A/N-Alright, the first actual chapter to Book 4, hopefully the prologue got you guys warmed up though! Read on...

Chapter 1

Winter's Arrival

"Hey Hawken! Move over so I can work here!"

I sighed as I turned around and leaned against the table where my already half-done experiment lay strewn across the space. "Seth, we've gone over this before. There is limited space at each of the stations, you can wait your turn or go to the other one that's open, and if you really need that much room there are three completely open tables that you could commandeer today. Back off."

It was early December, and I was in my last chemistry lab for the year. I had become well accustomed to the stress of college, the ups and down that came with the professors' uncanny ability to assign homework and tests all in the same week and the crazy schedule that left me all over the place. All in all though it wasn't too terrible. I never liked school anyway, but I could at least tolerate it. There was still one problem I had yet to really tend to: Seth.

A tall, well-built guy, Seth was used to getting his own way most of the time, and it showed as he rarely ever took no for an answer. He was from a rather remote town in the American Southwest, and was one of the very few people left around who hadn't picked up on the story of the dragon kid. No one at the college had told him due to my insistence after I'd first run into the guy, and since I kept my flights to the down low when coming and going he was still in the dark. I wanted to see just what kind of character he was, how far he'd push me before I decided it was far enough. Until now, he had backed off with little more than terse words and some prodding from the other students around.

"You always get the best scores around here, and I'm thinking it's because you get to the best stations first. Or maybe you're just the teacher's pet," Seth said none-too-kindly. Without another thought he pushed all my papers out of the way and put his own things down where I was. Then, he moved my materials down the table, and sat down, not thinking twice about his actions this time.

I glanced at the teacher's assistant, who nodded. I'd managed to get the faculty on my side in this, just for one good example to be made. I wasn't the only person Seth thought himself superior to, and he'd managed to get on the less pleasant side of some of the professors as well. Now, however, the issue had gone on long enough, and after nearly the whole semester of letting it slide and letting Seth build up his attitude, he'd managed to boil the kettle. I had the teacher's approval, and Seth had picked the worst time to be a jerk, so it was time to put him to rights.

I glanced around and my eyes settled on a beaker of water sitting on a hot plate nearby, boiling away. I meandered over, leaned next to it, and said to Seth, "Out of curiosity, what makes you think it's okay to displace another student in the middle of the final exam lab?" He glanced up at me, and replied, "Just you." While he looked my way, I lifted up my hand and placed it casually into the beaker, watching with great entertainment as the look on his face went from a smirk as he thought I would burn myself, to concern when I just sat there, like nothing was out of the ordinary.

"Okay, next question," I began, "what makes you think it's a good idea to tick off the one kid who doesn't get burned by boiling water?" He didn't have an answer for that, so I continued. "Yeah, I would think if someone could tolerate that, then there's a lot more that they could probably do too. Wouldn't be a good idea to get them really mad, now would it?" This time, he slowly shook his head in response, catching onto the snickers also starting to circle the room. Everyone knew something he didn't, and it didn't bode well for the bully.

I removed my hand from the beaker, and picked it up, holding the glass carefully and continuing to heat it, so that it boiled in my hand. "Well, would you look at that," I marveled mockingly, then glanced back at Seth, who'd gone a little pale. It's one thing to have high pain tolerance; it's another to make water vaporize at a touch. I smirked and carefully set the beaker down on the hot plate, then placed my hands on the table in front of Seth, bending over to look him in the eyes.

"Around late April there were some very shocking stories that went around, about a kid who could do some rather impossible things. Did you happen to hear any of it?" Seth stammered as he answered. "I-I thought it w-was a hoax. There's no way it could be possible, not by any measure we know." I chuckled, and lit my hands on fire, guiding the flames along a field so they spiraled up my arms. "Well, now I'm sure you can put the pieces together, that you personally know the boy those stories were about," I drawled, wrapping the pair of flames around my neck like a choker and then driving them down my arms again. "For future reference, I would suggest you be very careful about who you put down. I don't like being displaced, and neither do the other students I've seen you push around here. So shape up, and start by giving me back my seat so I can finish my exam." The flames went out with a hiss as my eyes flashed bright green.

Within thirty seconds Seth was on the other side of the room, quietly dealing with his own work on a very empty table as far from me as possible, and trying to ignore the laughs everyone was having at his expense. I sat down again as well as I rearranged my work, smiling to myself. There were no problems whatsoever for the rest of the day.

As I left the campus after the lab, clouds were beginning to build up in the sky, and I could see swirls of snow nearing. Two fronts were moving in, one directly from the north and one from the southeast, and both looked bad. I morphed into a Blizzard dragon and took off, holding my books tightly to my chest to keep them out of the weather. By the time I landed at home though, the dragon's name already matched the weather. There was one odd difference: this storm had lightning in it. I hurried inside and dropped off my stuff, before setting down in a chair to take a breath. My mom was already home surprisingly, cooking dinner.

"Weather's gone crazy out there," I said as I pulled out the last of my homework for the year. My mom nodded. "It was clear all day too," she noted, "and yet we've had notices that there may be closures tomorrow. And the next day. It's supposed to be bad." I sighed. "Well, then, I'd better get this done quickly and get to Berk, they'll probably be needing my help." My mom gave me a questioning look.

I sighed. "As odd as it sounds, the weather here and there tend to somewhat mimic each other," I explained. "Granted they get storms a lot more often than we, but when we have one, they never fail to either." "I see," she said, and turned back to whatever was on the stove.

I was right when I had predicted Berk needed help. When I slipped into the portal (kept clear of the snow partly by myself and partly by the temporal effect of the anomaly), I was almost immediately flattened by driving rain and wind. I found that odd in itself too, as here it was a regular thunderstorm while we got snow back home, but shook it off for now. Going for the smart option, I changed into Shadow form instead of trying to battle the elements, and dissolved into the now very dark woods, racing at blinding speed toward the village. Most of the houses were already boarded up, and what few Vikings were brave or mad enough to be out in the gale were hustling about trying to get supplies put away or tied down. I materialized and rushed up to one of the men nearby, a fellow named Mulch. You might know him already.

"Hey Mulch, do you happen to know where Stoick is?" I yelled over the wind. He started at seeing me appear so suddenly, but shook it off and pointed toward the docks. "He's down that way with the dragons, tryin' te get the ships safely moored!" he yelled back. I nodded and turned to leave. "Thanks!"

I dematerialized again and raced down to the docks where, as Mulch had said, Stoick and Hiccup were helping direct the dragons to help move the ships up onto the repair platforms so they were out of the waves. Out at sea, the whitecaps were quickly growing, and once they reached the shore they would bash anything left in the water to pieces on the docks and cliffs. I materialized again and dove into the water, morphing a Doomfang and starting to push the boats up onto the platforms. As I did so, I glanced down at Hiccup and Stoick.

"Need some help here?" I asked, smiling as they both jumped in surprise. "Good te see ye here," Stoick yelled up. "We were wonderin' if ye'd turn up! This storm's getting' worse and we need the ships tied town before the worst of it hits here!"

Half an hour later found the whole village locked up tight inside their houses, me staying inside with Hiccup, Stoick, and Toothless. The wind howled furiously outside as rain pounded against the roof and walls. I had morphed Night Fury to help stave off the cold seeping in, and we were all currently huddled around the firepit.

::There's something not right about this storm,:: Toothless muttered. I nodded. ::I know what you mean,:: I muttered back, before looking over at Stoick. "When did the storm show up?" He shook his head in confusion. "Well, that there is the weird part," he replied. "Usually we get notice of approaching fronts up to a day or more in advance thanks to Bucket"- "Barometric pressure," I mused, interrupting. Stoick gave me a look, before continuing, "But today it was completely clear all mornin', and only a few hours ago did Bucket start having his, uh, 'bucket issues.' Not minutes later the black clouds showed on the horizon. The first we saw were right over the mainland, and usually storms blow over us and continue that way, but this one raced straight toward the island. Another formed out te sea like normal and met the first here." He looked at me, before glancing and the boarded up windows, a concerned expression growing on his face. "I don't like it a bit. Usually we're getting snow this time o' year, but instead the thunderstorm of the century arrives."

I nodded in response and looked at the door over my back, where wind was howling through the cracks. "We had two huge storms show up over my town too, just like here; one from the usual north and one from a completely different direction. The system's predicted to drop like three feet of snow on us over about three days. And we've barely even had a few frosts yet this year." I sighed as we all looked at each other with concerned frowns. "Even more, it's a literal winter lightning storm as well as a blizzard right now. If that's not a really bad omen I'm set to wonder what is."

They nodded in agreement. The weather was acting impossibly strangely, and while winter appeared to have finally arrived, there was nothing normal about it this year.

Ten miles to the southeast, the broken remains of a small boat rode the raging waves, barely staying afloat and drifting slowly toward Berk.

A/N-Fun thing about this chapter: I wrote it about a month before the time the chapter was set at, and a huge storm system actually did move through where I live, the first big one of that season too, almost exactly at the predicted time.

Anyway, make sure to leave a review and let me know what you think!