A/N:
Hi, I'm still alive. This chapter gave me the worst case of writer's constipation – you're welcome for that mental image. Thank you for taking the time to tag along with me, and thank you VigoGrimbone for betaing.
Deadly-Bagel, I honestly don't see what's so strange about making friends by stabbing them, or accepting a person as your partner and mashing your body parts into theirs when you're angry. I always thought this was absolutely normal behavior. :P
Dragonrider's Fury, Thanks for the encouragement! Yeah, us silly humans sure can be complicated. Oh, the things we do to ourselves.
Vengeance
Frost stared at her dripping-wet paw. She stared at the misshapen lump of a partially developed hatchling oozing around a smashed eggshell. She stared at Toothless, whose wide eyes were rapidly flicking between Frost and her victim.
She never meant to do it, it just happened. She was too slow to catch herself, he was too slow to stop her, and Vicious was asleep–
A deafening shriek bounced off the cave walls as Vicious leaped up, rage instantly overpowering the lethargy from sleep, claws finding purchase in Frost's underside to lift her up and slam against the wall.
Frost did not react beyond allowing herself to slump to the ground. This was wrong, this was terrible. She recognized it, but she didn't feel it!
A clawed paw slammed her snout into the ground, and she snarled and lashed back. They snarled and lunged at each other, trading blows, scratching and biting, shedding scales and blood.
They ended up a wingspan apart, staring each other down, panting through labored breaths. Toothless' whine broke the tense silence, his teeth gently gripping Vicious' tail.
Frost knew what was happening. No, her eggs were not being taken from her. They were being protected from her. Toothless would make a good sire, that much was clear long ago. Vicious was a dam of two clutches. Frost… was a mentally unstable dragon who was a danger to her own clutch that she was supposed to feel murderously protective over.
With a whimper, not at the pain of the many small wounds on her snout and chest but at the reality of the situation, she whipped around and sprinted outside the cave. She ground to a stop and looked all around from her high vantage point. the sky spread out above, the forest below, the sea beyond. But where would a dragon go when everything she wanted was behind her and endangered by her?
Her wings were spread, ready to fly but clueless where to go, when soft steps padded up. She didn't even look back. She could feel the war raging in Toothless' mind, pity clashing with frustration and anger and betrayal, and from that, a sort of sad understanding that Frost had learned to never expect from any dragon.
She would rather die than look into his eyes.
Toothless licked up the little dribbles of blood, crooning sadly. She could hear his projections that reached far and wide, requesting several dragons to stay close to Firefly and be ready to intervene if necessary. Striker, the one lightning dragon still on this island, was ready to knock Frost out of the sky if needed. Toothless was ready to take her down himself if necessary.
The reason was obvious. She was conditioned to destroy her eggs, and that made her smash one of them. She was conditioned to kill Firefly…
Eyes closed, she gave Toothless a parting lick on the snout and turned to spread her wings again and take off. A dive into the sea with no plan to surface again suddenly sounded like a fantastic idea.
Toothless grunted at her. {A land-strider once told me that hope is the thermals on which the impossible arises.}
Frost chuffed at that and sprang up into the sky, angling for the nearest shore, away from her mate and eggs, soaring on the currents, not once looking back. She would protect those she loved by leaving them behind.
Just like that one land-strider, King Midas.
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Ruffnut strode back and forth in front of her few remaining students who needed special attention. They were part of Vassilis' crew, all of them here to learn how to interact with dragons. Such a feat would be fairly impossible if they couldn't even work up the nerve to touch one. Slaying a dragon was one thing, but to walk up to one without any weapon in hand was understandably foreign and frightening.
She knew from experience that asking a dragon to rush up and lick such a person was… unproductive. Entertaining, yes, and dangerous if said person was armed, but still unproductive.
As her pacing took her past Eret, she clung to his bulging bicep and smirked ferally up at him. She always relished a good challenge, and nothing would ever deter her. Since she first laid eyes on him, when she gazed at his hunky arms working the net launcher to shoot down her dragon, she knew that she found her prize.
He had resisted for years, sure, and he even stooped so low as to bribe Barf and Belch with smoked fish to restrain Ruffnut on one of his brief visits to Berk – something she couldn't help but deeply respect – but he could hold out for only so long. Eventually, the shell cracked, and he had to accept his fate. He always had a yearning for the rough and wild sea, and he finally realized what he refused to acknowledge in her.
They were wed only this past Spring, but they both decided they were not yet ready to drop anchor by having a child. They were young, and the world was large. For now, she ended up joining Eret and his few former dragon-trapping crewmen, flying around to the various islands of the Archipelago as liaisons between Vikings and dragons, and between tribes with blood feuds.
It was exciting and dangerous, and Ruffnut loved the opportunities to smack some people around. And Skullcrusher was a darling dragon who was always so happy to put his horns and massive tail to work.
So, it was no wonder that they were asked to run this dragon training operation with these squeamish mainlanders. Ruffnut had started with nine who refused to touch a dragon, and she was now down to five. Nobody even died yet, so she was very pleased with her progress so far.
She pushed off of Eret's shoulder and squared up against one of the students. "I dunno about this one, he looks a bit timid." she said to one of the two fist-sized balls at the end of her long braids. They were like two little Zippleback heads, her way of allowing Barf and Belch to tag along even though they ended up staying with Tuffnut.
She shook the other ball of hair in her other hand, and dropped to a lower octave. "Yeah, he probably peed his pants when he saw his buddy pet a dragon."
"I did not!" the man snorted indignantly. He thumped a fist to his chest. "Arnulf fears no man or beast!"
Ruffnut rose up on her toes and yawned in his face. "I dunno," she said to one of her hairballs. "Did you see what I saw?"
She shook the hairball. "Of course, I saw him shaking in his fancy boots."
"I was not!" the man demanded.
"Shh, shh, it's okay," she said soothingly. "Nobody here is judging you… Except for everyone. Here," she reached forward, hairball still clutched in her hand. "You don't have to touch a scaly dragon today. You can just pet my hairy Zippleback."
The man leaned back, grimacing. "I'd rather not, thank you."
"Don't be offended," she said in resignation to her hairball. "It is to be expected. He's just a cowardly, pompous, Flemish butt after all."
"I am not a coward, and I am not a butt, you primitive barbarian!" he roared.
"BARBARIAN?!" Ruffnut shrieked. Why you–!"
She leaned forward and slapped his cheek hard. The man staggered backward, right into Eret, who had positioned himself there for just that reason.
"Get off me," Eret grunted as he shoved the man off of him… right into the side of a nearby Gronckle.
"Crazy bi–" he stopped and looked sideways at what his hand was leaning against. Meatlug didn't react at all, seemingly asleep to the untrained observer. The man pulled his hand back with a gasp, but after a moment of standing there and absolutely nothing happening, he gave the dragon's side a pat and a little rub.
"There, I pet your dragon. Can I eat now?"
Ruffnut sighed. "Yeah, yeah, good enough, I guess."
She signaled for Skullcrusher, who was curled up around a cauldron of stew, to take a step back and allow the man to get some food. For the first time in two days. That was Eret's brilliant idea, classic carrot and stick. Some of these students didn't know a word of Norse, but they could clearly see the dragon guarding the only available food and the condition that led to him granting a person access to eat.
They could also see dragons tackling anyone who tried to sneak them some food. That was Ruffnut's genius at work.
She cracked her knuckles and looked at the other students. One down, four more to go, and they didn't look hungry enough, so she started towards the cauldron.
"Hey, Snoogie Bun, you want some more lamb stew?"
Eret beamed at her. "Ya know, I think I could go for seconds. And get me some bread with that wonderful jam?"
"Gladly!"
The students groaned. Ruffnut was a patient hunter.
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Fishlegs looked up an old, sturdy tree to see Tord sitting on a high perch, one foot hanging down, the other pressed against the wide trunk, an elbow hooked over a nearby branch, eyes half-closed. The man had probably been up there since before the sun rose, meditating, making supplications to his god or whatever those of "the church" did.
Well, Fishlegs wasn't so sure that Tord was still associated with the church down on the mainland. He called himself a "Christian", some new-fangled similar-but-different thing about a special prophet being in him in spirit or something like that. It was all silly nonsense, interesting but silly.
Fishlegs reached up and jumped as high as his short legs would allow to grab a branch and start ascending hand-over-hand, an easy task for him despite his heavy build. His pudginess from earlier years had gradually faded along with his timidness and squeamishness, allowing more tone muscle and resolution to fill in his large frame.
Halfway up, he hung from one arm and rotated to look down at the drama on the ground. Ruffnut was absolutely determined to get every student to pet a dragon today, and her methods were becoming louder and more physical as time dragged on, something that was entertaining or terrifying depending on where one stood.
Fishlegs resumed his ascent, and Tord flashed a smile down and gestured to a nearby branch.
"A fine morning, Benevolent," Tord said in greeting, using Fishlegs' "dragon name" in friendly jest. Fishlegs was among the first few to learn to hear dragons several years back, soon after Hiccup had figured it out, and he had felt so overwhelmed and embarrassed whenever someone called him by that name, be they dragon or human. Over the years, though, he got used to it and even started to feel proud that the dragons, who saw the mind more than the body, made such a connection. It was a good virtue, maybe not one of the nine noble virtues of a Viking, but close enough to hospitality with a dash of perseverance.
"A good day to torment some hesitant students, it would seem, Confident," Fishlegs replied. He hooked his legs over a branch above and next to Tord and swung down to hang from his knees, grabbing a branch below and twisting left then right to stretch out his back with a sigh of relief.
"So, after this dragon training is over…" he started to ask. He was proud of himself, when he had approached Hiccup about it, that he didn't stutter or wring his fingers. This was a big decision to make, and it felt a little like betraying the tribe, despite Hiccup's vehement insistence to the contrary. The Fishlegs of five years ago would have just made a bumbling fool of himself.
Tord gave a subtle nod. "Yes, I already spoke with Vassilis. He has plenty of room aboard his cog, dragons included. If it's not already too late for me to depart, it's not a moment too soon. Very few people appreciate the…the ripples I'm making."
Fishlegs, still hanging upside-down, waved it off with his large hand. "We're Vikings. We're not easily offended, and we haven't forgotten how gloomy things appeared after we first attacked the enemy, before you arrived. Too direct, too blunt, unthinking."
Tord nodded at that. "I could tell that everyone hated my ideas to defeat the enemy as much as they hated how well they worked. I feel the same way. It is the fruit of many days spent traveling and studying and surviving as an enemy of the aristocracy."
Fishlegs cringed a little at that. Tord's methods were unquestionably not the Viking way, wearing the enemy down by dropping rocks from above day after day, taking easy kills when a lucky hit left a ship isolated from the armada, the backstabbing sneak attack with the Terrible Terrors killing people – in their sleep! – to kick off the main attack. It worked, though, and with surprisingly few losses, the Hairy Hooligan tribe – and all the other dragon riders from nearby tribes – lived on to see another day. In the end, that was what really mattered.
"It is better to live than to lie dead," he bit out.
Tord grunted at that. "Havamal, if my memory serves, right?"
The young man grinned. "You've read?"
"Yes, and you may be interested to hear that a lot of it is sound wisdom that aligns with the holy scripture."
Fishlegs raised his eyebrows, surprised. "Oh?"
Tord nodded. "King Solomon wrote something similar… Before he went absolutely crazy. A living dog is better than a dead lion."
"Has an interesting ring to it, I'll admit, but how does one so ensconced in your faith end up reading…" Fishlegs drifted off in thought. "Oh, right, know your enemy, I suppose."
"Yes, and it is sad when the church views others as the enemy and tries to convert them with the edge of the sword. I myself, before I was an admiral on a mission to wipe out the demonic dragons in the North," he let out a self-derisive snort, "was part of the effort in converting the Vikings down on the mainland. It turned out that no words would sway them." He grinned. "All it took was a bit of gold."
"Fools!" Fishlegs growled. "I heard about the Varanger. Wealth may vanish in the wink of an eye. Gold is the falsest of friends." Another gem of wisdom from Havamal.
"Or, as the apostle Paul wrote, love of money is the root of all evil."
Fishlegs hummed at that. He had heard theories that this battle arose solely from the aristocrats lusting for more wealth. They could leverage the actual threat of dragons, as minor and sporadic as it was compared to so many other dangers in life, inflate it out of proportion in the eyes of the people and cut down anyone who gained attention in saying otherwise, then insist that the great dragon threat would certainly ruin everyone's lives and that the only fix would be to offer donations to their coffers and young men to their armies.
Such a theory sounded a bit far-fetched, like how Bucket would wear his namesake on his head to keep the dragons out of his mind. The idea of a few people, whose actions demonstrated that they didn't actually care about the masses, convincing them to donate coin with nothing more than fancy talking, sounded absurd. People couldn't be that stupid
It was just one more thing that he wanted to expose himself to while he was down there. The timing was good, too, as he was young but mature enough, with nothing anchoring him down. He looked forward to seeing new lands and learning new languages. Of course, what he was looking forward to the most was to walk through the "libraries" with shelves lined with books, as far as the eye could see and stacked so high one would need a ladder.
"Alright, try this one," Fishlegs said with a grin, curious if Tord's scriptures had any other parallels. "Speak useful words or be silent."
"Even a fool, when he holds his tongue, is counted as wise."
"Something Snotlout could benefit from." They both chuckled at that. "Alright, how about… It benefits a man to be merry and glad until the day of his death."
"In all things, I am thankful."
"A man should know how much wood to collect in summer to keep him warm in the winter."
Tord paused in thought for a moment, then snapped his fingers. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, and consider her ways, for she has no ruler and yet provides meat in summer and gathers in the harvest."
Fishlegs narrowed his eyes. "It sounds like your scriptures are just reiterating the writings of wise Vikings. I guess some people appreciate the flowery wording?"
Tord scoffed at that. "Sound wisdom bears out in any place, no matter the source, but Havamal doesn't always get it right. He said that advice given by others is ill counsel. Do you really believe that, or is it more reasonable that there is safety in a multitude of counselors?"
Fishlegs waved it off, still hanging upside-down. "Alright, alright, I'll have to look at it sometime. After I pick through every last book on math. And rocks. I want to make sure I give Meatlug only the best."
Tord raised an eyebrow. "A rock is a rock."
Fishlegs shook his head, then closed his eyes at all the blood rushing to it. He gripped a branch and slowly rotated and lowered himself down to sit next to Tord, comfortably settling into his role of a teacher addressing a pupil.
"Rocks, my good sir, are as varied and fascinating as all the rest of nature. Their taste, smell, firmness, how they crumble when a Gronckle chews them… There are patterns based on how close they are to the sea, or how deep they are underground, or–
"You!" A shrill voice shouted up from below. Tofa jumped up and started climbing in a haste born only of a righteous fury. She flung her feet over the same branch that Fishlegs had just abandoned and hung upside-down, her long hair and arms draping down. Two Terrible Terrors, Shrill and Flit, wrapped their tails around Tofa's ankles and hung down with a casual ease that demonstrated how common this was.
"Yes, madam Butterfly?" Tord asked with a smile.
Tofa beamed at her dragon name for a moment before she fixed her face into a scowl as she remembered why she had sought him out. "You're stealing all my friends away!"
"Stealing? All of them?" Tord asked innocently.
"Tofa…" Fishlegs moaned.
"Yes and yes," she said curtly, the two Terrors hissing their support despite how unthreatening their limp-rag hanging posture looked. "And you shush," she hissed as she poked a finger into Fishlegs' nose.
"I simply offered–" Tord started to say.
"Stole," Tofa demanded, crossing her arms and pouting.
"Tofa, that's not fair," Fishlegs said. "I–"
He was cut off by a loud, frenzied, banshee shriek from below – or above from Tofa's perspective.
Everyone looked down at the sight of a very unhappy Light Fury who was snarling and roaring at a student that she had pinned against the trunk of the tree in which they sat.
"I was wondering when Frost would show up," Tord and Tofa both said at the same time. They then jerked their eyes to each other and glowered as only bitter rivals could.
Fishlegs recognized mortal danger when he saw it and decided to address the smaller risk instead.
"I think I'll go peel Frost off of him," he called up as he hopped down.
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Frost hadn't realized that something peculiar caught her attention until her listless flight path angled towards a certain island. She hadn't realized what that peculiar thing was until she was skimming over the crashing waves on the shore.
She never noticed before, with her attention focused on her eggs and her attempts to not smash them. However, with her tail turned to everything she ever wanted and would never see again, with nowhere to go and nothing to focus on…
Like Toothless, she too had sensor lobes fanned out around her head, each a tightly-packed web of nerves encased in hide and scales. They granted her perception far above any other dragon to hear the faintest thought projections from far away and locate its source.
She flew low over the forest at high speed. The trees gave way to a grassy clearing, and in the blink of an eye, she shot down and had her prey pinned between her claws and the trunk of a tree.
{How do you like the feeling of helplessness?!} she willed him to hear. He was deaf to dragons, of course, but he could feel the claws digging, harder and harder as he attempted to wiggle free, and he could feel her hot breath in his face and hear the hair-raising snarl drifting from her throat. She used her free paw to whack the arm that had reached down to pull out a shiny claw, causing the weapon to fall to the ground.
All she wanted was for him to feel a small sample of what she had felt before killing him, to realize just how helpless he was. Not all land-striders were evil creatures, Frost could accept this, but some of them were.
Frost shifted sideways, around the smooth trunk of the tree, sliding her victim around in the process just in time to dodge Benevolent, who was jumping down in an attempt to distract her. He sprawled out on the ground, clearly not anticipating Frost's quick evasion, and hastily scrabbled to his feet.
"He is under our protection!" Benevolent barked at her. "This island is owned in part by Berk, and there will be consequences for harming or killing someone here!"
Frost noticed several dragons encroaching on her, mindful not to provoke her into violence by attacking, but also ready to respond. They were not like those ungainly sting-tail dragons who were clumsy on land and at a loss against her speed. They had all spent quite some time play-fighting with Toothless, after all, and the riders could not be ignored either.
Frost narrowed her eyes at Benevolent as she leaned in to nip at her victim's ear, drawing a small bead of blood and a pained yelp. She had already lost everything she ever cared about, so what loss would it be if revenge cost her life?
Benevolent's panicked gaze fell on Frost's victim, who had stopped squirming under the claws in hopes that she would stop tightening her grip. "Why is she focusing on you specifically?" His eyes shifted to Frost's. "Talk to me, girl. What's wrong with you? Speak!"
Frost did not bother responding save to continue kneading her claws into her victim's chest, lightly scuffing the skin. She wanted to kill him, but if she did, everyone would attack, and regardless of that outcome, the only thing she had to live for, this act of vengeance, would be history instead of something to look forward to and anticipate. Life required something to look forward to if it was to hold any worth, and the dead could not acknowledge Toothless' request to cling to hope.
A land-strider hastily translated Benevolent's words into other words that Frost's victim understood – such complicated creatures!
Frost's victim finally looked at her, not at her teeth parted in front of his face, or at her claws digging into him, but into her eyes. "Well, go on, then!" he barked out, his face reddening. "You dragons took everything from me!"
His spoken words were just noise to her, but his projected thoughts were understandable enough – focused by an anger that overpowered his fear – but Frost had no idea what he was getting at. She had seen him before, which was why she had singled him out. He was the one who had come up with that special iron quill with the venom that could knock out any dragon. He designed that mechanism that allowed Mast– her former master – to shoot that quill. He came up with that clever system that Frost had been conditioned to use to shoot a quill into her victim whenever she lured them into position and stepped on a trigger plate. Her former master was driven to use her for his own purposes, but he needed his clever little inventor to get things done, the very land-strider that Frost held in her claws–
Something about his scent caught her attention. She had smelled it before as this land-strider was her former master's shadow for a while. It was… familiar, similar to something else. In the blink of the eye, Frost tore through every impression from every moment in her life, every raid, every fight, every dragon and land-strider, fire, blood, betrayal, darkness, death, smashed eggshells–
There! The scent of one associated by blood, a clutchmate. A dragon raid, a land-strider nest, a small dirt cave, the female land-strider trying to keep her hatchling quiet in her arms by singing about sunshine. The quill that Frost had dodged, impaling the hatchling and the female holding it. The quill had been designed to pierce thick scales and hide, after all.
"I lost everything to you goddamned dragons!" The land-strider under Frost's claws cried out, anger and indignation overpowering his fear. "My parents! My brother! My sister for whom I was working as a servant to earn her freedom!"
All of them lost to dragons in that raid, no doubt. Regardless of whether he recognized Frost, she knew that he would associate dragons with aggression, a lesson learned in retrospect.
"And even after all that," he growled, "I decide to come back, I decide to stay and try to confront my beliefs and try this dragon training, and this is how I am thanked?! That's all you dragons are good for, steal, kill, and destroy, so go on, enough staring! Kill me, foul beast!"
He rammed his forehead into Frost's nose, and she snarled viciously. She was about to bite that head off when something fell onto her head, a stick, large enough to stun her for an instant, but not enough to loosen her grip on her victim.
From the branches above, Confident waved down at her. "Frost, if you release him unharmed, I will tell you something that I think can help with your problem."
"Ignore him!" Butterfly cut in. "I'm the seer, and my dreams reveal–"
"Nonsense, that's what they reveal," Confident cut her off. He looked down at Frost. "My lord spoke to me and told me that I could save a life by telling you that–"
"You can heal your mind if you–" Butterfly interrupted–
Frost interrupted them both by leaping up and settling on a branch in front of them. They clearly wanted to distract her from her prey, and if this turned out to be an empty lure…
Confident held out a placating hand, but he withdrew with a yip when Frost snapped at it. She was in no mood to be soothed.
He huffed and closed his eyes. "It is not the sword that is good or evil, but its wielder. It is from the heart, not the hand, that flows villainy or virtue."
"The Deathgrippers!" Butterfly cried out. "They are the key!"
"Hiccup tried that already," Confident groaned. "There must be something else or nothing at all."
"Yes, yes," Butterfly waved him off impatiently. "Their venom with Mr. Firefly's commands helped some, but a sword cannot mend the injury it creates. His voice was too much like Grimmel's who cut up her mind in the first place."
From below, the blonde-haired female called up, "Frost, you are a gods-damn miracle worker!" She gestured to the four land-striders that she had been attempting to goad into touching a dragon. The one Frost had roughed up was slumped against the tree with shaking knees, Benevolent sitting next to him in solidarity, but the other three were trembling and hiding under the nearest dragon they could find to get away from Frost.
"Yes, yes," Confident said dryly, snapping Frost's attention back to him. "But what, then, is the answer, oh child of Beelzebub?" He crossed his arms and looked expectantly at her."
"I don't know every last detail!" Butterfly hissed. "And you really know how to get me all steamed up, so congratulations if that was all you wanted. Interpreting the dreams the gods give me is a delicate art and–"
Frost cut them off with an ear-piercing shriek.
"Right," Butterfly huffed. "Toothless lost his tail to an attack from iron and rope and a fall into a forest, but it was healed by your spit and lightning and little bits of bones. An old hurt healed by something new. So–"
"Likewise," Confident cut her off, "your old hurt, caused by an old voice under the influence of Deathgripper venom, will be healed by a new voice, a different voice."
Butterfly crossed her arms. "Oh, please do go on, Sir Interrupts-A-Lot. Tell us more about this new… voice."
He opened his eyes and slumped. "I don't know. My god revealed to me enough to save that man down there, and to get Frost to some promising start, but the lives of dragons are of no concern for the lord of Men. For Frost's sake, Tofa, what can you offer? That Dragon King had some special mind control power. Maybe she could, uhhhh, heal Frost's mind?"
She groaned. "No, that's not how it works. She can overpower a dragon's willI, but she can't just shadow Frost forever and maintain nonstop vigil. You can roll a log up a hill, but once you let go of it, it will roll back down to the bottom."
"Maybe, if Hiccup were to give you a command again, but this time specifically to not smash your eggs? If you find a Deathgripper and convince him to fly back here with you–"
Frost snarled her thoughts about that.
"Well, that's all I got, then," Confident said. "But finding a Deathgripper and trying to resist killing him is a good start if you were to ask me. I hope my… friend… here didn't muddy the waters too much with her vain babbling about her visions from Baal–"
Butterfly punched him in the shoulder. "They're more reliable than the flimsy trifles that you claim to be revela–"
Frost knew an indication that she should depart when she saw one, and none were ever so clear. As she hastily shot up into the open sky, she decided to at least see if she could track down any of the sting-tails that had scattered several days ago.
If nothing else, the potential for vengeance gave her a reason to continue living.
