I know, I know, I'm so bad at regular updating. But at least I'm still alive…?

Guest: Yeah, I'm silly… I guess you could call that a coincidence. Thanks for sticking around and reviewing!

Other thing for this chapter - the Beast, Alphen, stands for both Drago's Bewilderbeast and Valka's in this story… Don't worry, it will soon make sense.

Chapter 22, in which Anna has a violet fan and we finally get to meet Cloudjumper.

TW: death, mentions of discrimination, bridge-dropping

If a man wants nothing and needs nothing, then there is no way to make an ally out of him. Or so the fairy tales advise, back home, in Arendelle. Should Drago desire nothing, how can we strike an agreement? How can we even leave this place alive?

Rebellious strawberry blonde and sparser silver strands, hanging loose from a pair of twin braids, floated in the breeze from Toothless's helices. Anna furtively glanced back at Hiccup through the glass of the cockpit, earning a reassuring nod. She managed a weak grin in return. Had the glider even approached the Drifter camp, it would most likely have been taken down on sight, so that Anna had to be dropped off far away enough from the meeting place and make the rest of the way on foot. Amidst the grassy flatness, gently rippled by the passing winds, stood the pyramids in the distance, within a few minutes' walk.

If the man, however, has a reindeer, and the reindeer desires a carrot, then give the reindeer a carrot, and the man will follow you to the end of the world.

Arendelle had truly silly legends, Anna reflected. But it seemed silly enough to work. She had to find out what the Drifters loved most, what they wanted most, and then she would own them. She had to extract the information from Drago at all costs. She was the only hope they had. And the thought, she had to admit, flattered her prideful ego. Decisively, she walked ahead, pulling up her thick sky blue cotton skirt and the finer pastel azure and ivory veil layers underneath that ruffled against the grass blades. The sturdy walking boots, borrowed from her sister, crushed the meadow without elegance but with efficiency. At least, Anna was a fast walker.

The Itzan site was a peculiar place, those of Anna's entourage would have called picturesque, for it was a ruin upon a ruin. It had been abandoned centuries even before the colonists had set foot in Eastern Extremesia, such that eroded pyramids, half-collapsed columns and stone statues whose features had been claimed by the time and lichen were the only guardians of a mostly forgotten past. When the Centralesian cartographers and gold-diggers had stumbled upon the site again and noted its unusual aesthetics, many a decade later, had blossomed the idea that it could make a good amusement park for the growing settler population. Cardboard palaces, roller coasters and Ferris wheels had sprouted from the ground, cheerfully and colourfully amongst the exotic backdrop of the ancient temples. The fashion, however, lasted hardly more than a decade. Wealthy colonists always quickly got interested and disinterested even more swiftly. The owner had been unable to sell the affair away, resulting on its return to silence and abandonment after his bankruptcy.

As Anna climbed up the steps of the central square pyramid, flanked by stone feathered snakes as rails, rusted swings quietly squeaked behind her, sending a shiver down her spine. Atop the edifice, a small carrousel, that could hardly ever have felt more out of place, seemed to revolve slowly in the wind with a faint metallic squeak. Its pastel paintings over their milky background, almost whimsically grotesque mimes of the native Extremesians tribal art style, looked weathered, faded and partly fallen off, revealing rough patches of rusted iron. Smiling horses on spiralling golden vertical bars stood in their bizarre immobility, the identical round light-bulbs regularly spaced around the bottom edge of the scalloped roof above them seeming dead and empty.

The baroness stepped onto the merry-go-round, briefly glancing upwards to the ceiling to see what looked like a painted Centralesian interpretation of a circular native calendar, structured in concentric rings, each filled in mysterious angular glyphs. With some apprehension, she spotted the miniature version of a diligence where the meeting was planned to happen in complete intimacy, its wooden frame painted in forest green with golden edges. It was such a surprising place for Drago to choose, Anna thought, for she could hardly imagine the bulky, tawny-skinned, scarred raider sitting inside a cramped carrousel cabin in an abandoned theme park. She caught herself being bemused at the thought, and the itchy tingles of nervousness were back. Her clammy fingers clung to her closed magenta fan desperately. Astrid may have had her axe, Tooth her knives and Merida her bow, but all Anna was the only one there and all she could hold up to protect herself was her fan. The only weapon a proper lady could ever wield. One of delicate wooden spokes, lavishly embroidered fabric, carefreely graceful courtesy and concealed cunning negotiation. The perfect weapon for the situation. Taking a deep breath, Anna pulled the tiny fiacre's door open.

"Before you ask, milady, I am the leader of the Huacans and the Itzans. They dealt with Drago, and I delegate for them."

Anna's eyes took some time to get used to the relative obscurity. A golden sunbeam drifted inside through the small window. The worn leather bench seats on either side were surprisingly comfortable, and a simple circular table, made of painted metal, was between her and her interlocutor. The person across her, even though garbed in the patchwork fashion of the Drifters, the disparate fabrics adorned in feathers, sea shells, glass beads and other trinkets, had the bearing and demeanor of one who knew how to be a lady. Her skin was tanned by years under the harsh tropical sun, but her pale brown curls and her emerald glare betrayed her Centralesian birth. Those large green eyes weren't entirely unfamiliar to Anna, as a matter of fact…

"They call you the Valkyrie, madam," Anna guessed, remembering Jack's words.

And the Drifter woman carefully chose to behave as a lady, it must be to ensure that Anna regarded her as no less than an equal, not as a savage.

"Indeed. And you are?"

"Baroness Anna of Arendelle. Delighted to finally meet you."

She held out a lace-gloved hand, that the Valkyrie curtly shook. Anna could feel the roughness of the calluses through the thin fabric. They had briefly been in contact via radiomessage through Hans, but she had had no idea that the Drifter representative would not be Drago. If her goal was to get to know who the person she was trying to convince was, then it definitely could have started better.

"So, how did they… deal with Drago?"

"After the Guardian leader and those allies of yours had dropped him off the flank of the Pyramid of the Moon, the mob caught him and carried on his ritual sacrifice in place for the Feathered Snake's. The Beast would have been his successor, but he did not have the right stuff of a leader. So I challenged him to a ceremonial duel."

Casually resting against the woman's leg where a lady would have had an umbrella or a lace parasol was what appeared as a staff, decorated with crimson feathers. One of its ends curved back not unlike Jack's weapon, while the other carried a simple obsidian point, the sanded surfaces shining weakly in the relative obscurity, the edges bearing the slightest hint of savage ruggedness in their razor sharp lethality. The slightest hint of the merciless warrior behind the manners of a lady. The slightest warning that one wrong move, one single misplaced word could send that sharpened extremity straight through Anna's freckled throat.

Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, Anna obliged to formulating a comment.

"May I infer the… Beast is no longer a threat, then?"

The Valkyrie's piercing glance suddenly felt back onto her, as if she had been lost in the deep jungle of her thoughts. A thin wrinkle creased her forehead, and a shadow seemed to fleetingly glide past her eyes.

One day earlier

Tropical rains were wild and bestial, barging past in the blink of an eye and storming through the land just as fast. Tlaloc's waters, in their full majestic and powerful verticality, swelled from the endless sea of clouds above, purifying the land and leaving it soaked to the bone. The lush green of the rainforest that crested over the horizon line all around the religious site carried an eerily oversaturated glow, each leaf swelling plump and replenished as the raindrops relentlessly crashed down. The humidity in the air was barely breathable, thick with that smothering scent of earth, of life, almost entirely washing away the odours of sweat, blood and ashes from the ceremonial combat the crowd was tensely watching.

The Valkyrie had retreated to her own vertical stone loop, once again rubbing the tip of her spear against the flaming tar that covered it. Even with this incandescent resin layer, the flames that coated their blades hardly stood a chance against the fully unleashed violent rain. The fight had to be regularly paused for both adversaries to set their weapons ablaze again, much to the watchers' irritation. The heavy weight of her feather-studded brightly painted mask, breastplate and belt accentuated the ache in her weary limbs. She winced at the throbbing pain from the cut her enemy had inflicted at her bare abdomen. Across the dueling area, the Beast stood by his identically fiery ring, flames licking the obsidian of his two-handed sword. She wouldn't be able to hold on for very much longer. She would have to end it quickly, and she knew it. She knew it too well. She knew him all too well.

The regular percussion of ceremonial drums, the entranced clamour, the heavy pulsation of expectant respirations, the rhythmic thundering of heartbeats… all ushering them forward, back onto the stone battling alley. For interrupting this reenactment of the flaming course of the suns across their celestial paths would have been a sacrilege.

The Valkyrie was the first one to strike. Grabbing her spear by the end of the crooked butt, she launched it flying forward, its sculpted wood shaken by a lethal oscillation as it sliced the air towards its target. The Beast barely managed to block the obsidian tip with his metallic arm protection, but his adversary caught her weapon back with ease. She spun the javelin between her hands in rapid circles, fiercely blocking each of her enemy's blows. Sparks were but fleeting in the rainy air. Powerful arcs of ephemeral orange light slashed through the damp grayness as the blazing staff swung around with agility and the flaming sword cut down with force. The stark white, emerald green, garish gold and blood red painted details of their wooden masks, rendered dull by the colourless lighting, were tarnished in trails of soot where the flames had brushed them too closely. A brutal aura of white enveloped their lithe limbs were a million droplets collided with patches of bare skin, pouring along the canals of salient veins and pale scars. Calloused bare feet moved with precision and speed, leaving short-lived footsteps on the irregular stony ground that the rain had converted to an immense mirror, orbs of fire dancing over the blurred background like colliding asteroids in a moonless sky.

Before the audience knew, Alphen was gaining ground over his adversary. An impact of his sword against her breastplate sent her sliding backwards onto the slippery floor. She dug the blunt end of her weapon into a crack in the stone not to violently collide with the blazing stone ring just behind her. The flames caught onto the whirling feathers that adorned her sleeves, in a grim caricature of a phoenix wing that she hurriedly smothered into the puddle beneath her feet. The rain still fell onto her skin like a thousand knives, rendering the burns so painful they felt almost numb. Silence roared past her wary ears as the tempest stormed on. She steadied her stance in an asymmetric crouch, one leg extended and one hand holding her weapon nearly vertically. Careful not to slip as he advanced, the Beast made his way towards his unmoving opponent, the angular grimace of his mask remaining expressionless.

Within a heartbeat, water met fire, and sparks, droplets and smoke traced a brutal arc between the two fighters. Alphen realised that the female Drifter had swung the tip of her spear around on the surface of the puddle at her feet, temporarily blinding him. But he had no time to lose; he lifted his blade over his head with both hands and cut down. The curtain of smoke subsided in seconds. And the Beast looked up to see the Valkyrie staring down in mid-air, her flexible wooden spear briefly vibrating as it was employed as a jumping pole. The toned curve of her bare back seemed to hover above him for an infinitesimal eternity, and then the balls of her feet rebounded off the flat of his blade with agility, causing him to drop his weapon. A collective stupor fell over the watching crowd.

Alphen stumbled to his knees as his challenger's wiry legs locked around his powerful neck. Splashes of crimson dripped from her wounds onto his face, but the rain quickly washed them away. She elastically landed behind his back, using her spear to hold him in a firm chokehold.

Second by second as they ticked by, raindrop by raindrop as they fell by, each one of the Beast's breaths drew more painful and ragged. His fingers desperately clutched the sharp flaming stones that studded the spear near its extremity, attempting to divert it from his throat, to no avail but covering his massive knuckles in cuts and burns.

To end the duel did not require the slaying of one of the participants. Forfeit was sufficient, as the audience knew just as well as the two combatants. But they knew each other too well, too.

Raindrop by raindrop the storm flew by, and the Valkyrie knew it too well. Only then, however, did she realise her mistake.

The wood of her staff snapped like a mere twig between Alphen's hands. The sheer force released in the fracture sent the female combatant backwards, both shattered halves of her weapon still in her hands. She regained her footing, hardly caring to brush the mud off her limbs, and tossed the pointed end of her javelin towards the Beast. He deflected it just in time with his elbow, causing it to land, extinguished, in a nearby puddle. With nothing but the broken crook of of her weapon in hand, the Valkyrie readied to deliver a savage roundhouse kick, nearly snapping off one of the decorative wooden tusks off her adversary's mask. The audience let out a choked gasp. In the fluid violence of her motion, the smaller duellist hardly recorded the grasp of a colossal hand onto her ankle, altering her foot's trajectory and causing her to lose her balance, knocked over by her own momentum. Before she even hit the ground, Alphen sent her sliding by her leg, onto the pillar carrying her flaming stone circle.

Her body was too depleted of air to scream out her silent agony. A brutal knee collided with her stomach, reviving the pain of her gaping wound. An iron fist caught her ribs just below her breastplate with a sickening crunch. A mighty grip lifted her by her neck and pinned her against the vertical stone loop, the flames immediately licking at the back of her headdress and soaked plaits. His heated breath ghosted against her parched lips, but she could barely note it in the surrounding heat. Rainwater, sweat and blood trickled down her face beneath her mask, along with some tears too, maybe, but those tasted just as bitter. The sharp tips of his tusks prickled the base of her clavicle, opening umpteenth cuts that already started to feel numb. His gigantic hands could easily squash her skull or break her spine. Her flame would go out in a matter of seconds. She was done for… she should forfeit, and she knew it.

If the gods of the suns, the winds and the rains had any sense of pathetic fallacy, then surely deafening thunder would have shattered the sky. If these deities, that men worshipped with their offerings of their gold, their feathers and their blood, even had an ounce of attention for those puny creatures who lived their lives and fought their battles for them, then probably lightning beams would have impregnated the clouds with light brighter than that of the sun itself, wild enough to detract the watchers' attention for the lousy imitation of the solar course that happened on the wet ground before their eyes.

But the gods were either cold and uncaring, or terrible at drama. And therefore all that crashed onto the crowd was silence and more rain. Icy, blind white rain.

As the tension imploded past its climax, just as silently, they saw the Valkyrie on her scarred knees, broken and immobile, with the stump of a shattered wooden crook in her hardly even closed fist.

As the quietness returned, fertile and sudden, they saw the Beast, covered in his blood and hers, the one just as red as the other, and in water, too much water, the rest of the crook of his opponent's weapon still locked against the massive nape of his neck where she had desperately attempted to grab him. One of his wooden tusks was missing, broken off in grotesque asymmetry. It was sticking out of his mask at a bizarre angle, deeply buried in the orifice where his right eye used to be.

And raindrop by raindrop as the sky blindly rained by, the water washed the blood, sweat and tears away from the wounds of the dead and the living, turning the particles of soot into mud. When the storm finally subsided, the earth and the ashes would be soldered into one, as hard as stone.

"The Beast now belongs to the past," the Valkyrie finally spoke, emotionlessly.

Anna sensed that her voice almost broke, just like the bulk of an iceberg lurking beneath the surface.

"But this isn't why you've asked to meet me," the warrior continued. "So why don't you tell me what it is you beg for?"

"As we all know, a war has broken out, and you are at the head of a force that is underestimated, but immense. What we ask for is your support."

The Drifter had a sad smile at that, contemplating the younger woman's innocent idealism.

"What makes you think that Huacans, Itzans and Guardians are for sale? With all that you own to buy yourself lace fans and silk ribbons, you should probably be able to afford mercenaries such as the Stabbingtons or even the McGuffins and the DunBrochs…"

"But we came to ask for you, because you are more valuable than all of them combined. You are superior in numbers and in knowledge of this land, and we can provide for the rest."

"Do you really think that flattery will lead you somewhere, milady? You have much yet to learn, dear child. I am surprised this is the best whichever powerful clan you are part of chose to talk to me."

The Valkyrie leaned forward in her seat as she spoke, slightly wincing at the pain of her fresh injuries. Anna resisted the urge to nervously chew at her strand of white hair, cringing at the bitter taste of her hurt pride. Her eyes wandered along the pale web of scars on the older woman's cheeks, timidly meeting the green glare again, that oh-so-recognisable green glare…

"What are you even hoping to offer in exchange to our tribe?" the Valkyrie continued imperturbable. "Colonists have invaded and destroyed our land, taken many a life of our children with the mysterious weapons and the strange illnesses they brought with them. Even the survivors are forced to inhuman labour in your constellite and gold mines, and those that manage to escape are condemned to live off raiding and robbery, hiding in the wilderness of the rainforest, while the likes of you sip tea out of fine white cups shipped straight off from Porcelanie. Do you honestly think that I and my people will accept anything from you?"

Each word, each accusation sunk like a knife through her frail skin, but Anna too started to feel the numbness of her toughening soul. She barely noticed how cold-hearted she was becoming… it was necessary for her task. She could not help smirking at the blocks of information roaming freely inside her head, quickly forming scraps of a plan…

"This is all we can offer for your tribe," the young aristocrat finished, her teal eyes bright with excitement as her interlocutor nodded expressionlessly. "As for yourself, Madam…"

Anna pensively fingered at the radiomessenger hanging off her belt, before bringing it to her lips to deliver her message:

"Hiccup, if you could come from over there, there is somewhat who would very much like to see you."

Clouds flew and changed fast as the hours went by, lazy and languid, their ever-flat surfaces gliding freely on the bottom of the sky as if on an ice rink. Their shapes flowed fleetingly and ceaselessly, sometimes akin to prideful white dragons, others reminiscent of mysterious hazy faces, never entirely distinguishable, but always mysteriously familiar. Down below, just as sheep-like, trees herded in expectant immobility, sipping in the sunny azure and the carefree winds. In the near-ethereal frontier between the immensity of green and the immensity of blue, rare passing airships drifted by, their spinning helices and flapping tailfins humming in the early afternoon quietness.

So many years had passed, so many clouds had flown over the land, sprinkling snowy silver onto the Valkyrie's hair, raining their way through the riggles of her newly formed wrinkles.

So many years had passed, but a mother never forgot.

And then, time seemed to have stopped abruptly. Maybe there was a way to stop the grand clockwork of things, after all… but Hiccup and the Drifter leader hardly seemed to mind. Each breath they inhaled, each step taken side by side seemed out of time, almost surreal. After years of separation, so much was awaiting to be said, so much that they had little notion of where to start. They exchanged words about everything and nothing, about the new spear the Valkyrie had crafted in the morning to replace the one broken in her duel, about the new heat-resistant alloy Hiccup had been working on for his turbine blades, about the rearrangements to the Huacan camp to accommodate the Guardians, about Berk Steel's recent contracts with the DunBroch clan. In between attempts to conversation, the pair walked side by side in the sunny quietness, enjoying the simple pleasure of each other's company.

The large gray iguana perched on the Drifter's shoulder suddenly snapped out of its torpor to reach out for an insect with its ridiculously long tongue. Said insect happened to be fluttering around Hiccup's nose, causing the young man to flinch at the contact of the reptile's pink appendage. The Valkyrie's face lit up with a fond smile at his puzzled expression. Seeming vaguely offended by Hiccup's reaction, the reptile rolled both of his eyes in bizarre asynchrony, before drifting back into his cold-blooded doze.

"He likes you," she giggled softly, encouragingly taking his hand to have him pet the animal's scaly snout.

"Hiccup, meet my close friend, Cloudjumper. Cloudjumper, this is Hiccup, my…"

She abruptly stopped herself, the crucial word choked in a silent whirlwind of emotion.

"I like him too," Hiccup whispered after a curt pause.

Near-identical dark emerald eyes met for a fraction of a second, then the aviator turned his gaze to the luxuriant green all around them. Their raised stone path, cutting straight through the grassy land, was covered by an iron arbour, its vertical iron lines subtly flowing into an art nouveau crisscross of arcs above their heads, all covered in a rough layer of dark maroon oxyde. The pergola was heavy with overflowing vegetation, smaller branches filling in the light space between the larger, cryptically textured leaves. Moss-covered liana and helicoidal tendrils of gentle green spiralled down from overhead, along with tiny wild orchids and other parasitic blossoms, saturated with they musky scent of rainforest.

The dusty golden light that filtered through the leaves delicately dappled the Valkyrie's face warm splodges, erratically highlighting her proud cheekbones and her pointy chin, roughly underlining the crisscross of white scars across the tawny skin. A ceremonial plastron adorned her chest and covered her slender shoulders, the rusty metal chains connecting motley pieces of carved wood, green glass, dented gold and iron, lapis-lazuli and jade together, the mismatched objects adorned with colourful ribbons, buffeting feathers dangling off the bottom edge, echoing the garishly painted seashells that studded her large leather belt. A large iguana sloughed skin was asymmetrically wrapped around her waist, the hem barely brushing the intricately sculpted bracelets at her ankles. Around her toned stomach, as well as one forearm and one knee, pale bandages seemed to have been recently wrapped, in a rushed but still efficient manner. From under the fabric. mossy herbal mixtures had been smeared over her injuries, staining the bandages with a peculiar mixture of green and red. Interwoven twigs and wicker supported the bottom of her ribcage, seemingly acting as a makeshift splint for her multiple fractures. Despite her multiple wounds, she stood tall and moved fluidly, as if attempting to conceal her condition. As Hiccup turned to her again and held her gaze, he could hardly help feeling the weight of the pain and the responsibility in the mirror of her forest orbs, as if in the inky depths of an algae-cluttered pond in the summertime. And he could bear the silence no more.

"It was Drago, wasn't it? The reason why you couldn't come home. The one who held you his prisoner and slave, all these years. Your honour, as a spearmaiden of the Berk Clan… Did he…?"

He gestured to the bloodied bandages and toward all of her. His fingers clenched into a vengeful fist at the thought of Drago, for he had seen what the man was capable of, at the thought of the late Drifter leader slandering his mother's noble Miseralian honour, and his father's, and his own. Hiccup almost wished the man were still alive, such that he could slice his insides apart with the heat of his plasma cutter and clean the Haddock name in Drago's blood.

The barely contained anger in his forest green glare only met the icy mirror of hers, clouded with a shimmer of what almost appeared as melancholy.

"Hiccup, I… I need to show you something."

Fun fact: Valka's weapon is loosely based off the atlatl, as in very very loosely. She uses it both in that way - as a throwing javelin - and as a spear for closer combat, which comes from her Viking training. The whole ball game ritual has been turned into a ceremonial fight because the Drifters have lost or forgotten much of the heritage of their ancestors and made up their own, often more violent rules for rites in the pre-existent sites. But that will be clearer in the next chapter. Also, I got rid of Drago off screen because a couple of new antagonists will be entering the scene very soon…

Announcement: next chapter in 3 weeks or so…? Hopefully…?