So here it is! Arc Two of the Horizons tale. Good things come to those who wait and after two weeks of re-planning upon re-planning upon re-planning I think I may have finally managed to get a hold of this big fish long enough to fry it.
This arc is significantly longer than the first arc, seeing as how it's sort of the meat in the sandwich per se. In the first arc we needed to establish a relationship, focus in of the past. Now the real stuff begins, with journeys and adventures abound. It'll start off a bit slow (after all, adventures don't get exciting right away), but once we get to the apex of this monster, and I mean that literally, it's gonna be awesome. And I know, because I skipped over the rest of the unwritten arc two during a temporary writer's block and started writing arc three and damn if it didn't turn into something freaking awesome, if I do say so myself!
I'll warn you now, for those of you who are not big accent fans (specifically Gobber's) you may want to shoot me. Go ahead and gripe to me in a review if you hate it, but I'm not going to change it – not only is it an awesome challenge for me to do something like that but it's also a lot of fun. Scottish is my favourite accent to write; I've written some authentic Scottish in my other fandom (Scotty in ST:XI) and it was an absolute blast!
This is the last of the really dialogue based chapters for the meantime. I'm also not ridiculously happy with this chapter. I don't have a beta so let me know if you see any particularly stupid mistakes! And be warned; I rip Stoic a new one during this section. He deserves it as far as I'm concerned and this will probably the last we hear from Stoic for a long, long time.
And without further ado, the aftermath of Hiccup's impromptu departure!
HORIZONS
Arc 2: Verðandi and the End of All Things
Chapter I
Three days.
Three days had passed since that idiotic, senseless son of a mountain troll flew off the island of Berk and disappeared into the distance and if the bedlam that had ensued was any indication, his absence certainly hadn't gone unnoticed. The villagers were in a flurry at the hands of their confusion; no one was willing to believe Hiccup, of all people, had simply left on his own faint account. Astrid clenched and unclenched her fists as she fought to suppress her murderous impulses, her azure eyes trained on the only two men on the island who vaguely knew anything about the whereabouts of the chieftain's renegade son.
"I know Stoic! I warned yeh that he was goin' teh do somethin' drastic. Th' minute he told meh he decided teh break it off with Astrid—"
"—I'm right here."
"Right…err…" Gobber offered her an apologetic glance that was subsequently ignored, "Well, that should 'ave been meh clue. But teh just up and leave like that Stoic, yeh cannae tell meh that I could 'ave foreseen that."
Astrid couldn't tell whether it was the poor light in the Great Hall simply playing tricks with her eyes, but she could have sworn that the chieftain's russet hair was becoming greyer by the minute.
"He can't 'ave left the island," Stoic bleated weakly, "He must 'ave been taken...or forced, or..." Stoic trailed off and groaned noisily, running his fingers roughly through his auburn hair. If she hadn't known any better, Astrid would have said that his voice was quavering beneath his rumpled beard.
The young warrior woman sighed and frowned with perfectly exposed irritation, her emotions running rampant in her chest, "I've told you already, I watched him go."
Stoic turned towards her, gazing at her with uncertain eyes as if she had only just appeared not a moment ago; too bad she, alongside Gobber, had been trying to convince Stoic the Vast of the obvious for the past few hours.
"No," he repeated, shaking his burly head again in disbelief. Astrid barely kept herself from winding up and slapping the man across the face, if only to enlighten him to the worsening situation at hand.
"Look Stoic, yer boy is gone," Gobber sincerely tried to look at least marginally sympathetic in his explanation but his comrade's mulishness was beginning to grate on his already ragged nerves, "He wasn't forced teh write those letters. All we can do now is try and figure out where th' hel he went."
"He was flying due west," Astrid explained, glancing sidelong at the parchment letter that had been addressed to her on the table, "The only land out there that we're familiar with is Grœnland as far as I know."
"So yeh think he's headin' teh Grœnland?"
"No," Astrid scoffed, glaring up at the blacksmith incredulously, "When have you ever known Hiccup to do the logical thing? Smart yes, clever definitely, but logical? And self preserving?" she laughed humourlessly, her bitterness unpleasantly intimidating, "I don't think so. He's gone in search of something new, to go exploring if the letter he wrote to me is anything to go by," she frowned at the still dumbfounded chief and silently willed him to get the picture, "And yours too. And once he gets past the currents of Jörmungand, which I have no doubt that he will considering his mode of transportation, we'll have no way of tracking him down at all."
"Th' ice is already beginnin' teh touch th' north shores. It wilnae be long before we cannae get out o' th' harbour."
"Right. So we're basically stuck. There's no way we can send out a scout ship to the settlements on Grœnland on the off chance that he did head up that way – if the ice is already on our shores I can only imagine that they're neck deep in snow by now. Our only shot is to take a ship south west and hope to intercept him resting on one of the chartered islands without getting lodged in the ice."
"That is, if he hasnae already managed teh get 'imself killed."
Astrid glared daggers at the blacksmith, unwilling to even think of the possibility, "Not with a Night Fury on his side. No matter how domesticated he might have seemed around Hiccup, he's still a dragon and a fierce one at that."
"And how do yeh know that?" Stoic grumbled pointlessly, his lips stretched into a half hidden pout.
"I've hunted with it," she replied simply, making fleeting eye contact with the mountain of a man in front of her.
Stoic was unconvinced, "And what if it gets hungry? There's a fresh meal sittin' right on its back for Odin's sake!"
"Are you blind?" Astrid cried. She knew that on any given day she would have been skinned alive for her insolence, especially towards the chief, but she was at such a point of semi hysterics that she was quite unwilling to care, "Toothless loves Hiccup – he needs him to fly, for the love of Thor! Hiccup getting lost between the jaws of his dragon is the last thing you should be worrying about!"
"The dragon is the reason he left!" Stoic exclaimed in response, puffing out his chest in inflated supremacy; the entirely unruffled warrior goddess sitting before him looked on undeterred.
"No he's not!" Astrid shot back, "You heard Gobber – Hiccup can't get over the loss of his leg! He thinks it makes him even more useless than he was already brought up to think about himself! Gods!" Astrid reeled, her words sounding preposterous in her ears as she fought to understand the boy's way of thinking, "What the hel was going through Hiccup's head?"
"Yeh got me," Gobber replied quietly, his brows pressed together in concentration, "Th' boy's got a mind o' his own."
Astrid could do nothing but nod in agreement; her thoughts were somewhere else already, running over the words the subject of their heated debate had left for them on parchment only three sunrises ago. All of the letters, Gobber's, Stoic's and her own, contradicted one another consistently, sometimes going as far as declaring three separate and completely different things. Did he really think that they weren't going to investigate his disappearance and read over the letters together? Was he really that naive? The entire village was up in arms over the departure of the boy who had nearly one-handedly brought down the Red Death and almost lost his life because of it. He was the village hero, the chieftain's son – the only villager who wasn't all that concerned was Snotlout, which made Astrid all the more furious. The slab of meat had been throwing himself at her at every interval since the news of her ex-lover's disappearance, if that's what he could be called, and if 'Lout hadn't been of such a high bloodline she might have already mangled his face right then and there. His over-confidence was absolutely sickening – she would move off of her homeland if he was given the position of chieftain which, now that Hiccup was officially out of the picture, was a position that was rightfully his.
With her lips upturned in disgust, Astrid dragged her thoughts away from her inner musings and back to the present. She rolled her eyes when she realized that Gobber was trying to convince Stoic that his son was gone once again. Not missing and not lost, the blacksmith tried to reason with him. Hiccup was gone – on his own, on free accord this time; no accidents, no kidnapping involved.
"Gobber, you said he was making a sword right?"
The blacksmith seemed to be startled by the question. His unruly eyebrows nearly shot past the confines of his forehead as he considered the question she had asked him, "Yeh, although I should 'ave known the moment he showed it to me that he was goin' off teh do somethin' stupid with it. Said he didn't want teh kill anyone, just wanted it fer self defence."
"Sounds like Hiccup," Astrid nodded and frowned, knowing from visual experience that he was more than a little challenged in a situation that required him to hold a sharpened weapon in his hands, "Can he use it?"
"Probably without hackin' 'is own head off," Gobber replied, catching the warrior goddess's ill portent implication, "With a bit o' luck he might actually be able teh lob somebody's arm clean but yeh know as well as I do that, well..." he trailed off, looking a bit helpless in his explanation.
The expression on Astrid's face assured him that she understood.
"Have you ever seen him use a sword?" she enquired quietly, her worry beginning to leak into her voice.
"Ah, no. I dinnae think so," Gobber shrugged, the guilt in his gut clearly showing in his face, "If he's any good he mustae been practicin' in secret 'cause I've never seen 'im. Th' only time I know that he's been workin' wit' a sword is when he's forgin' one. But he's very good at it if yeh mind me sayin'. Th' detailin' he put into that thing alone, and th' drawings, Baldur's ear! If he put that amount o' effort intae his everyday work I could put th' prices up another dozen fodder!" Gobber grinned and then sighed, his animated humour suddenly deflated, "He had been workin' on th' design fer some time if th' sketches all over th' walls o' his workshop are anythin' teh go by."
"Design? For what?"
"Fer the sword! Fer the hilt!" he waved his meaty hands around for emphasis, "Had all these letters hidden in it, and it looked just like his beast in th' engravings. A fine bit o' handiwork, I tell yeh."
"Did you keep all of his drawings?"
Gobber scoffed, looking at her as if she were mad, "O' course I did! Th' one time I threw a handful o' them out he moped around fer a week! Couldnae get anythin' done!"
Astrid glanced sideways, considering the new influx of information carefully. There was a chance, however slim, but...
"They're still in his workshop then?"
Gobber looked at her again with confusion, the bewilderment written all over his weathered features, "I told yeh, I didnae move 'em."
"Great," Astrid nodded forcefully and spun around on her heels, the look of a warrior's determination suddenly painted on her slender lips. She strode out of the Great Hall with all the purpose of the chieftain himself and left the men behind her in the dust – the two of them were still unsure of as to what her line of questioning had lead her to believe. It wasn't until the weakening sun illuminated her silhouette as the door shut behind her that Gobber realized what the hel she had been talking about. Hoisting himself off of the bench with far more effort than was necessary, he grabbed the chief by his collar and left in hot pursuit.
When the two seasoned warriors finally caught up with Astrid they were already too late; the young shield maiden had dropped herself unceremoniously in the chair that had once been solely Hiccup's property, her stance anything but victorious as she pursed her lips at the walls in defeat.
"There's no clue about where he's going hidden in his drawings. He even took all of his notebooks with him," she muttered, flicking a piece of errant parchment with her fingernails, "I figured he would but...I hoped he might have left something behind that could have given us some sort of clue..."
Gobber looked around quickly, analyzing some of the sketches pinned to the walls, "He cannae 'ave taken them all. He spends every spare minute writin' nonsense into his books o' ideas. Odin knows he's kept a thousand at least!"
Astrid glanced up at him, catching the blacksmith's eye, "Do you know where he keeps them all?"
It was at this moment that both Viking warriors turned towards Stoic simultaneously, staring at him with a look that could only be described as one of great urgency.
"What?" the great mountain of a man threw up his arms in innocence, "If we had a bookcase somewhere full of them hidin' in the house I think I would have known about it."
"Does he 'ave any hidin' places in th' house though? Any places that would be good fer...hidin' things, yeh know?"
Astrid rolled her eyes.
"I don't know," Stoic muttered once more, "I tried not teh pay attention to his eccentricities as a lad, hopin' they might go away. The only place I can think of is the cupboards – it's the place where he used teh hide as a lad, playin' games with Val or whatever they used teh do together. But they're full of weapons and fishin' gear now and I doubt he'd keep any of his pages of insanity at the house anyway."
"So they must be here then," Astrid muttered, her eyes scanning the little back room yet again. Nothing seemed out of place, no paper, no charcoal, not even a leather shaving on the floor to mar the seamless organization of the recently tidied room.
"Has teh be," Gobber replied, venturing further into the cramped, modest space, "Could be under a floorboard or somethin'."
The blacksmith carefully ripped off each one of the sketches from their pins in the wall as if he expected some sort of secret passage to be hidden beneath them. He couldn't help but feel just a little bit disappointed when he found nothing except grey stone and uneven wood. Astrid frowned as she followed his movements, trying with every fibre of her being to will her eyes into seeing something, anything.
Nothing.
"Look," she said with finality, the impatience in her voice grating against her ears, "We're not going to find anything with all three of us packed in here like meat. I'm the smallest so I'll stay in here and continue searching. You two go and look in the rest of the smithy – you might find something there."
Gobber released the wad of papers in his hand onto the desk and nodded, "Right yeh are lass. Holler if yeh find anythin'."
Astrid grit her teeth in reply and didn't wait to watch as the two seasoned Vikings left the crowded room; she quickly tossed the chair she had been sitting on aside and dropped down to her hands and knees, rapping against the wooden floorboards with her knuckles in an attempt to find a hollow piece.
Crawling towards the less occupied corner of the little room, Astrid thought back to one of the conversations she had shared with Hiccup in the Great Hall before he had lost his clever mind and left her behind. It had been casual enough; she had been seated a few people away from Hiccup, with the entire table stuffed with townsfolk eager to learn the merits of proper flying. They listened with willing ears, hoping to soak up as much information as they could from the forthcoming chief of their island. Only every so often had he been allowed to escape from the working confines of the forge during the fall season and when he was, he usually found himself in the Great Hall, surrounded by men and woman who decidedly hung on his every word.
"When it comes to direction," he had explained, his fingers folded in front of him as he conducted his informal lecture, "You'd be an idiot to try and steer. Go ahead and try if you like, but there's a pretty huge chance that you'll only end up getting yourself thrown off. Your dragon will fly wherever it pleases – its got the wings you know, not you. But they're not stupid either. You've got to ease them into the movement, into the direction you'd like to go and trust me, they'll get the hint."
"How do you do it?" one of the villagers implored, voicing the very question that had been avidly running through each of his student's boggled minds.
"Try leaning a little in the direction you'd like to go, not far enough to fall off though. Just swing a little in your saddle so that your dragon feels the shift of weight and they'll be sure to go in that direction, if they're feeling up to it."
"And what if I own a stubborn beast?" someone grumbled from the crowd.
"Nobody owns a dragon," Hiccup urged, his expression suddenly darkening, "If anything, they own us. Don't force yourself on a dragon – there's no use getting on the back of one if it refuses to respect you."
A murmuring of contemplation rippled through the crowd as the boy's tone of voice pierced their thoughts. Even Astrid felt a shiver run past her spine as she took a quick look at the boy's prominent profile, his serious expression slightly silhouetted by the fires in the hearth.
"Now," he cleared his throat, successfully regaining the group's attention, "Back to direction. When you're up in the air, make sure to keep an eye out. Most dragons have fantastic eyesight. However, with the exception of the Zippleback, which of course can have eyes in two places at once, dragons have a lot of blind spots. Nadders and Nightmares are extremely predatory and are less adaptable to night flying. Gronkles, on the other hand, prefer to fly in darker conditions and have some trouble seeing properly when it's really bright out. So be mindful – they have their strengths and weaknesses, just like us," Hiccup took a moment to turn to his dragon, scratching him beneath the plates on his jaw as he sat vigilantly behind him, "Night Furies can see well in all conditions but they thrive and prefer to get things done at night, which is probably why I can't seem to sleep for longer than an hour or two every night without getting prodded in the face to go flying."
The group laughed that the young rider's joke and the beast beside him responded in kind, his trademark grin plastered all over his scaly face. The toothless smirk only served to make the villagers laugh even harder and Astrid could tell that the dragon was clearly enjoying the attention.
"But one of the most important things," Hiccup continued once the laughter had died down, his body hunching over conspiratorially, "is this: when you're flying your dragon you have to think about your weakest points just in case you were to be attacked. So where do you think you're the most vulnerable?"
The crowd paused, smoke practically churning from their ears and they fumbled in deep thought.
"From the bottom?" someone put forward.
"Nope," Hiccup replied, obviously anticipation that particular answer, "Dragons have great sight in front of them and beneath them."
"Is it from behind?"
"Not that one either," he said, "Dragons can easily sense and hear when the air behind them is being disrupted."
Hiccup gave them a few more seconds but when none of the villagers seemed to have come up with a competent answer he felt himself kind enough to indulge them.
"It doesn't matter where we are – on the ground, in the sky, in the water..." he sighed quietly, as if reminiscing on something before coming back to the present, "Sometimes we could save ourselves a lot of trouble if we just took the time to look up."
Back on her hands and knees again underneath the missing boy's wooden desk, Astrid suddenly found herself craning her neck and staring upwards. The young warrior flipped herself onto her back and stared in victory as she gazed up underneath Hiccup's desk, a small smile gracing her tired features.
There, right before her eyes, was a trap door in the wood.
"Beards o' Thor Stoic! Will yeh lay off fer two seconds?"
Five minutes was all it took for the mountainous chief to make a mangled mess of the pristine organization both blacksmith and apprentice had managed to establish in the ramshackle smithy and Gobber couldn't help but make a sorry observation about the similarities between father and son. Both were as clumsy as a three legged sow on an ice sheet – the only time the two of them ever displayed a semblance of balance was when they were in their element, absorbed in their craft. Mind you, Hiccup had certainly picked up the finer qualities of sword crafting as well as flying, something that Stoic wouldn't be able to accomplish even if it was to save his life. So similar and yet so different, the old blacksmith mused silently, forcing himself to keep his reflections to himself.
"I can't help it!" Stoic bellowed half heartedly, his body slumped over as he glanced at the wreckage in his wake, "My boy is somewhere out there and he's probably gettin' himself killed as we speak!"
"Yeh don't know that." Gobber countered.
"Yes I do."
"No yeh don't."
"Yes I do!"
"No, you don't!" Gobber held back the urge to sigh dubiously and rolled his eyes instead, "Why do yeh 'ave so little faith in th' boy? Hasnae he proved already that he can take care o' 'imself?"
"It's not that I don't have any faith in him Gobber, it's just that—"
"Just what? Yeh dinnae trust 'im? Yeh left him teh fend fer 'imself ever since he started showin' more interest in searchin' fer trolls then lobbin' off heads. Why th' sudden change o' heart?"
Gobber knew he had finally struck a chord; the man, his best friend, crumpled perceptively before him, even if it was the last thing he ever wanted to put him through. But Gobber knew, along with every other soul on the island, that the only reason Stoic hadn't left the boy to squander off on some deserted island was because of the startling resemblance between him and Valhallerama. It killed him to see nothing but the ghost of his departed wife in the eyes of his useless son, Hiccup the Useless, Hiccup the Cursed.
But when it came down to it, the decision between his own blood and his dignity, Stoic chose the latter. Better to ignore the problem than face it when it came to something other than the familiar throes of warfare. He tripped and stumbled over fatherhood as he had tried aimlessly to cope with the son he thought could never be – only Gobber had been privy to the drunken nights where the veil of Viking pride came crashing down, exposing the clumsy, dispirited and utterly heartbroken man that truly lied beneath.
Not that his leaderships skills ever suffered because of his ungainly son; on the contrary, with Hiccup basically forced into an apprenticeship beneath the only man he sincerely trusted, Stoic thrived. The village remained strong despite the growing number of dragon raids purging the island of livestock and shelter. Patches were build, fodder was bred, fields were sowed; it was only when Hiccup became a teenager that things started to go irrevocably downhill.
Gobber indulged the lad as much as he was able, even if in the back of his mind he knew that Stoic wouldn't approve. He should have tried to stop him but the boy had so much time to himself and the blacksmith couldn't help but pity him, knowing full well that he was the only one in Hiccup's life who would actually speak to him without berating him until he withdrew completely senseless. So Gobber tried as hard as he could manage to be the father figure – and friend – Hiccup would never have and together, working as one in their smithy, they were happy.
But Gobber could tell that Stoic could never quite forgive himself for how he treated his son before the events of the Red Death and Gobber couldn't really blame him. The blacksmith knew that the chieftain was thankful for his fostering care but he knew that he was a little jealous, knowing full well that Hiccup considered Gobber more of a father than he would ever be; in comparison to the three sentences Hiccup had written to his father, Gobber had received more than two pages. And as much as Stoic was trying to make up for all of the time he criticized his son for simply being who he was, no amount of ignorance could save him from the fact that he would never be able to take back time and heal the old wounds he had engraved himself.
Stoic looked over at him now and the blacksmith knew what the chief was thinking without having to speak. He was at that precarious point where Stoic finally hit the wall of reality with painful realization – the hurt in his eyes was evidence enough that the father of the son he never accepted finally understood.
"Look Stoic," Gobber said at last, draping his good arm over the shaken man's shoulders, "Let's head back teh th' hall, grab somethin' teh eat. There's nothin' hidin' here."
Stoic nodded with a blank expression and Gobber lead him out of the smithy without another word. It was only when they hit the muted daylight that Stoic straightened in his colossal stance and walked as proudly as one could do under the circumstances, just like a chieftain should. He strode through the streets of Berk and through the throngs of townsfolk in the square; Gobber walked at his side as the man grunted in acknowledgement to those who greeted him, never betraying the emotions churning inside of him. Gobber was amazed that he could just bury his feelings beneath a well of Viking indifference as if they never existed inside of him even when the blacksmith knew he was reeling inside. Perhaps it was a trait bred into the lines of those who were born to lead; Gobber would never get the chance to know.
They entered the Great Hall silently and sat down at their usual table, two frowning men side by side in the suffering din. One of the maids came to their table with a stein of ale in each hand which they both took with grateful thanks. Stoic nearly swallowed the majority of his drink in one go and Gobber knew immediately that this was going to be one of those nights; the battered warrior drank his own pint slowly, fingering the folded parchment hidden in the pocket of his mantle. Ultimately, he brought the letter out into the firelight of the chamber and pressed the parchment between the pads of his calloused fingertips with a frown.
He read it over once, then twice before finally laying it flat upon the uneven wood and staring at it as if it were the more compelling puzzle in all of the Norse countries he had ever known.
"Odin's eye Hiccup, where th' hel did yeh go?"
It was a rhetorical question he had been asking himself for three days now but for some unspoken reason he waited for an answer none the less. Maybe the gods would give him a sign, point him in the right direction even when he was helpless to go after him. The ice would cover the harbour within a week's time and with that, their boats would be rendered utterly useless.
There was a rustle of fabric from behind that sounded close enough to bestow him with enough suspicion to turn around.
His eyes widened.
And with the kind of smile that gave grown men nightmares, the Elder Gothi grinned and laughed.
"I think I may just have the answer you seek."
So? What did you think? I'm actually quite nervous about this chapter! It's the beginning of a new arc and I have the butterflies a little bit. Did you like it? Did you hate it? Let me know! I'm really quite anxious about your opinions... :S
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!
Love and fluff,
Bronte