."
The Skrill roared above.
"Fine, you can share my title!" he shouted up to it, cupping his hands. "It's not your fault I still see an adorable little hatchling every time I look at you!"
"I was sorta his uncle," he casually said to Ragnar. "Dragons and I just get along with–"
"That's not what I'm getting at," Ragnar hastily cut him off. "This," he gestured to all the dragons on the island, "is just a fantasy everywhere but here in the Barbaric Archipelago."
"I suppose it is easy to take it for granted," Tuffnut conceded. He nodded his head at the kids playing with the Nadder. It chirped, and one of them was caught mid-stride, too slow to grind to a halt and freeze. The Nadder fluttered its wings and cawed, taking a step towards the child, sending her running away screaming all the way back to what must have been a start line gouged into the ground. The difficulty was rising as the leaders drew closer to the dragon.
"Especially for those who had dragons sniffing them as infants," Tuffnut threw in with a grin.
"Aye," Ragnar agreed, "but the more I see of this," he waved vaguely at the dragons all around, "the more I realize that our campaign up here was a waste. Let the barbarians ride their dragons and bang rocks together, it's not a real threat to the rest of us." He gave a sideways look at Tuffnut. "No offense."
"Barbarians banging rocks together?" Tuffnut mused with a raised eyebrow.
Ragnar shrugged. "I'm sure there are some people who would give up a civilized life to ride a dragon."
"Tell me, how did you get hundreds of ships up here?" Tuffnut asked out of the blue.
"We sailed…"
"Into the wind?" he pressed with a raised eyebrow. "The traders have always had to time things just right and take wandering routes to keep the wind at their backs. To get hundreds of ships to sail up here in a coordinated fashion must have been only the result of some breakthrough in sailing equipment."
"Well, yes," Ragnar agreed. "Lateen sails allow us to tack into the wind, it's no wonder they became popular. Makes sailing a lot more reliable and predictable."
A decade ago, such a massive assault on the Archipelago would have been an impossible nightmare. The armada would have had to follow the trade winds, which were less reliable way up here and would force captains to adjust their course on a day-by-day basis. Attempting such a large-scale voyage with square sails would have been a nightmarish maelstrom of ships crashing into each other.
"And how long ago did you start seeing that?" Tuffnut asked.
Ragnar stared at the young man, wondering what his angle was. "About… " he paused in thought, "Six, maybe seven years ago."
It was why Drago Bludvist was able to take only a small fleet of fifteen ships up to the Archipelago on his conquest mission as it was before the lateen sail was invented and widely used. Even then, they hit wind too contrary, and though they could daisy-chain the ships to a gargantuan Bewilderbeast, progress was a slow crawl for a while. It was only his control over the dragons, through that Bewilderbeast that he had somehow bent to his purpose, that allowed his successes before he was unfortunately defeated.
Tuffnut gave a smug smile and crossed his arms. "That's what I thought." When Ragnar didn't respond, he continued, "Did you ever wonder how it was invented, or how the concept of having a sail on only one side of the mast was discovered?"
Ragnar didn't bother responding as he knew that he was going to hear regardless.
"Well, the lateen sail was invented by," Tuffnut paused for dramatic effect, "a dragon!"
Ragnar looked over at the Zippleback perched on the roof nearby, which had one wing pressed to its side and the other fanned out, then back to Tuffnut with a flat stare. "Riiight."
"It's true," he insisted. "Hiccup and Toothless were out in the harbor on a dinghy, goofing around with a paddle. Hiccup was poking fun at his dragon for being dead weight who couldn't really paddle all that well with his paws, and Toothless didn't feel like diving in to swim with his tail and push the boat, so he discovered how to use his wings as sails. See, imagine that his body is the mast and his wings are little sails."
Ragnar chuckled at the mental image. "I suppose I can see that. Where are you going with this?"
"Well, Toothless was able to hold out both wings as sails with the wind coming from the stern, but when they had to turn around to avoid the rocks, the wind was coming off the bow. If there's one thing dragons are good at, it's knowing how to use the wind in any situation, so–"
He suddenly broke down laughing. "Gods, you should have been there! He had one wing stretched out above the boat," he gestured with one hand outstretched, "and when they started drifting sideways, so leaned down to stick his other wing into the water below the ship as an impromptu centerboard." Now his posture looked absolutely ridiculous.
His raucous laughter eventually settled down. "And then, Poof!" He threw his hands in the air. "The lateen sail and centerboard were born. Eight years ago. The traders and travelers were impressed with his invention and took it back to your–" he snorted. "Civilization."
Ragnar wasn't impressed. "That's quite the tall tale."
Tuffnut scoffed. "And I bet you've seen a lot more sheep in the past five years?"
That was something Ragnar had noticed, now that he thought about it. He had seen the old wool combs with their long iron teeth and imagined just how arduous and fickle the process would be of combing out debris and straightening the fibers. With the invention of a new spinning comb contraption, it became a hundred times easier and faster, and sheep herds exploded in all areas.
Blacksmiths and craftsmen were inundated with jobs to make as many as they could, and clothing became a lot more affordable, even for the peasants. The result was that fewer people died of cold in the winter, which increased how many able bodies could be drafted for conquest missions like this dragon hunting expedition.
"What about it?" Ragnar asked, expecting another tall tale. He had nothing else to do, and though he wouldn't admit it, he was curious how this tale would spin out.
"Well, six years ago, a few Terrible Terrors were playing around in a barrel full of uncombed wool, chasing and playfully clawing at each other, digging through the piles of wool. They ended up clawing around the inside walls of the barrel just to feel the stiff resistance of the tangled wool suddenly go slack, and when they were found in a barrel full of combed wool, they were rewarded handsomely for yet another brilliant invention. Toenail had the thought to replace the Terrors with a wooden wheel, their claws with iron teeth, and add a hand crank. Boom! Wool processing just got a lot easier!"
Ragnar gave him a flat stare. "Terrors are inventors? Now you're just scratching the bottom of the barrel."
"Oh, whatever!" Tuffnut waved him off. "Try to explain kites, then. You mainlanders haven't had time to steal that idea for yourselves yet as they were just recently invented."
Ragnar had noticed the strange things that the kids seemed to love playing with on the windy bluffs overlooking the harbor, contraptions made of thin leather and sticks, flying in the wind and held down by a length of string. Some looked like dragons in shape, if one used his imagination, and others just looked like blobs in the sky.
He sighed. "Alright, shoot, regale me of how a dragon", he rolled his eyes, "invented those things."
Tuffnut grinned. "Well, we learned a little trick to help particularly boring and timid people learn how to ride a dragon. We'd use a long rope to tie the dragon to a stump on a windy ridge. Gives the new riders more confidence that if they fall, it's not that far."
He chuckled. "Then, the Terrible Terrors got some kids to do the same, except the kids held the other end of the string, and that turned into a game where the kids raced along a course, dragging their Terrors in the air behind them, all while the Terrors were trying to get the others tangled up and grounded to slow them down. And guess who," he winked, "consulted dragons on how that was possible and how to construct his own flying dragon out of leather and sticks?"
"I don't see the point of it, though, " Ragnar insisted. Maybe, if these kites were made a lot bigger, one could attach arrows or small explosive capsules to them, then fly them over an enemy formation on a long string. A very, very long string if it was to serve any advantage over just shooting arrows from a bow.
"Wow, you mainlanders really are dense," Tuffnut said, rolling his eyes. He gestured to the kids playing with their kites – and Terrors – on a string. "You see the expressions on their faces?"
Ragnar nodded. It was like such an activity was the most amazing thing ever to their young minds. "Yeah, so?"
Tuffnut turned towards the cliff and stepped up to the edge. His dragon leaped from its perch and swooped down to cling to the cliff face right in front of Tuffnut, one head snaked up to mount upon while the other lifted high and stared at Ragnar.
"You measure the advancements of your civilization by how effectively you can conquer and kill, and there was a time when we too were so barbaric," he said over his shoulder. His dragon brought a clawed foot up to push off from the top of the cliff. "Perhaps, just maybe, one may find more joy in giving instead of taking, causing someone to laugh instead of die, pranking instead of conquering"
He stepped and sunk down to straddle the dragon's neck. "Something to consider!" he shouted back as he flew off.
Ragnar scowled at the departing rider. He had enough of this fantasy world, an island full of ignorant people unaware of how harsh life was. He still had two days to go before sailing back home. He could only hope that this island and its inhabitants had exhausted their strangeness.
