CAUTION: Spoils aspects of Innocent Hopes, Twisted Realities
Seriously, major spoilers here.
Assuming you wish to continue, read on…
Background: This is… Not what anyone was expecting, I'm sure. But Usurpation of the Darkness is coming to an end, slowly but surely, and certain aspects of the next big story in this universe could use some setup...
For reference, this is set about a year after the end of Innocent Hopes, Twisted Realities, give or take a few months. It's also the first entry of a two-part thing.
Astrid stood from her chair, shaking off the numbness that came from sitting for too long with her legs bunched up beneath her, and threw the makeshift book down on the small side-table. It hit with a thump that echoed through her sparsely-decorated hut, the blank leather binding heavy and crude.
She wanted to pick up her ax and split the book in two, but a Chief wasn't supposed to kill the messenger, even if the messenger was an inanimate object. Slamming it down and glaring at it was all she was willing to do.
Her fireplace was burning low, casting less light than the torch mounted behind her chair, so she tossed a few more logs on and fanned the flames back to life. It was dark out, and she really should have gone to bed long ago, but the book had kept her up.
She had finally found the time to open it and begin reading, now that the darkness came early and the cold was enough to sap anyone's strength, forcing all inside except for the greatest possible needs. The other book she had been given remained unopened, and after the captivating but depressing thing she had just read, it would probably remain untouched. If she didn't give in to her urge to throw it in the fire too.
There was a thump at the door, and she tensed, her hands going to the handle of her ax. A latch locked the door, a sturdy one Gobber had fashioned for her with a sad, regretful smile. No Chieftain before her had ever needed to lock their doors…
But Berk was not quite so sure of itself these days. Stronger than ever, but less certain that pure strength and stubbornness would protect them. Her people did not speak of the lock, or why she had it. Some approved, others understood that it was not for her peace of mind, it was for theirs. They would not lose two Chieftains to unnatural treachery. Not if a sturdy piece of ironwork could stop it.
"Knock again!" she called out, throwing her cloak over her shoulders. She wasn't about to open the door until she knew there was actually someone out there; all else aside, it was a freezing, windy night, and her torches were liable to go out if she was forced to open the door without some big Viking on the other side blocking the driving wind. The noise could have been a chunk of ice sliding off her roof.
Nobody responded, so she sighed, pulled her cloak close, and undid the latch enough to crack the door open and check–
The door jerked open to the extent the latch chain allowed, a gust of wind shoving in as if to escape its own chill, and she had to squint to look outside.
The village was quiet and empty; nobody stood on her doorstep. She shoved the door shut and rubbed her arms, crouching in front of the fire.
Others in the village did not have it quite so bad this winter; their dragons provided warmth by merit of being massive, hot-blooded creatures in a small space, to say nothing of their actual fire. She did not, both because she was Chief… And because she had no dragon companion. Stormfly was dead, and someone else had stepped on her grave and dug up her thoughts afterward, just to spoil the fond memories Astrid did have of her companion.
She tossed her cloak aside, letting it fall in a bundle of yak fur in the corner, and again contemplated taking an ax to the book. It was not something she was happy to have read, she would never read it again, and if she destroyed it now, the village would never read it either. Ember's book existed, Fishlegs could have it, but this one didn't need to…
But it was all she had left of her companion of a single Winter and a little of the Spring that followed. All she had left of Stormfly, the chirpy, happy dragon who had played with her and helped her lead the village in its first steps with dragons…
The same dragon who was also, once one read into her thoughts, an immature, callous, selfish creature who had cared little for anything beyond image, the moment, and feeling superior. It stung like nothing else to look into her mind and find so little to admire, so much casual cruelty, such a blunt, unfavorable story of a life told in her own selfish words.
Said story of one vain Nadder's lifetime also covered a critical time in recent history, and from the perspective of a dragon who was heavily involved in many of the important moments, both before and after the attack on the nest. Berk had no other record like this one, at least until Meatlug got around to dictating what, from the sound of it, would be an entire collection of books.
If it were up to her she would burn it. If it were up to an emotionless chieftain, it would be preserved to keep the record of what happened. It was even helpfully cut off at Stormfly's death, not explaining how she had died or how her memories had happened to be obtained and put to page.
"Oy!" a muffled voice shouted from outside. There was a loud knock at the door, this one undoubtedly real. "Chief!"
Astrid retrieved her cloak and opened the door, letting Gobber in. "What's going on?" she demanded. If Gobber had ventured out in the middle of the night, then it was serious.
"Just finished heatin' Bucket's bucket," Gobber revealed. "'E said his brain was frozen. The search and rescue team jus' got back."
"That's good news," she said impatiently. "You don't wake a Chieftain for good news. What's the problem?"
"They got caught up in the freeze 'cause they found somethin' and spent two days sneakin' around ta get a look at it without gettin' caught," Gobber revealed. "Berserkers, diggin' into a big iceberg. Mulch says they're diggin' for somethin', and it looks like they already dug up a whole bunch of old ship bits."
"Pieces of ship?" Astrid waved a hand, cutting herself off. "I'll hear it from him tomorrow morning. Were they seen by the Berserkers?"
"Nah, that's what took them so long, they lurked around and snuck onto the iceberg at night," Gobber scoffed. "Shoulda just gone in swingin', we know Dagur is gonna make a move the moment he thinks he's got a chance against us."
"Which is why I'm wondering what, exactly, he's risking men and ships for right now," Astrid said. The last treaty-signing with Dagur had left the wild-eyed young chieftain spewing threats with no bite behind them, at least for the time being, and she had burned the treaty the moment he left, recognizing that it wasn't worth the parchment it was signed on. Only superior force on her side kept him from attacking openly, and he would be looking to change that.
"What do ya want ta do about it?" Gobber asked. "Mind ye, it could be somethin' stupid not worth attackin' over."
"Simple," Astrid said, smiling slightly. "We go there, dig whatever it is out ourselves, and see what it's really worth to Dagur." If it was a weapon they could keep it, and if it was some harmless piece of junk, they could sell it back to him or keep it as leverage. She was curious to see what he considered worth digging into in the middle of the winter.
And maybe once they had dug whatever it was out, she could drop Stormfly's book in the hole and be done with it. It was something to think about.
O-O-O-O-O
"Pickaxes, Gronckle," Fishlegs said to Astrid, pointing to the stack of the former atop the latter. She was amused by his conciseness; he didn't often get called out for important tasks like this, and seemed to be trying to make a good impression.
"Idiots, smart people," Meatlug added sourly, nodding toward Snotlout, Hookfang, and Spitelout, before nudging Fishlegs with her club-like tail. She certainly wasn't worried about her value in Astrid's eyes.
"And the leaders of this little expedition are ready to go!" Snotlout proclaimed, hopping onto Hookfang's neck, as oblivious as ever.
"Hey!" Hookfang growled irritably and threw his rider into a snowdrift. Spitelout, who was seated much more securely between his back spines, scowled at his son.
Astrid held back a smile as Snotlout clawed his way out of the snow pile; she wasn't supposed to beat him up too frequently anymore, lest he and more importantly his family take it as a sign of a deeper disapproval, so she enjoyed others doing it more than she probably should have.
"Does this make me not an idiot?" Hookfang asked Meatlug.
"Yes, you're redeemed," Meatlug rumbled. "Alpha, are you coming with us?"
"I'm considering it," Astrid admitted. Her curiosity had not waned with half a night's sleep, and she was always looking for ways to take a trip up into the sky without neglecting her duties. Investigating a possible Berserker threat was important enough to merit her personal attention, especially with how quiet the village was on this particular day. The sky was dark and ominous, and another snowstorm was expected by nightfall. Those venturing out were only doing so to stock up on wood and food.
"We've got this," Spitelout gravelled. "No need ta worry yer pretty little head about us."
"You've yet to prove to me that I should rely on you," Astrid said sternly. The best way she had found to deal with Spitelout's disrespect was to ignore it and strike right back at him. "I'm coming." She would have to ride with him and Snotlout on Hookfang, so she left it at that. Further chastisement could come later, once this was over. She had long since learned that it wasn't smart to go into a potentially hostile situation with one of her own seething from rebuke.
O-O-O-O-O
The iceberg was exactly that, a massive chunk of ice that radiated cold even in the middle of the winter. It was hard to distinguish from the frozen seas around it, the exact line between a thin sheet of surface ice and its massive bulk only betrayed by a ring of subtle cracks and a slightly different shadow under the ice where the snow didn't cover.
Four Berserker ships were secured within the ice, likely damaged by it forming around them. Ice expanded and destroyed hulls if the crews weren't careful about stopping it from forming. Judging by the swarm of activity around the ships, they had been spotted.
"I say we go in hot," Snotlout said as they passed over, well out of arrow range. "Flame them out."
"We're not at war with the Berserkers, Snotlout!" Fishlegs objected.
"And we wouldn' be at war if there were no survivors to tell tha tale," Spitelout offered. "But that sort o' thing has a way o' goin' wrong. Stoick got the Murderous into the war against the Varl by provin' the Varl pulled something like that."
"It's an iceberg," Astrid said, staring down at the icy waters. "Hookfang, I want you to lay down a line of fire between them and the iceberg, then go around. Make a moat." Their ships were stuck in the ice and possibly only still above the water because the ice was holding them up, and the average Viking wouldn't survive even a brief swim. The water was an impassible obstacle to them.
"How does that help?" Hookfang asked.
"On it, Chief!" Snotlout yelled, yanking on Hookfang's horns. Astrid gripped his spines tightly as they dove, the cold air driving against her face and making her cheeks numb. The heat of Hookfang's oily fire did little to warm her, with how fast they passed over and flew away.
It took two passes, and in that short time, the Berserkers didn't fire on them. Astrid didn't know what orders they had about starting wars, but she suspected they weren't willing to risk that Dagur would object after the fact. Soon there was a turbulent moat between the Berserkers and the iceberg, and both Meatlug and Hookfang were landing near the obvious mining point, the place with wood and debris strewn everywhere.
"I expect that will have refrozen by nightfall," Meatlug said primly, landing on top of a snow-covered ledge. "Now, what do we have here? Fishlegs?"
Fishlegs slid off her back, a pickaxe over his shoulder, and wandered into the carved-out hollow in the iceberg. Astrid leaped off to follow him, but not before pointing to Snotlout and then the sky. He and Hookfang took off again-
But Spitelout didn't go with them as she had intended, instead dismounting just before they took off. "This better be good," he said loudly. "I'd not put it past those idiot Berserks to be out here diggin' up ice for their crazy Chief's yak pies."
"Yak pies are served hot," Meatlug rumbled.
Astrid, once again glad that Spitelout had yet to learn even the basics of the dragon language, happily ignored both of them in favor of inspecting the work site they had commandeered.
The Berserkers had carved out a roughly cone-shaped hole in the bottom of the iceberg, the point angled down and to the side with a slope just shallow enough to walk without difficulty. The hole was wide and tall enough for two or three men of Fishlegs' bulky stature, and surprisingly dark on the inside…
Spitelout kicked the side of the entrance, spraying Meatlug's hide with shards of ice. She growled, and he huffed right back at her, sounding much like a disgruntled dragon himself. Neither of them had much patience for the other.
"There's wood here, and here," Fishlegs called out from deeper in. "It looks like they were excavating the wreck of a ship… A very well-destroyed ship."
Astrid went deeper into the hole, drawing her cloak about herself as she did. It was bitterly cold, more so than even the skies above. There was no wind, but in exchange every surface seemed to suck the heat right out of her.
There were fragments of wood embedded in the ice as she went further in. They were small and everywhere, a thousand worthless shards lining the hole and presumably frozen deeper in the ice…
She stopped and looked down, scraping aside some frost-encrusted bootprints to see into the ice. She couldn't see much, but it looked like there was more further down.
"Fishlegs?" she asked. He had gone quiet, and though she could see his back, she didn't see what he was looking at, staring up into the ceiling of the tunnel at something completely unrecognizable from her angle.
"This is an old ship," he said softly, his tone reverent. "The sail is from back before Hardra the Many-Headed redesigned it to what we know today, and that was centuries ago."
"Many-Headed?" Astrid asked, impressed in spite of herself. She didn't even know what a Chief had to do to be called that.
"Legend says he had a skull attached to each of his gauntlets, another on each shoulder, and one on his belt buckle," Fishlegs explained, turning to her. "We have to dig all of this out! It's a historical marvel!"
"We're going to dig it out," Astrid assured him. "But I think I know enough about Dagur to know he's not doing this out of love for his tribe's history." He certainly didn't love recent history, and his stated aim was to return to the bad old days. If he thought something on this old ship would help him do that, she wanted it, if only to keep from him.
"Meatlug, we could use some lava," Fishlegs called out. His Gronckle companion buzzed in to meet them, and Astrid stepped back to let them work. A test shot of gronckle lava was fired at the icy ground, where it promptly hissed its way back into being a solid rock, melting a small circle of ice in the process. Fishlegs and Meatlug discussed that seemingly worthless result for a while, using plenty of terms she didn't entirely understand, and then Meatlug fired right at the far wall.
Said wall promptly melted, and Astrid had to step back from the flow of steaming water. "I don't know what you did, but keep doing it," she said.
"We just-"
She put her hand out and shook her head. "If you can't explain it in ten words or less, save it for when we're back on Berk."
"I can do that," Meatlug snorted. "I fired coal instead of limestone. Coal keeps heat better."
"That was painfully vague and incomplete," Fishlegs complained.
"It was also more than enough for me," Astrid countered. "We can correct my lack of knowledge later. I-"
The ice rumbled around them, and she looked over at the circular tunnel Meatlug had blasted into the ice. The lump of fiery coal was slowly sinking out of sight, its forward momentum expended, and behind it was what looked like a formerly intact plank of wood, steaming at the edges…
And a dark, scaly muzzle, angular and with scars crossing an eyelid. Droplets of water slid down the motionless grey face, and the coal continued to sink out of sight, fizzling as it was drowned in the water it created.
"Looks like this ship had some cargo," she observed, breaking the shocked silence. She wondered whether Dagur was digging for old dragon restraints; some long-lost design could conceivably be an improvement over the usual chains and locks, and he was planning on fighting her dragon-heavy forces. Keeping prisoners completely neutralized would be a worthy advantage.
"I do not know that kind of dragon," Meatlug growled. "That is a first for me."
"Maybe it's a… no, it's too small." Fishlegs shook his head sadly. "I can't tell what it is either, but it doesn't really matter. Nobody can survive being frozen in ice, not even a… Wait…"
"What?" Astrid pressed. She couldn't look away from the closed eye. Something was itching along the back of her spine, the same feeling she got when she was being watched. She glanced back at the tunnel entrance, but aside from Spitelout watching the Berserkers from the edge of the iceberg, they were alone.
Alone with the corpse frozen in the ice. She palmed her ax's handle, staring at the eyelid.
It twitched.
"Fishlegs, how sure are you that no dragon could survive this?" she asked calmly. If she attacked, fled, or even made a big deal out of what she had seen, he would panic and probably make a lot of noise. She didn't want to wake it.
"Very sure unless it's a Skrill, and even then I'm mostly sure," he said, peering into the ice off to the side, completely oblivious to anything she might have seen or imagined seeing. "Skrill are supposed to be able to survive being frozen, but Bork's papers say that's just a legend that stems from how they bury themselves in the snow when they're following winter storms."
"And what are the odds that this is a Skrill?" she asked softly. The eyelid hadn't twitched again, and it could just have been a trick of the light.
"I don't know, we can only see a tiny bit of it," Fishlegs said. "The Berserkers did use a few in warfare a while back, so I guess it's possible. Not likely, though."
The dragon - it had to be a Skrill - blinked. Astrid flinched.
"Fishlegs," Meatlug rumbled. "Why don't you… go get Spitelout?" She buzzed uncertainly and stuck herself between Fishlegs and the eye, which blinked again, the reptilian interior eyelid sliding lazily up and down a heartbeat after the main eyelid. A grey, stormy eye stared blindly at Astrid, slowly focusing with a third blink.
"Sure, he should see this too," Fishlegs said obliviously. He stomped away, his every step loud and echoing to Astrid's adrenaline-heightened senses.
"You have been in an… accident…" Meatlug hummed quietly to the still mostly-encased dragon. "We are friends. We can get you out of here…"
The eyelid snapped open and the iris contracted. Lights flashed in the dark ice behind the head. Astrid appreciated Meatlug's attempt at diplomacy, but she didn't think it was working.
"What?" Fishlegs asked, turning around in the mouth of the tunnel. "Accident? Wait, what's that light?"
A surge of energy flashed up and over the dragon's face, and the ice shattered outward. Astrid fell back, sharp pains crossing her face, and Meatlug's bulk landed on top of her as a blinding light and ear-shattering noise preceded a wave of force. She was weightless, falling-
The snow broke her fall, and she rolled without thinking, instinctively trying to avoid being squashed beneath Meatlug. Said Gronckle never hit the ground, orienting herself in the air and buzzing away somewhere. Astrid staggered to her feet, almost slipping on a patch of slick ice, just as Spitelout popped out of a pile of slush and snow.
"What in the bleeding hells was that?" he demanded incredulously.
Lightning, pure, unadulterated lightning, blasted out of the cave and struck the clouds in reverse of nature, and the Skrill flashed into being high in the sky, much higher than it possibly could have flown in the instant it had taken the lightning to strike. It screeched unbridled fury to the wind, crackling with power.
"Ah." Spitelout looked over at her, his eyes wide. "Tha' might be a problem."
"Coming in hot!" Snotlout yelled from above, Hookfang roaring immediately afterward. A plume of liquid flame shot out ahead of them as they strafed the Skrill, which moved in an instant, another lightning strike lancing out horizontally, blasting the air to its left.
Astrid squinted as the Skrill moved, wondering whether the impact had jarred her eyesight. It was not simply disappearing and appearing at the end of its strike, but it was not just flying either. Her eyes refused to follow its movement, and its shape distorted in the edge of her otherwise uncooperative vision, like it was squeezing through a thin, jagged tunnel in thin air.
"I have a concussion," Fishlegs moaned from somewhere nearby. "Dragons don't do that…"
"This one does," Astrid said grimly.
"Cool trick!" Hookfang roared, loosing another torrent of flame at the Skrill as he doubled back. "Do it again!"
The Skrill obliged him, but he didn't get to see it; he was too busy desperately dropping out of the sky to avoid a deafening blast of lightning. The Skrill appeared at the end of the attack, moving to where it had struck once more, and almost barely missed clawing Snotlout right off of Hookfang's back in the next moment.
Meatlug buzzed in, barreling into the Skrill from behind, and promptly bounced off like a pebble skipped on a lake, sizzling as she fell in a long arc toward the other end of the iceberg.
"Hey!" Fishlegs struggled through a snowdrift, waving his arms wildly. "Stop it! Don't hurt her!"
"Don't hurt us!" Hookfang roared at the same time.
Astrid winced, the two languages colliding in the strange way that they did when heard at the same time. More importantly, she saw the Skrill wince, faltering in midair.
It was a rare wild dragon that understood Norse, and she had no idea why this one did, but she knew they could use it. "Fishlegs, Snotlout, Hookfang, keep talking!" she yelled.
"Why?" Snotlout yelled back, crouching down on Hookfang's neck as a probing web of tiny lightning bolts passed over his head. "This thing iscrazy, talking isn't going to help!"
"Talking is better than being fried," Hookfang retorted as they flew. "That one nearly hit me!"
Astrid winced again, pressing one ear against her cloak and covering the other with her empty hand as she struggled toward the fight, pressing through knee-high snow with every step. It wasn't debilitating, not for her and not for the Skrill, but it was distracting in the worst possible way, and unlike her, the Skrill didn't have hands to put over his or her ears.
"We gonna get under and do the old return ta sender?" Spitelout demanded, following in her wake. "I shoulda brought my spear."
"We might," Astrid confirmed, assuming he meant throwing weapons up at the Skrill's exposed underbelly. It was flying in place, blinking rapidly and striking out with lightning at anything that got too close, but it wasn't watching the ground. Striking from directly underneath might work, and it was the best she could come up with, since the dragon wasn't listening to reason-
"Why are we fighting?" Fishlegs demanded. Meatlug flew low to the ground and landed beside him, and he leaped aboard, complaining all the way. "We just saved your life, we're friends, we don't want to hurt you, we just want to talk!"
The Skrill let out a ear-bursting roar, spun in place, and vanished amidst a massive web of lightning that radiated outward from where it had been. Spitelout yelled a string of truly vile curses, and Astrid would have joined in had she not been so utterly sure that this wasn't even close to over-
Hookfang let out a startled roar as the Skrill popped back into existence right in front of him, exploding in another spherical burst of lightning. The Nightmare fell to the ground, Snotlout somehow still in the saddle, and a single burst of lightning struck Meatlug down.
Astrid anticipated the third blast coming her way and ducked, but she was shocked anyway, her every muscle contracting and spasming unbearably.
When the pain faded, she found herself face-up in the snow, looking up at the crackling visage of the dragon that had brought them all down the moment it decided to do so. It was obvious now what Dagur had meant to recover… not that it mattered.
"Fool," the Skrill hissed in a crackling voice, addressing her directly. "Next time, kill me without any of the trickery. The ransom you intended to take for me will be paid by yours for you, and the alpha will be pleased with me. Now which are you?"
"What?" Astrid rasped.
"Which are you? Darman pack or Hildras pack?" The Skrill picked at her cloak, pulling it off of her and discarding it. "No face marking, so not Darman. No filed teeth, so not Hildras. Blast you humans, you are all equally deaf and featureless."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Astrid gasped, her chest aching with each word, "but I do hear you."
"Don't talk ta the beast," Spitelout growled from somewhere nearby, his voice as faint and pained as hers was.
"Name, tribe, and affiliation in this war," the Skrill demanded, snapping its toothy, angular maw inches from her nose.
"Astrid the Steadfast, Chieftain of Berk, Hairy Hooligan tribe. I know nothing of the war you speak of." She propped herself up on her elbows, doing her best to seem as unruffled as her name would suggest she should be. "My companion thinks you come from the time of Hardra the Many-Headed. You have been frozen in this ice for a long time. We melted you out, at least enough to wake you."
The Skrill glared at her. "I can stop your heart," it threatened. "Squeeze you into oblivion. Take your breath and leave you to suffocate. Speak truth or never speak again."
"Go back to where you broke out from and see how deep in the iceberg it is," Astrid challenged. "See the shattered wreck of a ship encased in that same ice, having clearly sunk and frozen. Question those of my companions who understand you. We came to find what was hidden here, nothing more."
"Hardra was calling himself the Two-Headed last winter, but nobody would call him that in return," the Skrill murmured to itself. "You are not Darman or Hildras. You speak to my kind and travel with those who never would side with either."
A bolt of electricity traveled across the Skrill's chest and out to the side, and Astrid's eyes watered as it wrenched itself away right in front of her. She sat up and rubbed at her eyes, feeling as if they had been pulled around in their sockets.
"Tha' Skrill is not natural," Spitelout grumbled.
"No, it's not," Astrid agreed. She had heard a few legends of Skrill, and they paled in comparison to what she was seeing now. The legends said they breathed lightning from their maws and ate it from the clouds, not that they could fire from anywhere on their body, and no legend so much as mentioned disappearing from existence only to appear somewhere else, or riding the path of its own lightning, or squeezing in a way that physically hurt the eyes to watch.
But in a way, it didn't matter. If their legends had for once undersold a dragon's abilities, or if this Skrill was special even among its own kind, her aims would remain the same. Dagur wanted it, and he would not be allowed to have it, by any means necessary.
Astrid got to her feet, her legs shaky and still occasionally twitching, and offered a hand to Spitelout, who ignored her and struggled to his feet without help. Fishlegs and Meatlug were a short distance to the side, moving about as they recovered from the swift but nonlethal putdown, and neither Snotlout nor Hookfang was anywhere in sight.
A small bolt of lightning threaded up from the ice pit, and the Skrill was out above the iceberg again. It flew normally down to her, and landed heavily.
"How long?" it asked.
"Fishlegs!" Astrid yelled. "How long ago was Hardra the Many-Headed alive?" That was the only reference point she had.
"At least three hundred years, give or take a few decades," Fishlegs called back. "Maybe two hundred and fifty if the records exaggerate the age of his successors, they were notoriously unreliable about that back then. And now, but then too."
The Skrill's neck bowed, and the tip of its grey-scaled face pressed into the snow. "Too long. Much, much too long."
Spitelout put a hand to his sword, and Astrid shot him a hard glare until he took it away again. They were not going to ambush the dragon that had so easily defeated them all, not in its moment of grief. Their tribe had already suffered one grudge from a supernatural creature, and she sure as Hel wasn't going to bring down another on her watch.
"I can offer you a place to recover for as long as you need," she said kindly. "We-"
"I accept, for now," the Skrill buzzed, its voice eerily augmented by the noises of electricity. "Play me false and die twitching."
"Much may have changed in three hundred years, but Viking honor remains intact," Astrid retorted. "You have my word."
"Then answer me honestly," the Skrill hummed, looking her in the eye with an alarmingly focused gaze. A tiny strand of lightning crackled across the surface of its left eye, and Astrid noticed that said eye was a different color, both in iris and pupil, from the other. The right eye was different shades of grey, but the left was pure black on the outside and pale yellow in the middle.
"I will," she said, dismissing the oddity in appearance.
"There are ships with something resembling the insignia Hardra was fond of imagining, only more refined," the Skrill said. "Several, in the ice nearby, separated by a melted channel. Are they Berserkers, and are you with them?"
"They are, and we are not," Astrid said warily. "But just as time has passed, the tribes you know have too. My tribe is nothing like who they were only five years ago, and I can surely say the same for the Berserkers over three hundred. They are not friendly to dragons, and their chieftain– "
"I will make my own assessments," the Skrill snarled. "But for now, my judging will be of you and your people, not them."
"Then we should go," Astrid said. "Before they can come over to the iceberg and force the issue."
The Skrill said nothing, but when it burst into the sky, it waited for them to show the way back to Berk.
O-O-O-O-O
"We're not sure what he wants to do, or where his allegiances will be once he gets a handle on the situation," Astrid said a while later, addressing an anxious crowd. The Great Hall was warm and pleasantly bright compared to the cold, cloudy day outside, but she felt a chill as she spoke, one that did not come from a draft. "But he's not an enemy yet, and we're sure as Hel not going to make him one out of sheer stupidity. Nobody bother him, especially if you don't speak Dragon."
"We decided to call it either Dragonese or Drak," Fishlegs murmured from a corner of the hall, his voice audible over the quiet muttering that always occurred when more than two Vikings were supposed to be listening silently.
"We didn't decide," Meatlug hummed shortly, her voice entwining with the other quiet murmurers and producing a note of discord that bothered Astrid more than it should have. She ignored it, because complaining about something nobody but herself and Fishlegs could hear would be petty, but she was thankful that Meatlug left it at that.
"Wha' if it starts slaughterin' us?" somebody asked belligerently.
"Then fight back, but if you start something I'm going to have to lecture your twitching corpse, and neither of us wants that," Astrid said bluntly. "This Skrill is insanely powerful, and we don't know his limits yet, if he has any. Even if he was definitely an enemy, which he is not, I wouldn't have him attacked, not with all the warriors on Berk." She could easily envision the Skrill laying waste to Berk in moments, flashing from place to place and obliterating all in sight, and that was just based on what she had already seen him do.
"But it's not going to come to fighting," she said firmly. "He is a dragon visiting our island, and it is our custom to treat visitors with respect and not with violence. What's more, he's a potential ally against the Berserkers."
"And a potential ally of the Berserkers, if we can't be better than those sods," Gobber added from the front of the crowd. "E's been out for hundreds o' years, we ought ta be helpin' 'im adjust and makin' 'im appreciate us."
"I've gotten him caught up on Berserker history up to now," Fishlegs volunteered. "There's a lot of betrayal in there, and we come out looking pretty good, so that's a start."
"Did ye twist the facts?" Gobber asked.
"Didn't need to," Fishlegs said, crossing his arms. "And I wouldn't even if I wanted to."
"Where is he now?" a woman asked. The murmur of the crowd around her suggested her question was a popular one.
"The top of the mountain, doing nothing as far as we can tell," Astrid explained. "He might be sleeping, or just thinking. In any case, he's not doing anything, and when the storm hits he'll be hunkering down and riding it out like anyone else." She had offered the use of several different shelters and the old training arena, whichever the Skrill liked. And her own hut, but that was a ceremonial thing he couldn't possibly take her up on, being far too big to fit inside.
"And we'll be snug in our huts, warm and cozy," Gobber said happily, waving his hook. "Also, carvin' club, the challenge this time is sea monsters, courtesy o' Fishlegs Ingerman."
"The usual bounty to the best carving," Fishlegs called out over the growing noise of the crowd. Astrid stepped down from the table she had been standing on and made her way to the doors, content in how the news had been taken. There would be confusion and arguing, there always was, but that was always solvable with a few stern words and a reiteration of the same explanation she had just given. Nowhere was it said that Vikings were good listeners.
The massive doors all but swung open when she unlatched them, and the crowd behind her recoiled like a single, massive creature at the cold she had unleashed. She stepped out into the bitter misery, one eye on the sky, and pulled the doors shut behind her.
The clouds did not worry her, not when her people were better equipped to ride out snowstorms than ever before, but it did make her nervous. She wasn't used to having everyone's safety on her shoulders, not yet and maybe not ever, and her own personal comfort was far less certain than the average Viking's. It would be convenient for the storm to pass over without letting loose… but one learned quickly that Devastating Winter was never convenient.
The villagers were all in the Great Hall, and the vast majority of the dragons were napping the day away, sleeping more than even the most lazy Berkian could match. Stormfly had been hard to rouse at all on the coldest days–
And now she was not cold at all. Astrid scowled and stomped her way to her hut, smashing the snow down under her boot with far more force than strictly necessary. She considered going for more firewood, but her stock was already up to the roof, and if she ran out she could burn Hiccup's terrible book and be rid of it.
"Humans never look up, even after all these years."
Astrid had her ax out and pointing at the distinctive voice before she even thought about it. The Skrill was lounging atop one of the huts across from her, most of its body draped down out of sight. The grey eye was turned toward her, staring disdainfully.
"I've become used to dragons on our rooftops," she said. "They are reinforced for safety, but you might be treading on another's territory." Usually, that warning was enough to get dragons off of rooftops they didn't claim for themselves; it was one of the many little tricks she had learned from Fishlegs.
The Skrill seemed nonplussed by that, a tiny spark travelling from its back to the tip of one of its spines, flickering out of existence there. "Territory means little to me. I have never held any."
"Be that as it may," Astrid said, "I want you down from there before you annoy someone who does care about territory."
"I want to get the measure of you," the Skrill said, remaining where it was. "You are smaller and weaker than I am used to, especially in a position of power."
"Off the roof, then we talk," Astrid said coldly. She would not be defied in her own village, not when this Skrill had agreed to not cause any trouble. All else aside, she suspected that appearing weak in front of this dragon would come back to bite her, perhaps literally. It had worked for the Berserkers, who could never be called weak. Plenty of other things, none flattering, but not that.
The Skrill jolted down to the snow-covered pathway in front of her, a tiny arc of lightning preceding it, and Astrid barely closed her eyes in time to avoid the eye-wrenching visual.
"But you learn quickly," the Skrill hissed, now right in front of her.
"Learn quick or die quicker," Astrid said dismissively. "That's always the way of things."
"I know that very well," the Skrill agreed. "It is why I am here now."
"Because you want to learn about us, or because you were learning about the Berserkers before you got frozen in the iceberg?" Astrid asked, genuinely unsure which the Skrill meant.
"Both," the Skrill hummed. "Neither. I have seen some of your dragons. They are fat and content."
"When did you see anyone?" Astrid asked. She had escorted the Skrill straight to the top of the mountain, and as far as she knew it had only come down upon seeing her walking through the village.
"Earlier," the Skrill said cryptically. "From what I have heard, you are adequate. No more, no less, with a far heavier touch than many would like and an isolationist leaning."
"Isolationist?" Astrid had been called quite a few things, especially in the early days when half the village didn't particularly want her as Chieftain, but that didn't sound like anything her people would say. For one thing, she doubted more than a handful knew the word at all. She only knew it because Fishlegs and Meatlug were ridiculously thorough in teaching her the dragon equivalent of every word they knew, not just the useful ones.
"All the power you could want, and no attempts at expansion, not even to unoccupied islands in the area," the Skrill hummed. "Not even to the vast wilds of this very island, where there is room for another nest or even two if you plan wisely."
"I and my people are happy with what we have, and our energies are better spent preserving and refining it, not expanding," Astrid said coldly. She had to hold back a shiver as a fitful gust of wintery wind blew past, and decided on a whim to keep walking, turning her back on the Skrill in the process.
Her half-thought-through bluff paid off when the Skrill followed behind, actually walking on its limbs for the first time she had seen. "That is a very pacifistic way to approach safety," it said.
"I'm sure it seems that way," she said. The grey eye was looking her way, but she refrained from looking back at it, keeping her eyes forward. "But I'm sure every approach short of open war seems weak to you. What were you doing with the Berserkers, anyway? How did you end up in the ice?"
"I am not entirely sure how we ended up frozen," the Skrill admitted. "The last thing I remember is an ambush by an unknown ship, under bright, sunny skies."
"And you were on the deck of a ship," Astrid said. "Why was that?" She would much rather hear the Skrill's story than be probed on her own thoughts and methods, lest what she said make its way to the Berserkers someday. An uninformed enemy was better than a knowledgeable one.
"I should start from the beginning," the Skrill murmured. "But you would freeze to death out here before I finished."
"I'll be fine," Astrid said. "We're headed to my home, anyway. Just give me the important parts."
"What do you know of my kind?" the Skrill asked.
"Nothing," Astrid said candidly.
"That will make this harder," the Skrill sighed, sounding incredibly put-upon. "Suffice to say we wander with the weather, never staying in one place long. I split from my pack as a fledgling, wandered into a place in the clouds, a mountain peak that had been hollowed, and struck at exactly the wrong thing, trapping myself inside."
"I'm with you so far," Astrid said, intrigued. She couldn't see how any of this connected to the present day, but what sounded like either caves or ruins in the heights of some far-away mountain was interesting enough on its own.
"My power was all I had," the Skrill continued as they walked. "I struck at many things, hoping to break a way to the outside, and eventually found something that ate my power and returned it tenfold. It took and gave, and the stone came to life around me, shifting to open a path out at my command."
"Now I'm lost," Astrid admitted. "Stones obeyed your orders?" She was getting shivers down her spine that had nothing to do with the weather or the literally hair-raising dragon plodding along beside her. Talk of strange things in forgotten places reminded her of the last unnatural creature to set foot on Berk, though she knew next to nothing about how that one had come into being. It was of the unknown, just like what the Skrill described, and that was enough.
"Yes, and they continued to obey me whenever I returned in the following seasons," the Skrill said. "They began to speak, like a child learning at first, and imparted knowledge I will never share with any other being." A flash of electricity had the Skrill suddenly walking on her other side, the yellow and black eye staring at her. "And when I understood enough, a stone to make part of myself."
"So not all Skrill are like you," Astrid ventured, thoroughly intimidated, though she hoped it didn't show.
"None are, and none ever will be," the Skrill confirmed. "It was an ailing place, falling into disrepair, and I lacked the scores of lifetimes needed to learn enough to fix it. When I had gleaned all I could use, I sealed it up and left for good."
"To go join the Berserkers?" she asked, still not seeing how any of this was connected.
"To see what could be done about replacing what I had used and failed to preserve," the Skrill corrected her. "I wish to make something that lasts, after seeing the power of knowledge built upon and not lost with every generation. To make my own sort of living stones, or the start of them. But for that I needed willing help and a place that would never be threatened. Searching for such a place led me to the Berserkers and what lay beneath their island."
"What?"
"I cannot say," the Skrill said calmly. "Not for any reason. I swore an oath. Regardless, it was the perfect place, well-suited to my needs. There were humans there too, and I saw them as a possible boon, not a downside. Some of the young ones of my pack came with me, and we made peace, of a sort."
"Just like that," Astrid murmured.
"Peace by slaughtering anyone they fought, avoiding their attacks, and then after a time submitting to their chains and whips," the Skrill said idly. "It was a peace of subjugation, but only for a time, since I cannot be held." It flickered, and was suddenly atop a roof far ahead of Astrid without even a bolt of electricity to herald its arrival. "We were granted more and more freedom the longer we fought for them without issue, and attitudes were already softening. One short human generation to set us into their culture, then a generation of maneuvering to put us equal to them, and a third to establish my place of progress and bring their best minds into the fold. Another two of your generations past that would see me dead of age, but I would have successors to build upon what I had started."
"Did it work?" Astrid asked, caught up in the story. She still didn't understand what the Skrill meant to build, but she got the sense it didn't fully know itself.
"It was working," the Skrill snarled, remaining atop the building as she neared. "Then I woke up to being buried in ice, all my work likely gone and a different world in its place."
The silence of the snow-bound village around them seemed a little more desolate than it had before, at least to Astrid. To make something, to have plans, and then to lose it all in an instant… It was a familiar feeling, and not a good one.