Chapter 10 - Myrka:
Back on Berk, Astrid was fuming.
She was in the forest, throwing her axe against the trees, and missing them several times.
She could not stop thinking about that useless boy, Hiccup. Ever since she had read the note he left, she couldn't figure out what to think.
On one hand, she was angry that one of Berk's people, especially one of such high status as the son of the chief, had just left Berk as if it was as easy as that. Like he couldn't care less. That showed weakness.
She hated weakness.
On the other, she was pleased that he had left. He had betrayed them, plus had chosen the side of a dragon, their enemy.
But, finding out that her favourite axe that she had adored for years was crafted by such a person, she couldn't accept that.
Every time she threw the axe, she felt like she was throwing Hiccup. Therefore she missed her tree targets and ended up retrieving it each time.
"Arrgh!" She slammed her rear end onto the dirt and sat down aggressively, her hands on her face while her axe rested beside her.
She couldn't be feeling like this, she just shouldn't.
It wasn't in her nature.
She was supposed to hate him, to loathe him.
To not pay attention to anything about him.
She was not supposed to have this tiny little feeling inside, the first time she had ever felt it over some random boy.
She could not get rid of it.
It was just the slightest, smallest feeling, of a minimal amount of guilt.
She knew there was only one person she could go to, to talk about it. One that wouldn't judge overly, one that knew him well, one that he considered an only friend.
It was nearly nightfall, and the blacksmith was working in the forge.
Gobber hammered away relentlessly against the hot metal, pausing once every few minutes for a break.
He was missing him already. He missed having someone to talk to. Someone to order around. Someone to teach his metal working skills to, and most importantly, someone who thought he was a mentor.
The snarky comments and looks Hiccup would give him burned in his memory. His sarcasm also would be missed.
He wondered whether he ever would see him again, he hoped so. He understood why he left, he could almost picture it coming.
The way he was treated was unfair, unfortunately Gobber seemed to be the only one who could see it.
Though Gobber knew that Hiccup had befriended a dragon and had left, his message he left behind to the others seemed to show the fact that he was going to try and make the world a better place.
Gobber admired that. That showed determination, confidence, and a strive to achieve a goal.
It also showed strength.
Not weakness.
That much Gobber understood.
Just then there was a knock on the windowsill.
Gobber looked up, and saw who it was.
Unsurprised by the visitor, he showed no sign of recognition and looked back down to continue his work.
"Hello Gobber."
Gobber nodded. "Well, if it isn't the master of dragon training herself." Spoke Gobber, once again not taking his concentration off his work.
Astrid sighed, and walked over to a chair in the forge and sat down. Placing her axe on the ground next to her.
"How's the chief?" She asked, her voice echoing through the forge over to Gobber.
"He's… well, what do yeh think?" Replied Gobber, as if it hadn't been obvious.
"Furious." She uttered. She knew Stoick was angry. "Is he feeling anything else though?"
"I don't know lass. I haven't seen him since I told him what happened." Gobber said, in his honest reply.
He too was curious about his friend, Stoick.
"How are yeh feeling about it?" Gobber asked her, as he banged away at the metal.
Astrid didn't answer.
Gobber stopped his work, and walked over to Astrid and sat down opposite in a large armchair. His moustache now hanging off the sides of the chair.
"Do yeh regret it?"
Astrid knew exactly what he was talking about. He was talking about what she said to Hiccup that last time in the arena of dragon training.
Her immediate answer was no. But she couldn't bring herself to say it. She couldn't bring herself to say yes either.
The golden haired blonde just thought over and over again.
"I don't know." She murmured.
Back on Dyflin…
Hiccup froze.
He wasn't sure if he had heard correctly…
Did this little boy, Polk, just say that his brother has a dragon mark?
"Are you all right?" Drifa asked, looking straight into Hiccup's face with a look of concern. "Polk I think we better leave him to his thoughts."
Drifa began to stand.
"Wait…" Hiccup whispered, still barely believing what he just heard.
"Did…did you just say… that your brother has a mark on his arm?"
Polk nodded. "Yeah. It looks like a dragon, but it's not the same as yours. Why? It's just a mark." He shrugged.
Hiccup stood up abruptly.
"How far is Myrka from here?" Hiccup demanded from Drifa, speaking quickly. "I need to know right now."
Polk and Drifa stood up too, taken aback by the urgency. Drifa began shielding Polk as if Hiccup was about to yank him away.
"You're not seriously thinking-"
"HOW FAR?!" Hiccup shouted. Desperate. He must go to Myrka, now that he knew for certain one person was there, he needed to rescue him and show him he's one of the Six.
"Don't shout at me!" Drifa warned, now holding Polk tight to her chest. Polk was starting to look nervous now too.
"It's about two weeks west of here by boa- HEY!"
Hiccup immediately began sprinting away towards Asan's house, he started waving his arms in the air, not caring is his sleeve fell back showing his birthmark. Trying to get Toothless's attention.
Toothless came flying down very fast, and joined Hiccup in running to Asan's house.
"What is it?! What do you know?!" He said rather loudly as he ran alongside him.
"I'll tell you in a minute." Hiccup responded, still running.
He reached the Chief's house and burst open the door, it swung around so fast and smashed into the wall. Asan was sitting at a table and jumped to his feet and the table toppled over.
"VHAT IN ZE NAME OF ODIN-"
"ASAN! I just wanted to thank you very much for everything. I must leave right now. Good luck with the dragons, just remember to be friendly, and don't harm them and they won't harm you. I promise I'll come back one day. If Myrkians ever come, don't tell them about me, my dragon or anything that Drifa says. Farewell!"
With that, Hiccup ran outside just as Asan yelled, "Vait! Vhat's zat on ye' arm? Vait VAIT!"
Hiccup jumped onto Toothless, strapped himself in and yelled "Run to the forest! I must get my sword!"
Without a word of complaint or question, Toothless was just about to sprint away, when they heard a voice behind them.
"What's so important about the mark?!" Hiccup heard Drifa scream out. He turned around and shouted, waving his right arm in the air while doing so, "It's not just a mark!"
"I'll bring back Kormak for you too! I promise!" He added.
"Go!" Hiccup said.
Toothless roared and charged off towards the forest.
When they arrived they couldn't find it, they searched everywhere, the forest was too big.
"Forget it! Let's go!"
Toothless took off and flew high up into the air.
Hiccup withdrew his compass as fast as he could from his pocket and directed Toothless to fly west.
"Okay, we're heading west now. What is going on?" The Night demanded.
Pocketing his compass once again, Hiccup explained to the Night.
"You mean, you think one of the Six is Polk's brother?"
"Yes!" Replied Hiccup, excited that Toothless understood the urgency of the situation. "You see, they said he was taken to Myrka, so we must find him."
Toothless let out a growl, "Hiccup, we don't know a thing about Myrka. Or why Polk's brother Kormak was taken. From what I've heard from Asan, it can't be good."
"I know. Exactly why we can't wait around any longer. We've got to go and see." Hiccup was certain he was right, it would be better to go and try and find out first.
Toothless frowned, looking at the clouds in front of him. "I disagree. We should have found out more before we left."
"Well it's too late now. We're not turning back."
Hiccup was getting a little frustrated. He was right, Toothless was wrong. They didn't need any more information, people's lives could be at stake.
Now that it was night, it was quite a relief being stealthy. They both knew they could not be seen at the dead of night.
The scents of the night air filled Hiccups lungs, as he breathed it all in.
He found himself relaxing, this was beautiful. He was a little cold, but he felt he could deal with it.
Then, all of a sudden there was a blinding flash of light ahead of them, startling them both. Quickly followed by a roar of deafening thunder.
"Oh Thor, a storm. Let's find cover bud."
"Yep. I could do with a sleep."
He ducked down and they both began searching for land.
"There, there's a little island," said Toothless. He dived towards it, just as large, freezing drops of rain started coming down from the sky. Followed by another blinding flash of lightning and its accompanying booming thunder.
Within a few seconds, they had landed on the rocky island. Due to the rain it was hard to see, but Toothless ran along it till he found a cave.
He rushed inside, and luckily it was dry.
"Nice and cosy." Hiccup joked.
Toothless said nothing.
Hiccup walked around the small cave, looking for any dry wood.
"I can barely see a thing." He muttered.
"At least I'm not too wet, I won't need to take off my clothes. But there's no wood, so I can't keep warm."
"Just lie down next to me." Grunted Toothless, opening a wing.
"Ok."
The cave started to get more and more illuminated by the lightning flashing outside.
Hiccup curled up into the warmth on the wing, and surprisingly, sleep came rather fast.
The next morning, Hiccup awoke to a hard, freezing ground beneath him. He opened his eyes, and sat up. Smells of the ocean flooded his nose, and the sound of the waves entered his ears.
He looked around the cave, it was empty.
He was alone.
"Toothless?" Hiccup called.
No answer.
"Toothless?!" He shouted.
No answer.
He stood up, and walked out of the cave to observe the island.
It was smaller than he had originally thought, certainly at least a third of the size of Dyflin. Though the island only seemed to be consistent with rocks.
Starting to worry, he went around the cave, and still did not see him. Hiccup could now see the whole island, and there was no dragon he could spot.
Was it something I said? We disagreed last night, but he wouldn't leave just because we had a little argument surely…
"Oh Toothless… I'm sorry." Hiccup sat down at the top of the cave, his legs dangling over the edge as he placed his head into his hands.
He let his hands fall to his knees, and suddenly noticed his dragon birthmark peeking out of his sleeve. It was its normal black.
He brought his arm up to his face and drew his sleeve back to stare at Night's mark. Hiccup just stared at it, waiting, hoping… for it to turn blue.
Then, it did.
It glowed a dim blue, then started to get brighter very quickly.
Hiccup looked up, and Toothless was flying steadily straight towards him.
As he approached, Hiccup noticed that he seemed to be carrying something.
Toothless landed at the foot of the cave, looking up at him. Hiccup noticed two things. His throat looked like it had a yak in there or something, appearing rather inflated, and in his paws was a stack of branches, sticks and wood.
Before he could even react or say something, Toothless emptied his mouth and throats contents onto the ground.
Fish, some of which were still alive, came out. And started flapping around on the ground.
"Toothless!"
Hiccup jumped down from the top of the cave and rushed up to the Night Fury. And he embraced him.
"I thought you left, I woke up and you weren't here." Hiccup cried.
Toothless crooned, sounding mournful. Leaning his head in to his best attempt at a hug. "I'm sorry, I was just getting us breakfast."
"No, I'm sorry. I was arrogant last night. I shouldn't have been like that."
Toothless let out a low purr, a beautiful humming, comforting sound that Hiccup could feel vibrating through him.
"Let it pass. Come on, let's eat before the fish get back to the ocean." The Night chirped.
They broke apart, and Hiccup saw indeed that the fish were flapping around so much, they might even indeed make it back to the ocean if they didn't stop them.
Toothless brought the wood into a pile and snapped the large branches into pieces for a fire before he shot a blast into it.
Meanwhile Hiccup got all the fish into an area, and took one of the snapped branches Toothless brought and pierced it into a fish.
"Where did you get all this wood from? I don't see any islands nearby." Hiccup asked, rather curiously.
Toothless walked over to the fish pile, then said, "There is an island not too far away, you can see it from the sky. I managed to get the wood from there."
The dragon then dug into the fish, bits of flesh splattering everywhere.
"You like your fish, don't you bud?" Hiccup chuckled, while he held his fish over the fire.
"There is nothing better." He muttered between mouthfuls.
Smiling, Hiccup stared at the fire. Thinking. And the more he thought, the more he realised he knew almost nothing about Toothless.
"What did you do before you were captured by the queen in the dragons nest back near Berk?"
Toothless froze, clearly not expecting the question.
"Lots of things." He then took another gulp of fish, going back to normal.
Hiccup didn't press the subject, as Toothless didn't elaborate so he guessed it may be a sensitive topic. So he let it go.
Once breakfast was finished, they cleared away the fire and prepared to take off once again.
"Ready? Here we go." Toothless prepared himself, shook his body and crouched down.
"Let's go."
The dragon pounced into the air, the speed of it blasting Hiccup backwards into the saddle and whipping his hair back.
Toothless beat his powerful, magnificent wings and climbed into the air. The storm had cleared from last night, and in its place was a beautiful clear sky.
Higher and higher they flew, until the island they were on previously was barely a speck in the distance.
"A little to the left, that's it. We're going west now." Hiccup announced, as they corrected their course.
It wasn't long before they spotted land, this time much larger than simple islands.
"Wow, look at all the land mass," said Hiccup, leaning over Toothless's side and staring down at the coast below. "We must be over either some huge island, or this might be the mainland."
"We'll find out soon. I know the mainland has some pretty large mountains not far from the coast." Toothless replied.
Hiccup didn't ask Toothless how he knew that, and just went along with it.
Looking down below, he noticed a little island not far from the shore of the larger one. Hiccup guessed that was where Toothless went to get the wood.
On the main coast they were flying over from the sky, the sand on the coast was a brilliant white, and where the sand ended, was thick, dense forest.
The further they flew, all they could see was forest. A strong, vibrant green. It was still flat, no mountains or slopes. And no sign of villages.
Then all of a sudden the island stopped and became sea again. Though the water looked quite shallow for quite a distance. The sand very visible through the water, then Hiccup noticed why.
The islands were connected, under the sea. As they flew another island came into view, and also filled with forest.
However, it quickly became hilly, and there were many slopes.
"This looks more like it." Toothless muttered, looking around observing the place.
"The mainland?"
"Yes."
Without much time passing, very quickly mountains of a truly massive scale, far higher and larger than Berks ones, became visible. Two mountains right next to each other.
"So if this is the mainland, Myrka can't be far. I'd assume it would be on the mainland." Hiccup noted. He turned around and saw the shallow coast disappearing into the distance.
The forests' began to thin out as they approached the mountains, of which appeared to be very rocky and were up into the sky even higher than they were flying.
Hiccup looked up as they approached, and spotted a little bit of snow at the very top of both of them.
The mountain on their left was very pointy, rather like the tip of a sword at the top. While the other on their right looked more like a flat surface or crater at the tip, like a volcano.
They passed in-between the mountains, and then a remarkable sight was present.
Endless areas of cleared forests could be seen. The ground was brown and flat now and it looked like hundreds of thousands of tree stumps were there. It started from where this side of mountains sloped down, and looked like it didn't stop.
Then, ever so hard to see, Hiccup could notice very tiny looking objects moving around the cleared forests.
Vikings.
Many of them.
They were obviously carrying all the-
"Hiccup look!" Came Toothless's sudden voice, interrupting his thoughts.
He turned around to look at where the Night's head was looking, and looked in that direction.
It didn't take him long to see what he was looking at.
On the ground below, linked in large metal chains that were being supported by many Vikings, was a bright orange coloured dragon, with a large wingspan. Its wings were flat, and even from the distance in the sky they were at, there were obvious signs of large scars and cuts on the dragon's wings.
"That poor Snapwood!" Exclaimed Toothless, fury clearly present in his voice.
"That… that looks like a Timberjack. I read about it in the dragon manual back on Berk. You suppose they used it to cut the forests?" Hiccup proposed, looking down at the dragon.
"It appears so." He growled. "Oh I so want to go down there and free it."
Hiccup looked ahead of them.
"Bud, look…" Hiccup pointed ahead.
Toothless snapped his head up to look.
The ground rose up a little more, and became a sort of wave in the ground, like a small hill that stretched for miles horizontally to where they were flying. On the top of the wave like hill, was a high, thick wall.
The wall spanned across the hill for miles, but that wasn't what Hiccup was looking at.
"Great ice of Bewilderbeast…"
Behind the wall, was undoubtedly, hundreds, if not thousands, of craters in the ground. Similar, but much smaller and shallower than the cove on Berk. All of which had sturdy, metal chains covered over every single one.
For as far as their eyes could see, these craters had a stained red dirt ground at the bottom, but what Hiccup noticed, was each one had a dragon inside.
It was a prison on a truly massive scale. Out of one of the occasional craters in the distance, blasts of fire could be seen coming out of some.
In-between all the craters, were narrow pathways. All the pathways were stained red. Some of which Hiccup could see movement on. There were Vikings down there, looking like they were pushing crates, wheelbarrows and loads of stuff.
Hiccup squinted, then suddenly emptied his stomachs contents over Toothless's side as realisation crashed upon him. He saw looking at the crates and wheelbarrows, on them, were parts of dragons. On some large wheelbarrows, there was even one as whole.
Heads, legs, wings, and even body parts. They weren't covered in cloth or anything, and blood was clearly dripping off the sides of the wheelbarrows from said body parts. Hence the red stains.
Then, as if to make matters worse, the smell suddenly bombarded his nose. Stinking, smelly and even some rotting flesh and guts made him retch even more.
Toothless flew on, looking at each crater, the pathways, and not making a sound.
At last, it seemed the craters were getting fewer, then they stopped at a line.
And something else could be seen instead of craters, now there were cages.
Large cages that spanned in every direction too. Only these housed a very different type of animal.
Vikings.
Humans.
They were in the cages. It seemed nearly as many, if not the same amount of cages for Vikings as the craters were for dragons.
Although, some cages had cover over them. So they couldn't see what was in those cages.
At last, the cages came to an end, and there was a large building that stretched a fair distance at the border. Quickly followed by a wall which had massive doorways.
This wall Hiccup recognised as the same wall they saw earlier that they flew over. So the wall stretched around the craters and cages for a long distance and came back together here, on this East side.
Squinting into the far distance to the left of them, which was South, Hiccup could just make out the ocean. And also several long wharves, with at least hundreds of boats around and tied to them.
Looking back in front of him, he noticed the Viking landscape changed again.
Now, they could see buildings. Lots of buildings. Mostly square shaped, like cubed buildings. And thousands of people moving in between as far as they could see.
Toothless ducked down a little closer to land, and Hiccup realised why.
At what seemed to be the entrance from the dragon's and Viking's prison into this new, bustling area, was a huge sign that Toothless obviously wanted Hiccup to read. Below it, hundreds of Vikings moved in-between, most going into the entrance and not towards the prisons.
Hiccup read it, without Toothless or himself saying anything, then he climbed back up higher into the sky.
"What did it say?" Toothless asked at long last.
"Myrka Markets." Hiccup spat, the taste of his sick still bitter on his tongue.