Siren

Magnus raised his hand as soon as I finished handing out assignments for the kids.

"When are we getting our pen pals?"

I'd forgotten about it. I didn't really want to do the project now, since that would mean way too much work for Sneaky and Sharpshot.

"It hasn't been approved," I lied. I knew the kids would accept that as an answer because I did tell them that would be one of the options.

"Oh. Okay."

"Any other questions?" I asked the kids. Fredegund raised her hand.

"Is our break period two or three weeks long?" she asked.

"Three weeks," I said. Their break would be a week away from now, and I was looking forward to it, since that meant less teaching and more free time to myself. "It's a week away from now."

I could see the enthusiasm in the kids' faces. No doubt they'd be happy to get away from homework for three weeks.

Since there were no other questions left to be asked, I told the kids to work on their assignments while I cooked their lunch for them. I'd already started boiling their rice. Soon, I would have to dry them. Then, I'd wash the squashes and corn, then dry and cut them and serve them along with the mead. Then they'd have a meal.

Hiccup

"There was a girl who claimed to be Siren," Hiccup muttered, pacing back and forth. "She was tall and skinny, and wore a strange robe. She had a Night Fury and a reptile with her, and wore a kraken. She had a Viking accent, and wore a yak skin glove. She had blonde hair that was tied up, and blue eyes, along with plenty of freckles to boot."

Siren had freckles, blonde hair, blue eyes, a yak skin glove, and a Night Fury. Hiccup didn't know if there were even other Night Furies out there, or if she came from a far away land. All he did know is that if it were him in the position of chief at the time, he would've kept the stranger there to make sure she was actually his daughter. At first, he didn't even think much of it, but when he heard the description, it was sort of similar to that of Siren's. Siren may have been much smaller when she left, but that was close to six years ago. She would've grown quite a bit then.

Not only that, she was outside of the archipelago, and Hiccup knew that because they didn't find her within the archipelago. The strange robe and reptile could've come from other lands outside the archipelago. It was possible Siren had picked up on their customs and had come to her senses eventually through them. She may have made the decision to come back to Berk because she felt Viking way was the right way.

Whatever it was, if Siren had chosen to return to the archipelago, then it might be time to start looking again. Hiccup had a hunch that if he were Siren, the first place he'd start living at would be Dragon's Edge. He and his friends lived there once, and he'd taken Siren there as well. She had been a small child then, and Hiccup could still remember the amount of questions she'd asked about the place. It had been "Daddy this, Daddy that," and so on.

How Hiccup longed for those days.

Siren

"How did you get into a war with the Celts in the first place?" I asked Al, as soon as I finished translating some of the first paragraphs of the Korean manuscript on shamanism into Nordic. I was planning to translate it into Japanese, then Celtic and Mayan down the road, along with any other languages I learned.

"How did you learn languages so quickly?" Al asked. "I don't know anyone who can learn languages at the rate you did."

"I had to learn quickly," I said. "In the Mayan world, I did end up learning some of the language, and it was just enough to hold a brief conversation, and I had Rupac, so I didn't really need to learn it.

"Japan was a different story. I was expected to speak it without Rupac, and all of the people I was with there spoke Japanese. I usually didn't really speak Nordic there.

"It was similar with the Celts, except I didn't have the benefit of Rupac, so yeah."

"Okay," Al said, dipping his pen into his ink bottle. "We Meatheads got into a war with the Celts when Drago Bludvist attacked a whole village of them. They declared war in return, and some tribes have joined in support of Drago."

"I hate Drago," I said. "He tore my family apart."

"Tell me about it."

I told him the whole story, starting from when Dad met him before I was born to the Second Dragon War when I was five.

"I've heard he was horrible," Al said, pulling his pen out of the ink bottle. The ink dripped down a bit into the bottle, but gradually stopped.

"Yeah, and he needs to be stopped. I'll be the one to do it." I hung my head down and looked up. "Mark my words."

Al's eyes widened in surprise. "Alright, then. Good luck." He returned to his work.

I'd been planning on taking down Drago Bludvist for some time. Once he was gone, my family's suffering would be avenged. Once he was gone, dragons would be freed and maybe given to the care of loving trainers. Once he was gone, the world would be a better place.

But what I didn't know was that his death would bring on much more than I thought it would. Much, much more.