I apologize for the lateness of this chapter! It's actually been done for about a week and a half, but my beta has been MIA and, in a fit of desperation, I called upon the darling Leon Woon to step in and give it the look over it desperately needed. So thank him for this update :)
I tried my best, but action isn't my strong suit when it comes to writing. Nonetheless, here is the final battle where I finally get to debut my favourite character, Jormungand himself.
Also, I apologize if I give you nightmares with this opening passage ;)
HORIZONS
Arc III : We Are Skuld
Chapter IV
Like a huge, massive column spilling from the very depths of the ocean he appeared, dark and deadly and swathed in layers of mist and cloud. Venom spewed from his bared fangs, dripping and oozing with poison that steamed as it made contact with the churning seas below him. Acrid fumes boiled upwards from the crashing waves and merged from the vapours pouring from the snake's nostrils, forming a noxious haze that enveloped the entire region around him. His mouth was open and his forked tongue lolled from his cavernous maw in anticipation for his next meal, his next delicious feast.
And the filthy creatures hovering before him…
Disgusting. He lolled his head sideways and bared his teeth further, taking sinful pleasure in the motion as his nefarious intentions were finally unleashed. Had his play toy finally given up on the chase? He grinned, fully anticipating on slowly sucking the life from his prey and the filthy winged creature with the hairless morsel on its back that they had so thoughtfully brought along with them as an appetizer. He intended on devouring them slowly, letting his deadly venom fill their bodies and liquefying them from the inside out; better to dine on scales that were already supple.
He would spit out their bones.
They would be divine.
Too long had he hunted them and too long had he kept himself invisible, the true hunter in their twisted game of hide and seek. He couldn't wait to finally taste his victory; he could literally smell the fear wafting off of the hairless humans sitting on top of their insects' backs. He mused for a moment, realizing that he hadn't tasted human in decades – it was an acquired taste certainly, but it was one he would definitely enjoy none the less.
He breathed out and hissed, and the noise caused waves of foam to fly off of the churning sea into the miasma around him. He writhed in sickening indulgence as the two little morsels flew away, stopping only to hover a great deal from the huge snake's titanic jaws; little did the flapping pests know just how quickly he could close the gap between them and swallow them whole.
But this was no time to be hasty. He had been here since the very makings of the world. Time was nothing to him.
He let out another hiss and tasted the air with his tongue, mocking his prey with glee. His prizes, the little human and the black insect, tried to reply in kind but the dragon's pitiful growl was barely audible against the snake's magnificent presence. There was no denying his majesty; he was glorious, brilliant! He was the bane of all existence, the very descendent of Nidhogg himself. He was the Ragnorok. He was the apocalypse.
He was King!
Half awestruck and half frozen in his saddle, Hiccup stared up at the towering sea serpent in all of its horrifying glory. Its mouth was practically frothing with elation as it continued its exchange with Toothless, hissing heinously in a way that he could and yet couldn't understand. The Night Fury beneath him tried to retaliate and put up a front of confidence, but the serpent could see how the dragon quivered in half hidden panic. Hiccup tried to pacify the Night Fury beneath him but could not find it within himself to move from his petrified position, his mouth agape with terror despite the spray of sea foam that soaked him to the core.
The serpent spoke again, and even though his body was frozen, Hiccup's mind was sprinting. He slammed his eyes shut and tried to think of something, of anything that could possibly be of help to him at that moment. He had a sword. Good. He had to get above its head without it noticing, and then stab it. Okay. But how? Without being eaten? Was that even possible?
Hiccup opened his eyes as Toothless banked left, narrowly avoiding a torrent of acidic poison that had been spurting towards them. Hiccup twisted the stirrup to compensate and whipped around in a tight circle before racing upwards as fast as they could.
"What did you do?" Hiccup shrieked, pressing his body as close to Toothless as possible. The dragon screeched indignantly in reply, hurling back his own flurry of insults in rebuttal. Apparently, the serpent hadn't been particularly amused by the Night Fury's acerbic brand of sass and had evidently strived to silence him.
"Odin's beard," Hiccup muttered, swallowing the rush of adrenaline that was threatening to overtake his attempt at keeping a cool head. They levelled just before the first layers of low hanging clouds and took a moment to catch their breaths as Hiccup peered over his shoulder at the scene down below him.
Astrid was doing her very best to stay out of the serpent's homicidal path, but her Nadder was far less adept at dexterous flying than Jormungand's previous targets had been; now that Hiccup and Toothless were out of harm's way for the moment, the snake had taken interest in the female duo.
Astrid cried out as the sea snake lowered its head to strike at her, forcing her Nadder to careen out of the way and dip closer to the surface of the ocean. In the back of her mind Astrid knew that this was dangerous territory, and that veering too close to the whitecaps would inevitably end up drowning them, but presently her only option in order to save herself and her dragon was to weave through the sea stacks as fast as she could and hope that Jormungand's body wasn't waiting beneath the water to knock them out of the sky.
Her Nadder swooped low and landed deftly on one of the columns of rock, taking only a second to catch her balance. She leapt onto an adjacent stack as quickly as she could before bounding onto another, keeping time in a peculiar dance that left the serpent growing more and more irritated. He lunged forward at the blue and yellow beetle only for the pest to leap away and take to the skies, finally able to escape the ocean spray thanks to the serpent's momentary distraction.
Jormungand hissed in frustration and spewed a deadly stream of poison from his maw towards his retreating meal. Droplets of the venom splattered onto Astrid and her Nadder, sending the latter into throbbing spasms of pain mid-flight. Astrid did all that she could to hold onto the howling dragon as she tossed back and forth in the skies, trying in vain to fly higher and get away as the acid continued to burn through her scales. The light mist coming from the clouds did little to soothe the blisters as they corroded deeper into her flesh, but it did stop the poison from spreading any farther.
Astrid didn't have time to notice the acid slowly eating through the layers of her clothing as Hiccup dived down beside the pair, his eyes wide as he wracked his brain for something to do to help. Toothless tried to comfort the crying dragon, but his efforts were quickly cut short when Jormungand attacked again.
Hiccup clawed at his ears as the serpent's guttural scream reverberated through his bones, clacking his teeth together from the sheer power of it. Toothless wailed and Hiccup threw himself over the Night Fury's forehead, clamping the dragon's ear flaps down with his elbows. A wordless cry of thanks was exchanged between the two as Astrid and her Nadder continued to drop in altitude, spiralling downwards towards the surface of the ocean yet again. Hiccup watched helplessly as the pair fell into the haze, disappearing from his sight before he could do anything about it.
"Astrid!" Hiccup bellowed, taking his hands off of his ears against his better judgement. He felt his ear drums pop painfully as the shriek assaulted him in its entirety, but his concern for Astrid was waging war against his common sense. Fighting the urge to force Toothless to go after her, he watched in wide-eyed trepidation at the spot where she had disappeared and waited for the serpent's wailing to cease.
Jormungand finally closed his gaping maw, still furious at the little beetle for evading him. He rocked his gigantic body and hastily wound himself up into a coil, priming himself to strike. He had forgotten just how irritating these miniscule creatures could be, especially such diminutive and vexing ones. Such insects were usually nothing to him, but these two were simply too fascinating to discount…
A foreign image flashed through the sea serpent's mind, and the ancient creature gazed upwards eagerly to see the victims of his hunt staring down in horror. Jormungand grinned, fangs glinting lazily in the morning dimness; if those other two pests were such valuable possessions to his prey, he would take even greater pleasure in devouring them as his first course.
Hiccup's headache throbbed with a vengeance unexpectedly, and he seized his head in an attempt to soothe the sting; he faltered, eyes wide as he quickly realizing without a shadow of a doubt as to what had just transpired. In his lapse of judgement he had just exposed his biggest weakness to his enemy – he choked on his own breath, immobilized with dread. He hadn't even been trying to shield his mind from the beast, and now Astrid was in even more danger because of it. Wasn't he supposed to be trying to save her?
"Astrid!" he yelled aloud again, but the only response he received was the echoes of the waves crashing aggressively against the remnants of the volcano.
At once, the bedraggled pair dove down into the depths of the fog after Astrid and her Nadder, hoping to beat Jormungand at his own game and find them first. Forcing himself to focus as they descended, Hiccup went over their various advantages and disadvantages hurriedly in some desperate attempt to try and find something that would give them the upper edge. He left the flying to Toothless and only reacted instinctively to his movements, no thanks to their snake induced connection.
Hiccup wasn't necessarily a genius when it came to animals – that was usually where Fishlegs came into the equation. However, he did know that sea creatures had terrible eyesight, and he knew he could use that to his benefit. On the flipside however, he knew that their senses of smell and hearing were usually remarkable, and there would be no way of getting around it; there would be no sneaking up on the serpent, unless…
Astrid's scream rung out through the air like a beacon in the bleakness, effectively piercing through Hiccup's train of thought. His mind blanked as he flattened his body to Toothless' neck for extra speed, hoping desperately to try and intercept Jormungand before the serpent got to them first, if it hadn't already.
His hopes were raised as he spotted the creature's giant head bobbing through the murky waters out of the corner of his eye, and the pair rapidly changed directions. He knew he was being foolish for thinking that he could attack it now, knowing well enough that it would hear them long before they got anywhere close, but if they could distract it just long enough, perhaps it would give Astrid and her Nadder a better chance to escape.
Toothless dodged the serpent's gigantic jaws easily as the ragtag pair swerved down the length of its upper neck, landing deftly between the cracks of its huge scales. The Night Fury clambered upwards, irritating the snake as Toothless' claws tickled his skin before landing a volley of cyan blasts on the upper right side of the serpent's barnacle embedded forehead. Jormungand shrieked in annoyance and tossed his head violently, throwing Toothless and Hiccup off of him and back into the fog. Hiccup assisted in balancing themselves in the air just as they missed a series of sea stacks by a breath, and they quickly executed a hairpin turn before tearing back towards the serpent yet again.
The two of them didn't dare perform the same manoeuvre for a second time as they steered over top of the snake's massive body. Jormungand snapped his jaws when they swooped too close but didn't blatantly attack otherwise, which had Hiccup worrying for Astrid's safety all the more.
Suddenly, and without warning, the colossal serpent took off like a shot and even Toothless had trouble trying to keep up with it. The speed in which the sea creature could move out of nowhere worried Hiccup for about an instant before the all-out panic kicked it and took over his practicality. He had sworn up and down to keep her safe, even if it meant throwing himself into harm's way to do so, and the harrowing realization that she was about to be devoured like an appetizer turned his body into ice.
Toothless rocked violently, and the faint impressions of stubborn courage slapped him out of his self-induced emotional coma in a rush of vertigo and common sense. Hiccup forced himself to focus – he was letting his emotions consume him once again.
Toothless followed the snake as fast as he could manage, but his exhaustion was beginning to get the best of him. Vaguely, he wondered what would happen when his body ran out of adrenaline – he was already having a hard enough time trying to keep up his energy after wasting his fire trying to distract the sea serpent. It had been a spur of the moment thing, and he inwardly chastised himself for the impulsive action; if they were going to get out of this alive, he'd have to start thinking more clearly.
Toothless shook for a second time, jolting his rider into focusing yet again; the hatchling's almost constant string of morbid thoughts wasn't helping his already crumbling concentration.
Jormungand roared boisterously, and Hiccup just knew that the snake had found them. Twitching his foot instinctively, Hiccup took the lead as the pair barrel rolled over top of the serpent's coils, narrowly avoiding one of the towering spikes lining the creature's back. Toothless righted himself just as the back of Jormungand's head came into focus, and he had to make a careening twist in order to avoid the serpent's huge fins on its head.
Astrid's Nadder had just fired a torrent of spikes at the snake from the top of a sea stack as Toothless came around, but the Night Fury wasn't able to do anything as a loop of Jormungand's serpentine body destroyed the rock tower from its base, sending the female pair tumbling out of control. With difficulty, the blue and yellow dragon managed to pull herself back into the air before hitting the whitecaps, but at the expense of a great deal of energy. Exhausted from the overexertion, she was unable to get out of the way before she was hit yet again with Jormungand's colossal form, breaking her.
Time paused for a moment. Hiccup reached out towards her, but there was nothing to grasp.
There was no life that flashed before her eyes; all Astrid could see was the sky above her, and she took that as a sign as she plunged through the air towards the ocean, voiceless and blank. Her mind was a muddled mess of fear and sensation as the venom continued to burn into her arm, having had eaten away the portions of her coat and underclothes only moments before. Her face felt warm as the wound from where the serpent's obsidian-sharp scales had sliced her open. She felt weightless.
Hiccup cried out, but the noise was drowned out by the stone column crashing into the frothing waves. His outreaching hand was frozen in place. He didn't see where she had fallen.
Vaguely, somewhere in the back of his mind, something clicked.
He felt it immediately, as if it were purely physical; his eyes narrowed, his stare no longer tainted with the tendrils of emotion. He clenched his fists. He could hear everything, sense everything, feel everything. His body shook with it, that long, long repressed Viking gene, smothered and squelched in the deepest recesses of his heart since he was merely a child – his blood boiled with it.
Toothless turned his head around, eyes wide and questioning. He hesitated as Hiccup wrenched the pedal for the dragon to dive downwards, but the empty look of rage his hatchling gave him convinced him quickly to comply.
Their journey was cut short however, as Jormungand's gaping maw intercepted their downward path, forcing the pair to skid in another direction to avoid being eaten alive. The serpent guffawed as it blocked their passage once more, toying with the two gnats as if they were playthings. It was captivated by the waves of ire coming from the human as the duo narrowly avoided colliding with his fangs; never had he felt an emotion that strong emanate from such a little, filthy creature. He had hunted humans before, and knew that they were more or less capable of being marginally sentient, but this was something entirely different from what he had ever experienced before.
Hiccup snarled and led Toothless into a back dive, spiralling downwards before banking left suddenly and soaring past the serpent's forehead. The only thing that was running through his mind was killing this thing – with his bare hands if he had to – and then finding Astrid. It didn't register to him that she could have been injured, or dead for that matter; his good judgment had all but turned into tunnel vision as he cursed the creature to happily burn in Hel, goading Toothless into firing into one of its iridescent eyeballs for good measure.
Jormungand screamed in anguish as the Night Fury's flame detonated with perfect aim, searing his socket and leaving him completely blind on the left side of his face. His astonishment melted away as his own furious vanity took over, impeaching him with sightless rage. The sea creature tossed his head viciously and released his fiercest battle cry, no longer willing to toy with his long overdue meal.
Meanwhile, Toothless and Hiccup had nosedived down towards the surface of the ocean, and although his throttling fog of aggression had lessened somewhat, Hiccup's soul still boiled with indignation. Desperately, his eyes frantically scanned the waves in search of her body or the body of her Nadder, but found nothing.
The white hot anguish he had all but been consumed with turned to ice in the pit of his stomach – what if she had drowned?
The hairs of the back of his neck rose in tandem as a hiss filled the air, forcefully oscillating everything around him; the air practically shook with the profoundness of it as Toothless and Hiccup slowly turned around. They couldn't control their shudders as the hissing grew louder, and the great snake rose from the depths of the ocean – seemingly endlessly – until it came to rest, convoluted in a gigantic winding coil. Its forked tongue undulated to the throbbing tone of its jeer and its remaining eye was now constricted into an unblinking slit. Without warning it went to strike, barely missing Toothless and Hiccup in its monstrous, noxious jaw.
Blind panic started to take the place of Hiccup's fury all over again as Toothless flew into a sharp incline, skittering through the snake's gaping mouth and soaring over the creature's brow. Jormungand threw his head around and didn't miss this time, grazing the flying pair just hard enough to send them careening out of control. Toothless and Hiccup managed to manipulate themselves back into balance just quickly enough for them to dodge another attack, sending them plunging back down towards the seas.
Hiccup looked down and saw that Toothless was bleeding, though not enough to truly impinge on them. He himself was losing blood, his coat having been shredded by the snake's razor sharp plates when they had collided with each other; but he could barely feel the pain, whether by an over indulgence of adrenaline or the cold, he couldn't tell. They dodged its huge coils yet again as the snake tried to crash into the pair with its body in the same way it had downed Astrid, but Toothless was proving to be far more agile than the ancient serpent took him for.
Toothless spun around and took another shot at Jormungand's face, but the ball of fire just missed the snake's scaly temple. The serpent took off after the two of them furiously, so outraged by the fact that they had already bested him once that he didn't notice the prickling feeling on a part of his lower body that was wrapped around what remained of the volcano he had downed earlier before it was too late.
Bedraggled, soaked and gasping for breath, Astrid sank the blade of her axe into one of the larger fissures in between Jormungand's huge scales and carved out a hunk of its flesh. She wrenched the weapon free just as the serpent jerked violently, sending her back into the ocean again as a cascade of the creature's inky blood spurted upwards like a geyser. Holding her breath as she made contact with the glacial water, she slammed through the barrier and tried not to pass out from the all-encompassing cold. With a last burst of strength, she broke through to the surface and desperately fought the undertow towards a cluster of fallen boulders, and heaved herself heavily onto one. She rolled onto her back and frantically fought to catch her breath, but it felt as if a weight was pressing down on her lungs, constricting her from panting as she fought to inhale. She grasped her axe at her side, hoping that the steadfast weapon would give her strength, and tried to focus of the battle above.
Toothless and Hiccup barely managed to skid out of the way as Jormungand lurched erratically and disappeared beneath the surface of the ocean, hissing furiously. Between his undying admiration and the overwhelming relief he felt at seeing her alive enough to attack a snake thousands of times larger than she was, the pair swooped down and landed on the rock beside her.
"Astrid!" he grappled at his prosthetic with numb fingers and hopped off of Toothless as fast as he could manage, slipping to her side, "Are you alright?"
"I-I'll b-be fine," she replied hoarsely, still breathing heavily. She started to push herself into a sitting position but her shaking limbs were doing very little to help; Hiccup reached out and assisted her in heaving herself onto her feet, keeping her propped against his body until she stopped trembling as forcefully as she was.
"What did you do to it?" Hiccup asked in an attempt to distract her from herself, seeing that she was soaked and her lips were tinged with blue. He peered around her body to gaze at the gore encrusted axe still gripped in her fingers, hanging limply at her side.
"I-Its skin is…is s-still soft," she ground out, trying to control her chattering teeth. Hiccup went to start rubbing her arms in an attempt to warm her with friction, but she shrieked and cowered away when he reached for her left appendage, which she had been cradling close to her chest.
His eyes widened with panic, "Are you hurt?"
Astrid was having a hard time controlling her breathing at this point, and her trembling was only getting worse. She moved her injured arm in front of her and Hiccup finally caught a glimpse of what the snake's venom had done to her skin.
He tried to school his expression as his eyes grazed over the mottled, blackened skin; he swallowed the wave of nausea that came over him and quickly brought his stare back towards her pallid face, trying to control himself. He reached out and brought her close to him again, keeping silent this time as he willed his body heat to warm her. He led them both over to Toothless, whose exhaustion was quickly getting the best of him as his gasping shuddered audibly with each deep exhale.
Hiccup filtered through what Astrid had just mentioned as he helped her onto Toothless' back, remembering almost immediately what she had said about seeing a giant snake skin floating in the waters when she had been hunting him down. He knew from his very limited experience with snakes that they shedded their skins, but their textures and vulnerability never really crossed him mind. He had, up until that moment, likened their skin with that of an eel, but upon landing on the creature and scampering up its back as they had earlier, its outer layer was much more reminiscent of that of a dragon. Hiccup glanced closely at Toothless' own scales as he swung his leg over the saddle, noticing the little gaps between each one; to a dragon as small as a Night Fury, the fissures didn't pose as a weakness, but when stretched out to cover miles…
Bending down to reattach his prosthetic, he tried to consider the serpent's weaknesses. The first image that came to mind was Astrid's great aunt Gothi, and how wrinkled and sheer her skin was, though she rarely showed it. If this snake was as old as he gave the impression of, Hiccup had a feeling that he may have just discovered how to take him down. Astrid herself had just proven how easily she could hack into Jormungand's scales, and that lesion had only been barely a foot deep. Hiccup had a three foot long sword strapped to his back, and for the first time since this entire battle had begun, Hiccup thought he might have a chance.
"Do you think he's gone?" he heard Astrid murmur from behind him, her uninjured arm snaking around his midriff as he pulled himself back up into a sitting position.
"He wouldn't give up that easy," Hiccup replied, eyeing the waters carefully. The waves had calmed down somewhat, but they were still tumultuous enough to hide the giant serpent's ascension from ocean level.
"Come on," he said to Toothless, easing the wearied dragon back to the land of the living. Toothless, foregoing his usual vertical lift off, flapped his wings just fast enough to push them off of the ground and spiral upwards, easily clearing the remaining sea stacks and the salty ocean spray.
They stopped only when they were high enough to be able to take in the vista around them. For a few moments, Hiccup let himself believe that they might have won but that hope was quickly squashed when his companion wordlessly pointed out that the buzzing in their heads was still there, still digging snake sized holes in their respective psyches. Hiccup sighed and kept his eyes peeled for anything that looked unnatural between the rise and fall of the whitecaps, but everything seemed to look natural, almost peaceful. Even the monochromatic sky was beginning to lighten somewhat, diminishing the dark shadows that shrouded them and rendering them impotent.
The wind started to pick up and although both Hiccup and Toothless were looking towards the North, Astrid felt the prickling feeling of intuition raise hairs on the back of her neck. Slowly, she peered over her shoulder, tightening her grasp on Hiccup instinctively.
"Hiccup…" she intoned, eyes widening with a growing sense of panic. Hearing the alarm in her voice, Hiccup spun around in his seat and froze, unable to swallow the huge swell of terror that felt horribly reminiscent of the last time this had happened.
"TOOTHLESS!" Hiccup screamed, but the ebony dragon was already flying as fast as he could away from the colossal tidal wave that was coming after them. Toothless tried as hard as he could to gain altitude, but the extra weight on his back was fighting against him, and the burn in his sides was quickly becoming too overwhelming to bear…
The wall of water hit them harder than anything they had ever experienced, and it took every ounce of energy to hold on as they were thrown sideways at unthinkable speeds, unable to prevent it. Astrid buried her face in Hiccup's neck and Hiccup bowed over Toothless, holding onto his scaly neck for dear life as they were thrown back towards the surface of the ocean, where they could easily be knocked out, or drowned, or swallowed –
Hiccup opened his eyes against the violent rush of salty water and regretted it immediately, but what he had seen in that split second was all that he had needed.
Toothless pressed his wings to his body and made himself as aerodynamic as he possibly could despite the two humans on his back, barrelling into Jormungand's eagerly waiting mouth and passing through his razor sharp teeth out of the other side unharmed. Once they were clear, the Night Fury opened his wings to slow them as much as possible before they skidded on the surface of the ocean like a skipping rock, finally coming to a stop many metres away. Jormungand, noticing his folly, rose up from the surf like a grotesque pillar and bared his teeth in all their glory.
The ancient snake was sick of playing. He had never been denied his victory before, and he refused to be defeated. He was the very epitome of pain and suffering in this world, the very harbinger of death and apocalypse! How dare these creatures pose a challenge! Their prevarications both astounded him and enraged him; their willingness to survive both perplexed him and displeased him. They should have been honoured to die in his grasps, the fiercest, most widely feared beast on this earth! And yet they continued to evade him, continued to fight back against him. How dare they?
He would crush their hopes, their desire for life. He would make them worship him once and for all.
The wound near his tail was only secondary to him now; it perturbed him that such a small creature could have sliced into his faultless skin so easily, but he thought nothing of it now. He was millions of years old, and had had his fair share of lesions, especially in his youth. He had not been injured in centuries, but this no longer mattered to him. His age only made him wiser; he would never be considered weak!
Jormungand roared, keeping his remaining eye trained on his prey as they hovered a little ways in front of him. He watched as the three creatures' tremored in his presence and basked in it, thinking of nothing but his own narcissistic glory. He coiled himself upwards and continued to snarl menacingly, preparing for one last final strike.
Hiccup, seeing the opportune moment approach rapidly, knew that it now or never. Rolling his shoulders, he turned his head and met Astrid's stubborn stare unflinchingly, "Remember when I asked you to trust me?"
Astrid narrowed her gaze, and although she tried to remain strong on the outside, she knew where this was going. Her stomach dropped as he gripped her hand, squeezing it reassuringly.
"You're going to fly Toothless."
"What?" Astrid exclaimed. Toothless turned his head around roughly at the same time, his expression matching that of Astrid's with disbelieving incredulity. Hiccup raised his palms and continued to explain.
"We're going to fly above his head, and…and then I'm going to jump off and…hopefully, as long as I don't die – stab him."
"Are you stupid?" Astrid shrieked in disbelief, her aggravation strong enough to finally bring some colour back onto her ashen cheeks, "You…you can't do that!"
"I can, and I will," he replied as calmly as he could, even though his outer shell held very little resemblance to the quavering fear he was hiding beneath, "You and Toothless will distract him, and I'll kill him."
Astrid stared at him in disbelief, "And if that doesn't work?"
"Plan B."
"And that is…" Astrid pursed her lips, not liking where this was going.
"Fly as high as you can and get out of here."
"What?"
"I'm serious Astrid! Stop looking at me like that!"
"No! No, you're being ridiculous—"
Ignoring her, Hiccup bent down and started unlatching his prosthetic from the stirrup. Toothless quipped in protest but didn't bother arguing with him any longer, sensing the logic through their mutual bond. He couldn't argue against logic, but he had his utmost doubts about his hatchling's mate trying to steer him without either of them dying in the process.
"What – what are you doing?" Astrid shouted as Hiccup contorted himself, wrapping one arm around her waist and the other around her thigh in order to pull her up in front of him.
"Please stop fighting me on this," Hiccup pleaded through his teeth, hoisting her around in an admirable feat of strength that would have shocked her had she not already been distracted otherwise. She gripped the handles of the saddle instinctively and peered back over her shoulder, her weary eyes gaping.
"How…how am I supposed to—"
"Try and fit your foot in there first," Hiccup urged, keeping one eye on Jormungand as he began to wind himself into a coil, "Quickly. Does it fit?"
"No," she choked and started to panic, "How am I going to steer him?"
"You'll have to use your hand," he replied gravely, swallowing the lump in his throat with difficulty, "Now, twist it out, and you'll go right; twist it in and you'll go left. The harder you twist it, the sharper the turn."
"But—"
"Push it down and you'll go up; push it up and you'll go down. Just think, opposites for everything."
"Wait!"
"Go Toothless!" Hiccup cried, snatching Astrid's hand in his and forcing her into grabbing the stirrup, "Left!"
Astrid pulled the stirrup left and they went on the opposite direction, spiralling out of control until Astrid yanked the contraption the other way. The turn was too sharp and Hiccup could feel Toothless' dread fall onto him like a dead weight, "Concentrate. You can do it."
"I'm not you!" she shrieked, barely able to hear herself over the airstream as they started to pick up speed, "I can't just…do it!"
"I know," Hiccup helped her as they ascended further over top of the snarling serpent, spiralling upwards in preparation for what would be a very swift dive, "When I say go, you're going to push up on the pedal as hard as you can. At the very last second, push down and get out of the way. Let Toothless guide you; if he starts to lean left, turn it in. If he starts to lean right, turn it out. Don't think about it, just do it."
"Are you really going to do this?" she whispered as Toothless paused at the top of their climb. They were weightless for a moment as Hiccup brushed her cheek with his lips, then drew the sword from the bindings on his back.
"Go."
Clenching her eyes shut, Astrid yanked upwards on the pedal as hard as she could and Toothless plunged into a nose dive. That ballistic noise that accompanied his free fall was the only thing he could hear as Hiccup prepped himself to jump, waiting for the opportune moment. It came within milliseconds and he leapt off of Toothless' back, flailing in the air with his limbs outstretched as he tried desperately to manoeuvre himself over the beast.
Astrid punched the pedal down and Toothless barely managed to clear the serpent's gigantic spines before dodging left and downwards around its humongous neck. He weaved right and, although the movements were jerky, he was surprised that they had actually succeeded in getting through their dive bomb without being thrown headlong into Jormungand's eager mouth.
Hiccup landed forcefully just below the nape of the serpent's neck and wasted no time in scampering upwards, ignoring the blinding pain that was spreading like fire from his legs. He hoisted himself around one of the creature's spinal plates just as Toothless attacked its face with a ball of indigo fire, distracting it from the thump it had felt on its back seconds earlier. Hiccup continued to climb regardless of the obvious projectile driven battle going on in front of him; Toothless fired several more shots to buy his hatchling more time, but Jormungand was fighting back, spewing streams of venomous poison to try and subdue his prey. Hiccup couldn't see what was going on in front of him, but he really hoped Astrid was getting a hang of dodging things before it was too late.
Hiccup finally clambered onto what he safely assumed to be the nape of the serpent's neck, and skittered into the shallow crater that marked where the snake's head met its spine. Hiccup took a moment to compose himself, staring blankly at one of the larger gaps between the serpent's enormous scales. It was now or never, and Hiccup swung the metal weapon over his head, slamming it into the base of Jormungand's skull until the sword was fully embedded in its flesh.
The immense serpent jerked violently, screeching as he tossed his head back in forth in excruciating agony. The vehement motion threw Hiccup off of the snake's head, hurling him up into the air before sending him plummeting back down towards the surface of the ocean.
Time slowed, and in those moments the leaden, blackened sky was replaced by a rapidly firing sequence of memories from his former life. He saw his village, his home and the rafters that held up the ceiling in his bedroom…but it was the three statues of the Norns that stuck in his mind as he tumbled helplessly through the air, too startled to scream. He watched as Jormungand continued to writhe above him, and Hiccup realized then that his efforts had been entirely in vain. He had injured the sea serpent, but his blade just hadn't been long enough to finally end him.
The waves crept closer and closer as he fell, and the last thing he saw before colliding with the merciless ocean was a bolt of lightning leaping across the clouds, smiting Jormungand once and for all by manipulating the only conductible object in the sky. Hiccup didn't have time to grin as the impact of the ocean slammed into his body, flooding his vision with blackness.
A big thank you to Lord Lithos Maitreya for providing me with all sorts of research. Much of what made Jormungand terrifying was because of LLM, so thank you again!
Also, if you're out there Sir Nick, let me know you aren't dead!
I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Let me know what you thought of it, especially with all the action and stuff - this isn't really my genre, and I'd love to know if it came out clearly.
Finally, the 300 review kiriban is still up for grabs!
Brontë