Stormchaser's Envy
The chief and I would have been immediately pelted by debris and hail as we charged headlong into the storm had it not been for my two shields. The buffeting wind caused them to spin at blurring speeds as they floated in the air, shielding us from the wind, hail, and debris. The rain on the other hand was coming down in a deluge and drenched us in an instant.
"There are still 3 men unaccounted for," Chief Hiccup hollered above the din, "We need to find them and get them back to the hall!" I pulled the chief behind a building that was wobbling with the wind something fierce but had yet to topple. "What're you doing?" he asked.
"Giving you some cover," I responded above the maelstrom. I pulled the shield assigned to my left hand close and whispered a command to follow, gesturing to the chief followed by a command to protect. Without hesitation, the shield moved to the chief's side. "Now this shield will protect you! Let's split up and meet back at the hall!"
Chief Hiccup nodded and took off to the southeast with a quick, "Good Luck!" I watched him disappear behind a curtain of rain before I started toward the southwest, keeping the shield between me and all the hail and debris that flew my way.
As I made my way through the village I passed several homes that had already been ripped from their foundations like a child might pick up a toy house and throw it into a toybox. There was a moment where I happened to see a thick wooden beam flying right at me like an arrow. Instead of letting my shield take the full brunt, it and I jerked back as the beam gored the ground where I had been standing, then was plucked back up by the wind.
The longer I stay outside the more likely it is that I'll be flattened under a whole house, I thought to myself. I pressed forward against the wind, the rain soaking me to the bone despite my shield. More than once I slipped on the devastated ground and fell into the mud. Once I managed to fall into a pit that was the basement of a house that had been taken; now all that remained was a pit of muddy water and debris.
Wiping the mud from my face as I resurfaced, I looked for any purchase that might allow me to escape the pit. The window. Go! Spurring myself on, I swam for a sublevel window that was just low enough for me to haul myself up to the surface.
Escape offered no respite though. As soon as I flopped onto my back to catch my breath the shield moved to block a whole barrel that the storm hurled at me in spite. I rolled to my feet to dodge the barrel's debris, but at that same second lightning struck the ground right next to me. The blinding light and deafening boom offered more than plenty of force to knock me from my feet and into an ox cart that the storm had chosen not to take. The impact left me dazed and breathless, lying there under the constant deluge of the typhoon. Get up. Get up! If you die here you'll never get your revenge, and you'll never be able to look her in the face, I thought to myself in frustration.
Willing my body to rise, my feet to steady, my hands to balance, and my eyes to look forward, I managed to get up and continue my violent trek through the maelstrom.
Thankfully I didn't have to travel much farther before I heard a faint "...help!" I couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from through the overpowering storm.
"I hear you!" I yelled above the razing zephyr. "Where are you?"
"Here! We're over here!" I managed to get a direction with that response and took off at a sprint, holding my hand up to shield my eyes from the piercingly frigid rain as my shield moved to block a wooden plank or two. It wasn't a moment later before I slid through the mud to a halt at a waving hand jutting out from beneath a collapsed house. It grabbed onto my offered hand as a drowning man might grab onto his rescuer.
"Hang on! I'll get you out of there!" I yelled above the wind as lightning struck a few houses down, lighting up the umbral morning.
"Please hurry," the man replied in a panic, "You've gotta get us out of here! I don't know how long it'll hold! It's shaking a lot!"
"Hang on!" I pulled away and raised my numb and shaking hands to cast a hex. Create a barrier around the people and expand until they can be freed safely, I spoke in the language of hand-gestures. When my hex had finished priming, my fingertips glowing white with power, I snapped to set the magic to work.
A glowing white aura pulsed around the arm, then expanded to create an energy bubble. The collapsed portion of the house was being lifted away, but the weight must have been too much. The bubble expanded to a point then stopped, flashing a warning, and threatening to collapse under the weight of the house and force of the wind.
Shit, I didn't figure in the wind! I didn't have time to plan. The bubble was going to collapse and crush the people underneath and it would be all my fault. They'd have been safer if I hadn't helped. This is all my fault. They're gonna die because of me! I could feel the onset of panic rising from my stomach like a tremor heralding the onset of a volcano. But then I heard the words I had lived by: Mission first, everything else second. Remembering my training, I shoved all other emotions aside and focused on the task at hand.
Acting quickly, I did three things in quick succession. First, I threw my shield at the largest collection of hanging debris with as much force as I could muster, then I supercharged the hex with excess power causing it to pulse outward before shattering. It seemed to be just enough to move the weight of the debris of the house off of the people, allowing me to use my power to unceremoniously pull them from the house and out into the brobdingnagian monsoon.
My execution wasn't elegant though and resulted in two large Viking men flying directly at me; all of us toppling head over heels in a heap of scrapes and bumps. Before I even took notice of the storm becoming more violent, I noticed how heavy the men were.
"You Vikings could do with a little less feasting," I said mostly to myself as I pushed them off of me.
One of the men got up and helped the other to his feet. I recognized the taller and older of them as the leader of the men that attacked me in the cove a few days prior. A flame of anger stoked to life within me like ale tossed onto a bonfire, but I pushed it too aside. Mission first, everything else second, I said to myself, trying to find my center, my focus.
A fresh wave of hail and rain descended on us, pelting us so badly that we retreated underneath an overhang that had miraculously not been taken by the relentless storm. I called my shield to my side to defend us on our journey back to the Great Hall, but it had shattered in the rescue, the ritual dissipating.
"We need to get to the great hall!" I yelled to the men over the accelerating wind. The taller man was dazed, with mud or possibly blood on his face. The shorter man, a younger version of the dazed man, was supporting what I assumed to be his father with his arm around the waist.
"We won't make it in this storm! We need to find shelter and wait it out," replied the son.
"We can't! The storm is ripping everything off the ground! If we stay out here we will die!" The storm chose that exact moment to agree with me by using an entire longboat to literally scrape the house they'd been trapped under off the face of the earth. I turned back to the two men. The father seemed to be completely disconnected from reality due to his head wound, but his son had the embodiment of terror on his face. "If we stay here, we die for sure! If we move towards the Great Hall, we only might die!" The son locked eyes with me. "I will do everything in my power to keep you safe! On my honor as a sorcerer!"
To his credit, the son only hesitated for a split second before he nodded. "We're with you!"
The storm itself seemed to be closing in on us, increasing in violence, if that were possible. If I didn't do something in the next few seconds to protect us on the trek back to the hall...well, then I'd be seeing a dear late friend much sooner than planned.
An idea came to me. One I wasn't going to enjoy doing, but would give us a fighting chance at survival. "Stay close to me and don't say anything! I'll keep us safe, but I need to concentrate!"
The son nodded and pulled his father along next to me. I created a triangle with my fingers, touching the tips of my very numb thumbs, index, and middle fingers together. Using this gesture as an anchor, I channeled power equally throughout my body. Almost instantly a wave of white energy pulsed out of me and surrounded us in a small dome barrier. I didn't wait but started briskly walking back towards the great hall, hoping that the two men were following.
I could feel it already: this technique was burning through my stores of energy. Sustained flows of magic have never been efficient, and the only reason I could keep it up for so long was because of my naturally enhanced stores of energy. I was a walking storehouse of magical energy; which is what made the Syndicate take such an interest in me in the first place.
It didn't take long before the steps to the great hall were in sight, and thankfully I hadn't had to block any large pieces of debris to that point. Across a short field, I could see Chief Hiccup and a few people through the sheets of rain, at the top of the steps. They were still defended by the barrier I had placed there, and they were beckoning us to hurry.
Of course, at that exact moment, as soon as I stepped out from the cover of the main village and onto the field, the storm created a wind corridor that we would have to trudge through. We made it little more than halfway through the charging river of debris, stabbing rain and hail, and forceful windfall before the storm shot a massive tree at us.
The barrier I was holding did manage to deflect it away from us with a sonorous gong noise, but the force of the hit transferred to me, breaking my concentration, dissipating the barrier, and sending me sliding headlong across the grass until I hit the very tree that had hit me, a split second after it had landed.
This was bad, the two men were exposed, and the son was doing everything he could to not be snatched away by the wind itself while trying to keep his father up.
It was at that moment that I was done. Done with fighting this force of nature, done with getting my ass kicked. I allowed myself to feel. All the anger, frustration, indignation, embarrassment, sadness...everything I felt and bottled up since she had died. Those tremors that heralded the volcano? Well, they progressed into a full earthquake, and the volcano erupted. Oh boy did it erupt.
Feeling supercharged as the emotions flowed through me like a stampede of mustangs through the streets of Rome, I grabbed the two men with my power and bodily threw them! I threw them through the air across the field and up the steps where they landed in a heap on top of a few other people.
"You want a piece of me!? Well come and get me!" I screamed in anguish and indignation at the storm itself as I rose to my feet in rebellion. "I have survived so much worse than you, and I'll be damned if I let you stop me now!"
The storm in response threw, what I believe to be the same longship from before, directly at me. I wasn't even casting magic at this point, I was just lashing out with all the power I had. I roared in defiance against the storm. The umbral morning lit up again, but not from the lightning, but from me; the effect of my power lashing out at the oncoming vessel. Brilliant pure white beams of destructive power shot from my chest directly to the center of the longship's mass.
Immediately the ship began to break apart, faster than any conventional bomb could deconstruct it, and I aimed to rip the whole thing apart before it reached me.
It broke apart in my attempt to destroy it, like a snowball hitting someone in the head. I continued to roar in violent outrage as I threw the sum total of all of my power at the longship debris. I managed to get most of it, but I missed a piece: an oar, which hit me directly in the face with its flat side.
My head jerked back and I slumped against the tree, my battery empty, and my vision going dark.
xXx
Astrid was more than a little relieved to see Hiccup walk back into the Great Hall, soaking wet, but without a scratch on him. He, Eret, and Tuffnut had pulled Hades from the storm after he'd lost the fight with the longship, and the story that Snotlout had told after the hall's massive doors were securely shut and barricaded was nothing short of incredible.
The people of Berk, thanks in no small part to Hades' warning, had nearly all evacuated to the Great Hall just before the storm began. Only three people hadn't made it in time: Hoark, Snotlout, and Spitelout. Hiccup had helped Hoark make it from his farm on the farthest side of the village; able to withstand the storm because of Hades' magic shield. The Jorgensens, however, had been caught underneath their hall as it collapsed with them inside. If Hades hadn't been able to lift the hall off of them and get them through the storm to the Hall, Astrid feared that Berk would be two good men lesser.
Following the men's return from the storm Astrid's mother, a student under the Goethi's teaching, and the Goethi attended to the injured. Hades, for all his magic, suffered a nasty cut on his forehead that was sure to leave a scar to add to his collection along with some nasty bruising on his back. He was certainly going to be feeling that in the morning.
Spitelout, on the other hand, had fared a little worse when his hall collapsed. Snotlout reported that he'd taken a bad hit to the head, and as a precaution, the Goethi sedated him and mended his wound. He would probably be forced to sleep for a few days to allow his head to heal properly. Gods only knew how hard-headed the Jorgensens were.
The storm itself lasted half the day, and by the afternoon it had subsided to a hard rain. With the damage to the village being as extensive as it was Hiccup ordered everyone to stay within the hall till the rain let up.
Throughout the day Astrid would steal glances at Hades. That same familiarity that plagued her days ago came back with a vengeance. Her whole body, even her heart, told her that she knew him somehow, but she couldn't place his face no matter how hard she tried to remember.
There was a moment, however...a single instance where she caught the Goethi glance over at him...and she had the same face that Astrid assumed that she'd been wearing as well. The Goethi seemed to recognize him too. Astrid managed to steal a moment with the Goethi to ask her what she thought, but the elder woman simply shrugged and offered no more help than that.
As dusk was nearing, she, Hiccup, Fishlegs, and Ruffnut were sitting against the stone wall just outside the Hall's doors, preferring a moment of quiet with the rain rather than the rowdiness that grew as the men tore into the mead.
It did Astrid's heart well to see that there appeared to be some amicable affection between Fishlegs and Ruffnut. Their wedding had been put on hold since Ruff got sick, and Astrid was a little surprised to find that Fishlegs hadn't called off the wedding due to Ruff's condition. Ruffnut was currently wrapped in furs and leaning against Fishlegs when he broached an uncomfortable subject.
"You realize what this means, don't you?" he asked ambiguously.
Hiccup sighed with worry. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."
"What?" she asked.
"Hades," answered Fishlegs, "He saved the village, plus defended the chief, and saved the lives of Berk's general and his son."
"What's that matter?" asked Ruffnut with that drawl she had long before that...thing sucked the life out of her. Astrid would absolutely never admit it to her face, but she'd missed Ruff. It was a long year without her friend. "We'll throw him a party in thanks, let him shag one of the barmaids, and that'll be that."
"It's not that simple," replied Hiccup. "According to our laws, we owe him a debt. The whole village does."
"I don't get it. What would we have to give him?" Asked Astrid.
"According to the laws," Fishlegs submitted, "We would have to give him just about anything that would equal the service he rendered to us, that he requested."
"Such as?"
"Gold, crops, land, ships, livestock...women."
"What!?" Ruffnut screamed in outrage, sitting up ramrod.
"According to the laws, he's within his rights to request any woman he wants that doesn't currently have a marriage contract."
"Oh thank the gods," Astrid would bet her next meal that Ruffnut was happier than ever that her family had accepted the Ingerman's marriage proposal last year before she got sick. "...wait, but wouldn't that mean Astrid…" Under normal circumstances of hearing that her freedom was in jeopardy and that she might have to marry a strange man against her wishes, she'd have been outraged beyond reason and probably would have killed said man on the spot.
However, Hiccup, her Hiccup had this...look on his face. Astrid sometimes liked to imagine that there was an army of tiny men in his head that created the brilliant designs that he built. She could almost see them working overtime to make sure that Astrid was safe. And if Astrid knew one thing, it's that when Hiccup got that look, she had nothing to be concerned about.
She locked eyes with Hiccup for a moment, willing her face to share with him that she understood. "I'm not worried about it. It probably won't come to that." He nodded at her, and she knew that they'd understood each other.
There was a tense moment of silence before Hiccup spoke up, "Any luck finding that thing I asked for, Fish?"
"Not yet," he responded with visible frustration. "If it's in the archives, it's buried deep."
"What are you looking for? Is it cool?" Asked Ruffnut obviously in the hopes that it involved explosives somehow. Astrid couldn't help but feel a swell of joy in her chest at seeing her shield-sister acting more like her normal self again.
"Nothing so dramatic," replied Fishlegs, "Hiccup tasked me to look through the village archives to find out why magic was outlawed in the first place."
"What for?"
"If it can shed some light on why our forefathers thought it was so dangerous or evil as to outlaw it, it might also shed some light on the nature of magic, and possibly whether Hades can be trusted."
"Best case scenario," continued Hiccup, "It might even have a special section marked, 'What to do in the event of a Sorcerer Showing Up at Your Door'."
"That'd be too easy," replied Ruffnut.
"And It's never that easy," confirmed Astrid.
"Or simple…" Fishlegs said cryptically.
"What do you mean by that?" Hiccup queried.
"Well, have you noticed how Hades speaks?"
Astrid thought back to the spattering of conversation she'd held with the man of magic; nothing untoward jumped out at her. The others seemed to come to the same conclusion.
"He doesn't have an accent. At all," Fishlegs offered.
"So?" Astrid asked.
"So, either one of two things could have happened. One: he could have been very well trained in speaking Norse; so well that he ironed out any accent."
"Or?" asked Ruffnut a little impatiently.
"Or...and this is my personal theory, Hades is from here."
"What," asked Hiccup, "Here as in the Archipelago?"
"No, I mean here as in Berk."
"What? That's impossible. Someone would have recognized him," answered Ruffnut, "Like the Goethi. She remembers everyone ever birthed on this island...or so I'm told." Astrid thought of her short interaction with the Goethi just earlier.
"Just think about it. His Norse is perfect. Even down to the inflections we all speak daily. Inflections that are native only to this island."
"Okay, but who could he be," asked Hiccup. "Nobody's gone missing, not since my grandfather went on that treasure hunt."
"I have a theory, and I'd like to keep it to myself until I prove or disprove it. I've been digging through the old genealogical records for clues, but...my predecessor isn't as organized as I like to be. I haven't found the right record yet."
Astrid had listened to Fishlegs' theory and chose to voice her experience with the waves of familiarity, adding to the evidence. The others listened attentively as she recounted the different events that had left her head spinning with aimless nostalgia that had emanated from their mystical guest. "You might even want to meet with the Goethi. I can't be sure, but I think she recognizes him as well," she finished.
They all were quiet. The implications of one a berkian having gone missing for gods knew how long...then to come back, and keep their identity a secret. Astrid couldn't see any situation where things ended well.
Nothing she could think to say could quite sum things up like what Ruffnut posited. "Well, shit."
Please comment, and tell me how you like the story so far. You'd be surprised how far encouragement goes in giving a writer motivation to write more.