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Camicazi was staying impressively collected considering the situation. Not calm– she was absolutely not calm by any definition of the word. But the fact she was managing to maintain a level head right now seriously deserved credit.
She was in an empty fortress on the charred island of the Danger-Brutes, all the way down on the basement floor. The windows were iron-barred squares that barely poked above the rocky ground outside, and yet, from the inside, they were pressed up against the ceiling, barely allowing stormy gray daylight to pour in from fifteen feet up. The wet wind sang sorrowfully through them like the bay of mourning wolves, somehow all around them and far away at the same time. The walls and floor were cobblestone bricks, cracked and slimed with moss and mildew, and iron shackles hung from the walls in a harrowing display of its history.
It would be a disturbing place to be trapped in alone.
But she wasn't trapped.
And she wasn't alone.
Swords clashed together in quick, blurry succession, erratic swipes and swings, the sound of metal on metal echoing through the empty dungeon as Camicazi fought the last person in the world she wanted to be up against.
"Hiccup!!" She shouted, her mouth twisted into a snarling grin. "I know you're still in there, you stupid boy!!"
The stupid boy in question did not answer her; at least, not in any coherent way. His skin was waxy white and tinged with green– a dark, forest green infection that had spread slowly but surely from the wound on his left bicep, where a single dragon tooth had been buried beneath the flesh. The color of the open wound was so dark now that it was almost black in the dimness of their surroundings.
This was only supposed to be one short rest stop in a series of short rest stops as the companions of the Dragonmark slowly but surely made their way across the archipelago toward the Island of Tomorrow. But they ran into a bit of a hitch.
The abandoned Danger-Brute fortress had been cold and silent, claiming to offer nothing but eerie wind and swinging cobwebs as the companions scoured the place for food and other supplies. But although the place was bereft of all human life, the same couldn't be said for dragons. Something bit Hiccup while he was exploring the kitchens alone. A species that even he did not recognize.
It left a tooth behind for its troubles, something thick and sharp that hurt to touch and was too serrated to chance ripping out just yet– not without the proper tools– otherwise they'd make it worse.
Hiccup said it didn't matter. He wouldn't be any worse off with a thorn in his arm.
And then he started to get sick.
Really sick.
Of course, Hiccup insisted he was fine. This didn't surprise Camicazi– the boy had always been good at hiding his suffering. He never quite forgave himself for dragging his friends into this mess to begin with, so there was a stoicism to how he carried his own burdens and insisted on carrying those of his friends as well.
Still, Camicazi and Fishlegs had tried to take care of him in spite of this, watching him toss and turn in his bedroll, getting paler and paler until he looked like porcelain in the moonlight. But they weren't healers, and Hiccup was not a cooperative patient.
"I'll be alright." He insisted, his voice raspy and strained. "I've had worse. Give it until morning, I'll pull through."
Morning come, his bedroll was empty altogether. He must have staggered off in the night, out of his right mind, losing himself within the twisting passages of the prison. Camicazi, Fishlegs, and the dragons had all split up to find him.
Well… Camicazi found him.
The effects of the infection were… not ideal. Green-black poison climbed up his arm both ways– up his neck in veiny branches, and down to his fingers like charcoaled trees, the will of the venom overriding his own and commanding his sword arm as though it didn't belong to him. His eyes were unfocused, glassy and clouded– expression twisted into something unrecognizable until he was merely a stranger in her best friend's likeness.
He was backing her into the corner of the room, his swings slamming into her sword like the hurls of a mallet, all of Hiccup's waning strength powering every blow. Camicazi deflected each one with a loud curse word, ending off with the ferocious shove of her own blade that caused Hiccup to stumble– but only barely, giving her just enough time to cartwheel to the side before he could swing again and cut open her stomach.
"You missed, Hiccup my boy!!" Camicazi shouted tauntingly, thrusting her sword to meet his as he did a mad turn to lash out again. "You're getting sloppy!!"
His expression twisted into something furious, his teeth grit in a savage snarl. The look was unnatural, uncanny– it did not belong on the face of her kind, compassionate friend.
You're going to be okay, Hiccup. She reassured him in her head. It was more for herself than anything. I'm going to save you, don't you worry.
Camicazi did a backflip to avoid the perfect arc of his swing, ever mindful of his terrifying gift for swordfighting. There was no doubting that Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third was a master of the art.
But Camicazi knew something that Hiccup was too delirious to remember. No other person in the entire Barbaric Archipelago matched Hiccup's sheer talent for the art of swordfighting…
...except for Camicazi.
Like a whirlwind she met his every strike with practiced speed. She twirled and flipped and bounded as she evaded, evaded, evaded, her reaction time outstanding and her agility a marvel to behold. Hiccup was graceful in his own right, calculated and precise– a terrifying foe, even while poisoned. (Especially while poisoned.) She and Hiccup sparred together all the time, but they usually both held back at least a little bit to avoid injury. Poisoned and injured and wild, Hiccup fought with every ounce of his strength, meeting Camicazi in the middle with a panicked urgency and the full intent to kill.
Unstoppable force meets immovable object. Sun and moon, night and day, fire and water, yin and yang. Step by step by step, in circles around the prison, reflections of each other in perfect tandem. It was a pas de deux, a contemporary ballet for just the two of them.
Now, Camicazi had danced with Hiccup before. In the first few days following the escape from Prison Darkheart, the companions had all found themselves in a sad, mourning silence, hiding in a cave just off the cliffs of the Peaceable countries. So Fishlegs picked up a few sticks and started tapping out a tune, singing something uplifting, something he came up with all on his own. The song picked up in liveliness as the dragons joined in with the tapping and humming, and it was so catchy that Camicazi found herself standing up and joining in with the taps of her feet. She twirled and hopped and showed off everything she learned from the Bog-Burglars, bringing smiles and laughs to her friends' faces. But when Hiccup's smile still hadn't quite reached his eyes, she reached down to where he sat on the floor, yanked him to his feet, and spun him along with her until he was laughing hysterically, harder than the poor boy had in years.
It wasn't a good dance, by any stretch of the means. Hiccup didn't know any of her moves, and she didn't know any of his, so the way they came together was clumsy and improvised. (After all, he danced like a Hooligan and she danced like a Bog-Burglar, and those two styles were quite nothing alike.) She remembered wondering, as they stepped on each other's toes, how such conflicting styles could come together at all.
But here in the prison, illuminated by the spotlights of the gray, rainy windows, it came to her. A perfect back and forth, spinning and wheeling and twisting– with a bit of a murder-y flair thrown in, of course, but that too felt appropriate. They danced with the empty prison as their stage and the clanging of blade on blade their only music. They danced for no audience, to no applause but the howling wind outside.
A dance of swords.
Camicazi dodged Hiccup's forward thrust with a veer to the left and a duck inward. For just a split second, it left him wide open and she could have run him through. She didn't.
He's getting reckless, she thought as the moment ended and Hiccup responded with another sharp blow, gritting her teeth and blocking, blocking, blocking. If there was one thing Camicazi learned in her years of swordfighting– it was that recklessness usually meant her opponent was starting to get tired, starting to get desperate. The moment Hiccup slipped again, Camicazi would have her chance to act. She just had to hold out longer than him. She needed a plan.
And then, as though Freyja were looking out for her, Camicazi felt her feet bump into a pile of chains on the ground.
Bingo.
"Impressive moves, Hiccup– for a boy of course–" Camicazi called to him, ducking his blade to give a flourish of her own. "But it's time you follow my lead!"
Hiccup swung again, and this time, when she deflected, she kicked out at him, slamming her foot into his chest and throwing him back about half a foot. As he quickly recovered, Camicazi did probably the stupidest thing she'd ever done in a swordfight. She threw away her sword.
It was a tactical move, crazy and stupid as it was. She threw it end upon end, and it sailed at her friend like a head-lopping boomerang; something he deflected with a wide arc of his blade, flinging her sword away to sink nearly a foot deep into a wooden crate on the other side of the prison. In his distraction, she snatched the end of the heavy chain right off the ground, gripping it with both hands.
If he was in his right mind, Hiccup might have seen what Camicazi was up to and attempted to dodge when he had the chance. Luckily for Camicazi, though, his self-awareness seemed only to reach as far as his arm could swing.
Hiccup tried to come in again and this time when Camicazi swerved to the side– his sword missing her face by inches and slicing off a bit of her hair– she reached out and snatched his left wrist up in her chain, wrapping it tight. She rolled behind him and threw the chain over his head, snatching him into a headlock.
The sharp yank of the chain caused his sword to fly out of his hand and clatter to the ground several meters away. Excellent, Camicazi thought, slightly hysterically. That makes things about fifty times easier.
As Hiccup grabbed at the chain around his neck with his one free arm, Camicazi leapt up onto his back as though she were scaling a cliffside and hopped over his shoulder, snatching his right wrist into the chain as well and effectively trapping his two hands together, wrist to wrist, binding them tight.
Camicazi landed several feet in front of him, pulling his trapped hands with her. For just a moment they lingered like that; a game of tug-of-war between children, leaning away from each other, supported by each other's weight.
Eventually Hiccup reacted, his eyes wide and wild, yanking back with all his strength and wrenching Camicazi forward. Camicazi rode the momentum and jumped up, launching off his bent knee and then over his shoulder, vaulting over him entirely with a flourish that would have her mother shedding a tear of pride.
She landed behind him and kicked him square in the back, so that he fell forward to the ground.
And just like that, the dance was over.
There was no applause. Only the weak struggles and panicked breaths of Hiccup and the deep panting of Camicazi as she tried to catch her breath. Bravo, the empty prison did not say. What an encore.
Camicazi knelt beside Hiccup, looking into his exhausted face as he tried to look around, barely coherent. Perhaps if he had any more strength in him he'd get up and keep fighting– it was only his hands she'd restrained and Hiccup had done much more impressive feats in more binds than this. It was one of the things she admired about him so much.
But Hiccup was also dying of dragon poison right now, so Camicazi could let it slide just this once.
She brushed his dirty hair away from his face, and he tried to focus on her with his tired blue eyes.
"Hey." She greeted him, softly. "Can you hear me?"
He didn't make any indication that he could. His pallor was horrible and the dark branches of poison under his skin were vivid enough to make even her queasy.
His inflicted arm was bruised and dark and bloody around that damn tooth. They hadn't wanted to tear it out without proper medical supplies, but it looked like they were going to have to improvise. It would kill him if she left it any longer.
"Sorry, Hiccup." Camicazi murmured, flicking open one of her pocket knives. She tried to ignore how Hiccup closed his eyes and looked away. "This is going to hurt."