Author's Note: I must apologize for the lateness of this chapter. It may have been optimistic to think that I could get this out as usual with my sporadic access to wi-fi. I will try to do better with the next chapter, which should be out on Saturday, and by shortly after the following Saturday, access to wi-fi becomes much less problematic.
On the bright side, this is a good chapter to have had delayed, given it ends on a cliffhanger and the next chapter is coming out at its normal time (hopefully).
"I don't like sand." Beryl snorted in disgust.
Hiccup flicked a claw at Beryl, showering him in more of the stuff. "Why? It's useful."
"It's all coarse, and rough, and irritating. And it gets everywhere," Beryl retorted, flicking some back. Neither of them seemed to have the energy to do more than that.
"Well, get used to it. For now, we're stuck here." Hiccup eyed Beryl's tail. "I told you not to strain it."
"We're fine. I don't think she's going to follow us." Beryl stuck an intimidating pose. Well, intimidating to anyone who didn't notice that he was visibly drooping through exhaustion. "We showed her back in those woods."
"You may be right..." Hiccup cast a glance at the sea and sky behind him. "Will you be ready to go by nightfall?"
"I'd say... no." Beryl flexed his tailfins. "It hurts to move."
"Okay. I'll go grab some fish." Hiccup launched into the air, slowly winging his way out to sea.
Beryl sat on the beach, amidst several chest-high sand dunes, seemingly at ease. "I don't think she'll ever find us" he muttered aloud.
O-O-O-O-O
The sound of the waves masked the soft crunching of sand that heralded approaching footsteps. Vithvarandi glared at the insolent Night Fury she was creeping towards, fully aware she couldn't be seen as a Changewing. Quite useful bodies, Changewings. She'd never had to use them so often before. Most prey wasn't so alert and observant.
Alert by comparison, that is. The doomed Fury in front of her wasn't at all observant, even if in this case it would have been futile. He was sweeping at the sand idly with his tailfins now, creating a flowing pattern around him, smoothing the sand. An activity good solely for wasting time. He wasn't aware he had almost no time left to waste.
One more form for herself, and maybe some insight. She coveted that almost as much as a fresh Night Fury in the prime of youth. Information about her real concern. This dragon was insignificant, like every other mortal in the world.
A portion of her mind weakly objected, but it was quickly overridden. Mortals were inconsequential, they had to be. Nothing they did or said lasted, no promises could be kept, no relationships maintained. They all fell to death, all their actions and intentions rendered worthless. They were no better than the true animals and should be treated as such. Besides, it was for the greater good. She could use their imperfections to keep herself alive. Forever.
That was good. But it wasn't enough. Both sides of her agreed upon that, one of the few times in which they were truly in agreement. Both of them were knew all too well the feeling of loneliness, isolation. So her dominant side acted on that, ignoring the half-hearted pangs of discontent emanating from the other. She had gotten very good at ignoring that kind of thing.
Someone like her. Someone to spend eternity with, to banish the loneliness. It was all she wanted, and she'd get it, one way or another. Even if it involved deceiving the one she wanted even more than she already had.
Her plan was simple. Her future companion was busy, diving and firing into the sea, following a school of fish. She'd attack his companion, take his form, hide the ashes in the sand, and...
Here her ideas varied. One plan was to simply act as her companion's friend for a while, and hopefully ingratiate herself to the point that she could reveal her true self, without him objecting. Or she could start a fight, and either get her companion to kill the Fury or leave as the Fury, abandoning him and leaving him open to her approaching him in her true form. Or something in the Fury's memories would shine a light on how her companion thought, how he worked.
Really, there were plenty of possibilities, but they all hinged on this. Her killing her future companion's...
What was this other Night Fury to him? The two had been journeying together before any of this, and she knew from the memories of others taken from their village of the history between the two, from perspectives of both species. But friends, allies in battle alone didn't describe them. Best friends maybe.
She was sparing him pain later on, by killing his friend now. At least here the death would benefit her and possibly him in the long run, instead of a worthless death of accident or old age.
That was what most of her thought. The feeble objections raised by her other half were inconsequential and didn't factor into her decision-making process at all. That lone, reedy strand of memories that reeked of objection and discontent was annoying in the way a distant mosquito just close enough to hear was. Aggravating, but not actually doing anything.
The Fury was still unaware of her presence, but he had by coincidence moved away, looking out at the sea. She stepped forward, preparing to pounce. She would grab his head and cut his throat. Almost instant death, and hopefully a silent-
A flash of agony, and the familiar wrenching sensation of losing the body she inhabited. The odd sense of intangibility that lasted a split second before she resolidified in the body of a Timberjack. What-?
Before her eyes even opened she was again under attack, claws tearing into her large wings, shredding the sensitive membrane. The pain was excruciating, but her anger drowned it out. No point in hiding, in being silent. Her agonized and enraged roar echoed across the beach.
Her eyes focused on the Night Fury tearing into her massive wing. A single flex of her will and he was thrown back, her black flames repelling him like the insignificant insect he was. A painful insect, but still insignificant. Rage flooded her mind with energy, and drove out all thought, save for one immediate goal. The death of this animal that dared-
Another mass slammed into her, inexplicably knocking her back despite the protection of her flames. It hurt. Something was wrong.
When the flames receded she shook her head, dazed. Nothing could even hit her in that halfway state. The flames repelled any encroaching mass with unnatural force. So what had?
O-O-O-O-O
Hiccup spun and dropped the act the second he heard the sound of combat. It had been a risky plan, but the gamble paid off, Vithvarandi taking the faked injury and complacency as truth. He was rewarded with the sight of Beryl tearing into an invisible mass, one that flickered into sight a moment before disintegrating.
Invisible, yes, but it was pretty easy to see her footprints on the perfectly smoothed sand. That was the first of several surprises he and Beryl had prepared, and it had already proven deadly. Hopefully, that was her only Changewing body.
Ember flung himself at Vithvarandi the moment she began to shift forms, hoping his guess was correct. If it wasn't, this was going to be very painful. He triggered his own transformation moments before plowing into the black flaming mass.
Black flame battled blue, an unstoppable force against an unbreakable barrier. The forces negated each other, but as Hiccup had momentum, he felt less of the effect, his barrier far less disturbed by the impact. It hurt in a strange way, but not debilitatingly so.
He had a knife up and almost out of his hand by the time the flames receded, the sharp metal flying true. It hurt to see his own weapon buried to the hilt in the chest of a red Nadder, the way she staggered and bled. But this was necessary.
Besides, the only reason this felt so one-sided was that she hadn't gotten a chance to strike back yet. They would work to keep it that way.
Hiccup shifted back to his dragon form, pouncing on whatever form Vithvarandi was about to fall into, the Nadder collapsing. That turned out to be a Gronckle, who resisted his claws and teeth a bit better. Vithvarandi slammed her bulbous tail into Beryl's side, knocking him to the ground right in front of one of the chest-high sand dunes.
Beryl subtly winked at Hiccup as Vithvarandi leaped at him, aiming to slam her tail into his head.
Hiccup spat a fast plasma blast at Vithvarandi's descending form, pushing her just a bit off course, angled to land on the dune instead of Beryl. Beryl rolled out of the way.
A sickening tearing sound was heard when Vithvarandi landed, her dense body smashing the sand dune… and something else.
The body of the Gronckle collapsed, revealing a strange object that had been hidden beneath the pile of sand. All three of them stared for a moment at the grisly sight.
A twisted spike of partially clear glass, speckled with sand and colored by the carbon produced as a side product of a Fury's fire. A smoked spire of dark glass coated in blood, having just impaled Vithvarandi as she slammed down onto it.
Vithvarandi, now in the body of a heavily armored Viking, visibly paled as she made the connection, staring at the multitude of similar hills scattered across the area. Any or all of them could conceal similarly deadly spikes. The beach was a hidden deathtrap.
Hiccup grinned viciously, saying nothing. He and Beryl spread out, slowing circling Vithvarandi, who seemed to be considering her options. She held her hands out, brandishing the sword this body happened to be holding. "Clever." Her voice was dripping with anger, lips curled into a sneer.
"Story of my life." Hiccup considered the armored opponent in front of him... and Beryl, who Vithvarandi seemed to be ignoring. "Taking down more powerful enemies with my mind. Or a friend."
Beryl blasted Vithvarandi in the back, denting her armor and causing her to stagger forward. Hiccup slammed the armored helm with his tail, taking the brunt of the blow with the base of it as he spun.
The blow hadn't been intended to kill, but the sickening snap and subsequent pile of ash proved just how lethal it had been. One more body down.
Vithvarandi seemed even more uncertain as she backed up, now a lightly armored human with no weapons. For some reason she kept that form, not switching to one more capable of self-defense.
Beryl again got behind her, not attacking yet. This felt like a trick, like they were missing something.
Vithvarandi, seeing she wasn't being attacked, grinned. "No matter how much you think you want to kill me, you can't attack an unarmed-"
Hiccup cut her off, using his second-to-last shot at close range. The piles of black ash were dotting the ground now, like diseased sand staining the beach. Yellow sand, black ash, and red-stained sand all intermixed between the dunes.
Two Night Furies against any one human or dragon was just unfair. That was becoming clear. There was almost nothing Vithvarandi could do in a straight fight.
She was beginning to understand that. After losing yet another form, the black fires cleared to reveal... a hole in the ground, sand streaming down into it.
Hiccup groaned, recalling the little he knew about tunneling dragons. "Whispering Death." It didn't help that this species of dragon, he knew in retrospect, was the one Vithvarandi had used to kill him in his first life as Ember.
The ground shook slightly, informing them both that Vithvarandi wasn't running.
"Take to the air!" Hiccup's actions mirrored his words as he yelled, launching quickly. Last time Vithvarandi had attacked from below, tearing him apart with her rotating teeth before he could react. They needed distance.
Beryl leaped into the air, but he wasn't fast enough. The sand exploded outwards as Vithvarandi launched out from below, slightly off-target.
The cloud of sand Vithvarandi brought with her obscured Hiccup's vision, but he could clearly hear Beryl's yowl of pain and see the way his friend's wings faltered even as he pulled away from the worm-like dragon with no legs and a massive maw full of rotating teeth.
Without thought, Hiccup banked and dove, slamming into the spiked side of the Whispering Death, cutting himself as he shoved it away from Beryl. Worth the pain.
Beryl flew somewhat far from the scene of the battle, blood dripping from his left back paw. He was visibly psyching himself up to rejoin the battle despite what must be near-debilitating pain.
But for the moment, it was Hiccup against Vithvarandi in the body of a Whispering Death. This was far more even of a match than he would have liked, especially with only one, maybe two shots left. They circled each other in the air for a moment, Vithvarandi moving fluidly through the sky, her smaller wings and body shape making her deceptively agile.
Vithvarandi opened with a strange circular blast of red-hot fire, which Hiccup dove through, shooting his last blast directly into her open mouth. It didn't kill her, but the strangled roar of agony was proof it had hurt.
They clashed again and again, Hiccup slashing and Vithvarandi twisting, letting her spikes do the work, always looking for an opportunity to bring her shredding maw into play. For every gash Hiccup opened with his claws, he received a few from the unavoidable spikes all over the Whispering Death's body.
This was bad. Attrition was not a type of war Hiccup could win. Vithvarandi had who knew how many bodies to spare, and he did not. She would win if they continued exchanging wounds. He scanned the ground below and abruptly changed his strategy, diving down and grabbing onto Vithvarandi's small wings, using all four claws to clamp them down. Dropping both combatants out of the sky like a rock.
He held them like that until the last moment before impact, letting go and rolling off, hoping his aim was good. But as he completed his roll, he saw that it hadn't been good enough. The glass spike hidden beneath that dune was a bit off-center, and Vithvarandi had landed to the side, stunned but not injured, the spike a few feet away from her massive maw and beady eyes.
Before Vithvarandi could move a plasma blast shattered the glass spike, launching hundreds of razor-sharp fragments into Vithvarandi's head, killing the Whispering Death. Beryl had reentered the fight.
And so the fight continued, Vithvarandi becoming more and more desperate as Beryl and Hiccup methodically tore through her forms. The sand was thoroughly soaked with blood, the rough glass spires one by one uncovered and used by Hiccup or Beryl. The preparation had paid off. Vithvarandi was forced to avoid all sand dunes, while Hiccup and Beryl knew which were safe and which were death traps. Even if they weren't good as impaling spikes, Beryl had proved they could be lethal if shattered with a blast.
Vithvarandi became more and more desperate as her forms died, each loss shaking her resolve to fight. A wild look began to show in her diverse eyes, alike only in their desperation.
Hiccup was tired, but they didn't stop, couldn't stop. It would end here. He could see that Vithvarandi was defending herself more frantically with every lost form. That to him implied she was running out of morbidly stolen bodies. He and Beryl were entirely focused on ending her here and now.
Which might explain why he was surprised to feel an arrow pierce his side even as he clawed at Vithvarandi, who was in a human body wielding an ax. He staggered, shocked by the unexpected and sudden pain. The surprise in Vithvarandi's eyes echoed his own. Beryl froze mid-snarl, staring at the treeline.
Six Vikings emerged, dressed for hunting and armed with bows. One had his bow out, but the rest seemed far less ready to fight. Their eyes were wide, staring, mouths slightly open in awe... or fear.
Hiccup realized how intimidating this must look. Two unknown dragons attacking a Viking, the beach literally bathed in blood, far too much to have come from the three combatants present, also littered with strange fragments of glass. Of course, they'd attack the vicious dragons trying to kill one of their own.
Vithvarandi held a shaking hand out towards the Vikings, her voice quivering. "Help!" That shriek tore out of her throat, an embodiment of panic and exhaustion.
Hiccup winced as she darted towards the Vikings. He had no shots, and neither did Beryl. Vithvarandi was getting away, and leaving them with a far more dangerous fight, while exhausted.
All three combatants were surprised when the leading Viking drew his bow and pointed it at Vithvarandi's chest. She skidded to a stop.
The leading Viking spoke, his voice quivering with suppressed fear. "We saw. Not one step closer, demon." His men drew their bows, two aiming at Hiccup, two at Beryl, and one more at Vithvarandi. "I don't know what kind of unholy monstrosities you three are, but we aren't falling for this."
Hiccup eyed the arrow sticking out of his side. It had missed his vitals, though not by much. Just another painful wound, not serious enough to worry about. He managed to twist his head around and yank the arrowhead out, thankful it wasn't barbed. He returned his full attention to the archers. "Beryl, no sudden moves."
Beryl snorted, burying his still bleeding paw in the sand. "No need to tell me that."
Vithvarandi began slowly stepping to the side, away from both the Furies and the Vikings. "I have no quarrel with you."
Hiccup growled. She was getting away, slowly but steadily. Though not that far away. What was she trying to accomplish?
Vithvarandi pointed at the Furies. "They, however, are Night Furies." Her voice was scared, but there was a subtle lilt that to Hiccup implied she knew exactly what reaction that would produce.
The Vikings visibly paled, though Hiccup personally didn't know why Night Furies were more intimidating than a shapeshifter. Their leader spoke, his thoughts following a similar path. "They are dragons, simple beasts. You are something more, something worse." Without warning he fired, an arrow slamming into Vithvarandi's chest.
The leader frowned. "I don't take chances."
Beryl leaped into the air a split second before two arrows pounded into the sand where he had been standing. Hiccup did the same, having heard the implications in the man's words just before seeing the subtle signal he gave. Both winged out of range, circling above the beach of blood.
Vithvarandi hadn't died yet. She was gasping, the arrow lethal but not immediately so, for whatever reason. After a moment her breathing stopped, and the assembled Vikings let out a stream of curses as her body crumbled, a Terrible Terror appearing behind her. They scrambled to draw more arrows, but Vithvarandi darted away, flying straight out to sea.
Hiccup and Beryl chased after her, unwilling to let her escape. But she shifted midair, her new body one much faster. A particularly streamlined and muscled Nadder, who easily shot ahead, outpacing the injured and exhausted Furies. Beryl roared in frustration as she powered ahead, slowly fading into a dark speck on the horizon.
Hiccup groaned, his muscles all hurting from the fight, and the multitude of cuts he had suffered aching in the sea breeze. "She's running."
"We were close, I could feel it." Beryl faltered in his flight, before forcing himself back up. "She must be almost out of bodies."
Hiccup agreed, but clearly, she wasn't quite down yet. Though they had knocked the will to attack right out of her, by all appearances. She was fleeing. They would follow. The hunter had become the hunted. He was good at the hunt.
O-O-O-O-O
Following Vithvarandi quickly become nearly impossible. A speck in the distance if the weather was good was all the indication they had. A few days later and she was gone entirely. Hiccup had no ideas on how to track her. She had escaped them.
He was contemplating that as they flew, following the last direction she had been spotted flying in, before a cloudbank in the Northwest let her give them the slip entirely. There was no way to know where she had gone.
They passed a series of oddly shaped sea-stacks to the East, ones with almost spherical sections, looking precariously balanced. Hiccup blinked, staring at those sea stacks. He... knew them. Without explanation he turned, heading in a new direction.
"Where are you going?" Beryl squinted at the horizon. "She can't have gone this way!"
Hiccup didn't answer. His mind pulled him, memories suddenly becoming relevant. Half an hour's flight later, and that smudge on the horizon had grown distinct. An island. One he knew well.
Home.
Beryl at some point recognized it and ceased his intermittent questioning, flying silently. They circled the island, Hiccup taking in the familiar sights. After a while they set down, walking towards a very familiar place. A large hill near the center of the island, one he was sure still had a dirt cave dug into its side. So much time had passed, but it felt like he had never left. If he looked to the side he felt he'd see a younger version of Beryl, tumbling along, still not entirely coordinated. Flint would be around and Spark somewhere nearby. Night Fury footprints would surround the dirt cave, and the interior would smell like home. It was an illusion, thinking it would all be as it was so long ago, but a good one.
Which is why he stopped, staring down. Beryl stopped beside him, both of them looking at something that shouldn't exist.
Night Fury footprints, fully grown and fresh. Leading towards and away from the dirt cave.
Beryl's face went through an array of emotions, from surprise to shock, fading into anger and fear. Fear, despite what he said. "There's only one person who would be here."
Hiccup agreed. "Remember what we said?"
"I do." Beryl took a step back. "You'll-"
A thud cut him off, one that came from behind both of them. Hiccup turned slowly, knowing and looking forward to what he'd see.
A somewhat small yellow Night Fury, whose eyes were still a startling off-white. One who was a bit too lean to be healthy, with a strange drooping of scales under his eyes. Despite the oddities, it was clear. This was Spark.
Author's Note: Did anyone really think he wouldn't enter the story at some point? One does not set up a character without eventually using them. We'll see how all of this plays out…
I should note that it is a physical impossibility for this to be Vithvarandi, unless she is capable of teleportation. She was last seen, only hours before, going in the opposite direction to this island, and Hiccup and Beryl have been between it and her since then. She did not have time to circle around, and Changewings cannot camoflage against the empty sky, so she could not sneak past them either. A Scauldron or water-dwelling dragon might have made it past their surveillance (and really, Vithvarandi should have thought of that at some point), but it would not be faster than a Night Fury in the air, meaning our protagonists would still beat her there.
Basically, this is not Vithvarandi. It's not possible.