A/N-A quick reply to a guest review on chapter 3: Very glad to see at least one person who knows the reference for Hiccup's bow, so far no one else has actually mentioned Hitchups. That being said, in this tale that weapon has a few of its own unique tricks. Anyway, time to move on in this story; it's also time we learn some background on Ember...

Chapter 7

Ember's Tale

The sun was just beginning to break the horizon when we landed back in the village again. The others had managed to dispose already of the dead sea serpent (many, many burn marks and drag lines were in evidence up to the cliffs), and some of the villagers were working on the damaged houses while others tended to the injured and still-unconscious Vikings. Most of the ones who had been hit by the serpent's energy pulse were awake again, but a handful were still out. Toothless and I landed in front of the Great Hall, where Stoick was waiting.

"Are they gone?" he asked as soon as we touched down. "Not quite," Hiccup answered. "They still think we're out in the forests somewhere, though, so we probably have a couple days at best before they figure out to actually head back here. They at least know enough that Ember doesn't want to risk us."

Stoick sighed. "Then we need te figure out how to end this, for good." He turned to me, and I melted back to human after Ember got off. "Why exactly are these creatures attacking anyway?" He pointed to Ember, who winced at the gesture. "I most certainly heard the big one call her name, and I also know for a definite fact that most sea serpents cannot talk." He crossed his arms in a demand. "Someone had better care to enlighten me as to why these sea demons decided to follow our visitor here."

There was silence as we all inadvertently focused on Ember. Finally, she sighed, and muttered, "They work for a sorceress named Jezebel."

I raised both eyebrows at that. "Jezebel?" Hiccup queried. Ember nodded in response. "She was named, supposedly, after a wicked queen of many years past, who threatened to destroy my ancestor's way of life."

I nodded, knowing the tale, and figuring out where this was headed. "So, when you said this wasn't over, you weren't kidding." She nodded. "Yes, regrettably I'm sure of that part. Jezebel wants me, and more specifically wants me dead, because of what I managed to dig up. It's a rather long story, however, especially for right now."

Stoick snorted. "Well, then, you'd better get talking. The sooner I know the cause, and why they're after ye, the sooner I can make a decision about you and hopefully start figurin' a way te get rid of these monsters." He turned and motioned for us to follow him up the steps and into the Great Hall, whistling a nearby Terror to him and sending it to find Gobber, Astrid, and the other members of his warrior's council, along with the other teens due to their experience.

Once they and all their respective dragons had arrived, Stoick gave a stern look to Ember, who sighed. "Well, I guess I should, uh, start from the beginning of this whole mess, huh?" We nodded, and she carefully sat down on the edge of the fire pit.

"Five years ago," she began, "I lived just outside of Jerusalem, Israel. At that time we faced the same sort of problems that you all did here, Stoick. Every month, sometimes more often, dragons of all different kinds would appear from the sky and raid our village, seemingly attempting to burn us to the very ground. It had been like this for well over a hundred years prior, and no one actually knew why, save that we thought we were simply food in the dragon's eyes." She shut her eyes, memories clearly coming back, and took a deep breath.

"I was born on a day coinciding with Yom Kippur, or what in common tongue would be called the Day of Atonement, at least in our beliefs, with a birthmark resembling a burning flame on my neck." She turned and carefully lifted up her hair. Indeed, underneath there was exactly that: a scar like image of a flame. I unconsciously rubbed my neck, where my own birthmark resided.

"It was one of the other reasons for their giving me my name," she continued. "Anyway, like all the other villagers I grew up learning how to fight the dragons from a very young age. I was extremely proficient with my bow and arrow, so I was given a rather specific task. We have a species of large stealth-type dragon that I became specialized in hunting, as I learned to spot the faint signs of their invisible figures. It doesn't always work, however, so I never progressed beyond trying to down them.

"One night, there was a particularly severe raid, and fire rained from the sky like it always did. I had run out with my bow, arrow strung, like always, but for some reason that night I hesitated when my next target revealed itself." Ember sighed, and I could see melancholy welling in her eyes. "This species of dragon never fired unless it was visible, I theorized due to the concentration or energy required, but in any case this one didn't fire at me. It was small, a runt really, for a member of the Shadowracers, as we called them. As I spotted it, I could see it had also easily spotted me. But instead of shooting, I let it land. Or really, I should say it made me step back, with a look I'll never forget, feeling as if I'd seen something different in this dragon's eyes than the murderous flame in all the others. I saw instead of rage, a mixture of fear, confusion, determination, but also hope, mixed into one."

I looked at Hiccup, and I could see his own memories of his first encounter with Toothless were coming to mind. Ember looked down at the ground, before taking another breath and continuing. "The look the dragon gave me shocked me enough that I inadvertently dropped my bow, and apparently that's what the Shadowracer was waiting for. It shot forward, picked me up, and flew away. But, to my great surprise, it didn't tote me in the direction of where we knew the dragons live. Instead, it flew north, to a small mountain range in the opposite direction.

"It dropped me there, on top of a barren rock, and then landed as well. In my shock I fell hard, before getting up and trying to bolt away. The dragon stopped me, of course, swinging its tail to block me. Then, it did something I would not have expected in all my life: it spoke."

Ember lifted up her hands to emphasize this. "My entire world completely turned on its head in that instant. Here I was, cowering beneath a creature I'd been taught was evil, nothing more than a mindless killer, and he was talking, in my language and on a level of intelligence I'd expect from my own people!"

Hiccup leaned toward me and whispered, "Sound familiar?" I smiled, trying not to chuckle, and Ember gave us a look. "Sorry, go on," I apologized, wiping the smirk off my face. She blinked and shook her head. "A-anyway, turns out the real problem was another dragon, a creature much like the Red Death told about in your now widespread tale, controlling the other smaller species. The Shadowracer that found me had been ignored, however, left out for being a runt and seen as small and useless."

This time it was Spitelout who sniggered. "Oh, just like Hiccup used to be, eh?" We all turned to him and I smacked him upside the head with my tail. "Forgive him, Snotlout's father," I told Ember. "Ah, well, that explains it," she muttered. "But back to the explanation: I came to name the Shadowracer Orhaganuz, which translates into the common tongue as 'hidden light.' He had watched for years as our two races warred, never quite gaining the courage to step in and try to solve the problem, until that night. He asked for my help, after explaining all this, and after what he told me, and shown me, there was no way I could refuse.

"We prepared for weeks, discussing the right way to go about addressing this problem, what we would say and do, before we finally attempted to approach the people of my home. Both Orha and I were nearly killed on sight when he flew into the village square with me on his back, and we were at spearpoint for over an hour as we desperately tried to explain what was really happening." Ember shook her head at the memory. "To make a long story short, they agreed to at least let us try and show them the problem, and we ended up taking down the demon controlling the other dragons. We lost many that day, but those left and the dragons found common ground to join together afterward, and we began to rebuild our disheveled lifestyle."

Ember stood up and gestured to Hiccup, then the dragons. "What I did is close to what you did, though I had many more people to back me at the time. And, for nearly three years we lived in peace, and prosperity.

"Then, without warning, savage attacks began again. They weren't from the dragons that lived with us, thank God, but from an entirely new force, that had been waiting for the turning point I brought on. These dragons did not attack like in the raids before, with haphazard fire and individual raiding animals in a horde. Nor did they look anything like what we had once fought. They were faster, they strategized, and they had been trained. And, though they would have once been recognizable as wyverns, these dragons had been misshapen and changed physically and mentally, possessed by powers beyond this earth. Those of us who could began to fight again almost immediately. With our dragons by our side we actually stood a chance, until Jezebel arrived herself.

"She came riding on the back of one of the demonic dragons she controlled, claiming that she was the new ruler of our land, on a mission from a higher power. Some of my village took one look at her, riding the creatures that now plagued us once more, and chose to give up right then and submit to her. The rest of us had seen clearly what her forces intended, what they brought to our home. We refused her, and she gave us a warning, a choice, before leaving with a swear that she'd be back."

Ember sighed and smiled sadly. "Orha and I, though, we couldn't just leave well enough alone and stay around the village to prepare for battle. Instead, we got it into our heads to follow Jezebel, tailing her back to the hideous fort that she ordained to call a palace, and decided to snoop about." She chuckled at this thought. "After dealing with stealth dragons as long as I had, you end up picking up on a lot of their traits. Anyway, I watched the sorceress for two whole days, staying out of sight using what I learned from Orha, and I stumbled across a dangerous secret she held: some sort of device, I assumed enchanted, and it looked like a big green jewel. She was using it to hold captive a group of powerful guardians." She glanced around at the people gathered around her. "If I told you the names, you would probably find them familiar, as they are the sources of many of your legends."

Gasps of surprise went up from some of the council members, and Stoick held up a hand to pause her in her story. "How can that be?" he asked. "Our beliefs and our traditions have been in place for hundreds of years." Ember nodded. "Yes, and Jezebel's been around for a long time, kept alive by black magic. The guardians are held in a sort of stasis, trapped between dimensions outside our visible world and unable to break free. If they could, Jezebel wouldn't have been able to gain the power she wields now, and they'd probably exist as far more than the myths of gods and monsters they are now." She shook her head.

"But, back to what happened: I'm not perfect, and neither was Orha, and not long after I found that device one of the guards of her 'palace' found us hiding out within a high room. When we tried to escape, they went after us immediately. We nearly managed to reach the village before a lucky shot knocked us out of the sky, and they attacked." Ember shuddered. "I got away, but only because Orha sacrificed himself for me. Orha…well, to put it simply he was captured. Not a day goes by still without me hearing his scream that day, when they ripped us apart.

"Jezebel returned to the village the next day, demanding not only our immediate surrender but also my blood in recompense for my trespass. When my people refused, she attacked. We were nearly wiped out; nearly my entire family disappeared in one afternoon. The few of us left fled immediately, unable to stay in the ruins our home lay in, and went to hide in the mountains to the north. My father was one of the only survivors and…the only… one, of my family to make it out. He insisted I leave there to go get help, or at least flee to safety. I refused, at least until the sorceress tracked us down again. This time, though, she also returned with Orhaganuz."

Ember choked back a sob, and looked up at us, tears breaking. "He wasn't the same. They'd… they'd done something to him, much like the wyverns Jezebel's army commanded. He was mostly the same physically, unlike the others, but they'd cursed him, wrapped his mind beneath black magic and demons. Jezebel set him loose as soon as she found us, and he began to lay waste to men and dragons alike, a monster in my friend's guise. We fled again, but Orha continued to hunt us, following our party wherever we tried to escape to. This went on for weeks, before he suddenly disappeared. He'd been sent on a new mission, and stories began to emerge of a monster dredged from the depths of Hell, sent to kill anything that moved. These tales slowly spread across the continents. A small group of our still loyal Shadowracers went out to try and find him, them having the only chance of stopping Orha, but I never heard if they found him.

"But, after all of this a small sliver of hope did manage to reach our party, another story of a different kind: a Viking village that had found the same truth we had, with a boy who had ended a three-century war like Orha and I had, and allies with someone who was said to have powers unlike any other alive who protected them." She gestured to me. "Now I know the truth behind those tales, and honestly the tales, wild as they are, still don't measure up to you guys in person. But, at this point there were so few of us that the rest of my party sent me off in hopes at least I would survive, maybe set off with what little I still owned to find Berk, and you Hawken. My journey was no easier than the rest of my life, however.

"From Israel to Scandinavia, the journey by foot is normally well over three months straight. I started nearly a year ago, heading here, and found out rather quickly Jezebel's forces were following me. Jezebel knew that if I reached help, there would be a chance of me at least escaping, maybe even being able to fight against her once and for all, so she ordered my death, by nearly any means."

Ember stood up slowly, another sad smile etching her face, as she faced the hall doors. "My saving grace I think is pure luck. I am not easily tracked, and if I am near another village Jezebel's lackeys wouldn't risk coming after me until they built up strength enough to wipe it out completely, as even she didn't want to risk her own tales spreading. Plus, the demonic spirits that fight for her once would often come after me in physical forms, when out in the wild where others couldn't see, and not too long ago they stopped appearing so often in such forms." That caught my attention, as it was no doubt connected to what Hiccup and the gang had accomplished west of Narnia five months before.

Ember turned back to us. "I really almost didn't manage to make it here, as I'm sure you figured out when I washed up, and now that I am here, if the serpents don't succeed in finishing me off, then they will attempt to escape so they can notify Jezebel." She held up her hands in apology. "I'm so sorry now that I've brought all this to your doors, but something needs to be done and I at least had to try, since I need help. Jezebel won't stop with my home."

Not surprisingly, there was complete silence as everyone present thought over the information Ember had provided. It was certainly a lot to take in. I stayed quiet on the matter, waiting for someone else to speak as everyone already knew what position I would take on the matter: one way or another I would fight.

Finally Astrid stood up. "I say we figure out how to end this," she announced. "Ember's words, while outlandish, certainly aren't any stranger than having Hawken as a friend, and what she told us before held as true. Plus, we've all seen before that when Hawken stands for something, it's probably the right thing to do." "I agree," Hiccup spoke up, standing with Astrid and I in support, soon followed by Toothless, Thorn, and then the other dragons in the hall.

"Ye realize that this is gonna take a whole lot o' manpower," Gobber said, standing up. We all nodded. "Very well then," he decided, "I'd better get back te the forge an' start workin' again." "Hold on Gobber," Stoick ordered, stopping the smith as he turned toward the doors. "We don't even have a plan fer how we're going to do this."

"Eh, shouldn't be too hard," Tuffnut piped up from the back of the room. "We just need to trap the worms in a hole and blow them up!" "There isn't a hole big enough on this island to fit your head, let alone those creeps, dimwit," Ruffnut replied, smacking her brother upside the head.

"Actually, he might be on to something," Hiccup said, drawing surprised looks from all of us. "Yeah, I can't believe I said that either, but we may not need a hole, just the right vantage point. And I think I know just where to find one."

A/N-So, what do you think? Jezebel's name alone holds a lot of meaning, as does the device she has. There's a lot riding on this information that will soon come to pass, and none too easily either.

Let me hear your predictions, thoughts, etc, and make sure to tell me what you think so far!