Reunify

Chapter One - A Brush with Magic

X

The frigid arctic waves blasted their spray high above the deck of the trader ship as it trudged it's arduous journey north. The trading ship, the Death Pheasant, had stopped at all trading posts from Rome to Albion, pulling in an impressive haul, if Trader Johann was to be believed between his wild stories. On its northerly voyage, Johann had granted passage for a single man to travel from the northerly most port of Albion, bound for the Viking lands of the Barbaric Archipelago.

The man had asked a few simple questions about the region, but when Johann had mentioned the dragons, the normally cool mannered man visibly tensed. Chalking it up to simple fear of dragons, Johann didn't press further.

The man, called Hades, was of tall stature and lean build, as far as Johann could tell underneath the red scholar's robes he donned. The man was kind enough, helped around the boat when he could, even when Johann attempted to dissuade him. The man simply said that helping Johann helped himself get to where they were going, and that he didn't want to be a burden.

The only burden Johann could find in him was the generous amount of gold he had paid for travel north.

As the Death Pheasant approached Berk, slamming through the rough seas, Johann carefully watched as the man gathered his things and placed them in his single messenger bag; jars and tins of different ingredients. Being especially fond of Berk for their good trade and kind people, Johann had inquired about the jars and tins, but the man kindly asked this privacy be respected, and Johann left it at that.

"Ho there, Johann!" said the familiar voice of Agatha Thorston, Portmaster of Berk, atop her Monstrous Nightmare as she met them a short distance outside the port of Berk.

"Ho there, Mrs. Thorston! How did the harvest go?"

"Very well, thank you! You'll be in dock 15, over there," she pointed to a dock fit for Johann's runner off to his right.

"Thank you ma'am," he exclaimed, steering the vessel to its destination. "I hope you're ready for some rigorous bargaining! I have quite the haul this time around," Johann said with a gleam in his eye. The opportunity for a good trade involved too much joy to contain.

"Can't wait," she said with a warm smile. "Are you by yourself? What happened to your assistant? Zephyr, wasn't it?"

Johann gave a deep sigh, "Unfortunately he up and quit on me when he found this dame in the land of the Franks. Said she was his destiny," he said with a sneer. "However, no, I am not alone. I have a single passenger. Goes by Hades. Says he's here to answer Mr. Thorston's call for help. Had the poster and everything."

Sighing stiffly, Agatha responded, "Another healer? That's the last thing we need: more false hope…" A horn was sounded from the shore. "Oop, they're calling my name. I'll have someone meet you at the dock, Johann. It was good to see you!" She promptly flew towards Berk, Johann waving at her.

X

Not long after I finished packing my things, taking special care to place my Tome of Aldavox in its place in my bag, did Johann knock on my door to tell me that we had successfully docked in Berk.

I knew when I saw the call for help ad back in Albion that it might be a long shot to help the girl. The details weren't very clear, making it apparent that the family, and possibly the whole village, had no idea what they were dealing with. Through this simple logic, I was able to ascertain that it wasn't a simple solution...but I wouldn't know for sure what the issue with the girl was until I examined her for myself. I had a theory, but couldn't be sure.

Thanking Johann for his help, I disembarked from the Death Pheasant and made my way up the dock where a young blond woman with a spike skirt was waiting for me.

"Hi there! Welcome to Berk!" she held her hand out in greeting and I respectfully returned the gesture. "I'm Astrid. What brings you to this far north?"

I pulled out the call for help ad and held it up for her to see. "I'm here to see if I can help."

She visibly sagged her shoulders; a minute amount, admittedly, but enough for me to notice, though she kept her smirk about her face.

"Listen, I don't mean any disrespect, but unless you're actually here to help, I suggest you turn around and go back where you came from. We've seen too many people try to get at the reward money, and too many of them make Ruff well for a day, only for her to get worse the next day after the supposed "healers" took off with the money."

I smirked. "Well then, you're in luck."

This threw her for a loop. She tilted her head and scrunched her face in confusion. "How's that?"

"I don't want the reward money."

She froze for a moment. "You don't?"

"No. I have no need for money. What I need is information." I looked around the docks, settled between two sea stacks, teeming with life. "How about we make a deal? I help...Ruff, was it?" Astrid nodded. "I'll help Ruff, if I can, and I'll stay as long as it takes until you're convinced that she is indeed well, then you give me the information I need." I held out my hand to seal the deal. "Sound fair?"

She narrowed her eyes at me for a moment. We were like this for a good moment, and I almost thought she was going to refuse my deal, but then she rolled her shoulders, as if to shake something off her mind, then shook my hand. We had an accord.

"Good. When may I meet Ruff? The help ad didn't have enough information for me to properly diagnose her. I need to see her in person before I can proceed."

After a short trudge up the towering steps out of the port, we then trudged up a second hill up to the Thorston estate. Astrid knocked on the door, revealing Mr. Thorston, a thin, lean man with a mean glint in his eye. Mrs. Thorston and her dragon landed some yards away, the dragon growling at me, eyes narrowed.

It had to be dragons. It couldn't have been kittens...I thought bitterly, keeping still, as Astrid explained the deal we had made. The Thorstons were pleasantly surprised, but still wary as I was lead into the main hall of the estate.

Three stories high, and a raised ceiling above me, the hall was spacious and decorated smartly with an assortment of fabrics, tapestries, weapons, and armors. The hearth at the head of the room burned strong, sending comforting heat throughout the hall.

Lying near the hearth was a Zippleback curled around a man and a woman about my age. Sporting blond dreadlocks and blue eyes weighed down by sleepless bags, the man stood up and walked towards us.

"Listen here! I don't want you or any of your kind touching my sister anymore! She's been through enough and just needs rest, not some miracle medicine. You're not getting a single shilling of our money." The man heaved in a breath and bellowed, "Now GET OUT!"

Frankly, I admired his desire to protect his sister, but I was here on a mission and didn't really pay him any attention. I walked calmly past him, my eyes never wavering from the young woman. I noted absently that Astrid and Mrs. Thorston were talking the man down, explaining the situation.

Unlike her brother, twin brother I gathered, Ruff looked sunken and shriveled, starved even. Her hair had grown unhealthy, and instead of long flowing golden hair as her family had, she had scalp-length, thinning black hair. Her blue eyes had faded into a dead gray. She stared with dead eyes at the fire, barely breathing.

The Zippleback wrapped itself tighter around her, wary of me, but hesitant to lash out. Care for the woman? That's new...I thought to myself.

I squatted down and looked at the woman. Really looked. Saying a quick spell under my breath, my iris' lit up with magic, allowing me to see into spectrums that humans couldn't even imagine. Thankfully, I had the wherewithal to leave my hood up, blocking my use of magic from the dragon; although they did growl a little lower.

The woman, Ruff, had an aura like no other. While her whole family, I saw with a quick glance, had normal auras, radiating their different emotions and energies. Ruff, however, had an aura like black smoke after lighting herbs on fire. The thin tendrils radiated from her, up above her to where a black wraith-form was floating.

Appearing as the Grim Reaper of legend, the creature paid no attention to me, focusing on its sole mission: to suck the life out of the woman for all she was worth...and he was nearly done.

Releasing the energy within me to stop the seeing spell, I stood and walked back over to where the group had gathered, with even a few more people joining to watch.

"Okay, here's the deal. I know what is wrong with your daughter, and I can help her."

"And here comes the catch." said the brother with a sarcastic drawl, his arms crossed.

"But she is close to death. Here is the long and the short of it: I am a sorcerer. I can help her, but she doesn't have time for us to argue. I can save her if you do what I say. If not she will be dead within the hour."

I locked eyes with her father, trying my best to project all the determination and plea for trust I could muster.

After a tense moment, the father nodded. "Tell us what you need."

"I need that dragon out of here." I jabbed a thumb over my shoulder.

"What? Why?" asked the brother suspiciously.

"What did I just say? We don't have time for this. Dragons hate sorcerers. Always have, always will. They attack on sight if they see any magic being used."

"Got it." Mrs. Thorston cut off her son before he could speak. "What next?"

"Look," I said to the brother and her parents, "I understand that I'm a stranger, and I'm going to ask you to do stuff you won't understand, but I promise you, I can save her. And I don't want your money or your stuff, so you can cling to that and trust that I don't want to take advantage of you. Trust me, I know what that's like. Just trust me for one hour. After that, do whatever you want. Square?"

They looked at each other for a single moment, then nodded.

The room was a flurry of activity for the next twenty minutes as the place was prepared. I shed my coat, and placed it off to the side along with my bag, pulling some tools out and heading to the middle of the room.

I started with the scry-shard. A sharp piece of dark blue crystal that I used for all my complex spells. I traced the crystal along the ground in the middle of the room, an azure glow of magic light left in the scry-shard's path. Creating a circle first, I then filled it with different lines and geometrical shapes and patterns until the array was complete.

The people gathered, now over ten, immediately set several dozen large candles at equidistant points around the array. While they did that, I ingested some groot-root, to fortify my insides, followed by askis fungus for clarity, and ale for the nerves.

I motioned for the brother to bring Ruff over into the array, careful not to knock over any candles, he gently placed her in the center of the circle, leaving her there after a quick kiss to the forehead.

With everything in place, I looked to the father, who looked between me and his daughter, then nodded, giving me his ascent to proceed.

I stepped into the circle, beginning my spell.

X

Fighting Outcasts? Easy. Taming wild dragons? Piece of cake. Being girlfriend to the love of my life? Really freaking hard, but so worth it. Watching my best friend whither away for a year? The hardest damn thing I've ever done, bar none. Watching a strange man perform a magic ritual to heal her? The absolute most terrifying thing I have ever done. I honestly didn't mean to brag, but I was Astrid Haddock. Nothing got to me...except this.

There were sights I saw I had no name for. Sounds I heard that had me shaking in my boots like the little girl I felt like I was. I wanted to look away from what I was seeing, but I couldn't. Not so much the spell itself, but the man who was casting it. It tortured me for the twenty minutes I was planted there. He felt so familiar. I wracked my brain trying to figure out where I knew him from, but I just couldn't. I wanted to let it go but the familiarity about him was clamped around my mind like a Nadder's jaw.

When the man, Hades, placed his lips on Ruff's, my blood boiled with rage...for a split second until I could see that he was drawing a darkness from Ruffnut, out of her body, and into his own. The darkness, like a solid tentacle of whispering black smoke, wasn't leaving Ruffnut without a fight, and Hades had to pour energy into pulling the darkness from Ruff.

The vest he had been wearing burst was incinerated when he tried to pull, revealing white, glowing tattoos from between his shoulder blades, across them, and down his upper arm; identical markings on his chest. They glowed so brightly I had to shield my eyes.

After the darkness was out of Ruffnut, who slumped to the ground like a corpse, Hades did some weird hand gestures in front of himself, causing another array of white light over his palms. The darkness violently erupted from Hades' mouth, pooling in the center of the array, coalescing there for a moment, before finalizing into a black crystal that would fit into a grown man's palm.

Then the strangest thing happened if you can believe it. The man turned to us, tattoos and iris' glowing with magical power...and flashed a grin that instantly made my knees go weak with recollection.

No, I thought to myself, it can't be. That's just not possible...is it? It can't be him…

X

I was absolutely ecstatic. I had done it! I pulled a Siphon out, without sacrificing the host! Not even the High Priests of Jerusalem would dare attempt something like this.

I turned to the assembly and waved at the parents to approach, which they swiftly did, staying outside the array.

"What in Asgard was that thing!?" asked the brother.

"A Siphon. A nasty creature that literally sucks the life out of its host so that it can cross from the mystic realm over to this one," I explained, examining the crystal in the firelight.

"That was living in my daughter?" asked Mr. Thorston.

"Yes, sir. If we had waited even a few more moments it would have succeeded in sapping Miss Thorston of all her life force."

"How do we know that wasn't some kind of trick or something?" the Thorston son inquired angrily. "How do we know you aren't going to just disappear tomorrow?"

"Because," I replied, tossing the Siphon crystal across the room into my bag, "we made a deal, and I fully intend on making good on my end." I held out my hand pulling my scry-shard through the air from the table to my palm. "Right now though," I said, passing through the crowd to the other side, "we need to jumpstart Miss Thorston's life force so that she can start the recovery process." I knelt to the ground, starting to scry a second array, this time in green.

Paying extra attention to the Doxica's Transcendence Theorem as I scry the stone ground, I spoke to the Thorstons. "Listen, the easy part is done, but we have a long night ahead of us if we're going to help her survive this." I look up from my work toward the Thorston son. "Hate me later. Help me now. Square?" After a tense moment, the twin brother nods. "Good. Here's what I need…"

X

"How long have they been at this?" Hiccup asked me. He had come up to check on their progress after his morning duties. He had plopped down next to me on the floor, our backs against a support beam. It was now nearly midday...the next day!

"All through the night." I paused for a moment, unsure of whether to bring up what was really on my mind. "Hiccup...does Hades remind you of anyone?" I whispered to him, careful not to break Hades' concentration. He had been very particular on that point after an outburst between Tuff and Mrs. Thorston caused some of Hades' life force to break the containment of the magic glowing circle. I can't even believe that I just thought that.

Hiccup looked to the sorcerer, sitting cross-legged on the floor inside the circle, tattoos glowing white, eyes closed, willing his own life force into Ruffnut. "No...can't say that he does. Why? Who does he remind you of?"

I hesitated a moment, then, "Nothing. Nobody. I'm probably just tired from being here all night…and all day," I said, sighing.

"Hey," Hiccup nudged me with his elbow, "you sure?"

I nodded, then leaned back and closed my eyes for a nap. It had really been a grueling night. Hades, for the first several hours, was pouring, as he said, massive quantities of energy into her system. Every turn of the hourglass Hades would stop and whoever was on duty would descend on the circle. Two people to clean up Hades and Ruffnut of the sweat from their exertion, two people to feed them both. Hades was consuming a startling amount of food, even more so than I'd ever seen Fish eat on his best day; and at the same time, someone would spoon some broth into Ruff's mouth and massage it down her throat.

At first, even I became skeptical of Hades and his ritual, but over the course of the night and into the morning I noticed that I could visibly see Hades losing weight and Ruff gaining. It was now nearing the point that I was getting concerned for Hades. He couldn't help Ruff if he keeled over and died. And on top of that...I still couldn't shake the strong familiarity I felt every time I looked at him.

A few moments later at the next break, I approached him, kneeling beside him. "Listen, I know that I don't know anything about this magic stuff, but don't you need to stop and rest? I can actually see your ribs now."

He shook his head and barked at a whisper between bites of chicken leg, "Can't. Not 'till she wakes up." I didn't get a chance to respond before time was up and he continued his ritual, green energy radiating from his core, down to the ground like waves on the ocean, across the magic circle, and into Ruff's core.

I sighed and took my place by the support beam. Hiccup kissed my cheek and left to continue his duties as Chief. The day pressed on, me staring at Hades, and the fight for Ruff unceasing.

X

Tuffnut dropped heavily onto the bench in the dimly lit Great Hall next to Snotlout, Hiccup, Fishlegs, and Eret. "It's over…It's finally over."

"It is?"

"Are you sure?"

"What happened?"

"Is Ruffnut okay?"

"Hey!" Tuffnut was way too exhausted to handle the jibber jabber of a bunch of Terrors. "Yes, Hades is done. They're both sleeping. Ruff woke up just for a minute, then fell asleep."

"Are you sure we can trust this guy Tuff," asked Hiccup. "We have no idea what he was doing to her."

"Hades said-" started Fishlegs.

"I know what he said, but none of us actually knows anything about magic. He could have been turning her into a chicken and we'd have no way of telling the difference."

"That is true." Fishlegs acknowledged. "Ever since the Founders banned all magic from the island, the knowledge hasn't been passed down like it used to. It's interesting to think that there's a whole world of knowledge that we know nothing about. Reminds me of us before you and Toothless became friends."

"I don't like it. Can you look in the archives at Goethe's place, see if you can find anything helpful?" Fishlegs nodded solemnly. Hiccup rose and placed a hand on Tuffnut's shoulder. "Get some sleep, Tuff. Ruff is gonna need all the help from you she can get."

Tuffnut closed his eyes in exhaustion and nodded, promptly passing out there and then. Fishlegs draped his outer fur over his shoulders, then left him to sleep.