CHAPTER 2: Five years
Five years had passed following the defeat of Grimmel at the hands of the Hairy Hooligans, and five years since the dragons left for The Hidden World. The past five years had been an era of peace unmatched. No fighting, no dragons, no conflicts, just complete and utter peace across the Barbaric Archipelago.
But the archipelago, only a few days ago, was sent into a state of panic across the tribes. For a dangerous revelation had come to fruition - Drago Bludvist was alive.
It sounds impossible, but he was genuinely alive. How did that come to be? quite simply, when Drago Bludvist and his Bewilderbeast evacuated after being defeated by Toothless, the Bewilderbeast had swam aggressively through the ocean with Drago holding on for dear life, until he could no longer do it. He let go, and was sent violently through the monstrous waves until he eventually made impact with an abandoned island in the middle of nowhere on the archipelago.
Left with nothing and an inevitable death from starvation, Drago was an isolated man on that island. As food was scarce though, it started to show in his appearance. But as the days passed by and he remained on that abandoned island with none of his Warlords knowing he survived, he started losing weight. But all of a sudden, out from the forests of the island, flew a decent sized dragon.
Nobody knew what type of dragon it was at the time and nobody still knew, but nonetheless it was a dragon on the same island as Drago Bludvist, the man who wanted to conquer the world with controlling the dragons. Quite ironic. The dragon had shown great sympathy to Drago, as it clearly didn't know who he was or his reputation due to it being a dragon that hadn't been domesticated by vikings.
It'd find whatever food it could whether it be meat or anything like that and fly back to Drago on the beach shores and drop it to him, and in general it'd provide him company. Nobody knew whether Drago had a change of heart from the experience, but frankly none of the vikings cared - they just straight up feared the man given his legacy and what he caused with the Bewilderbeast having nearly won that battle against Hiccup, and for especially being the murderer of Stoick the Vast.
Eventually that wild dragon had automatically flew up and away from the island as soon as Toothless and the hundreds of other dragons left the Hooligans and the world to go to The Hidden World following Grimmel's defeat - at that point, Drago had forcibly climbed onto the dragon who was seemingly flying as if it was being magnetized to The Hidden World.
Eventually, Drago made his way back to where his Warlords used to reside, and, having discovered and found their former leader to still be alive, they kept it a secret for five whole years following Hiccup defeating Grimmel, until now.
That is how Drago Bludvist survived and how he came to be alive still today. The sheer news of him being alive caused a great scare among all of the tribes in the Barbaric Archipelago. News of it had also reached New Berk.
Alfa Yurlin, now 30 years old, more than ever had an energy of authenticity. He had been distributing copies of his 'My Solution' volume to his tribe over the past five years and had built up a name for himself. Truth be told, many of the vikings in the tribe were attracted to his ideas. He built a big coalition of support from the vikings because they felt like it'd do two things - improve their living standards, put their tribe first by the new room of space to live on, and to protect their safety with the ideology Yurlin was talking about.
Yurlin himself had good charisma - any hall on the island he was making a speech in drew vikings, men and women and children in. His voice was a weapon, his movements were rapid and conveyed emotion, and his ideas were completely unique in viking terms - an even bigger appeal to the vikings of the Ancient Tribe. Having heard the news of Drago Bludvist being alive, he felt like now was his time to forcibly become Chieftan of his tribe.
The Ancient Tribe itself was like all the other tribes across the archipelago - they've just kept a well hidden profile over the years because they've generally been a pacifist-based tribe. No interest in conflicts, no desire to get involved in affairs not concerning them, and they didn't even have any interest in allies because of the fear it might've provoked other tribes. Under Yurlin as Chieftan, if he ever became it, that would change though.
The tribe had been established for hundreds of years. Despite the name of it, it contained a lot more young adults, men and women, than elderly. Their island was among the biggest on the archipelago, almost double the size of Berk itself. Their population was well into the tens of thousands, and because of this, even with an island double the size of Berk, their population was massively outgrowing it and space was becoming less and less.
As Alfa Yurlin wrote in his 'My Solution' book, one of his proposals was to expand the tribe's living space but only to the places he considered having 'unvikings' on them to also subsequently 'punish' those groups. Islands he deemed to not have these would be left alone.
However, Drago being alive completely changed the dynamics for Yurlin. To the 30 year old, Drago represented the complete opposite of his ideology and everything he stood against - the unvikings.
Alfa Yurlin was pursuing this ideology so conflicts like the ones Drago and Grimmel had against the Hooligans could never be repeated - part of that ideology was to have war against prominent 'unvikings' like Drago if they ever arose. Because of this, Yurlin had no qualms about acknowledging that war would become inevitable between the Ancient Tribe under him as Chieftan and Drago.
He absolutely detested the man for killing Stoick, a Chieftan Yurlin heavily praised and admired in his book, being responsible for the gradual modernisation of the viking life, and causing huge harm to the archipelago and in particular to the Hooligans. War with Drago ending with Ancient Tribe victory and his death would be a history changing step to returning the vikings back to how life was 300+ years ago in Yurlin's perspective.
Which was also why he was still certain that the Hooligans would make an alliance with him should he ever become Chieftan of the Ancient Tribe. He genuinely admired the Hooligans and Stoick's legacy and felt like he'd be able to gain a protection treaty between him and the Hooligans whereby he'd protect them and give them their fair share of territory and control of the seas whilst he dealt with the central archipelago's unvikings.
The Ancient Tribe elderly vikings, members of the council overseen by the Chieftan, were meeting in their hall. The news of Drago still being alive got to the archipelago and it had just got to the Chieftan of the Ancient Tribe, Grull the Great. The meeting had specifically concerned the news of Drago Bludvist.
Outside the hall, thousands of Ancient Tribe vikings were gathered, yelling and roaring at the doors of the big hall, with Alfa Yurlin in front of the crowd as he demanded he was made Chieftan to save the tribe. The atmosphere was tense.
Grull the Great's council guards had to put up with the thousands of vikings congregating in a protest directly ahead of them, the roaring voices made them feel like they were about to be the victims of a stampede by a load of bulls. The current Chieftan of the tribe knew all too well of Alfa Yurlin and his book he wrote, and he was trying his best to ignore him.
"ONE TRIBE, ONE CHIEFTAN!" yelled the crowd of vikings, with Yurlin leading the pack.
"You have a CHOICE," yelled Yurlin, from the top of his lungs towards the wooden doors so the Chief inside could hear him, "either surrender us to the UNVIKINGS by ignoring the will of our vikings or APPOINT ME!"
"ONE TRIBE, ONE ARCHIPELAGO, ONE CHIEFTAN!" the crowd of men yelled directly after Yurlin's charismatic proposal.
It was getting messy outside.
"We cannot ignore the growing support for this man, but a modern day tribe doesn't allow someone with his perspectives to enact them. What must we do, council?" Grull asked, as his council members, sat around the large wooden round table in the hall, struggled to come up with a solution.
Out of nowhere, a scent of burning started roaming its way through the air both inside and outside the hall. Everyone outside the hall continued going crazy as the guards struggled to fend off what were clearly supporters of Yurlin - his book had more than 100 copies throughout the tribe at this point so he was a well known name.
Directly besides the hall though, the vikings further behind in the roaring crowd which resembled a protest, looked over to see a black coat of smoke emerging into the air. There was a fire, and it was biting its way into the hall.
"FIRE!" one of them yelled, "FIREEE!"
Suddenly, the guards in front of the large wooden door sprinted as the crowd clearly heard the word 'fire'. The orange blaze was already pursuing through the cold wood of the hall.
"FIRE, GET THE CHIEFTAN OUT NOW!" one of the guards yelled.
The protest had suddenly turned into a mixture of running and panicking vikings.
"SIR, THERE'S A FIRE, WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW!" one of the guards yelled to the Chieftan, Grull, inside the hall.
"A WHAT?!" questioned Grull, but his rhetorical question was quickly answered - the blaze was starting to feed its way through the wood and into the hall itself.
The scent of burning grew more and more. The hall was quickly burning in a mysterious fire that absolutely nobody could see who started it. Grull rapidly jumped off his chair as did his council members, and they made a swift sprint for the large round wooden doors. As they sprinted, just as they quickly approached the doors, a large piece of debris from the roof dropped like an avalanche - the fire was already spreading to the top of the roof.
They were trapped inside.
Yurlin stayed put as he was basically the only one not running away from the fire as it spread more and more - he watched the hall as it quickly began succumbing to the blaze.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING, ALFA?! WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE IT SPREADS TO OUR HUTS!" a supporter of his said, as the large round viking patted Yurlin on the shoulder.
"You go, I must stay behind and ensure order is maintained!" Yurlin replied.
"What will you do though?! we don't even know who started this fire, and our Chieftan hasn't come out yet, what is going on?!" the viking replied to Yurlin.
"I'll tell you what's going on," Yurlin proclaimed, "the unvikings are already on our island, hiding. They started this fire because they want to assasinate me. Drago Bludvist still being alive...it all makes sense. The unvikings are coming after us and me."
The viking was too preoccupied with fear and the heat from the fire was turning into a bigger sensation - he simply ran off after Yurlin's declaration that this fire was started by the 'unvikings'. Whether or not that was the truth was to be seen but that was his clear authentic view.
The Chieftan was trapped inside the burning hall, as were his council members, and the clock was ticking - panic was rife on Ancient Island as Yurlin remained surprisingly calm in the midst of a storm of screams, yells and sprinting vikings in fear. He just continued watching the burning hall.
The Chieftan needed to be rescued from the hall and he needed to be rescued now - the fire was starting to eat into the wooden structure. Given the debris inside was already collapsing, time was running out.