Chapter Eleven: Four Final Details

With the moon covered by thick clouds and the stars all but hidden by a new storm front, the Outcast longboat found the seas far more challenging to navigate than normal. Alvin had ordered all torches doused so to keep their presence masked, forcing the navigator to work extra hard to keep them on course. The alternative was to broadcast their position to any Gunnarr patrol ships in the area, and Alvin knew they were out there in their black night boats, waiting to pounce.

Alvin stood at the bow of his ship and acted like he was fuming over his latest defeat, his men keeping a safe distance in case he took out his frustration on one of them. He still might, just to keep up appearances, but he really wasn't all that disgruntled. In fact, he thought the day's events had proven highly educational, even uplifting.

Oh, he did get thwarted yet again. No denying that. His clever plan to find the adventuring Dragon Conqueror had fallen to pieces, and his brief alliance with the steel devil had ended with the devil falling to pieces as well. Defeat was defeat, and no amount of ale or face punching would change that.

But oh, what revelations! There was more out there than dragons and dragon training. The steel devil had shown him such sights, such wondrous things. The Outlander had done him a favor, for if such a meager stick-man could gain the power of a god, so could another. What if he himself gained the same power, or what if he could find the resting place of another steel devil?

Alvin smiled in the darkness. There were indeed many roads for an ambitious Outcast like him to travel. And all roads eventually led to Berk… and his triumphant homecoming.

The torchlights of Berk cast a welcome glow over the village as Snotlout and Fishlegs approached the village harbor, but the sight of home did little to warm their damp spirits. A soft sprinkle of snow added a blinding component to the flight, but it was still more appealing than the sand-whipping breezes that existed in the Desolation, where they have left their friends.

What's left of our friends, Snotlout thought dejectedly.

"If we don't tell Chief Stoick about Ruff and Tuff," said Fishlegs, flying off of Fenrir's left wing, "how long do you think it'll take the village to figure out they're gone?"

"I don't know," answered Snotlout. "I'm tempted to find out."

"Are we going to tell them about Astrid?"

Snotlout's reply was to glance Fishlegs's way and shake his head noncommittally. Fishlegs had the weird pyramid artifact in his hands, fully intending on fulfilling his vow to Hiccup. The artifact had stopped all the glowing and shining shortly after they'd popped back into the air above Last Gasp. Now it looked like a simple stone carving with fancy writing all over it. Weird how such a little thing could take them halfway across the world faster than a Monstrous Nightmare could spontaneously combust.

If he could, he'd let Fishlegs handle all the responsibility garbage. He just couldn't bring himself to care. His mood was far too black for him to even feel the frost nipping at his exposed skin.

Snotlout hated the fact that he was stuck with telling Hiccup's dad about Alvin and Hiccup and steel devils and how the Twins weren't coming home any time soon… if at all. He hated the reaction Chief Stoick would have when he realized how much danger his son was in. He hated all the questions and accusations that would be thrown his way. He hated the fact that he was stuck in Berk with no squad to speak of any longer.

He hated the fact that the one girl he'd been trying to impress for years was gone… absolutely gone. He hated that most of all.

He hated Hiccup for letting it happen.

Until now, he had never had reason to question if his life had been better before Hiccup ended the Dragon War. It seemed like a no-brainer. Snotlout had Fenrir, his loyal dragon buddy. He had respect as a member of Hiccup's Dragon Squad. Those two things alone, plus his undeniably Norse physique, should've led to bigger and better things by now – glory, girlfriends, and a statue of his handsome likeness in the Great Hall.

But the glory wasn't happening. It was always Hiccup that got it. And now Hiccup was costing him friends, friends that should be staying in Berk.

It had cost him Astrid, a girl that would've seen all the great potential in him if not for Hiccup. A girl that would still be alive if she hadn't run off with Hiccup.

Was his life really better with Hiccup… or was Hiccup the actual problem?

"You okay, Snotlout?" asked Fishlegs, picking up on his friend's dark mood.

"Let's just get this over with," he muttered, steering Fenrir toward Chief Stoick's home and nearly colliding with Chomps. He ignored Fishleg's feeble protests, as he always did.

Not all seeds come from plants and grow in the earth. A few are born from wonderful and wicked experiences, and they blossom in the fertile soil of the mind. Such a seed was germinated in Snotlout that day, and while much of Snotlout's attitude did improve as the long, cold days came to the village, a wicked impulse had taken root in his soul. One that lingered in his heart, yearning for further nourishment.

One that grew in the dark, of which there is plenty in the winter months of Berk.

The Desolation has no life to speak of, yet eyes were upon the group of flyers heading east, taking with them the best entertainment Valha had experienced in such a long time.

Her name wasn't really Valha. Nor was she a "she." But it had not lied to the Dragon Rider – the girl had once lived, and it had the pleasure of meeting her and knowing her. The side effect of playing a role like Valha was that it became the role as thoroughly as if she had lived that person's life. It knew all her hopes, her fears, her mannerisms, her nuances. For the time being, until it deigned to return to its true form, it would think of itself as Valha and live through her perspective.

She already missed the Dragon Rider. Not the boy's presence exactly, but his perceptive mind and inquisitive nature. Humans had such incredible aspirations, such limitless potential, yet most of them saddled their minds and their lives with artificial obstacles, blocking off their imaginations for the questionable benefit of practicality and pragmatism. Most humans proved unfulfilling when she got to know them. Most were toys that were too easy to panic, too easy to break.

She found that she had grown restless in her seclusion, and her trip inside Hiccup's mind had reinforced her desire for something… different. Perhaps it was time for a change herself. The humans were waking up again, beginning to reach for the heights they once achieved eons ago. She'd seen snippets of the past rising up in the boy's mind. Necromancers and alchemists and mighty dragons the size of mountains. Great and terrible powers returning or newly born. If the pattern held up, the world might be a very entertaining place for years to come.

She'd wait a while to emerge. She had sent "eyes" elsewhere, and those "eyes" told her that a great showdown was slated to occur very shortly, one that could change the face of the planet. It wouldn't serve her to blindly walk into a typhoon when she could hunker down in her sanctum and ride it out, waiting for the waters to recede.

Once the storm was over… who knows? There would be a brave new world, perhaps, and one that would interest her greatly.

Sanctuary Storeroom – a very pedestrian name for a very pedestrian room, and it was the most boring place in the world to guard outside of a garbage dump. Not that it didn't need guarding, as it held a selection of fine gems and rare minerals organized on standing shelves, alphabetized and categorized by use and quality. A handful of the stones could buy a pauper's way into nobility in any country, which would normally make it a rich target for ninety percent of the personnel stationed on Sanctuary Island. Formers pirates and mercenaries didn't have many qualms about stealing, and it wasn't like the Alchemist would miss a few here and there.

Yet the lone guard for the room, sitting on a wood stool inside the room and next to the one door out, couldn't remember having felt this degree of dreariness before. The stack of books piled next to her stool, which contained mostly old plays and fables, had become her buffer against the relentless tediousness of her posting.

She currently had a copy of an old Greek play, "Oedipus," which was an interesting read but pretty depressing overall. She fiddled with her long black-haired ponytail absently as she read and shifted her feet to keep her legs from falling asleep, all the while hoping that some dumb ex-pirate would make a try for some garnets or emeralds or even the prized white diamond collection. Anything to break up the monotony.

He'd have to be extra dumb to try it, too. There were two well-known rumors about the Alchemist – that she enchanted every gem in her arsenal with some kind of tracking magic so that she could easily locate any lost or stolen gems, and that her punishment for theft of her property involved the thief losing every body part that had touched the stolen objects. The guard had never heard of anyone actually getting punished like that, but at the same time she had never heard of anyone daring to steal from the Alchemist. Rumor or not, the fear kept the gems safe and her job dull.

Failing the appearance of a criminal mind, the next best thing would be for the Alchemist to come back from her latest outing and talk some sense into the base lieutenant about his posting choices. The guard was wasting away in this dusty warehouse room, unable to see or hear or learn much about the Alchemist's grand plan. The base lieutenant clearly had an "old boys club" mentality because he routinely assigned women to support roles like the kitchen or custodial work, though only when the Alchemist was out and about. Women didn't get combat assignments or construction duties, not with this guy in charge.

At least she managed to pull guard duty, which had to be a slight acknowledgment of her growing reputation among the ranks of the Alchemist's troops (or more likely, an acknowledgement that she was a pretty girl and that men belonging to the "old boy's club" liked doing favors for the pretty ones). She had more than proven herself an able sailor, a capable sword-fighter, and a generally intelligent individual right from the beginning, back six months ago when the half-troll named Norom had come to her island settlement on a recruitment drive.

The big lug had marched into her fishing village with a squad of sneering men and declared that he needed twenty able bodies before he left. Volunteers would be great, but twenty bodies were twenty bodies regardless of how motivated they were. Times had been tough in her settlement and many of the younger men had decided to try their chances with the Alchemist rather than suffer the bleak prospects of continuing poverty. Norom got eighteen men to sign up, but he needed two more. Norom implemented a lottery for the two remaining spots, and to the young woman's horror one of the names picked was her father's.

The thought of her father, who was more farmer than fighter even in his younger days, becoming caught up in some aspiring warlord's army, the thought that she might never see him again, prompted her to make a challenge to the half-troll. If she could beat two of his men in fair combat, she would join his army as the last two slots, and her father would stay behind. After a lengthy bit of gut-busting laughter, Norom agreed to the challenge, probably because he thought it would be entertaining.

It had been, but not for the reasons he expected. She succeeded in taking down two grown men twice her size in an epic bout of sparring that impressed Norom so much he honored their agreement and left with his quota one off.

The young woman had not been so thrilled. She kissed her crying parents goodbye, telling them she would be okay, that it wasn't like she hadn't been through this kind of thing before, and that she would be back home before they could even miss her.

She'd lied to them. The Alchemist wasn't a flash-in-the-pan warlord. She was something else, something far more dangerous. She took her time, solidified her forces, kept to the shadows while gathering her strength – talents that demonstrated a keen, patient mind. It was a trait most would-be conquerors didn't share.

The guard had seen enough of the projects nearing completion on Sanctuary Island to know the Alchemist was about to make a big move, and the guard knew she didn't know anywhere near what she needed to if she was going to…

A strange whine materialized in the room, surprising the guard into dropping her book to the stone floor. Her pulse quickened as she tried in vain to identify the sound. The Storeroom was typically as silent as the grave, save for the slight hum of the glow-crystals that kept the room in a subdued light. There were no alarms to speak of, either.

She listened intently. The whine was growing louder and escalating in tone. It reminded her of a pinwheel her father made for her when she was a child, how it would spin in the breeze so fast that it gave off a high-pitched birdcall. It sounded like that – something spinning faster and faster. But there was no wind here, and nothing that could spin around in the wind.

Wondering if the Gods had heard her complain and had sent an extra-dumb criminal into the storeroom, she jumped off the stool and cautiously walked the rows of shelving, glancing about for the source of the whine. She drew her one weapon, a rusty dagger that any self-respecting warrior would have thrown in the forge. She hoped she wouldn't need it.

As the whine grew louder, she deduced that it was coming from the rear of the room, where there were spare shelves and empty space and almost no gems on display. It was possible someone was trying to break through the rear wall using one of the Alchemist's inventions, though that was the hard way to go, as there was a mountain on the other side of the wall. There were constructions devices designed to move large quantities of minerals, but they were kept under close supervision and…

As soon as she cleared the shelves and stood staring at the source of the enigmatic whine, she realized she had it all wrong. There was no criminal act in process here. She had dismissed the other purpose of the Storeroom – to store the one special trinket that stood out of place among the colored gems and stones surrounding it. The whine, and a now-noticeable puke-yellow glow, was emitting from it, the mysterious symbols adorning its sides caked with energy that intensified with each passing second.

The guard had never understood why this pArcticular artifact had been stored here until now. There were other rooms with other useless knick-knacks and museum pieces, failed experiments and wrecked prototypes from the Alchemist's workshop that she liked to keep around for sentimentality or as a reminder of past failures. But this object, which went by the name of T-Node, had been placed on a granite pedestal and treated like the most important object in the room. No thievery consequences for stealing this artifact – it was straight up death for anyone taking it without permission.

The guard had thought it a very personal piece of the Alchemist's history. It might still be. But it was also a very active piece of history, and it looked like it was about to…

The guard was treated to the twin assault of light and force, the hammer blow of a concussive sphere of yellow energy striking out from the artifact and plowing into everything in the room. She was shoved back down the row she had emerged from, a shower of gems and torn shelving accompanying her. She curled into the fetal position and covered her head with her hands as the shower, pelting her with stone and wood, the room going from neat-and-tidy to catastrophic mess in three heartbeats.

She saw little during the brief unnatural assault, and it stopped as quickly as it began. She lifted her head out from under her arms, feeling punched up a bit but with no serious pain. A cloud of dust now enveloped the room, obscuring most of the damage. Two sets of shelves had collapsed against each other instead of on her, leaving her covered in broken splinters, loose gems, and a fine layer of dust. She was free to move, and she quickly crawled out from under the leaning shelves in case they decided to collapse altogether.

Standing up, she resisted the impulse to pocket the loose gems sliding off her body. She then noticed that what she thought was a dust cloud shimmered more like steam. It felt humid all of a sudden, like a fog bank had been deposited in the storeroom. The whine was gone, and though she couldn't see the T-Node she figured that she would have seen the glow had it still been active. It was silent now, and that could only be a good thing.

She glanced about the room in astonishment. Completely wrecked, and on her watch. She cringed at the conversation she was about to have with the base lieutenant…

Someone was coughing.

Startled, she froze in place and listened carefully. It hadn't been her imagination. Back toward the T-Node, there was a human-sounding cough. In fact, it sounded like a pair of coughs. Maybe this really was a criminal act and someone had caused the T-Node to activate so to mask their thievery.

The guard searched for her dagger, but it had escaped her hand during the magic assault and was presumably buried in the rubble. No matter. She'd take care of these scoundrels mono-e-mono.

She crunched past the rubble as fast as she dared, slipping a couple of times on loose shelving that had grown wet from the indoor fog. In the thick blanket of mist, she had trouble picking out the would-be thieves until she was right on top of them. They were both on the ground, coughing and groaning like a pair of sickly plague victims. They must have gotten caught in the blast and were in a bad shape for it.

"That'll teach you to mess with ancient artifacts," said the guard, reaching down to hoist up the nearest thief for a closer inspection.

"A lesson I know very well already," came the reply from the "thief," coughing once as she got her feet under her.

The guard gasped and released the woman immediately. Even with her clothes drenched and torn, her leather harness burnt and smoking, and her face smudged with grime, there was no mistaking the strong, stern face of the Alchemist.

At a loss over this dramatic entrance, the guard simply stood and gaped. The Alchemist cleared her throat as she scanned the room, getting her bearings. The mist began to clear as it spread out through the room and into the hallway, and now the guard could see more of the Alchemist's harness and the three crystals built into it. All three were cracked and smoldering, as if they had burst from within. The guard didn't know gems could do that.

"Is this the Sanctuary Storeroom?" asked the Alchemist.

Still in shock, the guard managed to say yes. The Alchemist took this as good news as she proceeded to take off her ruined harness and survey the damage. "Quite the mess. Still, any landing you can walk away from, right?"

"What?" the guard asked dumbly.

"A phrase from a long time ago. Do you have a name, soldier?"

"Heather," said the guard. "I was stationed in this room when your T-Node… exploded."

"Tell me, has the Zenith arrived here yet?"

"The Zenith? The last I heard, it was with you."

"I'll take that as a no. Can you tell me the date?"

Heather told her, eliciting a grim nod from the Alchemist. "Three days. If the Zenith proceeds here at full speed, we should have another four days before it arrives. Now, what about Dark Star?"

"Your dragon? I haven't heard…"

"She will arrive soon." The Alchemist bent down, plucked up a ruby-like stone at her feet, and inspected it like a jeweler might inspect a stone for imperfections. Then she placed it against a vacant spot on her armband, as if measuring it for future insertion.

The echoes of running feet came to Heather's ears. It was about time that someone showed up. It wasn't like rooms exploded every day. Her attention then settled on the other figure sprawled on the ground, her features obscured by the slowly dispersing mist. She assumed the barely-moving figure was a she due to the blond ponytail showing through the steam, and she coughed on occasion so she was clearly alive…

Blond ponytail.

Heather's pulse, having finally slowed to a casual rate, found a reason to speed up again. It couldn't be her, could it?

Then the mist faded a little more, and Heather saw the girl's pretty face, and she felt a blast from her past take her in the gut, as disorienting as getting hit by a half-troll.

The Alchemist saw her reaction, though she must have misunderstood the reason for it, as she didn't ask any questions when she began to climb around the rubble, seeking the door. She did give out an order, which Heather barely heard above the pounding of her own heart.

"Take our guest to a room. A nice room, but not too nice. Make sure it is secure – our guest will not be happy when she wakes up. Keep her there until I say otherwise. For now, I have other matters to address. There's been a snag in my plans, but only a snag. We have time enough to prepare… and then continue."

Yes, To Be Continued…

Final Note: Yes, Astrid's alive. Shocking, right?

I originally intended to not even mention Astrid's survival (along with the Alchemist) until the beginning of The World Needs Champions, but I realized that I would be keeping my readers cruelly in the dark for a whole year after I Bring The Thunder. I couldn't do it. I like you guys too much.

See you again this summer.