The room was dark, built out of some blue metal, specially chosen and made by the person who created the plans. Wires made of some soft, yet tough black material lay on the floor like waiting vipers, plentiful as the vines on a jungle floor. Boxes of thin glass, curling sigils carved into the surface, lined either side of the room. A faint blue glow emanated where the wires plugged into the boxes.

At the end of the long room, a wall of the same dark, shiny blue, and in front of that wall, a table littered with papers, each one filled with careful diagrams and rambling notes. And standing before that table, a huge man, heavily muscled, bathed in that ethereal glow, his hands flat on the table, fingers splayed. The light reflected off his skin, played off every little movement.

"Eurenym."

The man looked up at his name and turned to face him.

Myre walked closer, ignoring what populated the glass cages. If it wasn't Eurenym doing this, he would never have allowed it to happen under his nose. If anything eased that burden on his conscience, it was that all the people here had committed atrocities. This was only their method of punishment.

You needed trial runs for that final, resounding success, after all.

He reached Eurenym, and looked up into his face. Dark, thin hair that he'd allowed to fall over his forehead, a hooked nose, and a fine layer of stubble.

And calm, half-lidded, ice-gray eyes.

Every time Myre looked at Eurenym, it hit him just how unnatural eyes like those were. It should be obvious by now, by the amount of times he spoke with him, but it still hit just as hard every time.

And to think he still hadn't begun with the tattoos.

"I believe you are aware of the recent move against the sorcerers?"

Eurenym stood straight, but loosely, his back to the table. He nodded in response.

"I heard. You retreated."

His voice was unexpectedly soft, but every bit as deep as you would have expected.

Myre smiled at him. "Yes. They had cannons, powered by magical energy. Strong enough to incinerate a ship upon contact."

"You want that I build one?" Eurenym asked.

"Hm?" Myre said. "I do not believe you have enough in you at the moment to power one, Eurenym. I will not ask you. I simply wished to state that I fought two of theirs."

Eurenym tilted his head questioningly.

Myre's finger brushed against the mark on his face. "One of them managed to land a hit."

Eurenym nodded. Then frowned.

"It hurts every time I speak," Myre explained. "I believe my cheekbone may be fractured."

Eurenym raised an eyebrow, then nodded understandingly and turned back to his desk. Myre waited, and in a minute Eurenym had drawn up a sigil on the back of one of his notes. He handed it to Myre.

"Are you sure you don't need this?" he asked, reading through the notes. "The observations on your limited magical flow tests seem important."

Eurenym's eyes widened for a second before settling back into the customary bored expression. "Not… giving it to you."

He leaned in. "You can read it?" he asked in a low voice.

"Your code has ingenuity, yes, but it is symbol-based," Myre told him. "That makes it simple to understand, if you can recognize how it links together."

"Not code," Eurenym said. "Magic."

Myre looked back at the paper. "Ah."

Eurenym shrugged. "Should've expected it. You're smart. Turn off antimagic for healing."

Myre took a deep breath, closing his eyes, and bottled the hunger down into the tightest corner of his being.

"Quickly now," he said calmly. In the back of mind, he noticed how Eurenym shook his head, an expression of accustomed wonder on his face. Most likely he was wondering how Myre could talk with something like a fractured cheekbone. It should have hurt like hell, as Modo would say.

Myre allowed a little amusement to leak into his permanent smile. It was just about perfect control.

Eurenym tapped the sigil, and it began to glow, bright white with traces of rainbow shades, the colour of his magic. Carefully, he applied it to Myre's cheek.

In barely a second, the pain faded, and Myre breathed out, antimagic swelling, flaring around him again. Eurenym stepped back out of its range, a faint, strained look on his face as it, for a moment, fed on his power.

"My apologies," Myre said, reining it in. "Oh, and how are the experiments going?"

Eurenym glanced at his test subjects, then looked back at Myre.

"One week," he said softly.

Myre smile was the personification of light glinting off a knife.

"Excellent."

Something brushed against his leg, and he looked down, then picked up the offender.

"Hello, mister kitty," he smiled.

"Mrraow."

=0=

"Buzzard's going to have to either retrain with his eye as it is, or we'll have to set up some kind of magical vision for him," Alphas said as he walked to the stables with Hiccup.

Hiccup sighed despondently. "Right."

"I know what you're thinking," Alphas said sharply, "and I'm telling you not to think it. It's not. Your. Fault. Blame Myre for having someone to shoot Buzzard."

"But I'm the reason he came here," Hiccup said tiredly. "You can't tell me that's not my fault."

"Sure," Alphas said, stopping to pick up a thick, round piece of wood that was leaning by the wall, "but that doesn't mean you're at fault for his attack. Myre attacked us because Myre attacked us. You had nothing to do with it."

He lifted the wood up to his face, examining it. It had sigils carved into it. Alphas scrutinized it for a moment, then let his hand swing back down and sighed.

"I can't make you feel anything different just by telling you not to feel that way," he said, "but if I can pound that thought into your head enough times, maybe you'll start to believe it."

Hiccup nodded glumly.

"You might not feel any different right now," Alphas continued, rounding the corner to the dragon stables, "but it takes effect eventually."

"Okay," Hiccup said. Their stables were smaller than the ones on Berk, although he'd only seen the ones on the castle grounds. The other two that he'd visited had been larger, probably some sort of public service.

The individual rooms were very well-made in comparison to Berk's, however. Arching slopes, designated food and water troughs, and the walls lined with material and sigils that were, Hiccup saw, specific to whichever dragon resided there. Well, he could see that about the materials, at least. The sigils were still a mystery to him.

Beside him, Alphas got Wreckage to stand up, then tapped the stick he'd brought with him. The air was immediately alive with a heated whine as air was blasted straight at Wreckage, cleaning him off astoundingly well. Hiccup watched the process until Alphas tapped the stick again, and the magic deactivated. He'd tapped it in the same place as before, Hiccup noticed.

"How does that work?" Hiccup asked. "I'm really interested."

"You're interested in quite a lot of things," Alphas said drily. "Magic is complicated to explain if you don't know the grammar."

Hiccup tilted his head as Alphas picked up a brush. "Grammar?"

"Yeah," Alphas said, sweeping across Wreckage's thick, rough scales. "Just like any other language. You must have noticed that you can't just replace Greek words with Norse equivalents and make a perfectly good sentence. Also, give me a hand with this, damn you."

"Oh, sorry," Hiccup said, grabbing another brush from the pile of grooming equipment/instruments. "Where should I…?"

"Wings. Take care of the area under the wings too."

Hiccup put a hand on the wing on his side, and Wreckage obligingly lifted it up. Hiccup began to scrub at the joint.

"Not too hard," Alphas told him. "You can damage his shockwave ability if you do it too hard."

Hiccup paused, then began to scrub again, lighter this time.

"Yeah, that's fine," Alphas said, and continued working on his side. They continued to clean Wreckage thoroughly, silently.

"How would it hurt his shockwave?" Hiccup said after a while. It was an intriguing thought.

"Knew you'd say that," Alphas muttered, running the brush firmly across the top of Wreckage's conveniently bowed head. "The shockwave's just really powerful air, right?"

Hiccup nodded.

"Air's thin. You know that."

Another nod. Hiccup finished with the first wing, then moved around to start on the second.

"That means you can pack a lot of it into a small place. More than you can with, let's say, water."

Another nod. Alphas glanced at him while he took care of the neck. "Side to side at the wing joint, not up and down. If you can put enough air into a tight spot, then you open the container, whatever it is, it comes out a lot harder than if you put less air in there. Try it, right now. Breathe in a normal amount."

Hiccup obliged, and exhaled. He looked questioningly at Alphas.

"Now breathe in as much air as you can manage."

Hiccup inhaled until he felt his lungs were about to burst, and let it all out at once in a long snort.

"Get it?"

"Yep. That's interesting," Hiccup mused. "There's a lot of potential use for that."

"In your own time, smart guy," Alphas grinned. "Keep on with the wings in the meantime."

Hiccup nodded and resumed with cleaning Wreckage. He tugged lightly on the wing, and it unfolded. He began to run the brush across the tight membranes.

"That's basically what Wreckage does. There's an organ in him that stores air, like an extra lung. There are holes in his skin which he sucks the air in from, and that organ holds it in."

"Is that why I keep hearing a whistling sort of sound around him?"

"Ah," Alphas smiled. "You got it. That's some good hearing. Yes, that's why there's a whistling sound sometimes. When the organ's full, the holes in his skin close up, and that makes the sound."

Hiccup eyed Wreckage. "He won't explode, will he?"

Alphas failed to keep in a small laugh. "Pfft. If Wreckage was ever going to explode, he'd have done it by now."

"Heh," Hiccup smiled, and put a hand to the back of his neck.

"Scrubbing too hard can damage the holes in his skin," Alphas told him, "and make them close up until they heal. That means his shockwave would recharge slower in that time."

"Ohhhh," Hiccup said, nodding. "That makes a lot of sense now. Thanks."

"No problem."

Alphas began to brush at the front legs. "Can you handle the back legs and the tail when you're done with that wing?"

"Hm?" Hiccup looked up. "Sure."

He finished with the nub of bone where the wing curled, then started with the back legs.

"So…"

Alphas looked up. "What?"

"How does the air stick work?"

Alphas sighed good-naturedly. "In basic terms, the air rune combined with a directional rune to make the air go one way, then combined with a strength rune to increase the power. And an adjusted power sigil for control over its activity."

"That… sounds simple, actually."

"That," Alphas said, pointing at him, "is because I gave it to you in layman's terms."

"Oh, so it's oh so much harder than you're making it out for little old me?" Hiccup said sarcastically.

Alphas threw the brush aside, dusting his hands off, and grinned at Hiccup. "I can teach you if you like, big shot. Let's see how you do, eh?"

Hiccup grinned right back at him. "Challenge accepted."

=0=

They finished by watering down Wreckage, then drying him off with a cloth, then rubbing a special oil into his scales. The entire process, along with the air blaster and dusting off, was repeated on Spiral. Toothless was terrified of the air blaster, so Alphas took pity and they took to it straight from the dusting.

And now they were back at the castle. Omegas and Leonidas were sitting together outside the entrance. Leonidas had a patch of black leather covering his right eye. Omegas was poking at his face.

"Leave Buzzard alone, 'Megas," Alphas said, drawing to a halt beside them. Leonidas nodded to him, then, after a moment's hesitation, nodded to Hiccup as well.

Hiccup was a little taken aback, but recovered enough to wave back at him.

"Ah, but he likes it," Omegas said jauntily. He nudged Leonidas. "Don't you, Buzzy?"

"You say that word again," Leonidas said gruffly, "and prince or not, I will deck you."

"Buzzy."

Leonidas was up in a flash, dragging Omegas up by the collar, and flipped him over his shoulder. Omegas landed on his back, laughing.

"Ah, you actually went through with it! You actually did it!"

"Did I say I wouldn't?" Leonidas responded, sitting back down. A reluctant smile played on his face for an instant before he went blank again. He looked up at Alphas and Hiccup, watching amusedly.

"Where are you two going?"

"Inside, Buzzard. Where else?"

"Take me with you," Leonidas said flatly. "By the gods, if I have to talk to him for another minute this eye won't be the only thing I lose."

"You're mean," Omegas said, turning over onto his stomach.

"Play catch with each other," Alphas suggested.

"The only child here is your brother," Leonidas growled.

"I was thinking more along the lines of rehabilitation," Alphas said smoothly. "You've lost a good chunk of your hand-eye coordination. Do something to get it back."

Leonidas paused. "That's… not a bad idea."

He looked tiredly at Omegas. "Up for it, prince kid?"

Omegas shrugged. "Sure. I'll get a ball."

He got up and jogged off inside ahead of them. Leonidas waited for exactly zero seconds before scrambling up and sprinting for the castle gates.

"Found one right insi-" Omegas paused mid-sentence, mid-step, his eyes on the retreating figure of the Commander, his mouth still framed around 'ide'. He had a wooden ball held loosely in an upturned hand.

He glanced at Alphas, then looked back at Leonidas.

"You should run after him," Alphas suggested with a smug grin.

"Great idea!"

Omegas aimed and threw the ball, then set off running after Leonidas. The ball hit him in the back and he looked around, screamed a curse, and somehow managed to speed up.

"HEY BUZZY, WAIT UP!"

"STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!"

Leonidas tapped his hand against the sigil on the gates as he neared, which crashed open, and ran outside. Omegas reached the gates right as they closed, and slammed into the metal bars. He staggered a little, dazed, then activated the sigil and ran off after Leonidas, slipping through the gates even as they opened.

"Leonidas is in his late thirties, just so you know," Alphas informed Hiccup as they watched the gates swing closed. He gestured. "And he acts like this."

"How old are you?" Hiccup said, turning to him.

"Twenty and six years old."

"So… about a ten year difference. Are you sure he doesn't just see this as playing with a kid?"

"That might be it," Alphas nodded. "Then again, you could also say that he's secretly immature. Or maybe he just wants to enjoy himself."

He shrugged. "Who knows."

Hiccup watched the gates for a while before quickly shaking his head and turning back to Alphas. "What did we come here for?"

Alphas looked blankly at him. "Oh, right."

=0=

Hiccup stared at it.

"Just hop in," Alphas was saying.

A little square of colour, the size of a Maces and Talons board, lay at his feet. Patches of golden and green, with specks of red and black and white, covered the area in a random patchwork jigsaw. Dark green thickly lined three sides of the square, the remaining edge left to be taken over by the other colours. The square was illuminated by a golden sunset light, completely at odds with the bright blue of the sky around them.

Hiccup hunkered down, peering closely at the jumble of hues and shades, then looked up at Alphas, who wasn't there anymore.

He whirled around, looking desperately for any sign of Alphas.

"What's the matter, man?"

Hiccup's head switched around so fast that he felt that familiar heat of whiplash blossom in the back of his neck, and he clapped a hand there. Alphas watched him, frowning.

"Really," he said. "You just have to step in. Like this."

He turned back to the one open side of the square, and stepped forward.

He vanished before his foot touched down.

Hiccup watched, mouth agape, his hand still pressed down on his neck, then hesitantly shuffled forward, slowly.

The instant his foot entered the dark green, a forest of pines burst up around him and he leapt up backwards from his crouching position. The castle flickered back into view, the world the size of a game board in front of him.

He breathed deeply, then carefully stepped around to the open side and tentatively held his foot over the boundary, then stepped in. The world rippled and now Hiccup was standing in the middle of a dirt path that snaked between fields of wheat, marching off and down into the distance. Alphas stood waiting for him, outlined against the sunset visible over the heads of the trees that stood on the distant grounds, rising slowly up until the world cut off.

Hiccup walked to the edge of the downward curve that the ground took. The fields dipped down into something like a valley, a thin river running through the middle like quicksilver in the low sun. Hiccup shaded his eyes, squinting.

It looked like someone had cut out a part of a mountain range and dropped it here.

"What is this place?" he wondered, turning to Alphas.

Alphas walked forward and continued smoothly down the steeper slope, unhindered by the change in gradient.

"Come with me."

=0=

There was a large wooden house down in the valley, just by the stream. The walls had been painted red, the corners painted white. The front of the house was rather open and faced west, or at least what passed for west here. A wooden platform was arranged at the door, as wide as the house and also covered by the roof. They sat there, facing the sun, which hadn't moved since they came here.

"Where should we start?" Alphas said, staring at the river. "This place first? Or any other questions you have?"

"Let's start with this," Hiccup said, bewildered, "and then you can answer anything else."

"Right," Alphas nodded, then paused. "You know, it just occurred to me that Buzzard's still having to take medication for his eye. That's probably why he's so loopy right now. And Omegas is just Omegas."

"Wow. Loopy."

"Shut up. You know what I mean." He sighed. "This is… somewhere. That doesn't exist anymore. It was around a few thousand years ago before… a war broke out."

Hiccup stayed silent.

"The war was between magids," Alphas continued, "and normal people. Before, both societies existed together. But then some people grew jealous, basically, that we had magic while they didn't. They started a hate movement against us, and it kept growing until it spilled over.

"Even magic sometimes isn't enough against something like a thrown knife. They had a rule back then, to not kill using magic. Because of that, huge numbers of magids died. By the time they began to fight back, all of them had been killed except for the strongest or most talented magids. Or just the clever ones.

"After some time, the magid leaders all agreed that we couldn't live in harmony with the normal world anymore, and we struck out on our own. That's why Nisi exists, and all the other places like it. I've heard that in some areas, a few magids have come out into the open and offered their services to kings and all that, in exchange for privacy and protection. The local people only know that there's a mystical figure guiding their king. None of the magids that have come out tell anyone that there's whole civilizations of people like them out there. It's mostly soothsayers, healers, witches, magids who can pass by with a vague explanation. People who won't make the normals sit up and think "hey, how the hell does that work?"

"But anyway. During the war, after the 'killing with magic' rule was retracted, all the magids left began fighting back. Obviously, they were angry because of all their friends and family who'd died. And emotion plays a big part in the strength of your magic. It's all down to how the soul is constructed."

Alphas looked at him. "I'll show you a diagram later."

"In any case, the magical potency then was at an all time high. And too much magic in one area is… harmful. You might have noticed that the dragons on Nisi are more… docile, I suppose, than the ones on Berk."

"You said that on Berk too. They seem the same to me," Hiccup told him.

Alphas frowned. "I did? They do?"

"I mean, I don't see any difference between Berkian and… Nisian? Dragons?"

"Nisian," Alphas mused.

"I don't know, okay?" Hiccup said, bemused.

"I don't know either," Alphas admitted. "We've always been 'the sorcerers'. Nisi is just our home. It's the same with all the other magid groups."

"There are more?"

Alphas looked at him. "Duh? Sorcerers live on Nisi, witches live in some hidden area on the mainland, mages have their own island somewhere west. Enchanters and magicians have a unique relationship, in that they occupy one half each of the same place. They share another island together. And conjurers are scattered throughout our magic societies. You just get some born from time to time."

"You guys have a lot of islands then, don't you?" Hiccup remarked sardonically.

"Any ideas for a better place to house an entire secret society?" Alphas replied. "If you can think of anything, do tell."

Hiccup shrugged. "Underground?"

Alphas gave him an exasperated look. "How long do you think you could handle living underground for? No sky, no sun, no trees, no open spaces. We can make food from scratch with alchemy, sure, but that's the only thing we can make. We can't make an entire sky. We can't make day and night. We can't make the world, smaller, just for ourselves. It's-"

"Okay, okay, you've made your point," Hiccup interrupted. It was getting too much.

Alphas breathed out. "Right."

He paused. "How did we get here?"

"We walked."

"Not-" he broke down into quiet chuckles, holding his head in one hand. "I mean, how'd we get to this point in the conversation."

"Uhh," Hiccup looked up, thinking. "You said something about the dragons being more docile here because of the magic, and I said I didn't see any difference between Berkian and 'Nisian' dragons, then you told me about the different magical places, then I said you had a lot of islands, then you told me to tell you a place where you could house a secret society, I suggested underground, then you started telling me everything wrong with that idea."

Hiccup took a deep breath, and let it out. "That's how we got here."

He looked at Alphas, who was watching him with a quiet smile. "What?"

"Nothing," Alphas said, his head resting on his hands. "Just impressed that you remember that precisely."

He straightened and clapped his hands. "Right. Thank you for reminding me. So I left off at 'too much magic in one place is harmful'. The thing is, too much magic in one area can sort of… slosh around. React with itself. All the different nuances of magic mixing with one another to create new and weird spells. That's what happened with this place. It used to be a valley on the mainland. Then someone set a trap for an entire army of the normals, passing through. It worked, but then the amount of magic you need for every person in an army adds up to a huge amount.

"Background magical levels in the area started getting critical, so someone threw a new spell in there to gather all the magic into one spot to contain it and then cart it off somewhere, basically. Probably would have thrown it into the ocean. Good thing their plan didn't work. Well, good for us, not really good for them, whoever they were. The spell gathered all the magic into one… ball, I guess. Just a ball of magic, the size of your hand.

Alphas treated him to a sharp smile. "Now, I think you can imagine what went wrong. Based on what I've told you so far, take a guess."

Hiccup didn't even need to think about it. All the magic in a huge area, already reacting with itself, concentrated into one little ball? The result was obvious.

"It reacted with itself even faster," he said, "and you got this."

Alphas clapped slowly. "Well done. Yes, it reacted with itself, and then it exploded. The entire area within the explosion got turned into this. The spell warped the valley to be the same size without, at the same time, taking up that much space. The sorcerers claimed that bit of land and we moved it here to Nisi. Now we use it to supply food to the island. There's animals some way from here. I can show you if you want."

Hiccup frowned. "Wait, so was the explosion square-shaped?"

Alphas shrugged. "I mean, proportions are an important part of runes and sigils. Why not the actual magic too?"

Hiccup decided to let it go. The rules of magic seemed to be roundabout, curving in on themselves occasionally, when they felt like it. Probably if you were born into magic, you understood it much better, but all Hiccup understood for certain was that magic needed to get its priorities straight.

"What's left back there then?" he asked. Alphas waved a hand at him.

"You'd hardly even notice anything wrong if you actually went there. The magids terraformed the place so that there wouldn't be any trace of magic left in the normal world."

"Terraformed?"

"That means changing the land to how you want it," Alphas said. "Earth and air and water and everything."

"Oh. Okay."

"Interesting thing is," Alphas continued, "that time doesn't pass here. When space got distorted, time did, too. It's just always close to sunset. There's duration, sure, but no time. I find that extremely interesting."

He turned to Hiccup, dark eyes glinting gold in the late sunrays.

"Don't you?"

Hiccup returned the smile, positioning his head for the perfect flash of his own emerald green.

"Absolutely."

Alphas leaned back, wearing a sly smile. "I swear, I feel so proud right now."

Hiccup's smile turned confused. "What?"

"Ah, it's nothing," Alphas laughed. "Don't worry about it."

He looked back at the sun, unblinking. "Would you say, perhaps, that we are the culmination of everyone we have ever known?"

Hiccup nodded, a little bemused.

Alphas turned back to him, rubbing his hands. "Alright, what other questions do you have?"

That shark's smile. "We have all the time in the world, after all."

Hiccup tried to think of something to say, and remembered the king's words back then.

"Why did my father come and visit you?"

"Ah," Alphas said, growing immediately serious. "Good question. You'd have to ask Uncle about that, because I really don't know. For me, it was just something that happened. Summer's hot, winter's cold, your father comes every few years to meet with us. Just one of those things."

Hiccup was crestfallen, but nodded. It was an important question, and he'd really have preferred to have it answered as soon as possible, but at least the king was there to be asked whenever Hiccup needed to.

"On Berk, Myre said he was doing everything for a dragon legend," Hiccup said. "Do you know anything about that?"

Alphas winced. "That's an extremely long story to tell. I know what it is, but I think it would be faster to just give you the book."

"Book?"

"It's a fairytale. Should be in any children's book you can name. I'll give it to you when we come out of here. Any other questions?"

"Yeah. What's a guns?"

"Just gun, not guns," Alphas corrected. "You saw the cannons fire, right?"

Hiccup nodded.

"A gun is like a mini cannon. Handheld. They're illegal to use because they're just too powerful. And by the way, our cannons aren't the same as the cannons that Myre uses. His shoot huge balls of metal. That's probably starting to be normal everywhere else, so you should expect that."

"I didn't see any metal balls," Hiccup said, "while I was out there."

Alphas flapped a hand at him. "You were a bit further away. And you were looking down at the ships. If you were looking at them from the side, you'd have seen their cannons."

"Alright." Hiccup breathed out. "Now, magic time."

Alphas grinned. "I'll get some of the stuff you need. Give me a few minutes."

=0=

"I got you the book," Alphas said, slapping a leatherbound book down in front of Hiccup. It had fractal, geometric designs captured within a rectangle on the front cover, with a woman holding a rose, standing in front of a fractured blue sky.

"What is this?" Hiccup asked, picking it up and flipping through the pages. Alphas sat down and carefully put an inkwell down. After that, several pencils and brushes clattered onto the wooden floor, followed by a book and some blank sheets of parchment.

Alphas picked the book out of his hands and rifled through the pages until he seemed to find what he wanted. The book was pushed back in front of him. Hiccup looked down at something that looked like a dragon made out of fire.

"Oh, is this the legend?" he asked, realization dawning. Alphas nodded as he arranged the rest of the items he'd brought.

"You can read it while I figure out how to teach you, because I have no idea how to get through this."

Hiccup grinned and settled against one of the beams that held up the roof, while Alphas picked up another book and began to ponder over it. Hiccup looked up again.

"Alphas."

"What?"

"I can't read Greek."

"Oh, sorry," he said, setting the book face down and picking up a brush and a sheet. "I forgot that I only gave you speech."

A sigil bloomed on the paper, and he peeled it from itself, then stuck it to Hiccup's head. The eye-watering feeling of another mind looming over yours flashed for an instant before Alphas took it away again.

Hiccup looked down at the letters he could now understand, and began to read.

In the time before men, there was a dragon, who laid an egg. This dragon was the first of them all, and the mother of them all. The first egg hatched and gave rise to every order of dragon, from the smallest Fireworm to the largest Devastare.

The dragon laid a second egg, and the wyverns were birthed.

And when man came to be, the dragon despised the new ones, and she set her children to destroy them, the wyverns who killed quietly, and the dragons who left trails of destruction behind them.

Her army, the wyverns as commanders, the dragons as soldiers. And she, the mother of dragons, watching for the death of man.

But men were far more capable than she had anticipated, and they harnessed the forces which before only she and few of her children could control, and turned it on her.

Now, magic belonged no longer only to the mother and the wyverns.

And the men of ancient times fought to a standstill and garnered a truce with the mother, and so both races existed peacefully together.

But then one day, all magic began to falter, and all mankind and dragonkind found that the source was failing.

The sun, the light of magic, was dying.

And so the mother decided to become one with the heart of the world, so that her children could live on, and so the world that the dragons and the men had created together would not die. The mother became one with the sun, became one with magic, and she lives still as the Heart of the World, within the burning depths.

But some of man and some of the draconic still harboured resentment towards the other, and with none to watch them, some enacted their grievous acts of hatred, which spilt over into a war unlike any other. Those who sought not to battle rose against their fellows, and slowly, the animosity was crushed but for some who escaped elsewhere, hiding deep below the perception of those who searched for them.

But the mother would grace this world once more.

For those who understood the sun for what it was, those who understood that the mother had become one with it, built a magic to call her, to thrall her, and they named her by their own understanding of names, and they called her something that could not capture her form.

They called the Golden Roar, the Mother of Dragons, the Heart of the World.

And in thrall, she gave them what they sought for, and when power became theirs, they left her to return.

Those magids died long ago, but yet the Heart lives on, waiting.

Hiccup read to the end, then laid the book down. If anything, he was just as confused as before, if not a little more.

Alphas was sitting, staring at nothing. Hiccup waved in his direction, and he looked up.

"Hm? Oh, you're done?"

Hiccup nodded. "Not sure I understand what's in it for Myre. From the way it's written, those magids that called that mother of dragons got some kind of power, but what was it?"

Alphas shrugged. "Hell if I know. The original legend was written a hundred thousand years ago, or something like that. Probably some of the story was lost as it was passed down."

"Oh," Hiccup said, looking back down at the open pages of the book. Gently, he closed it, then scooted over to Alphas.

"So… about the magic?"

Alphas sighed. "I have no idea how to teach you, so I'm going to give you the basics of written magic, and if you don't get it, we give up. Okay?"

Hiccup's mouth quirked into a smile. "Sure."

"Here goes." Alphas clapped his hands together, closed his eyes, muttered something, then his head snapped back up. Eyes like shadow bored into him.

"So written magic uses two things, runes and connectives. Using runes and connectives, you can make sigils, which are the spells, basically. You can use it to say stuff as well, but it's needlessly complicated, so most people just talk in their own language. Magic is secondary. Anyway, the runes represent basic elements of the world, and connectives let you link it all together for how you want it to be. Got that much?"

Hiccup nodded slowly. Alphas was saying a lot at once.

"There's a whole bunch of runes, so I'll just give you a couple of them, give you a list of the connectives, and if you can draw a working spell then you're a goddamn genius for getting all of that."

Alphas picked up a sheet of parchment and handed it to him. Hiccup looked at the various labelled symbols.

"Those are some basic runes," Alphas said as he picked up another sheet. "Here's connectives."

Hiccup accepted the second sheet and pored over the lines.

"There's two sides to most connectives except for the 'Completed' connective," Alphas was saying. "That one's just a marker to show that you've completed one sigil. Every other connective is between two runes, so you need some way to show which rune you're connecting from. Like with the 'Transform' connective, if you want to turn, let's say, wood, into something else, like… let's just go with stone, you'll draw the sigil for wood and stone, then link them with the connective. To show what's being transformed into what, there's indicators on the connective. The side with the little circle is what it's being transformed into. The side without the circle is what it's being transformed from."

Hiccup gave a slight nod as he noted the circle on one side of the connective marked 'Transform'. Alphas had slightly scrawling handwriting.

"I suppose the 'And' connective also doesn't have sides," Alphas said, pointing at said connective. "We just use that one to associate runes. They have to be of the same type, though. Like, you can't associate a descriptive rune with an object rune."

"Descriptive rune? Object rune?" Hiccup asked, looking up.

"Dammit, this is why I'm a terrible teacher," Alphas groaned. "There's three types of runes. One type is object runes, which represent stuff that exists. Like earth, air, fire, water. The second type is descriptive runes, which represent qualities that things can have. You know, like if it's hard or soft or something. The third type is active runes, which represent something that can happen. Like moving forward or backward."

Hiccup nodded, feeling a little sorry for Alphas.

"Okay," Alphas sighed, pushing another sheet of parchment towards him. "Draw a sigil for shooting fire in a line. I've given you all the runes you need, and a list of all the connectives. Give it a try. Don't worry about drawing it exactly for now, just make it. It needs to be recognizable though."

Hiccup nodded again. "Sure."

He slid the blank sheet towards himself, picked up a pencil and began looking back and forth between the three sheets he had been given.

Some time later, he slowly pushed the sheet back to Alphas, who glanced at it and picked it up.

"I see," he said slowly. "You almost got it, actually."

Hiccup brightened as Alphas shuffled over so that they were both looking at his drawing. He'd been worried he was doing it completely wrong.

"You see this, over here? You should have used a 'With Object' connective, not a 'That Is' one. It says 'shoot fire', instead of 'fire being shot'. You get the difference, right? And over here, you should have use a 'With Quality' connective, so that the fire is said to have a linear quality. That makes it go straight. Everything else is perfect. Oh, and you forgot to mark it with 'Completed'."

He grinned and reached a hand out before pausing, then slowly retracting it.

Hiccup wondered what he'd been about to do.

"Natural magic writer, aren't you?" Alphas quipped. "You can keep doing this if you like. There's probably some learning books somewhere in our library. Use those as reference if you want to continue."

"Thanks for the offer," Hiccup said, stretching his arms out over his head, fingers laced. "I don't know if I want to keep doing it, though."

Alphas shrugged as he picked up everything else. "Well, whenever the mood takes you. Oh, could you pick up those brushes and the storybook?"

Hiccup complied, gathering them up into his arms, and followed Alphas as they made their way back.

=0=

"Uhh," Hiccup said, the moment they exited. The sky was still bright, midday blue outside that boardgame of a world, despite the amount of time they'd spent in there.

"What did I tell you?" Alphas said, continuing onward. "Time doesn't pass while you're in the valley."

Hiccup watched him as he strode on. It was almost like he'd read his mind.

Hiccup followed after him.

Alphas had just taken the things he was carrying, and left him to put them all back, when Hiccup saw someone try to climb over the castle gates in the distance. Someone else followed, clearly in hysterics, and pressed a hand to the sigil that opened the gilded doors. The climber sprinted through, while the other person leaned against the wall with one hand, still laughing.

Hiccup watched as the sprinting figure drew closer.

Blonde hair.

Red shirt.

Blue eyes.

He took a slow step forward, which turned into another, which turned into another. Hiccup ran towards her, and he and Astrid slammed into each other in a tight hug.

Nothing was said for a long moment as they both just held each other, then Astrid pressed a light kiss to his cheek. He returned it, smiling, until he saw the way her eyes shone.

"Astrid?" he said, worried. "What's wrong?"

She smiled at him, then blinked hard and wiped the tears away.

"I'm just happy to see you," she told him softly, then hugged him again.

And despite the heat beating down on them, it was a perfect moment.

A/N: I created an entire language just for this fic lol, so if you want to get to know the rules a bit better (your choice, it's not necessary to learn the language to understand anything that goes on), I'll place the link to a document with the rules of the language.

bit . ly/3P7ZUmw

Copy and paste into your browser (don't forget to remove the spaces!) to open the document for the language.

Have a nice day!