Sorry for the wait! End of semester blues, but we're back! Hope everyone else is doing well in the world. Much love!
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Pit
One of the things Astrid hated the most about the Hatchery, next to the abysmal conditions, was the screaming within the tiny fire rooms. Fabric wrapped around her hands tightly, she picked up the Gronckle egg in her hands and turned it. The skin on her cheekbones and nose and lips had blistered long ago, and the rags had caught fire twice since she started hours before. The fire rooms were the most hated area to work in the Hatch, and that was partially due to the high and literal burn-out rate. If you didn't faint from the heat within the first few minutes, the pain would throw you out soon enough.
Astrid wiped the sweat out of her eyes as she moved to another egg, turning it against the stone. Gronckle shells were coated with a rock-like finish and it ground against the bottom, making a terrible crunching noise. And the eggs in Astrid arms were heavy. Too heavy to bear. She grunted and wheezed as she twisted her body to turn the egg.
Set, she leaned against the egg, wincing as her hands burned and yet not strong enough to leave the support of it. She peeled open her eyes only slightly – anymore and the heat would seer her eyes again – and looked at all twenty-two eggs with a heavy weight in her stomach. None of them would hatch. Not a single egg – Gronckle, Scauldron, Terror, Thunderdrum, even Whispering Deaths – none of them would hatch.
Astrid groaned and left the room, feeling the walls to guide her way out. She sucked in the cool air of the Hatch and sighed deeply, rolling her shoulders and clearing her parched throat. Her eyes adjusted and she felt them twitch as the thin layer in front of her vision healed. She shuddered, not used to the bond's benefits. She blinked and looked across to Valka, who gave some of her soldiers a collection of orders before catching Astrid's eye. She waved the soldiers off and they departed towards the cages containing the mother dragons, disappearing down a corridor. She made her way to Astrid and had a harsh look on her face – her Birdsong face – but her voice was soft.
"You've been in there for hours," Valka said, looking around. She subtly handed Astrid her water skin. Astrid looked for onlookers before quickly drinking the entire contents of the bottle before handing it back to her.
Valka grabbed Astrid's wrist and pulled the rags around her palms back. She watched for a few seconds as the blisters burst and slowly healed, like a Snaptrapper slowly opening and closing their mouths in a morning rain. Valka pulled the rags over her palms once more and Astrid closed her hands into fists, stifling a groan and squeezing her eyes shut.
"How are the eggs?" Valka continued.
"Unchanged," Astrid replied quietly. "None have hatched, or even moved. They're full, they're in there, but they just won't hatch."
"Have any turned?"
"You mean die?" Astrid asked. "No… they just sit there."
Two weeks of nothing, Valka reminded herself. Two weeks of sending poor souls into the egg rooms, sacrificing flesh and bone to the creatures, and yet nothing.
"You've been spending a lot of time in those rooms," Valka noted. "A lot of time to think about our discussion?"
Astrid winced again, twisting her hand around to stretch her aching wrists. She had been avoiding the topic ever since it had been brought up. A revolution, to fill in the tiny and yet huge boots Rose left in her wake. "I don't know," she mumbled.
Valka chewed her lip for a moment and stepped in closer. She lowered her voice. "What do I have to do to convince you? Seeing Hiccup is not enough?"
Astrid growled. "It's not that. There's more to this situation than him and I. A quarter of my village is here. Generations of people are here. I can't just commit to something blindly, and without my strength, if I risk losing everything."
Valka shook her head. "It's not blind, it's spitting all of us in the face. I don't like this structure – have you ever thought to take a closer look at the the walls? How they're worn down, how this enormous monolith of a 'sanctuary' was… built? I don't know about you, but I certainly haven't heard of Alvin's brigade of master builders or Dagur's magnificent diggers."
Astrid furrowed her brow and looked across to the smoothed walls, the arched doors, the pits grooved into the earth.
A scream broke the two women from their reverie and Valka turned almost too calmly. Astrid's neck tensed painfully as a huge shadow lumbered from the caverns that led to the cages. The massive body of the beast practically collapsed into the light of the torches and Valka looked upon it distastefully.
Astrid, meanwhile, marvelled at the colossal dragon. A magnificent creature with purplish, shiny skin covered in deep scars and welts, cuts, and defined muscle. The harness wrapped around the beast's mouth over and over, digging into his sore flesh and making his aggression rise dangerously. His wings were pinned to his body with even more chains, and the sound the matel made when it scraped along the stone ground made Astrid's teeth clench.
"That's not a dragon mother," Astrid breathed.
"No, it's one of our males," Valka replied. "The most extraordinary Skrill man has ever seen. Or he was... before Dagur got his hands on him."
The Skrill's laboured breaths rocked the Hatch as Valka's face went stern.
"He was mating with our females?" Astrid asked as her eyes nervously flicked over the details of the Skrill's muscular body. "We have a female Skrill?"
"Nay, Wildling. This is no breeding dragon. This is a Pit dragon."
Astrid didn't have time to ask before Valka waved over to the soldiers reigning the monster in. It drooled all over the stone, its legs weak and its eyes searching frantically. "Hurry up, I want this thing out of my Hatch!" she ordered.
"Wait, Birdsong, what is going on?"
"I'm sure if you wanted to find out, you'd find out," Valka replied quietly. "Are you deaf?" she yelled to the soldiers. "Move!"
Astrid watched Valka give her a look over her shoulder before she escorted the huge troop of men and the dragon out of the room, followed by a few shaken and disturbed men and women who murmured to each other. One of the men who peeked from one of the egg rooms had a quivering lip. He shook his head and ducked into the room.
Astrid cursed under her breath and followed them, a burning feeling entering her gut with every step. She kept her head down as she tried to catch up to the party. The feat wasn't terribly difficult as the dragon was lumbering slowly. The crowds in the main cavern parted, and Astrid followed warily, weaving through the crowd as she untied the rags around her hands and wrapped them around her head to conceal her hair. She followed closely behind with her shoulders back and her head facing the floor and no one questioned her as she slipped behind soldiers and weaved around the residents of the Underground, keeping close to the wall. They made their way to the gate blocking off a passage that lead to the Sun Sap pools and the miners.
"Open the gate!"
"Make way!"
"Everyone back up!"
Astrid paused as the crowd thickened, trying to back away from the beast and the soldiers and being trapped by the walls that closed around them. Astrid wriggled between them and made it to the edge of the gate just before the Skrill entered. It paused and growled at Astrid, one eye looking straight at her.
Astrid, struck pale and frozen in place, only stared. The voice of the Skrill, so powerful and alarming, and it slithered up her body like ice water.
You… come… see.
She only blinked as the soldiers kicked the beast in the legs.
"What is going on?!" Valka barked. "Get him in there!"
Hurry, Harbinger, it roared. Come see the story of my wounds. I have been waiting. Waiting.
The dragon began to thrash against its chains, causing a stir as everyone leaped back. Astrid sucked in a breath and ducked under one of his clawed hands, rushing through the gate and running down the hall. She skidded to a halt and hid behind one of the natural pillars, sucking in a breath and swallowing her nausea, absorbing her surrounding areas as quick as she could.
"Where do I go?" she asked, barely above a whisper, thinking the words with a strong mind.
Up, a different dragon murmured. There are stairs, climb them.
There was no time to dwell on who was speaking to her, but she continued to run, darting up the flight of stairs carved into the wall two at a time. She came across a row of cells, empty with a floor covered in dried blood.
Enter our confines, a third voice whispered. Come, Harbinger. Come see.
Astrid hesitated. She didn't want to enter the cell. The smell of blood made her stomach flip and her lower back ached painfully. She grabbed it and grimaced. But the sound of cheers and roars of men shattered the moment of indecisiveness.
"I want the best seat!" one of the men barked loudly, followed by a hearty laugh.
"Not if that means I'm stuck behind your fat ass!"
"If anyone is getting the best seat, it's Birdsong, am I right?" another man snorted.
"That's right," she heard Valka call. "For dealing with all of you."
Astrid covered her mouth to quiet her laboured breathing as she ran to a cell door. She heaved on it and the door swung open slowly. She pulled it closed behind her after she entered and scurried through the huge cell. She tripped over something and fell, a cry tearing out of her throat as she crashed into the floor.
"Did you hear that?" a man asked loudly.
"Hearing things again, Jorick?" Valka asked. "Move along."
"I'm sure I heard something!"
"And I'm sure I told you to move along!"
"I'm going to look," another man stated. Valka tried to argue, but the man was already on the move.
Astrid tried to get up, but the pungent smell of blood around her made her gag. The iron smell, the putrid stench of familiarity, the thick cloud of death around her. She looked at her foot and saw what she had tripped over. A body. She wasn't sure how she could tell – the bond made her nose much more sensitive to the details of the type of blood that smudged against her hands – but she knew it was a human body. She covered her mouth and scrambled to all fours as she heard the man lumber up the stairs and draw his sword. She crawled into the safety of the shadows, a groove in the wall, and gasped again as the floor dropped from under her. A sharp decline sent her rolling down the hard stone. She righted herself and slid on her back the rest of the way painfully. Rocks and jagged stone bruised her back before she managed to dig her heels down. Her feet caught a small lip in the stone and she stopped her body from sliding any further.
Her legs were shaking and she kept her back pressed against the sharp incline of the floor as hundreds of voices echoed from ahead. Astrid gulped and quickly jumped to the side, pressing herself into an alcove of the wall, out of sight.
An iron gate stood between her and the voices, and she peeked around the edge of the alcove. Her lips trembled and her body throbbed and her heart pounded. But what was she looking at? She could hear voices, but she couldn't see them, as if they were above her, through the floor. She looked through the iron grid again and tried to make herself as small as possible.
A cheer roared above Astrid and the ceiling shook as what sounded like hundreds of angsty soldiers before a battle. She jumped and shrank into the floor as a chant erupted through the cheers, deafening.
"Dagur! Dagur! Dagur! Dagur! Dagur! Dagur!"
Astrid looked over again and glared as Dagur entered her view. Wearing his Berserker armour, he opened his arms, looking up into the crowd, which elicited another scream of praise and attention from his fellow tribesmen. With his arms open, Astrid could see the glint of his unscarred chest plate as if forged new out of fine silver and iron. His crest, a Skrill painted in crimson hues, flashed the audience with a taunting power, an emblem of fear and shock.
Dagur dropped his arms and revelled in the cheers, cooing to himself and shuddering, pure ecstasy running up and down his spine with each cheer and salute. Astrid swallowed again. He waved to the crowd to hush and eventually, it was quiet enough for him to yell over the crowd.
"Men! We have been holed up too long!" he cried.
The men howled in agreement. Astrid shivered and she felt fear – fear of a nearby dragon – enter her heart like a cold wind.
"Too long have we docked our ships, too long have we brought back the spoils of our battles! We are warriors! We are soldiers, and we need our blood!"
Dagur sneered menacingly. "Berk has fallen. Berk and her allies have all fallen. Dragon lovers. The gods did not give us iron and steel to be friends with such beasts! No! This is our land, this is our world, and dragons have no part in our heroic tales, in our battles!"
Astrid sucked in a breath as she looked behind Dagur to the tall walls, the scratch marks up the sides.
Solve the riddle, Harbinger, she heard the Skrill growl in her head, the echoes of chains clinking together loudly and the sounds of screaming, tortured creatures pounding in her head. Can't you smell it? Smell the blood of hundreds of my brothers and sisters?
Astrid's breaths came fast and shallow, and sweat beaded on her forehead. She closed her eyes and swallowed again, forcing bile and fear back into the hidden confines of herself. When she opened her eyes, she shakily peered around the corner again. She returned to the gouges in the walls, and noticed chains at the tops of the walls. They stretched overhead, where she could not see, but she recognized the cage-like netting.
The Pit was an arena, she noticed with a horrifying pang. The Pit was an arena, and it was not like the arena back at home. This was like the old arena, an arena for fighting and killing.
"Berk believes there is a way," Dagur continued, seething, "that you can train a dragon with love." He spat in disgust. "Is that how we treat our dogs? Our women? No. If we are to train these dragons, it's with discipline! Bring forth Thorvane! Let us see what a real dragon is!"
Astrid watched as a gate opened from an unseen area of the arena. But the crowd went absolutely wild as the giant Skrill lumbered into Astrid's view. The troops, with Valka's help, quickly unlocked the chains around his muzzle and ran off, shutting the gate behind them. The Skrill roared a terrible, distorted bellow that sounded unlike any beast Astrid had heard. Like someone had taken jagged metal and hacked away at his throat. Scars criss-crossed his entire body and even fresh wounds glinted in the torchlight.
"Hiccup would have told you that a Skrill cannot be tamed!" Dagur screamed as the Skrill slowly bowed before him. "But he was wrong! And now he and his dragon-loving curs are dead."
He grinned and turned, his back facing Astrid. He motioned to the top of the arena where the audience was seated. The crowd parted and a handful of Berkians were shoved to the front, scared and clutching to each other. Astrid paled and squeaked at the sight of people she knew – people she bought bread from, people who were at her parents' wake, mothers and fathers of some of the Dragonlings she taught – and she struggled to watch as their frail bodies were shoved through the wide holes in the chain webbing. They tumbled into the arena and landed painfully. One women fell and her ankle shattered under her weight. Her screams made Astrid hide for a moment as angry, hate-filled tears spilled down her face.
How can you still need convincing to fight when this is happening to your people? the Skrill growled, his head still bowed.
Astrid forced herself to look again. The Berkian woman's husband tried to lift her, but her mangled leg made her howl out. One man didn't move – he must have landed on his head – and blood trickled from it into the stone.
"Hear how they cry! Hear how they beg for their lives! Begging for mercy with their love," Dagur continued, looking at the Berkians suffering, trying to help each other. "These people believe Hiccup is alive! They believe he's some sort of Saviour. Last I checked, no one, not even Hiccup, can rise from the dead. But their tongues have earned them front-row seats! Let's hope they enjoy them!"
Dagur threw his hand up to another gate. The soldiers above cranked the lock, lifting the bar out of the loops. The doors burst open, and a Monstrous Nightmare flew out desperately. Dagur unsheathed his longsword.
"Give these Berkians a weapon, and let's see who wins! Berkians and a Monstrous Nightmare versus Thorvane and myself. Let's see what love does for them!"
Another soldier dropped an armful of rusty swords, broken staffs, and a single shield onto the shuddering Berkians as the arena shook with cheers and bellows. She watched two men fight over the single shield, shoving each other. One man grabbed a sword, but the blade broke off the hilt at the tang. They scattered as the Monstrous Nightmare rushed to them, snapping its jaws.
"Oh no! It seems love cannot train their Nightmare!" Dagur gasped, laughing as it smashed into the Berkian woman. It closed its jaws around her head and shoulders and lifted her up, shaking her about like a rabid animal destroying a straw toy. Astrid froze, forced to look by her own terror, as blood splattered at the wall and onto the audience. The husband cried out and fell to his knees as the dragon swallowed her mangled corpse.
"No," Astrid whispered. "No. No. No, no no no. No!"
They starve us, Harbinger. They starve us until we have no choice. We cannot be picky in the Pit. We must feed, even on sacred human flesh.
Astrid slammed herself back into the alcove, curling herself into a ball, as she heard the Nightmare eat her villagers, her friends, the parents of Berkian children back home. She couldn't look, but she could feel it. She could feel the Nightmare jaggedly connecting to her mind, flashes of the familiar faces disappearing into sheets of blood, the feeling of hunger tearing through her, guilt waving over her body. She didn't want to see, she didn't want to feel, but she did through the Nightmare, and she heard as every last one of them was torn apart and gulped away.
They travel to Valhalla now. There is no more pain to endure.
"No…" Astrid wheezed, silent sobs shaking her to her core.
The Nightmare flicked it's wild, broken eyes over to Dagur, hunger still burbling in his stomach. He was filled with craving, lust for food, and it lunged for him. Thorvane stretched out his wings and met him in the middle, and the two dragons twisted into each other violently, screaming and screeching and blood and scales flying about.
I want to lose, the Skrill admitted sourly. I would rather die. I have no lightning anymore, I have no true voice. I am broken. I want to lose.
Astrid looked back one last time. Thorvane screamed and shoved the Nightmare back, towards Dagur. And Throvane stopped, shaking and shuddering, watching as the Nightmare turned and charged towards Dagur. Dagur blinked and barely had a chance to move. And for a split second, Astrid thought this would be it. This was the end of Dagur.
But there was a loud bang, and a harpoon the width of a tree slammed through the Nightmare from above, pinning it to the ground through the neck right in front of the gate Astrid hid behind. The Nightmare struggled for a moment before catching Astrid's eyes in the darkness.
Please… it cried softly to her, before his gaze went blank. A consuming emptiness ate at Astrid's mind as she stared into the dragon's dead eyes.
No one wins in the Pit, Thorvane told Astrid. No one except Dagur.
Astrid left before everyone else, running as fast as she possibly could, sobbing violently as she ran down the deserted halls. She knew of a back entrance to the Hatch – a small corridor Valka took her down some nights to explore the Underground – and she flew down it until she slowed, all alone. She stumbled onward, sobs echoing around her, her face drenched in sorrow. She slid down the walls, holding herself, retching and screaming and crying, pounding her fists into the floor all over again, a newfound fire blazing within her heart after weeks of isolation suffocated it.
After what felt like hours, Astrid forced herself to her feet. Her body weighed her down into the earth, and she grounded herself as she looked ahead down the darkened corridor. She left it and entered one of the larger halls. As if possessed with a newfound rage, she pulled the dagger from her boot and ran the only guard patrolling the hall down, slashing open his flesh and driving the blade into the back of his head over and over again. No one noticed. No one saw. And even though she hated every second of it, the way the blood stuck to her arms and hands, she felt the tiniest pang of satisfaction. She dragged the man's body against the wall and, using his blood, wrote on the smoothed stone in huge runes.
Saviour.
Astrid hid her bloody arms under her long sweater as she marched straight to Stargazer. She opened the door and rushed in, ripping her sweater off herself and throwing it into the fire. Stargazer lifted her bound head towards the sound of Astrid dragging the washbasin from under the bed.
"Did you injure yourself?" she asked gently.
"No."
"You know that water is reserved for wounds?"
Astrid began scrubbing the blood away with a handful of dirty rags. "I got blood on me…" she breathed, barely a squeak. Stargazer paused her work at her table before she stood, worried. "I don't wanna say how."
"Oh dear…" Stargazer murmured. "Wilding, what –"
"I need some kind of sleeping draught. Something to put me to sleep for a day. For the rest of today until tomorrow morning. Something to shut my mind up for a moment, please, anything."
"What happened?" Stargazer interjected. "You sound agitated."
"The Pit!" Astrid cried, almost breaking the bowl. "The fucking Pit, okay! I watched – I can't – they fed those people – my people – to that thing, and it had no choice but to do it and it was the most disgusting thing I had ever –"
She retched again and Stargazer quickly felt her way along the wall towards a collection of dried herbs. She grabbed a handful of them and made her way towards Astrid, who was back to sobbing. She found Astrid and leaned next to her, wrapping her arms around her, rubbing her back and her stomach.
"Hush, now," Stargazer whispered. "I… I have something. It's minor, but… it'll put you to sleep. It's over now. Hush. Hush."
Stargazer gently rocked Astrid as she ate the herbs sloppily, drool coating her hands, until she felt her eyes droop, dragging her down, down, and down into a quiet abyss.
She prayed to all the gods as she dreamed in the dreamland that he would show. She hadn't slept deep enough to see him, to hear him… and she sat against the tree rocking back and forth, praying that he would dream.
"Freya, please, please gift me the presence of my husband, please show me someone is still watching over me…"
She didn't open her eyes to see Rose staring down at her, her face calm.
"They call you the Harbinger," she murmured softly. Astrid's head snapped up, and she gawked at the sight of Rose looking at her. But Rose disappeared instantly, and left her sitting, bewildered, against the tree.
But she heard the familiar squeak of a mechanical device, and she looked up as Hiccup rounded the tree slowly, confused.
"I knew there was something weird when Rose gave me that tea… she must have… drugged me…"
Astrid leapt to her feet and grabbed Hiccup, who hadn't noticed her, and she shoved him up against the tree.
"Wha – Astrid!" he gasped. Astrid covered his lips with her own, rough and desperate.
"I need you," she whimpered through her kisses. "I can't do this anymore, please – I love you, I love you.."
Saying it over and over centred her as Hiccup wrapped his arms around her body, holding her against him.
"I love you, too," he breathed against her skin.
She pulled him to the ground and over her body, begging for him to push his weight onto her, to make her feel surrounded and safe. She pulled the thin shirt from his torso and ran her hands up and down his body, which had bulked up the tiniest bit since she last felt him, and she moaned as he ran his own hands up her body.
She didn't care if this was just a dream, or if this was some kind of suspended reality. But it felt real. She felt his hands on her, his fingers, his tongue, everything she missed and craved and almost forgot about. And he relished in her scent, the softness of her hair as he tangled his fingers in it as he explored her body with the other hand, groaning with her and desperately meshing their flesh together. They held each other and rocked with each other, saying "I love you" as a mantra in the cove, growing louder and louder until the place they felt the safest shook with their voices.
Hiccup fell over Astrid, his breaths ragged, and Astrid buried her face in his shoulder. And she thanked the gods for those few moments of forgetfulness, for the moment where pure bliss and ecstasy battered away the visions of the Pit, the feeling of starvation.
"I'm gonna find you," he said, listening to fluttering of her heart beneath his flushed cheek. But when Hiccup's body left the dreamland to start another day on Berk, she stayed on her back watching the sky, her hands over her heart, and tears rolling from her eyes and into her hair.