Chapter 18:
AN: I finally have a cover photo! If you're wondering where I got it, I just went to one of those websites where the AI paints a picture and typed in a prompt, and it actually gave me some usable results! Pretty cool stuff. Nerd things over, onto the story.
Arkyn's nose was itchy. That was the first thought the boy was able to form, vision still black, sides still aching from whatever had collided with him before. Something was pressing against his face…something soft. The chilly evening air swirled around his head, which also ached terribly.
Still collecting the strength to try and move, the Viking heard muffled voices around him, not yet having the mental capacity to discern who they came from.
"Thank Thor you got there in time. Toothless and I never would have made it."
There was a pause, then more from the same voice.
"I'm so glad you're ok."
Arkyn heard the shuffling of feet as someone came nearer, then a second voice. This one more feminine.
"As ok as I can be in a situation like this. I'll be good when I know he's 'ok'. That's what matters right now. I still can't believe we won, Hiccup."
Hiccup. Hiccup? Arkyn knew that name. He knew it well. His friends were here…but where was here? What the hell had they just won? Curiosity overcame his lack of strength and Arkyn tightened the muscles in his hand to slowly and shakily push himself up off the ground, propping himself up on his left forearm and squinting his eyes open to discover the source of his itchy nose to be the soft grass beneath him. Turning himself over in the direction of the voices, audible sighs of relief could be heard as he laid eyes on his friends, who looked down on his position on the ground. Quickly glancing over each one, Arkyn immediately noticed that Astrid looked by far the worst of them all, her tunic torn in a few places and scratches scoring her arms. His first groggily spoken words were to her. "The fuck happened to you?"
Astrid cracked a stupid smile hearing his voice again, appreciating that his demeanor appeared unchanged even after what happened. "I fell off of Stormfly." She said sheepishly, not wanting to admit that the Screaming Death had bested her only original plan against it.
"Right…" Arkyn said, sounding skeptical of the response. "Follow up question? The fuck happened to me?"
This time Astrid giggled as Hiccup answered his query, having gotten a better view of what went down. "When the Screaming Death hit the cliffs it sent rocks everywhere. You weren't fast enough to dodge them, and one knocked you off of Stinger. It looked pretty bad…"
Standing up, Arkyn's eyes darted around in a blur, hurriedly finding Stinger amongst the milling dragons and ensuring his safety before facing the group again. "Screaming Death…" he repeated, exhausted. His recollections of that day had still not returned to his mind and he looked to his friends for an elaboration on the name.
Snotlout spoke up. "Uh, dude? Are you good? The Screaming Death. Look behind you."
Confused, Arkyn turned around for the first time since opening his eyes again. His jaw dropped at the sight that met him. A trench 40 paces wide had been jaggedly carved out of the top of the cliff face in what looked like a violent event. Inside it lay a blank white monster at least 200 paces long, perhaps more, its face a bloody wreck following the collision, loose rocks nestled amongst its body where it had dislodged them. It was absolutely still, a shell of its former tyrannical self, unable to harm anyone anymore.
Immediately all of the memories began flooding back into Arkyn's brain. The survey, counting dragons, the missing island, the surprise attack by the killer of his parents… He stared at the scene as words escaped him, just gaping at the sheer weight of it all. "Oh shit…" was all his small voice could say, almost breathlessly.
"Yeah. 'Oh shit' is right." Came Astrid's voice behind him.
"I did this?" Arkyn asked with uncertainty, facing his friends once again. They collectively nodded at him, remaining silent. The boy suddenly doubled over in pain, clutching his side as a wave of discomfort shot through his rib cage.
A concerned Hiccup rushed to offer support under Arkyn's shoulder. "Come on, Fishlegs. Help me get him to Stinger so we can go home." He then addressed Arkyn directly. "Don't worry, we'll tell you everything else on the way home. You need to spend the night with Gothi, though. She'll be able to give you something to make you feel better. And look…about our argument earlier…I'm sorry about what I said. It was short sighted, and now that I know what this dragon can do I realize I was very wrong."
Arkyn gave him a sort of confused half smile. "What argument?" He asked.
"Oh- you-"
Arkyn cut him off. "I don't think we're the type of friends to have arguments…" the boy offered reassuringly.
Hiccup gave him a smile back and nodded as his friends looked on, helping Arkyn into his saddle. The group of teens took off soon after and headed for Berk, eager to get a rest after their hellish day.
The truth was, Arkyn had remembered the argument he shared with Hiccup. Every word of it. However, he was too tired and relieved to care, and purposely used his lack of knowledge to downplay it so that Hiccup wouldn't feel bad as there was no reason for him to feel that way.
That was the type of friend he was.
—
The sun had just begun to set when the teens left the island they'd stopped on, and now that they were halfway back to Berk the late evening sky burned a beautifully deep orange. Arkyn had pretty much been caught up all the way on the final parts of the fight. Between what he remembered and the accounts of his friends he now had a pretty clear picture of what happened. It was just as they were passing over the second island in the chain that he spoke up again. "We'll have to go back there, you know. To the Screaming Death…"
"And why's that?" Hiccup asked.
"Because that dragon has the toughest scales of them all. They could be useful to us."
Snotlout seemed annoyed. "We really have to fly all the way out here again just for that? How will we even get them off?"
"Time, patience, and sharp objects." Arkyn joked, not wanting to hear the Jörgensen whine any further. "But it would be good to have them on hand all the same."
Astrid was surprised at both his suggestion and willingness to go back to the location, thinking it would hold many painful memories with it. She brushed it off, however, figuring it wasn't her who had the right to make that decision. The conversation resumed with more on the topic of Arkyn's victory soon after.
—
The orange globe in the sky was just finishing its journey towards the horizon when the group of teens stumbled back over the island of Berk. Hiccup had made everyone agree to see Arkyn off into the healer's hut for the night, and their unbelievably exhausted dragons nearly crash landed on poor Gothi's door step. Clambering off of Stinger's back, Arkyn greeted the old woman surrounded by his friends and briefed her on the important details of what had happened. She nodded and gave a knowing smile before silently ushering him towards one of her care beds. The door closed and the original 6 riders found themselves unceremoniously separated from the man who saved Berk, for without his quick thinking the Screaming Death would have almost certainly destroyed the island sooner or later.
"What a day…" Ruffnut sighed, looking around at everybody.
"Agreed, sis. You could say it was screaming good fun." The girl's brother added.
Astrid elbowed him in the stomach. "Too soon, Tuff." She said, scolding the twin. "There was nothing fun about any of that." The full weight of the day's events hadn't even landed on her just yet. Jokes were the last thing she needed right now.
Hiccup eyed the people he cared for the most in the dim early moonlight. They were all together. All growing up with no way to go back. All- er, some- becoming more mature with each day, being able to handle bigger and bigger challenges as a group. It was one of those nights that goodbye would be bitter sweet, even if temporary. His eyes fell on Astrid, the one he cared for the most, who clutched the brush burn on her left arm. It did not seem pleasant whatsoever.
"Hey, uh, Astrid? Are you sure you shouldn't be spending the night here too? That wound looks pretty nasty." Hiccup suggested.
The girl quickly let go as if embarrassed before answering him. "Thanks, but I'm fine, Hiccup. Really I am. Besides, my parents would do far worse to me if I didn't come home tonight, so I should probably start heading that way anyway." She finished, giving him a slight smile. "I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Sure thing." Hiccup agreed. "We should meet in the arena again, but late morning? I think we all need our beauty rest tonight." The boy chuckled, and his friends laughed along with him as Snotlout defended himself, quickly realizing he was the butt of the joke.
Soon after this exchange each rider mounted their respective dragons, with Stinger appearing to be content spending the evening outside of Gothi's hut. The moon shone brightly in the sky as they began to disperse, illuminating the landscape of Berk in a soft blue light. The townspeople didn't know it just yet, but they owed their restful nights to a handful of teenagers and a particular hero amongst them, no idea of the horrors that had ever loomed over them.
—
Astrid flew alone. The evening air whipped against her face as she rode through the eerily quiet darkness. Everything was so calm. So perfectly and absolutely still. Just the way the island was when they'd left it. It made the girl's mind drift to all of the dragons who could no longer say the same thing.
Entire worlds had been destroyed that day. Hiccup had crossed whole islands off of his map, never to be visited again. Never to be seen again. They simply didn't exist anymore. It was a lot to let sink in.
She thought about the Screaming Death itself. If the name alone wasn't intimidating enough, Astrid concluded that the image of the beast tearing out of the center of that island at sea was the most terrifying thing she'd ever witnessed in, well…ever. Perhaps the only thing that rivaled it was the time she first laid eyes on the Red Death, barely more than a month and a half before.
Something that had occurred that day, however, brought forth a different kind of terror in Astrid's mind. The kind of terror you couldn't control or fight back against. The kind of terror that just happenedwithout anything to be done to stop it. The image of Arkyn settled upon the grass flashed in her head. Face down, body limp, dull brown hair catching the wind as she'd set him down. Someone who didn't know any better might have assumed the boy was resting…but what if that had been his final resting place? What if he hadn't gotten up and just continued lying dead right next to the very beast that had brought about the demise of his only other family. The Screaming Death would have finished the job.Astrid realized, as Arkyn was the last member of the Nomanisan tribe known to be left alive, and she briefly choked on her own thoughts.
Arkyn had saved the riders, the people of Berk, and hundreds of dragons in between without so much as asking for a thank you after he'd woken up. Despite his obvious, pain the Viking's first inquiry, although rash, was about Astrid's own well-being, and remembering this caused the girl's eyes to water, although she didn't allow herself to cry. She'd already done too much of that lately. Astrid shot a quick thank you to Odin that everyone was able to make it home in one piece that evening, not knowing what she would have done with herself if any one of the seven had been ripped from existence so suddenly, and as the shape of her house came into view she quickly guided Stormfly into a gentle landing.
Slowly opening the back door, the girl silently hoped that her parents had forgotten about her and gone off to bed already, but no such luck. They sat together in the sitting room, worried glances looking up expectantly at the noise from the back door. Her mother quickly stood as Astrid's figure was illuminated by the dim light of a dying fire. She gasped as she noticed her daughter's state, scrapes and bruises still visibly lining her body, the gash on her left arm quite prominent. "A- Astrid? Dear girl, what happened?"
Astrid froze as she gazed upon her parents. Her father's concerned face and her mother's warm eyes offered a feeling of safety she didn't know she needed. It was then a line from Arkyn's argument with Hiccup rang out in the back of her mind. "Do you want to see your father again?" The full weight of how close they'd come to that prospect being an impossibility hit her all at once. Arkyn had made sure that didn't happen, even though no matter what went down that day the boy had no hope of returning to his own parents- a crushing realization. "I go to sleep in an empty house," was what he'd said. It was enough to push her over the edge, and she let go as tears fell off her face. He was only 15. Remembering the promise she'd made to her mom before she left, Astrid smiled and chuckled to herself as she unsuccessfully held back quiet sobs.
"Good news, mom." She started, leaning her axe against the wall and stepping further into the house to hug her parents.
"Nobody died."
