"Another ale for the eagle shooter!" roared the hook handed thug, and the whole of the party cheered. Even Hiccup, whose life had been in peril but five hours ago, gave a little chuckle. Merida beamed as a tumbler of ale was shoved into her arms. Then the party toasted her. She tried slugging the ale in one gulp, but instead of downing it she coughed and sputtered the stuff all over the table before her, causing riotous laughter from her inn mates. When she looked up from the tumbler froth bathed her upper lip like a snowy mustache. Though she could spy Hiccup at the table end, she could not see his eyes. His head knocked back as he drank fast.
The pair was tucked in some seedy entertainment house on the far corner of Corona, right by the wall surrounding the kingdom. The bridge leading to the mainland was a ten-minute walk south. It was a linear and thus simple method of escape from the doom of the illegal activities occurring in the establishment. The building itself was old, with ancient brick and mortar painted black by soot holding it from the ground. Warm orange light glowed against the spots within where beverage or vomit had been spilled or wiped up. Blood graced the ground as well, as there was a sort of makeshift fighting arena at the center of the bar room. It really was just a square dug into the ground. Whereas the rest of the establishment's floor was wood, this box had been cut through deep down into the smooth clay substrate, densely packed and easily walked within. Four spears were driven into the wooden floor lining each vertex of the arena, and tied to each of them was a thick rope that kept the space enclosed. Much of the blood expelled against the substrate could be seen faintly, like birthmarks and scars against dark old skin. Long rectangular tables of life-bleached ancient wood surrounded. A bar graced the left upper wall of the establishment. Though ladies and gentlemen of all shapes and sizes served its ale, most had a strange alluring quality about them evident in the way their guests treated their bodies as they passed by, staring at them and reaching out for them. Merida found it revolting the way they caressed and stroked each other in public, but Hiccup could only laugh. His behavior made Merida wonder if he was of royalty after all. Was this the way the islanders of Berk carried on at celebrations?
As she avoided wrinkling her nose, Hiccup snuggled in beside her and nudged her in the side until she looked upon him. The boy's eyes were distant and red and his cheeks were flushed a deep coral. He was drunk. Merida snorted at the thought of it, but frowned when she pondered what new liberties he might take in this dangerous state. They would have to seek their beds before he made a fool of himself. Then again, he had promised Merida they would leave before nightfall. They had each been given money to gamble with, clothes to wear, and food and ale to consume. They had gotten what they wanted. Now they needed to leave. But Hiccup had betrayed Merida and lost himself.
"Hey!" he hollered, jolting Merida to attention. When she looked upon him again his brows were furrowed and his face glowed deep red. "Why aren't you having fun?"
Merida ran her fingers through her hair and tried not to grit her teeth as she glanced about. No one looked upon them but the hook handed thug, who sat at the bar and spoke with the tender as he pointed to the pair. Both boomed laughter between whispers. Merida's shoulders fell as she watched them. They were gossiping. In defiance she stared back at the thug as he spoke, attracting his eye with her glower. After he chortled and whispered to the bartender once more, he gave a final chuckle and lumbered towards them, throwing his arms ahead of him with a grin as he walked. His head had been patched up with a new bandage, but the vision of the puss stained one had engraved itself on Merida's mind. When he was a few feet away from their table, he grinned and boomed, "How are my two favorite DunBrochians?"
"Could be better," murmured Merida in reply, making the hook handed thug cackle and Hiccup glance at her in shock. She knew he had decided to make a fool of himself when he lurched towards her and set his belly against the table.
"Whatareyousayin?" he slurred. Behind him the hook handed thug had amassed a little posse, who giggled like schoolgirls as they watched the exchange between the drunken boy and his liege. Merida kept her eyes trained on Hiccup's blushing cheeks, but in her periphery she watched each of the thugs' every move.
"I am saying," she murmured, "that you are bad company." To this the thugs let out a challenge of "oohs" that made Hiccup puff his chest out and stumble up on the table. Soon, with the assistance of several strong arms, one hook, and three ax handles, he swayed to a standing position and gathered a large audience around him. Once he knew he was being watched, he threw his arms around him, stumbled back into several hands, and lurched forward with a tumbler of ale in his hand. Merida guessed that he had gotten it from the masse of bodies cheering behind him. As she looked upon him she put her palm to her forehead and sighed. Their inconspicuous trip to Corona was now over.
"Thiswhole time youbeena sourpuss anIdonlikeit one bit!" he barked, his voice cracking on 'one' but teetering back to normal for the final 'bit.' "Werguestsinthis beautiful house andyournot beinice."
"Hiccup, please retreat from the table," growled Merida. But Hiccup was on a roll.
"Fight me!" he roared, flinging his arms on either side of him and sloshing the ale from his tumbler all over his audience in the process. They screeched in protest as it showered against their fronts, but none grew angry. Before taking another swig he used it to point to Merida. "Fight me! Inthearena!"
"No, Hiccup," Merida warned. But Hiccup was intrepid. He had already lurched from the table and crowd surfed his way to the arena ledge. There he hung and beckoned for Merida to follow him. His constant calls of "fight me" dug like knives into Merida's eardrums until she could stand it no more. Without a flinch she took an empty tumbler from the arm at her side and pitched it straight for Hiccup's head, hitting him square in the temple and knocking him out so that his torso hung limply over the arena rope like a swaying fish at market. For a moment everyone stared at him in shock. Then, pitching him over the rope edge, three of the thugs lurched for Merida with a roar, making her climb on the tabletop and draw her arrows. Before they could reach her, they were intercepted by two more, who punched them in the faces and caused them to howl in displeasure. The circle of violence widened until it encompassed the whole hall, calling even the bartender, waiters, and waitresses into its steel grip. Soon everyone's sword was drawn, yet still Merida stood upon the table with her arrows slung in her bow, glancing from side to side to see who she would shoot first. When she felt metal scrape against her leg, she whizzed around and let her first arrow go, plunging its head into a distant thug's pectoral when the one at her feet ducked. When she glanced closer she realized the ducking man was the hook handed thug, beckoning for her to follow him. Ahead of him, Vlad was ripping her arrow out of his chest with a grunt. When he nodded to her in forgiveness, she jumped upon his shoulders and followed the hook handed thug as he led them towards the arena.
"Move!" called the hook handed thug as he beat his way through the crowd. Behind him Vlad tipped his helmet forward like a bull and speared his horns into anyone who blocked his path. Soon, the pair had jumped over the rope guarding the arena's sides onto packed sand. Nearby lay a comatose Hiccup, whose drool had clung clay to his face like blush. As Merida and the thugs passed him by, Vlad swept him up under his arm and moved past the substrate's center. It was there that Merida realized there was a door on each arena wall, leading to four basements. With brute strength Vlad barreled through one, forgetting that Merida was on his shoulders. To escape slamming into the wooden boards packed over the door she fell backwards and hung upside down from Vlad's shoulders, her long hair trailing the ground as it tumbled around her. The hook handed thug picked it up with his good hand and held it out for her to take as he followed behind, the warm orange glow lighting the bar disappearing as they passed beneath the arena basement door.
Once Merida had grabbed her locks and held them close to her chest, she was released to the floor with a yelp. Left to her own devices, she tumbled to her feet and wobbled to one of the side walls, watching as Vlad closed the arena door behind of them and pushed a dresser in front of it. Suddenly her world glistened a haze of deep blues and greens. Lanterns were few down here, and glowed a feint red instead of gold. Merida grasped her bow tightly in her arm as she hid against the darkened cobblestones. But when the hook handed thug glanced towards her, he had a warm smile crinkled into his beady eyes. As Vlad lumbered to his side, he straightened and stepped back, glancing around him in some sort of pride.
"Well, what do you think of it all?" he barked finally. Merida was at a loss for words. Instead of attempting to speak, she shrugged, and the thugs exchanged a chuckle.
"This establishment was built two hundred years ago," sighed the hook handed thug, patting the sooty blue walls with love. Beyond the basement door there was a loud thud. One of the fighting thugs from above must have been pitched onto the arena sand. The sound of groans echoed as the hook handed thug continued, "It is a meeting ground and recreation spot for mercenaries, soldiers, and banished lasses and lads of all kinds. Can I count you in the third category?"
As he looked through her, Merida glanced away and shrugged, murmuring, "perhaps," as she felt for the wall behind. A single lantern hung near. Though its rays drew thin, its warmth flooded upon her and quelled her fear. Far ahead, she heard a strange grunting noise like that of a beast. It echoed through the basement halls in a whisper, hardly real.
"I can tell a DunBroch accent a mile away- I should, having fought for the Nordic Invaders against High King Fergus."
"You fought-?" gasped Merida, gnashing her teeth as she lurched forward. Vlad obstructed her path before she could get too far. Behind him, the hook handed thug shook his head in exasperation.
"My little turnip, why are you so quick to fight?" he sighed, sitting on an upturned bucket that had been left in their path. Merida noticed suds lining its rim. Still overpowering was the smell of blood- different now, because laced with it here was the scent of lye.
"This is a house for loving life, turnip!" sighed the thug. "We do not aim to kill people here! To be invited into this place is an honor!"
"Why did you run away from the fight upstairs, mercenary?" snarled Merida in return. The thug shrugged. "Little radish, when you get people like us riled up you cannot stop us until we are dead, drunk, or tired through our bones." Then, his expression grew dark. As he pointed to Merida's chest, he sneered, "and in this house, I am no mercenary. I am a human being with hopes and dreams and a past. Up there," he cried, stepping forward and pointing to the ceiling, "I am regarded as a piece of meat that kills for money. But you have just destroyed this distinction, turnip," he sighed, turning away. "Planting a fight outside of the safety of the arena has desecrated this house and awakened our instinct for murder. Yes, people will die tonight. Yes, we will speak of how it was fun, killing for nothing for once. But then, once the blood in our veins cools and threads slowly through our bodies once more, we will realize that we have murdered brothers outside of the walls of battle. We will have murdered our vows as men."
"You have not murdered your vows as men," muttered Merida in guilty reply. "You are still strong enough to protect loved ones if you wanted to. You just have not found any yet."
To this, both thugs burst into laughter, Vlad's face finally cracking into some semblance of emotion. Merida felt a twist in her gut when she noticed it was bitterness.
"Ah," sighed the hook handed thug as he wiped his eyes. "You cannot understand, being noble. I spotted it from the moment I laid eyes on you. You are a relative of Fergus, are you not?"
Merida's breath caught in her throat. How could he know? She tried examining his face before replying to see if he was bluffing. But his complexion was clear of treachery. Without saying a word, she sucked in and nodded once, holding her breath in fear as she gripped her bow. The thugs, in return, exchanged perplexed glances.
"Turnip, why didn't you lie?" asked the hook handed thug. Merida shrugged. "I did not think you would believe me. And my companion and I were promised shelter and care."
"Being of noble blood makes the situation rather different..." responded the hook handed thug in a murmur before meeting her eye again. "What I cannot understand is why you are wandering around Corona with a young peasant. Did you elope?"
"Of course not!" gasped Merida in disdain. The thugs laughed at this. Then they grinned and Vlad patted her shoulder.
"You are safe here," rumbled the horn headed thug in the deepest voice Merida had ever encountered. His tone reminded her of sea storms on the coast of her home, when her family traveled for the summertime. The skies would spar and draw lightning bolts from the ground, throwing their tendrils through the clouds like fishermen's nets to catch bits of stars. She found herself smiling, saying she was sorry. The thugs shrugged in reply and patted her again. Then, with Hiccup still under his arm, Vlad lead the way forward, inspiring a twinkle in the hook handed thug's eyes. He nearly skipped as he waved his metal limb towards a leftward turn in the passageway. Vlad responded with a discomfited grunt. But the party continued forward, turning left towards a flood of red lantern light. This had been where the grunts and snarls of the strange beast had come from. As she walked towards it Merida's breath drew out in quick gusts. Her heart beat through her chest like a hammer against stone. The red light was overpowering. It made eyes and metal gleam onyx. The hook limb glowed under blood red like a bug's horn.
"Before you retire for the night, I wanted to show you one more thing, little radish," the hook handed thug whispered, chortling as a mightier howl shook the walls surrounding them. Under Vlad's arm, Hiccup was beginning to come to again, asking what that strange noise was as he glanced about. Beside him Merida shivered and the hook handed thug wet his lips. Slowly the party of four turned from the hall, where the silhouettes of cages shadowed the wall, warped and old. Inside one clattered black paws. But as Merida stepped under the arch leading into this red brick oven of a room, she noticed that the shaking cage was covered in spotted purple fabric. The animal within was big. But it stayed concealed.
"Your sigil represents triskelions fleeing from three inked bears..." the hook handed thug announced as Vlad let Hiccup go beside him. "It was dark in the night when the bears disappeared from the Scottish Isles. Now, a mere one has been spotted in its ancient home. We bring to you, the Bear of DunBroch, Elinor the Fearful!"
As the hook handed thug boomed, Vlad swept forward and ripped the purple spotted fabric from the shaking metal cage so that the inside was bathed in a blood red glow. Within laid the cowering form of a massive black bear, thin but blisteringly alive as it stared about it with wincing eyes. The world stopped as Merida looked upon its trembling form. The cheers and claps of the thugs and Hiccup drowned out to nothing as the two females met eyes. When the bear gasped for breath, Merida lurched towards the bars and stuck her nose inside the cage, causing the bear to growl but shrink back. In its black eyes flickered the red candle's flame, jiggling back and forth like a little face within the embers as the bear swept its glance from person to person. Merida could even see the wisps of her own reflection in its stone like pupils, like a body encased in a cold black abyss. Before she could reach towards the soft raven fur surrounding the pools, the arms of the hook handed thug drew her back. When he was able to catch her eye he stared at her as though she were mad. In return Merida drew away, into herself in confusion. Why had the bear awakened such sympathy in her? Its incarceration drew pins into her heart, but she could not tell herself why. Hiccup clapped behind her. Her misgivings draped into the darkness and wafted around her like mist as the thugs waited with excitement.
"We named her in honor of the High Queen Elinor," the hook handed thug declared, drawing a hint of a grin from Vlad. "Looks kind of like her, don't she?" As they chuckled Merida's memory echoed the roar of Mor'Du and the cries of Fergus, her father. At the back of the imagining, though, was another sound, another roar. A roar from another bear?
"Mother?" murmured Merida. Behind her the bear sniffed and grunted.
"Yes, the Bear Mother of DunBroch!" announced the hook handed thug in reply, snapping his attention to Vlad as it dawned on him. "That's quite good, actually!" he laughed. In return, Vlad grumbled in agreement. Hiccup echoed that it was a good name, even though his knowledge of the history of DunBroch was slim. The three men laughed as they stood, Vlad's and the hook hand's rising low in the belly while Hiccup's rung from his head, manic and nasal. Though Merida could not understand why, he seemed to be getting drunker as time went on. Soon he was collapsing in a fit of giggles against the blood soaked floor, the blush of his cheeks unnatural against its pools. He did not seem to notice. He was too far-gone. As Merida looked at her reflection in the floor, she furrowed her brows. The stench of lye was great here.
"What is this place?" she asked.
"This is where we keep the fighting animals!" responded the hook handed thug. "We store them in cages. Sometimes we buy them, sometimes we catch them. We caught this princess skulking along the coast of the Southern Isles exhausted. She had swum all the way from DunBroch in search of something."
"There has not been a bear in DunBroch since Mor'Du," responded Merida in a whisper. The memory of the night her family died streamed through her mind. The tear of her mother's clothes, the roar of the bear, the lumbering spirit that fled from the carriage for the woods. Was this the beast?
"We have a liger coming in tomorrow," responded the hook handed thug. "Or at least a lion painted like a tiger. We'll know when the beasts fight."
"You're going to kill her?" snapped Merida in reply. In return the hook handed thug burst into laughter.
"Ah, turnip," he sighed, wiping his eyes and rubbing the tears against his shirtfront. "I never said we were killing her. Like I said, this is a house for loving life! We'll see how much she loves it when we put her in the arena!"
As the hook handed thug spoke, a sound like the firing of a massive musket hurled through the air and fizzled out near the ground above his head, shaking the basement passageway so that soot tumbled from the ceiling in little breaths. The thugs glanced above them in confusion, their ears cocked to hear as the soot emptied upon their cheeks. For a moment they grasped nothing. But soon the sounds above amplified until a thousand moans rang through the sky. A cannon fired. The screams became pronounced as they melded with the sound of tramping feet. The whole city seemed to be running- but from what?
"Quick, Vlad, go see what is happening upstairs!" gasped the hook handed thug, and the horn headed thug nodded and barreled for the arena's basement door, hurling the dresser in front of it aside so that he could move through. As he attempted to open the door he was shoved aside by a mass of bodies. In terror they pushed Vlad against the corner wall as they shouted for the weapon store. When he could not respond they gave up and kept going, deciding amongst themselves whether they would flee the kingdom or stay and fight. Upstairs there were more of them. They clung to their ale and weaponry and howled as they fought faceless, black-leathered beasts. When Vlad spied these dark silhouettes from beneath the arena ropes, he gasped and staring back at the hook handed thug with huge eyes.
"What is it Vlad?" the hook handed thug asked from the foot of the hall, and after wiping his eyes with his hands, Vlad glanced out the basement door once more. "I recognize those robes anywhere."
"Who are they?" roared the hook handed thug, and Vlad gritted his teeth and prepared to go out.
"Drago Bludvist's army."
With that, Vlad grabbed his ax and a fallen long sword in his arms and barreled onto the arena substrate, knocking one of Bludvist's men across the ropes as the rogue attempted to sneak up behind him. In the coming confusion, the hook handed thug ran towards Merida in the holding room and put a lantern in her hand. Then, from his pocket he extricated four gold coins and emptied them into her palm.
"There is your escape," he chuckled. "I am sorry I could not entertain you anymore. Take this and flee. This passageway runs straight to the outside world. It empties near the alder at the foot of the bridge. You should be safe if you run fast. I wish you luck, but I cannot stay." Then, he ducked under the room's arched entrance and disappeared. As his footsteps became lost in the echo of the chaos overhead, Merida and Hiccup were left with the caged bear, who grunted in fear as it listened to the roar of the cannons and clanging of metal overhead.
"Whasgoinon?" slurred Hiccup, and Merida held back the impulse to kill him. With lantern in hand, she moved to heave him from the floor. But the sigh of the bear reverberated in her ear, and she turned around.
Suddenly its face grew solemn and reserved. Merida could see everything in its eyes. It knew it would die tonight, in the coming fire, in a cage whose iron would grow hot and bent in a night where the stars disappeared into ash and smoke replaced oxygen. Its bottomless pools for pupils did not dart as they had done in the early night. In its epiphany existed stateliness akin to only one person Merida had ever met in her life. Perhaps she was mad, but the memory of her mother shone through this bear, even if the beast had no collection of who she was. It stared upon Merida with an inquiring glance. Its fate was solely in her hands. It would die amongst smoke and flame and be branded by its cage, or disappear into the waters surrounding Corona and continue to wherever it had sought before being captured at the Southern Isles. All Merida had to do was choose.
"Where is the key?" she gasped, making Hiccup slur incoherently in response. Ignoring him, she swept around the room in frenzy, ignoring the bashing of men against the arena basement door. The horn headed thug must have blocked it with the dresser again. Its strength would not hold out for long. She had to find the key now.
"Damn it all!" she howled, slinging the bowls on top of the holding room cupboard to the ground. She jammed Hiccup's knife into every single lock, searching relentlessly for the keys. Outside of the room rose voices, and Hiccup moaned with anxiety as he attempted to sleep. Roars of men in the arena heightened as the dresser was pushed away from the door.
"Merida!" Hiccup groaned, and Merida slipped to her hands and knees and slid her arm underneath the last cabinet, padding around lye and dust for the clank of metal. When the tinker of brass resounded against her ear, she gasped and swept her hands to the left, closing her fingers around a small metal ring. Then, as she pulled the set of keys from the ground and cried out in relief, the dresser fell from the arena door and a mass of voices resounded in the hall. Quickly Merida jumped over Hiccup and turned the first key in the lock on the bear's cage. No good. She tried the second one. Nothing. There were six more, and Drago's men were already spilling into the basement hall. They did not hear her yet, but they would soon.
"Come on," she whispered, biting her tongue and drawing blood as she tried the fifth key. Another one, wrong. Wrenching it out of the lock's socket, she flipped over to the sixth one and nearly dropped the set, wincing as the keys jingled in her fumbling, sweating arms.
"What is that sound?" whispered a deep voice from the hall, sniffing through the air as he listened. Merida continued with the seventh key, trying to quell her breathing as a shadow of armor loomed upon the holding room wall. When the glimmer of black metal accompanied it, Merida gritted her teeth and switched the seventh for the final key, digging it into the lock and wrenching it to the side. When it would not budge, she cried out in exasperation and flew her hand over her mouth in horror, whizzing around as the shadow on the wall turned into a man. He was young with dark eyes and dark hair. A blue three-tiered tattoo was pierced into his thick chin. His eyes widened with shock as he glanced upon Merida. In the lantern light, his skin glowed red.
"You are," he gasped, pointing to her with his ax. In return, she gritted her teeth and backed up against the bear's cage, concealing the beast from the young fiend's fixed view. Then she nodded. His eyes glistened as his face broke into a manic grin. He laughed and gripped his ax tightly in his arms. Then, he stepped towards her.
"It must be fate that I was assigned to this dump of a shit hole," growled the lad with relish. "Your head is coming to Arcadia on the end of my ax."
Merida did not move as the young man charged towards her with ax brandished high. She waited with her hands behind her back, feeling the hilt of her bow sharp against her palms as the noses of her arrows pricked her skin like needles. The breath of the bear was deep but fast behind her, and she could feel the mist of its warm exhalation against the skin of her back beneath her summer dress. For a moment the two of them breathed as one organism, causing time to slow as the young man's wide shoulders hulked over them. When his arms reached their maximum assent into the sky, the bear's breath caught in its throat, and Merida gasped and ducked.
As she rolled to the side, the fiend's ax came down hard against the lock of the cage, shattering its thin metal frame and flinging its cogs and parts across the room. As the young man tumbled back in shock, the great bear burst through the cage door with a mighty roar. When it descended upon the screaming man it clawed at his throat until it had torn his larynx from the bone of his jaw. As the young man's shrieks died to gurgles and pops as the blood drained from his neck, the bear raised its black smeared snout and glanced towards Merida with blank, frightened eyes. She had already slipped her bow from around her back and strung three arrows in it, ready for the rest of Drago's army. Two fell by her metal before she felt the hot nudge of the bear's snout against her back. When she turned around to look at it, the roars of more men thundered through the hall, and she gritted her teeth once more. With hard eyes she gripped the bear by the fur of its neck and looked deep into its eyes.
"Are you going to help me?" she asked. The bear did nothing in reply but grunt. It did not attack. It was again serene. But it fumbled in forgetfulness, and Merida saw that behind its current placidity, a friendless, relentlessly violent creature loomed. Forgetting it, she charged to the back of the room and grabbed the sleeping Hiccup in her arms, emptying him onto the back of the bear with all of her strength. Once she had done this, she thrust her bow and arrows ahead of her and stepped forward. Five more men emptied into the holding room, but before she could let another arrow slip, the bear had barreled through them, calling to her with a single howl as it tore forward. Merida followed it into the basement hallway and watched with shock as it ran to escape without her. Gritting her teeth, she looked towards the arena door in fear. Then, she sucked in a deep breath and ran towards it, slipping into the arena and covering her mouth in shock when she realized that the whole bar was in flames. Without a thought she jumped up and scrambled over the arena edges, dodging beneath the ropes and jumping over flame towards the door leading upstairs. She skipped the steps three at a time, coughing as she whizzed through the upstairs hall. She tried the first bedroom, then the second, and then the third. Their winter clothes were somewhere in this hall. And the broach. The broach with her family crest was nestled in these flames.
When she entered the fourth bedroom she cried out. Hiccup's clothing was stacked in a pile against the bed. She grabbed the pile quickly and wrapped his shirt around her nose, dipping it in the water pitcher at the bed's side to block smoke. Then she moved to the fifth bedroom, whose handle was white hot to the touch. It meant there were flames inside. If she opened the door the explosion would burst into the hallway and consume her. Merida felt tears swell in her eyes. With her foot she kicked at the door. Once she had bashed it in and heard the suck of the flames mix with the oxygen in the hall, she dived into the open door of the bedroom as quickly as she could, crying out as the hem of her summer dress caught in bursting flames and licked her calf. After patting herself down she rushed into the hallway again and bounded over the fire consuming the room's doorway. Then, with Hiccup's yak vest slipped over her hands, she opened the chest at the end of the burning bed and cried out in relief. There were her clothes and the seal of her people staring up at her with nothing but soot smeared against their front. She swept them in her arms and leapt back through the flames consuming the room, bounding down the stairs and back across the bar.
As table after table caught flame Merida fell onto the arena sand and scrambled for the open basement door, flinging it closed and gasping for breath when she felt the roar of the flames die behind her. The walls were no longer cold, and smoke crowded the hall. But the relative coolness soothed her scorched fingers and calf and forced her into a run. The further she made her way through the passage the more the darkness of the walls turned from stone to dirt. The more she ran, the greater the echoes of the war raging in the world above boomed. Every few moments the blast of a cannon would force Merida to a hard, low scramble. Her shins bled against the thin fabric of her summer dress. But with gritted teeth she kept on, her crest and clothing packed tightly between her arms. Ahead of her, suddenly, was the sound of a grunting beast, pacing back and forth as it groaned. A great shadow loomed against the walls ahead, and as Merida held back tears of relief she met with Elinor the Fearful.
She still had Hiccup hitched against her back. He was in between sleep and waking now, slurring in a language only recognizable to himself. Merida slipped their belongings into his arms as she gripped the bear by the fur of its neck. Then she hurried forward, the bear panting as it followed close behind. When the air grew near freezing, Merida knew they were near water. The clay of the walls was moist here. They were rounding the edge of Corona. The bridge was close at hand.
"Let us continue," sighed Merida in exhaustion. The snout of the bear was a constant presence against her back, prodding her forward and holding her up from the ground. She ran until the ground rose into steps and the passageway they tread through grew hot with ash and smoke. Above them was a trapdoor packed with dirt. The smoke curled between the mosses clinging to its back. Kicking the trap aside, Merida hoisted herself into the blazing night air and waited against the massive stonewall at her side for the bear. By now Hiccup was asking what was going on. But Merida did not have time to explain. Without a word she lurched forward with the bear at her back. Soon the line of bushes and alder trees lining Corona's protective wall ended and the bridge to the mainland emptied out against the stars ahead. The houses surrounding flew up in flames as men clad in black hacked the inhabitants down. A few meters ahead, the archway over the bridge to the mainland flew up in a flurry of orange and red. Beneath it stood the wiry silhouette of a young man with auburn hair, sparring with a thug from the tavern. The closer Merida drew, the more the boy's features matched her own. For a moment she thought it was Adam. Then, as the young man sliced his rapier through the thug's thigh and drew to face her, Merida gasped in shock.
"Juri?" she screeched, stopping a sprint's distance before her. The figure stepped from the body of the thug without glancing twice. Her skin was tanned and her hair was dyed auburn. But her eyes were still colored a startling, unforgiving teal blue. Her face was the same, even if it had been washed hard. For a moment it contorted with shock. Then, in a blink it hardened. With a terrifying grimace Juri leapt towards the burning town behind the bridge and thrashed her rapier before her, blocking Merida's path. Hiccup and the bear were on the other side of the archway calling for her. Hiccup was crying. So now he decided to wake up.
"Run, Merida!" pleaded Juri, continuing to thrash her rapier. But Merida stumbled forward as if in a dream.
"I saw you run from the carriage..." murmured the princess. This close, she could see Juri's eyes fill with tears. For a breath the rapier faltered and fell. Then, as Merida lurched towards her, Juri turned and dashed under the flames of a falling building's frame, concealed for good in the crash of wood and embers. Merida screamed as she lunged forward, but a pair of skinny arms tugged her back.
"That was my cousin!" howled Merida. "She disappeared behind the flames! I know she is alive! I must save her!"
"Maybe she doesn't want to be saved!" howled Hiccup in reply. "I'll throw your brooch in the sea if you don't come with us!"
"Throw it as far as you can," snarled Merida in return. "I do not care! Blood is thicker than water!"
When Hiccup turned back to the bridge he gasped in horror. A massive army stood on the mainland of Corona. Little by little they swarmed the sea bridge and brandished their swords, rushing forward to destroy whatever their first troupe had missed. The closest was fifty meters away, gaining fast. The remainder of the first troupe blocked entry into the village. Merida, Hiccup, and the bear were cut off on all sides.
Helplessly Merida raised her eyes and watched as smoke extinguished the stars above. Against their dim light roamed a shadow with green gems for eyes. From its mouth spewed bolts of blue lighting that rained down upon the army men attacking Corona's villagers in spurts. When her teal eyes met with its peridot greens, it sailed towards her in curiosity.
"Toothless!" Hiccup cried out, and the dragon swooped down and swung his tail towards the oncoming army men. As the rogues tumbled in shock, Toothless swept Elinor the Fearful in his claws and snapped Merida's hair in his mouth as he launched from the cobblestones to the air. Elinor howled and swung her legs back and forth as she sailed through the air, and Toothless strained the muscles of his great wings in order to bear her. Merida clasped her hands around Toothless's snout to keep him from ripping her scalp off as he zigzagged through the air. As his great wings eluded the army's arrows, the city of Corona disappeared in a haze of black clouds. Hiccup cheered and the bear roared in terror. With a single head swoop Toothless pitched Merida up and caught her between his shoulders. Then, as Merida watched the smoke billow high, Toothless flew over Drago Bludvist's army into the woods across the sea, where he was concealed in alder and pine until they reached the border of Arcadia.