Broken Prophecy: How to Train Your Dragon

THE BROKEN PROPHECY Chapter 8

This is a fanfic and I make no money from this. Original copyrights belong to Dreamworks and Cresedia Cowell

Chapter 8

Hiccup slowly stirs, moving his head brings a sharp pain and dull throb that nearly makes him pass out again. Slowly opening one eye than another, he finds himself in a strange cave. The air is musty and stale, no scent of sea or fish comes to his nose.  Instead a dry, leathery scent becomes more noticeable. The scent is old, but fresh scents leak through a heavy wooden wall. The piercing pain in his head makes walking difficult without stumbling into a wall or what appears to be an empty food trough, and it feels like forever before he reaches the great wooden structure.  A large heavy door, through which a single ray of sunlight shines through a gap in the planks. Pressing his eye against the gap he can just make out a line of teens; Astrid, Fishlegs, Snotlout, Ruffnut and Tuffnut with Gobber pacing back and forth. With a shock, Hiccup realizes he is in the arena, the 'kill pit' and he is about to become part of dragon training.

"Behind these doors, are just a few of dragons you'll be learnin' to fight." Gobber shouts as he walks past the first door. "The Deadly Nadder! Hideous Zippleback! The Monstrous Nightmare! The Terrible Terror!" With each dragon, the largest teen excitedly rambles off some number or statistic of the beast. "Will you stop that!!" Gobber shouts at the over excited blond. Taking a moment to recompose himself, "And the Gronckle!"

As Gobber reaches for the lever next to Hiccups door, he hears his cousin Snotlout shout in a worried tone, "Wait, aren't you going to teach us first?"

"I believe in learnin' on the job." With that, the cell next to his opens, letting a lumpy brown dragon into the area with the teens. "Today is about survival. You get blasted, your dead. What is the first thing you need?"

"Plus 5 speed?" calls Fishlegs.

"A doctor?!" cries a frantic Snotlout.

"This is so cool!" call out the over-excited twins, as they charge forward like a pair of pumped-up rodeo clowns.

"A shield!" Astrid calls out.

"Shields! Go!" Gobber shouts. "Your most important piece of equipment is your shield. If you have to choose between a sword and a shield, always choose the shield."

Hiccup watches in rapt fascination as the teens are each whittled down, one at a time by the enraged Gronckle. In the end, Astrid is the last one standing. Her shield charred, but still whole as she stands panting heavily, trying to catch her breath.

Gobber manages to catch the angry brown dragon, and returns it to its pen, "In you go! Go back ta' bed ya' overgrown sausage! You'll get another chance, don' you worry."

Moving away from the gate, Hiccup takes stock of his situation. 'I'm in the arena, no one knows it's me. Dad is going to kill me, and mount my head in the great hall, I just know it.' The smiling face of Tannlaus flashes in his mind's eye, only to be replaced by the hurt and raging version that left him behind. His words, 'I HATE YOU', echoes inside her mind. Those three words bring the former Viking more pain than any number of axes to the head ever could. Curling up into as tight a ball as she can, Kari can't hold back her feelings, and tears from fear, disappointment, and worst of all loneliness overwhelms the youth as the young Night Fury cries.

A voice calls out, gruff but undeniably feminine, "Hello? It's alright young-one, no need to cry. These hatchlings play rough, but aren't really dangerous yet. So there is reason to be afraid. What's your name?"

Looking down the body he inhabits, Hiccup takes a deep breath, realizing this form has become less and less alien during his short time in it. "A friend called me Kari."

A second feminine voice chimes in, a little further away but still close enough to speak without drawing unwanted attention, "Does this 'friend' have a name?"

The first voice calls back, "Now that isn't very polite... We should introduce ourselves. My name is Gypsum, I'm a Stone-biter. The impatient one is Azurestorm, she's a Thorntail. In the cell next over is the Twin-soul, Mita and Vomi, "Hello!" calls a pair of voices in perfect synchronicity. The last cell is the Flametongue, Volcus. And you are called Kari?"

"What about me?" Squeeks a small voice from somewhere near Kari's rear foot.

"I was wondering where you slipped off to," Gypsum says with humor. "That's Swift, he's a Wyrmling. He's managed to find cracks in the walls that he can squeeze through, so he doesn't stay in his cell very often."

Kari turns, trying to find the dragon in her cell, but freezes when two sets of small feet land on her back and scurry to the top of her head.  Huge luminescent yellow eyes, set in a tiny head leans down into her field of view. "Hi!" happily squeaks the voice. The Wyrmling, she discovers is a light green Terrible Terror. He flutters his leaf brown wings a moment to keep his balance. "Your pretty." The tiny dragon's bluntness surprises Kari into further silence. "You're a Shadewing, aren't you?"

"I am." she says simply.

This brings a laugh from Azurestorm. "A Shadewing? We all know there is only one Shadewing. And you don't sound like Tannlaus."

A deep gruff voice laughs, "Shows what you know, Thorntail. You were probably preening too much to notice when they brought her in. She's a Shadewing alright."

"Be nice Volcus, there is no need to be rude." chides Gypsum. "I saw the two-legs drag her in, myself, Azure."

"Yes mother!" Volcus taunts back.

"Mother indeed! My first hatchlings are old enough to be your grand parents." the older dragon teases.

Kari closes her eyes, a dull throbbing in her skull grows harder to ignore. When she opens her eyes again, the sun has already dipped below the horizon and Gobber has just finished filling the food trough with scrap meat and fish parts.

"Oh good! You're awake. Beginin' to worry Astrid might have done you some permanent harm". The blacksmith turns to look the dragon directly in her amethyst eyes. "I usually have more respect for you beasties than most, but... but you took a young man I thought of as a son from me. Now it's MY turn to cause YOU some pain." With that, Gobber sends his beefy fist to land squarely between the ebon dragon's eyes. Again and again his blows land, surprising the dragon.

"Gobber?! No, It's me!... It's Hiccup!... Please... Stop!" she cries, but the enraged blacksmith hears only the dragons cries of pain and alarm. Never once, during the rain of blows, does she do anything to fight back, stunned into inaction by the sudden violence and rage directed against her, and for a long agonizing moment Kari becomes worried that her former mentor plans to beat her to death with his bare hand. The sun finally slips below the horizon, casting the arena into darkness, eventually bringing the violence to a stop. The smith closes the gate and locks it, leaving Kari alone with her new cuts and bruises. The shock of the abuse at the hands of a man she had thought of as a second father slowly fades, but some fragments of her former self bubbles to the surface. Years of being called useless, and the constant disappointment in the eyes of every villager returns full force crushing what few happy accomplishments the young dragon had managed. 'Maybe this is what I deserve... First Tannlaus leaves, now Gobber... I don't think anything worse could happen'. Despite the grumbling in her belly, she ignores the food left in the trough, and curls up upon herself. The only thing that helps her find any sleep is Tannlaus song.