I don't own anything recognizable.

Hi, I'm a terrible person and I am very sorry for the wait. This story is not over, I fully intend to finish it. When I first started this story, I was 12, and hadn't touched Wattpad, or even heard of Archive of Our Own. I've explored fanfiction for a good two years now, and I think I have a better grasp on how things work. I'll update when I can and when I get new ideas, so the upload schedule is going to stay very inconsistent but hopefully not as bad as this wait was.

Chapter 2

Having been thoroughly covered up by Hiccup and other long-dead Berkians, dragons were nothing but myths. There were those who believed in them, sure, but there were also those who believed in trolls and gnomes. Roughly half of the families in Berk stuck to the traditions of naming their children to scare away said beasts, though only a third of that group did it for the actual belief.

The dragons, on the other hand, were warned and taught to never leave their sanctuary, for fear of those who had driven them to the caverns in the first place.

The dragons were happy, their hatchlings thrived and grew into generation after generation of strong, healthy families.

But some crazy viking just had to come and tear it all away.

The ships arrived during the warm season, when the lower caves were abandoned by all but the sea dwellers, and the air grew damp.

The first thing they tried was smoking them out. Flaming logs were thrown into the chasm for a week straight before someone finally gained a brain cell or two and realized that dragons themselves breathe fire, and weren't bothered by the smoke. The dragons may not have been driven away, but several had been wounded when the logs landed on those who didn't notice the falling timber.

The next attempt was poison gasses. That started to draw some out. Over the course of ten days, one-sixth of the entire population of dragons had fled. Those who had left either had very young hatchlings or had had their immune system weakened by age, as the majority of the dragon population was resistant to the toxic fumes.

Emboldened by the dragons who had fled from the gasses, the vikings found a new tactic. They started taking pickaxes and hammers to the dams around the entrance. That was what did it. By the end of the warm season, the caverns had been completely flooded.

When we fled the caverns, we didn't see what we had expected. Perhaps somebody wanted to exterminate all dragons, maybe an army was looking to get the advantage over their foes and thought that they could make dragons do their bidding.

But we didn't get any of those things.

We got... nothing. The huge expanse of ocean was deserted as far as the sharpest eye could see. There were none of the wooden sea faring vessels spoken of in legends, the horizon rarely broken by islands and sea stacks. Why had the humans left? Why would they spend so much time and effort to bar our home from all but the sea dragons, just to leave before they could enjoy their spoils?

What we did know was that whoever had flooded the caverns couldn't have gone far.

There were far too many dragons for us to all fly in one group, so we split into groups of twenty to forty dragons, each heading in a different direction. My group came upon a large intimidating island with sheer cliffs making up the majority of the coast. A helpful scauldron informed us that there were many ships docked on the other side of the island.

We had found our attackers.

Our flock leader, a nadder known as Greyscale, spotted something making a fuss at the bottom of the cliffs. It appeared to be an animal that had somehow gotten down the cliffside, but got caught in the rising tide. Although we mostly eat fish, I was well aware that the surface fauna were edible.

I split from the group, and plucked the thrashing animal from the ocean.


Ingrid was terrified. She was staring at the creatures in the sky one second, and up with them the next. She was held tightly around the middle by talons thicker than her wrist, leaving her barely enough room for her lungs to expand halfway.

After a few seconds, the shock of such a quick transition from sea to clouds were off and she promptly began screaming her lungs out. Her stomach gave a jerk and the speed snatched her breath as her captor quickly ascended to fly above the flock.

She cracked open her eyes after several minutes of steady flight. The sight that greeted her stole whatever breath she had regained after the shock of sudden flight.

Glimmering ocean spread as far as the eye could see, with fluffy white clouds and towering sea stacks dotted throughout the seascape. The sun was growing closer to the horizon every moment, the sky around it beginning to change colors like leaves in autumn.

The girl would have probably kept staring until the sun had fully set below the waves, if not for a burning sensation in her chest reminding her of the need for oxygen.

After the sun went down, the time, the excitement of the day, the heat emanating from the claws wrapped around her, and the steady movement of the dragon's wing beats worked in tandem to lull her to sleep.


Okay, so that's the base of this story. I'm hoping that I adequately explained how the dragons and vikings view each other. If you didn't pick up on it, the dragons mistook the Berkians for those who drove them from their home, and they aren't too happy about it.

Again, sorry for the wait. I normally lose hope for works that haven't updated in over six months, so a huge thanks to anyone who stuck around.

I will try to pace myself with writing this time 'round, because last time I burned myself out pretty quickly. Please let me know if you see any errors or any awkward wording.