Chapter Text
The Traveler wakes up to a fin draped over them like a blanket. They have to being in their panic before they remember the events from yesterday and glance up to see Toothless, still sound asleep and nearly suffocating Hiccup. Paimon is asleep on top of the dragon, and the dragon is asleep on top of Hiccup. The Traveler is surprised that Hiccup is currently not suffocating. He seems to be just fine and is snoring lightly. The dragon seems to have taken to Venti well, and he's currently being used as a pillow.
Evidently, Venti had woken up before The Traveler and is looking towards them, practically calling for help. They wave goodbye to a slightly perturbed Venti before climbing out of the tent to cook an early breakfast for one Paimon, six hungry vikings and their Dragons. Luckily, they happen to have a couple apples in their bag that will satisfy the God of freedom when he eventually escapes from his prison of scales and sympathy. Too bad Dvalin didn't want to destroy the camp, Venti could have had a bigger blanket.
The tents look more like a canopy over each of the dragons and their riders, Astrid is already awake with the sunrise, leaning against her dragon and sharpening her axe. As The Traveler walks towards the pot and fire, they feel her gaze follow. They looks back at Venti to see a lazy middle finger stuck out in their direction and chuckle before they start making a bunch of sweet madames and some sticky honey roast.
After a while, the distant sound of stone against metal stops and is replaced by boot (or sock, as the Vikings had called them) against pine needles. Astrid is behind them with her own bag, pulling out some dried fish wrapped in cloth. The Traveler invites her by the fireside to cook a meal, glad for the company.
Hiccup and Venti come out next, followed by a tired Paimon. Amber had told The Traveler earlier that upon the Vikings asking why Paimon floated, she had no idea and wanted to know why herself. The Traveler had nothing to tell her either.
This train of thought is interrupted by Venti playfully smacking The Traveler on the shoulder for leaving him behind. After sacrificing about three apples to the god, he helps them make breakfast by bringing in some fresh boar meat from a straggler from wolvendom. The Traveler thinks that that is a lie, and so do Hiccup and Astrid by the looks they give him, but they all leave it be.
Fishlegs comes out next and starts on his first breakfast. The group of people who had gathered together finally make enough portions for everyone, although Traveler thinks they will definitely have to find a way for these guys to get their own food. Looks like a trip to the adventurers guild is in order, then. Maybe one at a time, though. Their main weapon seems to be their dragons, which means having six different dragons storming through the gates of Mondstadt would not be a good idea. especially since a lot of Mondstadt's problems have, in fact, been dragon related.
Huh, wait until these guys find out about Durin. The Traveler thinks.
After breakfast, the ground shakes. Everyone looks up to see Dvalin carefully making his way through the already destroyed pillars of old Mond before making it close enough to acknowledge the vikings and Venti.
“Bar-” He pauses, Trying to find the right name to address Venti with a bunch of mortals. “Venti. You called?” All the Vikings look at Venti, who just lets out his signature giggle and winks.
“That I did, Dvalin. You’re curious about humans, but a lot of them run away in fright, right? Now's your time to interact with humans who won't run away from you! They even like making friends with dragons,” Venti gestures wildly towards the friendly Vikings.
“I'm friends with you and the traveler,” Dvalin points out. Venti shakes his head.
“That's not the same and you know it, you're lonely. Make some friends,” he crosses his arms, making this fight look more and more like a parent pushing their kid to play with the other kids their age at a playground. The vikings also look back and forth between the two. The twins are amused as they look at the dragon being scolded like a little kid.
Dvalin sighs. “Fine,” Venti beams.
“Okay, but first I would like to figure out how these guys are going to earn their own mora because I don’t think I can afford to support these many people. I already struggle with Paimon,” The Traveler interrupts. Paimon lets out an indignant shout in the background.
“Is Mora the currency here?” Hiccup asks.
“Yeah, Mora is the currency they use here. Either that or you can hunt for your food, but you might still need mora anyways for other things, like weapons or clothes. So I would like to get you guys set up with some sort of jobs,” The Traveler replies. Paimon nods.
“If you want to stay here a while, It would be smart to find a way to live, especially because a lot of places here are inhabited, even if it’s by monsters. It would be smart to carry around a weapon, too! Just so that if you do run into any monsters, you don’t need your dragons to defend yourself,” Paimon adds. “If you want, we can split the group up again and find you jobs in the city, but if you plan on finding out more about this place, you can try coming with us when we go to get our commissions for the day so that you can join the adventurers guild,”
“Heh, sorry, we don’t do work,” Ruffnut says. Hiccup rolls his eyes.
“Don’t listen to them. Me, Fishlegs and Snotlout can go with you to the city for the first round. Astrid and the twins are in charge of finding food for our dragons. Is there anywhere that we can get a bunch of fish?”
“You can get lots of fish from the lakes, and we can also fly to the ocean, where there should be a lot of fish,” Venti informs. Hiccup nods.
“Alright, Gang, let's split up and get things done!” Hiccup mentions to the rest of the group and sets off.
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Astrid didn't feel like reminding Hiccup that it was his turn with the twins when he had mentioned splitting up again. But maybe she should have anyway.
The twins don't really like being separated. Whenever the group tries different group set ups, they always end up griping and end up not doing any work. When they're working with the dragons, it just makes sense to keep them together sense they man one dragon, even if it is one with two heads.
That left Snotlout, Hiccup, Fishlegs, and Astrid as possible choices for the third person in an evenly split party. While groups with Fishlegs and Snotlout did occasionally turn out fruitful, the twins had a habit of pushing Fishlegs until he broke and convincing Snotlout to help them in their schemes. So, Hiccup and Astrid often switch between the roles, mostly because Astrid gets tired of either group after a certain amount of time.
While Snotlout is annoying, Astrid can find the twins childish on occasion, especially when they're on a new island with new people they might not be able to trust and they don't seem to be worried. Needless to say, she's a little annoyed.
She takes a deep breath. No use complaining now. She just has to make sure she can keep it together. They may be annoying but they are still her friends, and she doesn't want to yell at them and end up causing more trouble on an island where they might get in trouble.
She takes another deep breath and uses the opportunity of the twins being distracted by feeding and playing with the dragons to organize her thoughts on this new island.
First off, everything is odd. The island is huge, the big blue dragon talks, and they're not sure if the dragon is a circumstantially tamed dragon, so they don't know how he and Venti met or became close. There haven't been any other dragons around, but she did hear a lot of howling around Wolvendom. That is to be expected, however. It's literally named after Wolves.
The vision thing is also odd. There is nothing like that in the rest of the world. They said something about it being granted to them by the gods. She might have to investigate that later.
She takes out the mini book she has in her pocket, and a charcoal stick. The book had been a present from Hiccup, a way to keep things she got mad about or wanted to talk to him about later. It's already halfway full, but she pulls out the bookmark and writes, “the twins” at the top of a new page. Under it, she notes down other things in bullet points.
Visions- gods? Abilities? Ambitions? Recognition?
Dvalin- Venti? C.trained? Stronterror attacks? (Flies low to the ground, original measurement of size was off due to assumptions)
Traveler and Paimon- Weird? Unsure. Attention on twins. Unknown reason. Paimon is small but floats? Unknown abilities. Traveler's name?
Diluc- cautious of dragons. Unknown reason. Fire abilities
Jean- Klee? Daughter? Albedo? Wind abilities
Amber- interested in stories. Fire abilities
Mondstadt- big statue near knight building. God? Also big buildings but not many people.
Venti- may be too young for Bard work. Friends with Dvalin. Weird in general. Wind abilities.
She notices the twins walking up to her, fed and played-with dragons in tow. She puts away the book for now.
“So, everyone is fed and everything. What now?” Tuffnut asks. Ruffnut nods. Astrid leads them back to camp to wait for the others. The twins seem tired when they make it back to camp, but she still gets them to be sort of productive by hunting for food for themselves.
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Now that Hiccup thinks about it, it was his turn with the twins. He just hopes that Astrid's patience limit hasn't been reached.
He had managed to tell the traveler about a little bit of the dragon's abilities. Surprisingly, they had .managed to deduce a lot of them by just observing the dragons themselves. The one they were most confused about was Barf and Belch. But they were able to find out that Meatlug was good at digging and heavy lifting, even if a little slow. Hookfang, Toothless, and Stormfly are all swift at flying, and good at attacks. Hiccup still made sure to keep some details a secret, just in case. It can never hurt to be too careful.
When they got to the city, the Traveler immediately turned towards an odd stand, near enough to the blacksmith that Hiccup could hear the hammer against metal. Maybe he could work there? He always got more inventive with his designs and handywork, but it would probably come in handy to know a blacksmith to go to when something needed to be prepared.
After the Traveler talked to Katherine, they introduced Fishlegs, Snotlout, and Hiccup to her. Eventually, they were signed up for the adventurers guild and earned their first commissions. The Traveler offered to help them with them and helped them start navigating to the first one.
First off, the trading routes needed clearing out and cleaning. With so many knights of Favonius gone (Hiccup wanted to ask about that, but deemed that a later task) getting the roads back together was hard to accomplish and was still taking a while. So, merchants has instead commissioned the adventurers guild and their adventures had slowly but surely been restoring the route. Katherine had decided to give all of them tasks relating to this area. Traveler's was clearing out the monsters while everyone else had stuff relating to cleanup. They had done some trading of tasks so that Snotlout can handle any crates that has been damaged beyond repair, Hiccup had the responsibility of clearing any unwanted foliage and Fishlegs is supposed to clean up the rocky roads by filling potholes with dirt and talking out any rocks. According to Katheryne, they're supposed to do it by section.
When they finally arrive, they all hide behind some bushes to stalk the monsters clogging the path. Everyone turns towards The Traveler, only to find that they had already disappeared and were on their way fighting the monsters.
Snotlout was about to go help before they caught sight of the way they were fighting.
The Traveler has thrown a small tornado towards the little ones, which they were all getting sucked into. The two big ones with an axe and a shield charged towards them, which they counteracted with water. Their sword slices through the shield and the axes handle before they hit them both with a rock that they had summoned from thin air. The group stares once the racket has stopped. Hadn't Amber said you need a vision to use the elements like that?
The Traveler is still looking around. The Vikings start to try and catch up before they motion for everyone to stop. They seem to have found their target, a moving ball of what seems to be slime is trapped in a tub of water. They quickly slice it down before they start using their sword to dismantle the parts of the monster camp.
Hiccup is still uneasy. The Hilichurls seem to be an intelligent race, maybe there's more to them than being monsters? They weren't aggressive with each other, and they only started attacking when The traveler did. Although, they didn't even seem to notice them at first.
He'll give this some more thought before bringing it up with any of their hosts.
They finish with their commissions before they head back to camp. It had taken longer than expected, but now that they know what is expected, they might be able to bring their dragons into the commissions next time.
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By the time everyone gets back to camp, Astrid is ready to switch. Snotlout and Fishlegs are a duo that can be trusted together most of the time, so they split again with Hiccup accompanying the newer group.
It's almost sunset by the time they finish their commissions, but Hiccup had been able to speak to Wagner, the blacksmith, while Astrid had taken on a commission from a girl named Noele for training lessons. The Traveler has apparently known this person and decided to watch. Astrid came back in a better mood with a new weapon on her shoulders.
The adventurers guild had managed to get some easy commissions, which involved gathering and delivering herbs to various different bards. The Traveler, however, had ended up with their last commission being somewhere in dragonspine so they brought the vikings back to camp before disappearing to complete it. Something about needing to rescue a group of adventurers.
With Venti and Dvalin out, and the Traveler busy with their own things, everyone finally has time to talk amongst themselves about the last few days.