Chapter 10 - Memories
Pain dragged Hiccup from the soft womb of sleep. The hurt came in cycles; a shock of burning agony that faded to a mild sting before the pain hit him again. He opened his mouth, only to cough and splutter as his throat was flooded with foul-tasting brine. Pain exploded in his shoulder as his chest convulsed.
Blinking the tears from his eyes, he managed to roll onto his front and force himself up on shaky legs.
He stood on a narrow jumble of rocks between a sheer cliff in front of him, and the ocean to his tail. His nostrils opened subconsciously as he scented the air. The overpowering odour was that of the sea, but he could also detect smoke on the wind, and, yes, a trace of that indescribable scent that his new mind told him meant human; he was still on Berk.
How did I get here? He wondered. He remembered Stormfly helping him to fly, and taking off from the cove, then his memories became fuzzy and jumbled. He glanced down at his paws; A reddish-brown stain of dried blood marked the rocks beneath him.
"Time to die, Hiccup."
It all came back to him in a rush. He'd fought the Night Fury in the skies over Berk, and the Queen - in control of the Fury's body - had bitten his wing and thrown him into the sea. He silently thanked Ægir that the tides and currents had conspired to wash him up on the shores of the island, rather than dragging his unconscious body out into open ocean.
Gazing up at the cliff edge far above him, he gingerly tried spreading his wings. Agony shot through him and a strangled growl escaped his clenched jaw as soon as he tried to move his right wing.
"Oh the gods hate me," he grumbled. "I spend a week stuck in a hole, only to be grounded again as soon as I get out."
With a sigh, he began to pick his way along the coast, hoping to find a shallower bay where he could climb up to the island proper.
Of course, this being the Barbaric Archipelago, following the shore would be no leisurely stroll on the beach; the rocks were jagged and unstable, and if he'd still been human he would have tripped and twisted his ankle several times. It took an hour of picking his way over loose rocks, snarling and swearing every time he jogged his injured wing before he came across a suitable way up. It was an old rockfall, that over the years had accumulated enough windblown soil for several hardy plants to sprout up from the gaps between the boulders.
Hiccup walked to the shoreline and turned to face the tumbled-down cliff; with any luck the plants' roots would give the fall enough structure to bear his weight. Before he could talk himself out it he took a deep breath, grit his teeth against the pain from his wing, and bounded forwards.
Just before he ran out of beach, Hiccup tensed his body and leapt up onto the first boulder in the pile. As soon as he felt his paws touch stone he pushed off again, aiming for the next stone. For a heart-stopping moment he felt the rock shift as he landed, but he was moving again before it could fall. A few more bounds and he was scrambling up onto the top of the cliff, panting with exertion and exhilaration at accomplishing a feat of agility worthy of Astrid.
When he was able to breath normally again, he peered into the treeline, realising that his plan hadn't extended beyond getting up the cliffs. He needed to know if Astrid and the rest of the village had survived, and he couldn't exactly wander into the square. While he had no desire to be trapped there again, he began to wind his way between the pines towards 'his' cove, knowing that it would be the first place Astrid would seek him out.
Assuming, of course,a voice whispered in the back of his mind, that Berk still exists.
Astrid stood over the pile of rubble in numb silence. Where, now, there was only a mound of ash and charred timbers, there had once stood a house.
Her house.
She knew that houses on Berk rarely stood for more than a generation, however, by some whim of the Norns, her home had remained unscathed through more than fifteen years of raids. Now, despite the stark evidence in front of her, she was struggling to process that the building she'd grown up in was simply gone; that she'd never again be able to trace her fingers along the intricate designs her grandfather had carved around the doorframe.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I should have been here...I..." If she hadn't snuck out of the village to be with Stormfly, if she hadn't been doting on a dragon she might have been here to save her home.
Her father's hand came down on her shoulder. "It's okay, Astrid," he told her, "We can rebuild. Your mother and Orvar survived, and that's the important thing."
She glanced to her side; her younger brother stood with Gunhilda nearby, staring at the ruins of their home with similarly numb expressions.
"Come on," her father said gently, "Let's salvage what we can and take it back to the hall." Normally, when someone's home was destroyed, they would stay with neighbours until their house could be rebuilt. However, given the scale of the destruction visited upon Berk by the Flock, Stoick had opened the doors of the great hall to all those who needed a place to sleep.
Grimacing, Astrid stepped over the blackened stump of what had been a wall. From memory, she picked her way through the rubble to where she'd kept her things, and began to sift through the ash at her feet. After a few minutes her fingers hit something solid and she pulled out the remains of her axe.
The handle was scorched black all along its length, and with a twist and a jerk she pulled it free, letting the ruined wood drop to the ground while she cradled the head in both hands. She ran her thumb over the runes carved in the centre of the two bits; Sandraudiga was the axe's name. Before she had come into her possession, she had been her mother's axe, and her mother's before her, and so on as far back as anyone could remember. The story was that the axe was originally forged by a southern blacksmith who came to live in the Archipelago, and it was he who named the weapon 'she who dyes the sand red'.
She reverently set the axe head aside, vowing to get another handle cut for her as soon as lumber was more plentiful. After a few more minutes of digging through the rubble she came up with her shoulder guards; the leather straps that held them in place had been destroyed by the fire, but the metal appeared to still be in good condition. She placed the armour and axe head on the small pile of things her father had already gathered, and helped Balder sift through the rest of the wreckage.
Some time later, she stood with her family at the foot of the mead hall's steps. The bodies and rubble had been cleared away, however the scents of blood and fire still lingered in the air, and she tried to avoid looking at the crimson smears that marked where the bodies of dragons had been dragged away.
Astrid glanced around as other family groups began to trickle into the square, many of them clutching bags of salvage similar to the ones at her feet. Barely a murmur passed between them as they congregated around the base of the steps; above them, in the hall, Stoick was speaking with the tribal council, and the villagers were desperate to hear what had happened on the Nest hunt. By now, even the most thick-skulled of Berkians had realised that three ships had set out on the hunt, but only one had returned.
The silence unnerved Astrid; normally when a group of Vikings gathered you would expect at least one good-natured argument to break out. She picked out the Thorstons among the crowd; even the Twins were silent.
As her gaze drifted over the haggard faces in the half-full square, she realised that the crowd had stopped growing. It can't be... she thought. Are we all that's left?
Before anyone could answer her the great doors cracked open, and Stoick left the hall, followed by Spitelout, Gobber, and the rest of his council. He descended all but the last few steps, stopping at a point where he could survey his gathered people.
"I won't lie to you," he began, "the situation is grim, but I've spoken with the council, and it'll be close, but we believe that as long as we complete repairs before the ice sets in, we should have enough resources stockpiled to make it through the winter."
Astrid grimaced. She knew they kept grains and salted fish in the cellars below the great hall for emergencies; but could those supplies really sustain the whole village?
"Before we get to business, we must pay our respects." Stoick continued. "First, to Gobber and his warriors, who defended our homes and families against the beasts twice during the hunt. Especially to Astrid Hofferson and the rest of the fire crew, who despite having not finished their training, took up arms alongside their parents in the battle last night - by all accounts, Astrid personally slew thirteen of the beasts."
Astrid tried not to meet anybody's gaze as a murmur of appreciation passed through the crowd. Thirteen. In a single night, she'd managed more kills than some managed in a year. Thirteen victims of The Queen's control, any one of which, through naught but a twist of circumstance, could have been gentle, caring, Stormfly.
"Secondly," Stoick continued once the praise had died down. "We must pay tribute to those who have gone to join the ranks of the Einherjar, both in the defence of the village and the search for the nest. Those who can, bury your dead, and in a week, we will hold a ceremony on the docks to commemorate all the fallen... Including my son."
A respectful murmur rose from the crowd, and Astrid bowed her head. She knew what Stoick was doing. Hiccup had been missing in the wilderness for a week, and in that time there had been two dragon raids. From the chief's perspective, he was already dead, and the village didn't have the manpower to spare on a search that would only result in a body.
"Enough of this!" somebody shouted, "Tell us what happened on the hunt!"
"Yeah!" Another agreed, "Tell us you found the Nest, at least!"
Stoick's gaze fell. Oh no... Astrid thought.
"We didn't even get close," he announced in a monotone voice. "The dragons were on us as soon as we hit the fog bank... the other ships went down in minutes. We picked up as many survivors as we could, but if we'd stayed any longer, we would have been sunk as well."
A deathly silence fell over the square. Two ships, each crewed with their finest warriors, lost. For what? They were still no closer to finding the dragons' nest.
"Gobber is overseeing repairs, and Phlegma is in charge of securing our food stores; report to one of them for work. That is all." With that, Stoick stepped down, the crowd parting before him as he made his way towards his house.
Astrid could almost see the physical weight of his loss and the Village's expectations on his shoulders. She couldn't help but ask herself: had the Queen of Dragons done what no other force on Midgard was capable of and crushed the indomitable Viking spirit under sheer weight of losses?
Hiccup wasn't alone in the forest. He couldn't say exactly how he knew, only that he felt an increasing sense of unease as he neared the cove.
He froze, nostrils dilating as he scented the air, and ear-flaps standing to attention, straining to pick up any sign of the other presence. It took him a moment to sift through the myriad scents of nature, but he could detect a faint odour of dragon, too recent to be leftover from the raid, and his ears picked up the subtle sounds of something large lurking in nearby patch of thick brambles.
He spun towards the bush, instinctively bearing his teeth and keeping his head close the ground. "Who's there?" He growled.
The brambles shuddered and shook as a dirt -and blood - stained Nadder pushed her way into the open. He backed up a step, growling a warning. Had one of the Queen's dragons remained on Berk? In response, the dragon simply bowed her nose to the leaf-litter, mantling her wings.
"I am relieved to see you alive, my Alpha," she said.
Hiccup blinked and sat back on his haunches, recognising Astrid's 'friend' beneath the grime. "Stormfly?!" he asked, shocked, "What happened?"
"I had an unfortunate encounter with a bear while hiding from the Flock," the Nadder replied. "I could ask you the same question," she continued, "Although from what I heard last night, I surmise that you ignored my advice and tried to take on Yilbegän's daughter, despite being hopelessly outmatched in terms of experience." She gestured with her muzzle to his injured shoulder. "You're lucky to have come away with just that."
"She was attacking the villagers!" Hiccup exclaimed. "I couldn't just stand - well, glide - there and watch her do that!"
"That's exactly what-!" Stormfly cut off her angry snarl, and let out a long breath. "I'm sorry, my Alpha. You have no knowledge of how important you are."
Hiccup sighed. "I feel like i've been thrown into the middle of a saga without having heard the first half. What in the nine realms is Yilbegan? Why are Night Furies its children? And why do you keep calling me 'Alpha'?"
"I apologise, m- Hiccup." she said, "I have no idea how confusing this must be for you." She turned away and began to walk into the forest. "Come," she called over her shoulder. "By necessity, the answers to your questions will be long, and this is not the place for them."
Hiccup followed after Stormfly, and she led him to a patch of open ground on the rim of the cove. From the vantage point, they could see the crack in the cliffs that served as the entrance, and the body of the Nightmare sprawled on the ground below.
Stormfly bent her neck and breathed a white-hot jet of flame onto the ground. She circled, blackening a large swathe of grass, then settled down on one side of the patch of ash. "Come," she invited, looking up at him. "Lie beside me."
Hiccup apprehensively placed a paw on the ash, expecting it to come up hideously burned, instead he felt only a pleasant warmth through his scales. Of course, he thought, fireproof. He stepped fully onto the 'bed' and settled down, an unconscious purr rumbling in his chest as the soothing warmth seeped into his abused muscles. Stormfly shuffled closer to him - ignoring the respectful distance he'd left between them - and ran her tongue up his right foreleg, over his injured shoulder. He flinched away from her, only to hiss in pain as the motion tugged at his wound.
"What are you doing?!" he demanded, almost rising to his paws.
"The Sharing of Tongues - mutual grooming, as you may put it - is an ancient ritual among dragons." Stormfly explained. "Before The Queen forced us all into one flock, it was the basis of the ties that defined the Dragons of the North as a civilised race; the bonds between mates and their offspring, between a hunter and her wing-partners, and -" here, she met his gaze with a pointed look "- between an Alpha and their subordinates."
"I'm sorry," Hiccup said, relaxing on the warm ashes. "I didn't mean to offend."
He tried not to tense up when she leaned in towards him again. "I don't want to make you uncomfortable," Stormfly told him softly, "but I need to clean your wounds."
Hiccup said nothing, but allowed her to continue. The sensation of her tongue gliding over his scales wasn't as uncomfortable as he'd expected, and his wound started to feel better after only a couple passes.
For several seconds the only sound was the gentle rasping of Stormfly's tongue.
"What's your name?" He blurted out suddenly.
Stormfly paused in her ministrations, pulling her head back slightly. "Did you not call me by 'Stormfly' earlier?" she asked.
"That's what Astrid named you," Hiccup replied. "What's your real name?"
Stormfly tilted her head in confusion.
"What did your parents call you?"
Stormfly didn't answer immediately; she stared off into the forest, her eyes unfocused, peering into some memory only she could see. At the base of her neck - just above her shoulders - her blue and white scales were broken by four parallel, bloody slashes. Hiccup winced; on impulse, he leaned in and gently ran his tongue over the cuts. Stormfly hummed quietly and shifted slightly, but made no move to stop him. The metalic taste of her blood filled his mouth, but he continued to clean her wound just as she had done for his shoulder.
"The Queen's control," Stormfly began - Hiccup felt her throat vibrate beneath his tongue - "It's insidious. It doesn't just take away your free will; over time it erodes your very identity. At first you remember everything that happened before she took over, but then things start to... slip away. It's subtle, taking inconsequential things first, so you don't notice it immediately, but after a while..." Stormfly shuddered. "After a while, you start to question whether there was even a life before the Queen."
"I'm sorry," Hiccup whispered, pulling away from cleaning her wound a moment. "How long were you...?"
"Seasons," Stormfly replied. "I was barely an adult when I first fell under her control... I remember the important details of my life before, but none of the specifics. I don't think I ever knew my sire, and my dam died shortly before I became part of the Flock. If my parents had a name for me, The Queen took it from me." The Nadder was silent for a time. "The only things I remember clearly from that time are my dam's Songs."
"Songs?" Hiccup questioned, leaning back so he could look up at her face.
"If you wish it, I'll tell you my story - what little of it I remember - later, but for you to fully understand my history, I must first answer your previous questions. For now, know that those songs are the reason I know much of what I'm about to tell you."
Hiccup nodded his head in acceptance. "So, should I keep calling you Stormfly?"
"If you wish, my Alpha," she replied, "The Human female - Astrid, I believe - was the first being to show kindness towards me since my dam died; I would be honoured to bear the name she gave me."
"Okay, Stormfly," Hiccup said, settling his head down on his paws. "You promised me some answers."
Stormfly didn't answer immediately; Instead, she hummed softly and leaned in. Her tongue flicked out, licking away the patches of soot and blood that the sea hadn't managed to remove.
Eventually, she started to speak between passes of her tongue. "In the beginning," she began, speaking in an even, measured metre, as if recalling a memorised verse. "When the world was formed by the clash of cosmic forces, there was darkness, broken only by the fires of dragons and those of the newborn Earth itself. Into this world of night and flame, there came two dragons, each blessed with a small spark of the powers that had created the world itself.
"First among them was Koyash, the first Red Death. Her spirit was of Chaos and fire; greedy and all consuming. Her counterpart was the first of the Bewilderbeast, Ülgen, who was like the glacier; slow moving and deliberate, but inexorable. Both Ülgen and Koyash had the power to sway lesser dragons to their wills, and thus the first Alphas were born."
Red Death? Bewilderbeast? Hiccup thought - he'd never heard of those dragons before - but then, the Queen has the ability to control dragons; she must be one of them.
"What about Night Furies?" he asked, "You called me Alpha as well."
Hiccup raised his head and began to clean a patch of dried mud and leaves from Stormfly's flank while she continued her tale.
"Born from two opposing forces, it was inevitable that the two Alphas and their flocks came into conflict. The fighting was ferocious, and would have destroyed the dragon race, if not for the third Force; the Preserver, the cosmic balance.
The Preserver's power came to five dragons, and together they became Yilbegän, The Five-who-are-one, first of the Night Furies. Yilbegän shared the power of the other Alphas, but rather than amassing his own flock, he used his power to counter that of Koyash and Ülgen, keeping their conflict from destroying the dragons.
With the Alphas held in stalemate, the dragons prospered, and eventually the original Alphas passed away - for, despite their power, they were still mortal. As the first Alphas died, some of their energy was passed on to their closest followers, becoming the next generation of Alphas, while the rest illuminated the darkened world; in the day Koyash's fire warms us, while at night, Ülgen's gaze lights the world, and Yilbegän's bodies patrol the sky."
Hiccup blinked, staring up at the weak sunlight as it streamed through the leaves. Growing up, he'd been taught that the sun was a chariot driven by the goddess Sól as she fled the wolf Sköll; was it any more plausible to believe that it was in fact the spirit of some long-dead dragon from the beginning of the world?
Stormfly spoke of Yilbegän, Koyash and Ülgen as if they were the Æsir; she couldn't really believe he was the descendant of some dragon god, right?
"Forgive me," Hiccup said, "That was a fascinating story, but why are you telling me this?"
"Believe it or not," Stormfly said, shuffling around slightly to lick at the scrapes on his abdomen left by the rocky shore. "This is your history now; I would be forsaking my duty if I didn't tell you your people's oldest tale."
Hiccup hummed thoughtfully for a moment. "You said that the Night Furies had the power to counter the Alpha's control, right?" Pausing her ministrations, Stormfly nodded. "So why is the Queen able to control the Night Fury - I mean, the one who transformed me - and nearly do the same to me?"
"The fact that you can resist the Queen's will at all is because of your Alpha blood." Stormfly's voice dropped into a sombre register. "But as you know first hand, a Night Fury's power is not infinite; a lone, inexperienced Fury is no match for a full-grown Red Death."
"The other Night Fury," Hiccup asked softly, "What happened to her?"
The shrill music of a songbird rang out, and Hiccup's ear flaps rose instinctively, pinpointing the sound to the lower branches of a tree to his left.
"Alas," Stormfly began, in the same rhythm as her previous narrative. "Her story is a tragic one, but it is also entwined with the origins of our current situation.
"After the deaths of the Trinity - the first Alphas - the Dragons flourished; balanced between the greed of Koyash's children, the restraint of Ülgen's offspring, and with the Night Furies ensuring neither side gained an advantage, they were able to spread across the entire world.
"This balance persisted for untold ages until the ancestors of humankind appeared on a continent far south of here. As your former kind spread across the world, the Alphas began to decline - and with them, the whole dragon race. Some said that the decline was due to competition with your ancestors for the resources to feed the titanic, ancient Alphas; while others believed the rise of humanity was simply a sign of a changing world. Whatever the reason, by the time your antecedents first sailed these northern waters, Dragonkind was a shadow of its former self.
"In this time, a Red Death was born in the North. Like all her kind, she hatched with a greed for power and lust for control. Somehow, this young Alpha was able to secrete herself from the eyes of the Furies and Bewilderbeast, and, as countless seasons passed, she gathered her flock - at first drawing in the occasional wandering dragon, her strength growing, winter after winter, until eventually she could bend whole nests to her will."
Stormfly paused gravely.
"By the time the other Alphas realised what she was doing it was too late - the Queen's flock was several times larger than those ruled by even the oldest of her kind. The Furies tried to stop her: they gathered a great host of every trained warrior among their number and, as one, they flew on the Queen's nest. That day, the fury that your kind is named for was unleashed."
The whole forest seemed to hush as the Nadder's voice dropped to a sombre whisper.
"The seas around the Queen's nest ran red with blood as the dragons fought. The Furies slew thousands of the Queen's dragons, as each of their number was the match for ten or more of the Flock. But, despite the Furies' skill and heroism, the Queen's greater numbers eventually won out, and they were slaughtered to the dragon.
"In response, the Queen's flock descended on the Furies' homeland, massacring every dragon they encountered. Be they hatchling, elder or gravid mother, it mattered not; every dragon who had remained behind when their kind went to war was slain. All, save for one; barely more than a fledgling at the time, she was taken by the Flock and dragged before their master. The Queen broke that young Fury's mind, enslaving her and using her as a spy to root out the Furies that had escaped the destruction of their home."
Realisation slowly dawned on Hiccup. "So the Night Fury, the one that transformed me, is..."
"Yes, she is the very same Fury; last of her kind, and witness to her people's destruction."
Hiccup didn't reply, his mind whirling. He finally knew the full story behind Berk's war with the Dragons, and it was far older than the village and his former people - if Stormfly was to be believed, it was older than humanity itself, having origins at the very beginning of the world.
"After destroying the Furies," Stormfly continued, "The Queen turned her flock on the other Alphas, killing them one by one and enslaving their nests.
"That is why you are so important Hiccup. Only an Alpha can stand against the Queen, and aside from Koyash's spawn, you are the only free Alpha in the world. I don't care that you used to be human; all I care is that you are my people's only hope for freedom."
Hiccup dropped his head onto his paws with a soft moan, his tail almost unconsciously swinging around to shade his face with an extended fin. He was tired and his wounded shoulder ached, but above that he was sick of it all. He wished he could go back to his life in Berk. Back home, he could be reasonably certain of his next meal, and that it would be cooked. His father's silent disapproval, and Snotlout and the Twins' regular bullying was preferable to spending his nights cowering in a dank hole, dreading the appearance of the Queen.
"Why?" He asked in a soft croon, "Why, if the Queen was in control of the Night Fury, would she turn me into the one thing that could possibly threaten her?"
"I don't know for certain," Stormfly replied, "But I suspect that the Queen's control never really took with the Night Fury, and that there was always a small part of her resisting. She would only have had the power for a single transformation; she must have seen something in you that made her choose to gamble everything on your life."
"Just what I needed," Hiccup murmured. "Another life depending on me."
Part of him wanted to dismiss Stormfly's tales as fantasy, but the depth of emotion with which she spoke told him that her words were truth. A mere week ago, the idea of being responsible for another's life was an abstract, distant concept - deep down, some part of him had known he'd been Stoick's heir in name only. Now, the lives of untold thousands of dragons depended on him, in a contest that he had as much chance of winning as the king of England did of turning back the tide.
"I know how you feel," Stormfly crooned into his ear. "The weight of expectations on you, and the sheer impossible enormity of the task you face; it's paralyzing."
Hiccup said nothing, and the Nadder began to speak again.
"After the Night Furies fell, a group of common dragons came together, they knew what was coming for them, and that they had no hope of resisting it, but they were determined to ensure that their people survived. Calling themselves the Songkeepers, they travelled to as many of the nests as they could, and listened to the stories and legends that the dragons told, with a promise to remember the songs they heard and teach them to their hatchlings. That way, when the Queen eventually fell - for no living being can be truly immortal - the memory of Dragonkind would not have been lost. Finally, they vanished into self-imposed exile, in the hope of escaping the Queen's conquest."
"So you..." Hiccup began.
"My dam," Stormfly corrected "She was a Songkeeper - by the time I hatched, the Queen had already won; as far as we knew, we were the only free dragons left. My dam had specialised in the stories and legends surrounding the Night Furies, and keeping her promise, she taught me everything she learnt before... before she..."
The Nadder faltered, and Hiccup felt her shudder beside him. For a moment he was paralysed with indecision - he'd never been very good at comforting people when he was human, and now he had no idea what was considered socially acceptable contact among dragons.
No, He told himself, She saved your life, this is the least you can do.
"It's okay," he said, shuffling closer to her - so that their flanks touched. "You don't have to..."
"No," Stormfly interrupted, "I owe you this story.
"Some dragon species can survive equally well feeding off the land or the sea, but Nadders, we can't hunt very well on land - we need open water. I was hatched on the mainland to the east of here, the Queen's dragons owned the shore, so we were forced to live inland, barely surviving on the meagre offerings of the lakes and rivers, and scavenging wolf kills when we could. One winter... my dam could barely find enough food to feed a Terror, let alone the two of us... yet she forced me to eat it all regardless."
Hiccup winced. He'd heard of similar things happening on Berk: in particularly harsh winters, grandparents sometimes went without food so that their children and grandchildren - the warriors that repelled the dragon attacks - could keep fighting.
"Eventually, my dam, she... she went to sleep and never woke up." Stormfly shuddered again, and was silent for a time. "I knew what would happen if I went to the coast, but I was barely more than a hatchling, and I was starving. The Flock found me while I was struggling to fish, half-starved and exhausted, I had no chance of escaping them... Seasons passed, under her control, and I grew from a scrawny hatchling into an adult... then one day I was flying over the ocean when I was brought down by a group of humans using some kind of net-launching device."
Dragon trappers, Hiccup thought.
"The impact with the sea knocked me unconscious," Stormfly continued. "When I woke up, I was being dragged onto their ship, still trapped in the net, but, more importantly, I was free from the Queen's will.
"It took me some time to gather my thoughts after being controlled for so long, but as I lay there, bound, in that ship's dark hold I realised that I was probably the last of the Songkeepers, and that the few scattered fragments of my youth that I could recall were all that remained of the Age of Alphas."
Stormfly turned her head to gaze down upon him. "My situation was helpless. As far as I knew, I was the last hope for the memory of the dragons before the Queen, and I was trapped, still weakened after regaining my mind, and sailing towards torture or death at the hands of humans.
"I spent a large part of that voyage wallowing in self-pity," she admitted. "But there was part of me that refused to give in and let my dam's sacrifice be in vain. So I began to speak. The dragons that I shared that hold with had been under the Queen's control far longer than me, and probably couldn't even understand me; but I told them everything that I could remember. When we landed and I was moved onto another ship, I told the dragons with me the same thing, resolving not to give up and share what I knew with as many prisoners I could, telling myself that even if I died, as long as the memory of the old ways existed somewhere, the Queen hadn't won."
Stormfly paused for a beat."Then, seasons later, a human fledgling opened my cage in the dead of night, with food in her hand and an apology on her lips. She told me a story about her alpha's hatchling getting turned into a Night Fury, and I dared to hope that my survival may not have been in vain." The Nadder's tongue ghosted over his uninjured shoulder. "I know it feels like an insurmountable obstacle before you Hiccup, but if you give up, you doom us all. But if we keep resisting, defying Her in whatever way we can, the universe will give us a chance to correct the balance."
Hiccup took in a deep breath. Regardless of what Stormfly believed about the bloodlines of ancient dragons, he had no part in her war - he'd been forced into this body against his will and it had nearly cost him his life on several occasions. He had his flight now, so as soon as his wing healed, what was keeping him here? If his former people saw him they wouldn't hesitate in attacking, and the longer he remained, he risked death - or worse - at the will of the Queen.
No, a voice within him whispered, you made a choice when you took pity on the Night Fury. If you won't kill a single dragon, can you really leave her whole species to their fate?
Astrid, He thought. It wouldn't just be the dragons he'd be leaving to the Norns' will; it would be his ex-clansmen as well. Berk was losing the war, and as much as his childhood had been miserable, it had still made him; he couldn't abandon the villagers either.
He exhaled slowly. "You're right." He told Stormfly. "I have no idea how I'm going to be able to face the Queen, but we can't give up."
His ear-fins rose at the distant sound of rustling in the forest. A familiar scent drifted to him on the breeze.
"We need a plan."
Mythology:
Ægir - The giant of the sea in Norse myth; personification of the ocean's power.
Sandraudiga - A lesser Germanic goddess attested to in a Latin inscription found in the Netherlands (hence the story about the original forger of the axe coming from the south).
Einherjar - the warriors brought to Valhalla by the Valkyries to fight in the events of Ragnarök.
Æsir - One of the two principal pantheons of Norse gods (the other being the Vanir) including Odin, Frigg, Thor and Týr.
Historical Note: The 'King of England' mentioned is King Cnut (often anglicised as King Canute) who was also king of Denmark and Norway in the same period. He is famous for allegedly attempting to order the rising tide to halt. Interestingly, in contrast to the context in which this story is usually invoked, the act was intended as a gesture of humility, not arrogance. (For those interested, this also dates the story to taking place sometime between 1016 and 1035)
Author's Notes:
Holy exposition dump, Batman!
Hello again, I appear to to be saying this far too often recently, but I'm sorry there was such a delay in posting this chapter. The months of May and June were very busy for me at University, but also I came to realisation that I'd written myself into a bit of a corner, forcing me to have Stormfly give a big exposition dump to Hiccup in this chapter. So I hope all my made-up backstory didn't bore you too much, and I apologize for leaving you all on a cliffhanger for much longer than I intended.
This chapter was originally meant to include Astrid rejoining Hiccup and Stormfly, but aware of how long I had left it since an update, and of how long this chapter was becoming with everything I needed Stormfly to say, I decided to cut it here.
My fanfic recommendation for you today is Nightfall by Le'letha. This story takes the 'Valka took Hiccup with her' AU to it's logical extreme, wherein for reasons I won't spoil here, Hiccup ends up being essentially raised by the dragons, to the extent that he thinks he is a dragon, and can speak fluently with Toothless, but only remembers a handful Norse words. The story is told from both Astrid and Hiccup's POVs, and the contrast between Hiccup's human-born intelligence and his draconic upbringing - as the dragons in this story are intelligent in more animalistic fashion - make him a fascinating character. There's also a sequel entitled Stormfall that takes place a few years later, broadly following the events of HTTYD2.
FInally, as always, thank you to everyone who's read this far for sticking with me despite my abysmal update schedule, and I'll reiterate my promise that no matter how long it takes I will not abandon this story.
Please leave your thoughts in a review!
~Superbun