The Offspring of Lightning and Death
Stoick couldn’t sleep. The howling wind kept him awake; clearly the Wild Hunt was in full swing tonight. An eerie shriek had him flinching reflexively, hand reaching out to grab his war-hammer. No sound of an explosion followed. He dragged a hand over his face; it was just the wind, not - not one of them.
Then, as the wind briefly died down, he heard another noise; sniffling and rustling. Apparently he wasn’t the only one awake. I should check on the lad, he thought. Stoick got to his feet and trudged up the steps to his sons room. “Hiccup?” he called through the door, knocking on it, then pushing it open.
He peered inside just in time to see Hiccup dive under the cover and curl up. Stoick walked over, leaned down, and gave the lump in the bed a poke. It squeaked. “That’s odd. My son should be sleeping in this bed, not some mice” he remarked, before declaring “I guess I’ll have to put them back outside.”
“I’m not mice!” the seven year old protested, scrambling out from under the furs. “Please don’t put me outside, I’m not...um, hi dad” he mumbled, blushing.
Seeing his sons eyes were red, Stoick frowned and asked, “Have you been crying?” Hiccup quickly wiped his eyes. “Had a bad dream?” Stoick guessed. A pause, the little boy not meeting his eyes, and finally a timid nod. “Dreams can’t hurt you, Hiccup. There’s nothing to cry about” Stoick told him firmly.
It was meant to be reassuring, but Hiccup didn’t quite see it that way. “You were gone” he blurted out. “The - the dragons came, and there was a Night Fury, a-and it shrieked and then...and then it was all dark, and I couldn’t find you...” Hiccup tried not to cry, but when the wind shrieked again, he flinched.
“Hush, now. It’s just the wind, son” his father insisted, “and I’m not going anywhere. There’s not a dragon in the archipelago that can get the best of your old man, not even a Night Fury. So don’t you worry” he said confidently.
Hiccup felt a little better. “Dad? What do Night Furies look like?” he asked.
With a sigh, Stoick admitted “nobody knows. Well, nobody on Berk. We’ve never managed to shoot one down. Wily devils, they are; the offspring of lightning and death itself. Some folks say they’re made of shadow itself.”
“Oooh. Wait, how can lightning and death have baby dragons?”
“Oh, no. You should be going back to sleep, and so should I, not telling you stories.” Hiccup pouted until his father relented, and warned “but don’t blame me if it scares you and you can’t sleep, alright? Good. So, first of all, Odin and the other Aesir made us humans, but do you remember who made dragons?”
“Loki made them” replied Hiccup, “from the scales of...of Jor-man-gunder.”
“Eh, close enough. Yes, the trickster god Loki made dragons from the shed scales and fangs of the world serpent Jormungandr. He made all of them but one before he was found out, but his daughter Hel promised to make the last. So she took scales from the world serpent, but everything Hell touches withers, and the scales did too. They turned as black as a shadow” Stoick revealed.
The little boys eyes were wide and round. “Then what did she do?”
“Hel saw the scales were useless now, and she couldn’t bring dragons to life from them. Yet she’d made a promise, so she placed the scales on top of the highest mountain in her realm, and sent a messenger to Thor in Asgard. Her message to him was, ‘you cannot strike this mountain here in my realm’.”
“Of course, the mighty god Thor had to meet this challenge, so he hurled lightning down from Asgard. It couldn’t hit the mountain in Hel, because Midgard was in the way. So he came down to Midgard and tried again, but his lightning still wouldn’t strike the mountain. Finally, Thor came all the way down into Hel’s realm, and struck the mountaintop with Mjolnir, full of righteous fury.”
“The lightning struck those black scales, and new dragons burst forth from them, dark as night and furious as a storm. Hel caught two of them to pull her chariot. She named them Leiptr and Dauthi - lightning and death. Thor caught one of them, and now it flies with the Wild Hunt, chasing doomed souls. The rest escaped into Midgard, and they’ve been here ever since” Stoick finished.
If Hiccup’s eyes got any bigger, they’d fall out of his head. “Night Furies are scary” he remarked. Well, so was any dragon, but especially those ones.
Stoick ruffled his son’s hair. “Ah, well, no Night Fury is gonna get you, so go to sleep. Goodnight, Hiccup.” He waited until the little boy mumbled a goodnight in return, then he trudged back down the stairs and into his bedroom again.
/
Years passed, and Hiccup didn’t think about this story...until one day, as he watched Toothless happily bounding after a spot of light, it occurred to him...
“I suppose the unholy offspring of lightning and death isn’t so scary after all.”
