Author's Note: Looking at the schedule of posts for this story, I've made a few changes. This story will still update every Saturday. However, in keeping with the theme of this month, there will be two extra updates, on October 31st and November 1st. Also, obviously, today's bonus update, because I needed one more extra update to fit when I want the epilogue to post, and this is a good chapter to add in unexpectedly.
The island did indeed exist. It was large, covered in sparse trees and very plentiful thorns. The entire place had an abandoned feel to it.
Toothless set down in one of the few places devoid of both trees and thorns, a plume of dust rising from his landing. Both man and dragon sneezed, though Toothless's plasma sneezes only made the situation worse. To the embarrassment of both, Toothless ended up having to take off again and land somewhere else.
Hiccup sneezed again, rubbing the dust out of his eyes. He could still see the dust cloud a few hundred feet away. "Why didn't we just land here to start with?"
Toothless lifted a paw in response, displaying a thorn stuck in the padding of his foot. A rather large thorn, the size of Hiccup's pinky finger.
Hiccup winced, moving over to remove it. "That explains it." He pulled the thorn out quickly, wisely dropping it and covering his ears as Toothless roared in pain.
Now that they were more or less intact and on the ground, Hiccup took a moment to look around.
"This place is cheery." He kept talking despite the snort of disbelief from Toothless. "Come on, who doesn't love old trees, dust, and painful plant life! Perfect place to do the impossible."
The lifeless atmosphere of the island was getting to him a little. "Let's just see if this cave exists."
Hiccup wouldn't admit it, but underneath the worry, annoyance, and unease this island caused, there was a glimmer of hope. Because despite everything, the girl had been right so far. The possibility that she was telling the truth about everything was slowly rising.
O-O-O-O-O
It took most of the day. Traversing the island, dragon or human, was either a slow or painful affair, depending on the rate of travel. One had to place each step carefully, to avoid the myriad of black thorns that littered the island, growing in scattered clumps and fields, literally strangling the life out of some trees. Not that those trees had looked so healthy to start with. They were some type of spruce, but clearly not very healthy ones if the fact that half the needles of any given tree were dead, brown and dry, was any indication. Oh, and of course, the weather was so dry the dirt had turned to dust, as Toothless and Hiccup had discovered earlier. All in all, it was a pretty depressing place.
It was nearing sunset when Hiccup caught a glimpse of something black and dense, as opposed to sparse and black, a sign of more brambles in the way. He and Toothless made their way towards it, silent after the toil of the search. It was hard not to speed up when it became apparent that it was indeed a cave entrance, but multiple puncture wounds on both of them from previous false leads had taught patience.
He and Toothless stopped in front of it, looking in. Hiccup could see... absolutely nothing. "What can you see?"
Toothless grunted, giving him a flat stare.
"Oh, right." Hiccup winced. "Hmm..." He looked around. He was going to need to be able to see. A torch would do nicely, but what to make it from?
Hiccup settled on grabbing a low branch of a spruce tree and pulling. He wasn't the strongest Viking around, not by a long shot, but these trees weren't strong either. The entire branch came off with a dry snap and Hiccup stumbled back, almost falling into the cave.
Toothless snorted, watching this.
"I needed light." Hiccup held the branch as an oversized torch, pointing at the end. "Mind setting me up?"
A tiny ball of blue fire lit the end of the branch. Hiccup estimated he had somewhat less than an hour before it went out. He waved it into the almost vertical cave, seeing that the rock was a strange tan color. "Well, time and my torch are wasting."
The two friends descended into the cave. If seen from above, the light of the torch would have slowly faded alongside that of the sun as both went deeper, the darkness following in their wake.
O-O-O-O-O
The cave system was certainly intricate. Hiccup had to wonder at several points what kind of rock this was. The complex and multi-level warren they were traveling through would surely have collapsed if located in any normal rock layer. There were ledges that felt downright unnatural, less than a foot thick, and several dozen feet long. Yet they didn't break, even when Toothless accidentally stepped on them. Often, neither of them would realize they had been standing on such a seemingly weak platform until after getting off of it and seeing it from a different angle.
"I wish I knew what this stuff is." Hiccup stopped a few minutes in, staring at the nearest wall. The rock was a tan-grey and almost porous, a very abrasive surface only smoothed by erosion in the places water would flow down. Which implied that it would rain here, despite the total drought conditions that currently existed.
He tried chipping at it with the metal hilt of one of his knives, but it wouldn't flake. "So much for that." It was enough that it wasn't going to collapse on their heads.
O-O-O-O-O
Descending deeper become more and more difficult as the tunnels grew sparser and less open. Finding one that led in a downward direction was no help, as often said tunnels would curve back up, depositing them on a higher level. Hiccup's torch was going steadily, and he knew they were running out of time.
Toothless was also becoming more and more agitated. He was growling softly, at nothing in particular.
Hiccup might have been worried about some unseen threat, but Toothless would have been acting on it, not just following. This was simply a sign of intense unease. He felt it too. This place was unnatural. But surely that meant they were on the right track.
They had reached an intersection of sorts, one in which three tunnels crossed over a pit. Hiccup looked down into the pit, but it was apparent that it led nowhere. A deep hole with no exit or side tunnels whatsoever, and a thin layer of stagnant water on the bottom.
The other exits, five in total, were unusually distinct, in contrast to the uniformity of previous ones. And, Hiccup noted with surprise, these had runes carved into the wall, despite the odd difficulty of even scratching this stone.
The first tunnel, the one directly to Hiccup's right, seemed fragmented, cracks running through the stone for a few feet. The word over it was simple and yet indecipherable in meaning. 'Memory.'
The second tunnel entrance seemed to have been scorched, a darkened flame blackening it at some point in the past. The words over it were also scorched, though they had originally been carved. The message, twice repeated, was 'Sacrifice.'
The third tunnel was caved in, a sight that filled Hiccup with dread. He had thought this place resistant to such issues. The letters on this one had apparently been recarved some time after the cave in. 'Personality.'
The fourth tunnel was normal, and the word even more so. 'Exit.'
And the fifth lead deep into the earth, the word scratched with an unearthly precision. 'Center'.
The last two tunnels felt different, as if named by a different hand. Hiccup did not doubt that he was meant to go into the one labeled center and that the one labeled exit was indeed an exit. They felt simple, straightforward. The other three, however, were unknowns. Disturbing ones at that. Memory, Personality, and Sacrifice. Not the most literal descriptions.
"Well, bud?" Hiccup turned to look at Toothless, who was sniffing the tunnel labeled memory. After a moment, he shook his head, growling in what Hiccup recognized as defiance.
"Okay, not memory." Hiccup considered the other paths. "Personality is blocked, and I don't like the sound of Sacrifice. So, we can leave, or we can figure out what's at the bottom of this place."
Toothless however began to stalk into memory, still growling defiantly.
"Okay, Memory it is." Hiccup followed, worrying about his torch. Toothless could get him out, of that he was sure, but when it went out, that was it for exploring. He wouldn't be able to work up the nerve to enter this place again. That was a truth he knew, in defiance of reason. When this torch burned out, they were leaving.
But it hadn't gone yet. So he followed Toothless through the passage, which was winding, curving to one side consistently, no exits or side-passages to be seen.
Toothless abruptly stopped, his growls faltering as he stared at the wall. Hiccup stood beside him, looking at what had caught his friend's attention.
It was a carving of a man, staring out at the tunnel from the wall, sightless eyes glaring. The details were sparse, done in the same painstakingly-etched lines as before, but they conveyed that the figure was human, male, angry, and not at all tall. Short, squat.
"Odd." Hiccup smirked despite the unsettling nature of everything around them. "I'm going to guess not a self-portrait. No one makes himself look ugly in pictures."
Toothless shuffled to the side, revealing another picture. A dragon, a Terrible Terror, though again detail was sparse. And another, just visible beyond him. A Gronckle, one with a missing eye.
As they walked through the tunnel, Hiccup recognized most of the common species of dragon, along with a few less common. Two in particular, right next to each other, made him gasp. "Night Furies."
Toothless pawed at the wall, seemingly confused. To be fair, there was almost no detail in these two, just enough to identify them as members of the species.
They continued. There was a single Whispering Death and a few Changewings, along with people. Men and women of all ages, ethnicities, and sizes, though far more women than men. A few children, though no toddlers or infants. All staring out from the wall, carved in stone.
The tunnel ended in... a very familiar cave in. Hiccup stared, confused, rewinding his mental map of the route they had taken. "This must be the other side of the personality passage." That was odd. Why label two ends of the same tunnel different things?
Toothless must have come to the same conclusion, because he turned and nudged Hiccup, urging him back they way they had come. Hiccup obliged him, trailing his hand over the carvings, lingering on the pair of Furies. "What was this place?"
He had a theory, though it was an odd one. A corridor labeled memory interspersed fairly evenly with dragons and humans of all kinds. Was this some sort of ruin from a civilization that lived in harmony with dragons, like he hoped Berk would? That fit, but it didn't fit the atmosphere of these caves, this island. Such a place would be one of less... disturbing nature.
They returned to the intersection, and this time Hiccup didn't hesitate. "Let's figure out why we're here, bud." He shoved his dying torch forward, and strode into the cave, descending even further into the earth, his best friend watching his back.
It was right about then he remembered something Vithvarandi had said. 'It's not safe there.' But had she simply been referring to the complex system of caverns and the entirely possible fate of being trapped in the darkness forever? That would be a massive concern if he didn't have Toothless here. Hopefully, that was it.
They descended further, and Hiccup realized something slightly comforting. The rock around them had changed again, fading into a very normal dark grey stone, one he could chip with effort. This new stone was lined with a strange moss. Moss that glowed, lighting the way.
"Looks like we don't have to worry about light for now." Hiccup considered the burning nub of the branch, likely good for another five minutes or so. "Bud, can you put this out? We can leave it here for when we leave."
Toothless complied, snuffing out the flames with his fireproof scales, leaving a smoldering branch at the place where the glowing moss ended. Together, they pressed onward.
The tunnel continued at an angle into the ground. It eventually began to split off, one intersection after another, coming at regular intervals, like a giant grid. Hiccup pressed onwards, never turning. The only thing he knew was that the tunnel wasn't sloping anymore, and none of the branches did either, from what he could tell. This must be the lowest level. Now they just needed to find the center.
Their forward progress was halted by a very strange door. It was built entirely out of some grey metal, and there was an odd dial on the front, one with numbers carved into it, so that at any given time one number would be facing up.
Hiccup spun the dial pensively, noting that the numbers ranged from zero to ten in no sequential order. "Weird." Then he noticed that the wall on both sides of the door had hundreds of tiny carvings distributed seemingly at random, of anything and everything. Trees, animals, people, stars, shapes, more numbers. Literally hundreds of them.
He turned his attention to the door, which, upon closer inspection, had a phrase carved into it, so lightly as to be invisible from afar. It was indecipherable, but there were more recent scratches in normal Norse runes below. He read it out loud. "It kills all who live, destroys all that is built, and erases memory. We all have it, but some more than others." He grimaced. "That's cheery."
Hiccup took a step back. "I refuse to be beaten by a puzzle." Of all people, he would not let that happen. "We need a number between one and ten. And we also need to do something else, because otherwise, I would have unlocked the door just by spinning that dial."
He reexamined the carvings, noting that many of them repeated. "It kills everyone, destroys everything. I don't know of any god that does that. Ragnarok is a massive battle, not one person ending the world." He was musing now.
"So many of these symbols repeat. Man, dog, tree, cloud, dog, cloud, sundial, dog..." Wait a minute. "Sundial. Time. It kills everyone, old age. Nothing lasts forever. And everyone has time, some more than others!"
In retrospect, it wasn't that hard of a puzzle. But that wasn't everything. Inspiration wasn't long in coming for the rest. He pushed the sundial and noticed that it moved slightly, the section it was carved into a separate piece of stone, despite appearing part of the wall.
But there was an ominous rumble above them when he pushed it. Clearly, messing this up would be bad.
Toothless growled, looking up.
"Yeah, I know." Hiccup thought logically, not about the puzzle itself but how it was built. From the point of view of the person who made it. Clearly, it was designed to keep people out, unless they understood the process. He knew the verbal part of the answer, and how to indicate it. But there was something else. He needed a number. What here indicated a number? The only thing that indicated numbers was the number of times a symbol was repeated. That was it.
He searched the wall, carefully seeking out other sundial images. This was important, and he spared no effort in looking. Missing one would likely be fatal if that ominous rumble overhead had been any indication. In all of his searching, he only found one more, hidden in a corner, on the opposite corner of the corridor. It also budged, telling him exactly what he needed to do.
Vithvarandi had given him the final clue, he thought. She had said two people were ideal. One for each carving. "Toothless. When I say, push this in." He was glad his friend understood pretty much everything he said.
They both paused, Toothless with a claw on one sundial, Hiccup with his hand on the other. The number had been set to display two, and if he was right, they needed to push both sundials in at the same time. "Now."
They both pushed, Toothless matching Hiccup's speed despite superior strength because he was pushing with a single claw, an awkward movement for a Night Fury. Both stone blocks slid haltingly, grinding against the surface of the holes they rested in. There were no further rumbles from above, and eventually both Hiccup and Toothless hit a place where the rocks wouldn't go any further.
A very distinct series of clicks made both of them flinch, though Hiccup grinned at the noise. Without even looking, he knew what had just happened. As an inventor, he could reverse engineer things like this. A system built on pressure and moving parts. Both sundials moved parts likely above them, as well as something in the door. The lock had three parts, and the misplacement of either sundial or misalignment of the dial would result in an insufficient loadbearing weight somewhere above them.
The stone that formed the ceiling above their head, he had to guess, was an extremely thin shelf. Somewhere high above it likely rested several dense boulders, which would at the first mistrigger of the lock be dropped, smashing through the shelf and crushing them. He knew this because it all made sense. So without even looking, he shoved the now ajar door open. "Nice try."
Toothless eyed the now open passage in front of the dubiously.
Hiccup smiled. "Well, we've gone this far..." He trailed off as Toothless nodded at the door. "Good to know you're with me on this."
Together, they ventured even further in. The passage ended in a large circular room, one with no exits save the one they had come in through.
The first thing either of them noticed was the little girl, standing in the center of the strange room. It was definitely the same person, despite the sheer impossibility. They had flown directly here, moving much faster than any ship could ever go, though not at any particularly high speed for a dragon. It was impossible.
The girl, on the other hand, smiled, though her grin faded into a look of confusion as Toothless became visible, walking in after Hiccup. For a moment, there was a stand-off. Then she broke it by turning away and walking towards the far wall, which Hiccup noticed had many strange runes carved seemingly at random, in no language he recognized.
After a moment she spoke, still not paying any attention to them both. "You came. With a very strange companion, but nonetheless."
Hiccup flinched at her words. The fact that she didn't seem at all frightened of Toothless didn't surprise him. It was just another facet of her oddness. "Yes." This girl had been unnerving out in the daylight, surrounded by people. In here, who knew how far below the ground, in a strange and unnatural complex of caves... she was downright disturbing. None of this felt right.
She pushed in a portion of the wall, fiddling with something he couldn't see beyond. She spoke as she worked, seemingly at ease. "It's been quite a while." A yank and a decidedly odd curse followed those words. "And this place gets more broken down every time. Not that it matters."
"Do you... live here?" That made no sense, but he asked anyway.
Vithvarandi shrugged. "Not really. This place is old and depressing, but I come back every once in a while. To add to the hall of memory, and once in a great while, to do this." She punctuated that last word by pulling something out of the unseen hollow and pushing the stone back into place. "You'll need this."
Hiccup stared at the ancient... thing... she held out towards him. It was clearly old, a metal canister with glass sides, filled with some sort of blue liquid, though that might just have been the ambient glow of the moss lighting the room. "For what?"
Vithvarandi smiled. "To make you whole." She gestured to his leg. "Was that not what you wanted, more than anything?"
Not exactly more than anything, Hiccup realized. There were plenty of things he would have gladly traded a leg for. But he did want it back if it could be done. "Well, I do want it back..."
She shook it, grimacing. "Then take it. You may also want to tell your pet to move aside a little bit."
He didn't like the way she referred to Toothless as a pet, but he took the canister anyway and stepped away. This was where he drew the line though. "As great as all this seems, I wasn't born yesterday. Mind explaining a little more than 'you'll need this?"
Vithvarandi smiled at him, her young face shadowed oddly by the glow from the moss. "In a moment. I know you won't do anything without a full explanation. No one does. Luckily, I don't need to do that first. This is for your own good."
A sharp pain in the hand that held the canister underlined those ominous words quite efficiently. Hiccup yelped and let go of the canister, trying to drop it. The problem was, it was attached to his hand, in defiance of anything he could do to shake it off. And it hurt. He was horrified to see the blue liquid disappearing, and to feel a strange burning sensation travel up his arm, slowly moving towards the rest of him.
Vithvarandi sighed, looking at Toothless, who was growling at her, clearly torn between worry and rage. "Call your pet off. I told you, this is for your own good."
Hiccup groaned, finally able to drop the canister, which was empty. "That might be a good argument... if you hadn't just poisoned me, or whatever that was." He didn't know what it was, but it certainly felt poisonous, that odd heat traveling through his veins, spreading across his entire body. Nevertheless, he waved Toothless back, seeing the wisdom in not attacking the little girl who was clearly far more than she appeared.
The girl grabbed the canister, eyeing it before tossing it aside. "Now that we've begun, I have an offer for you." She glared at Toothless, before smiling at Hiccup. "It would be in your best interests to listen."
Author's Note: A true cliffhanger here, I'd say. Sorry, but at least you have one less day to wait, right?