Chapter Text
Despite what Hiccup Haddock’s impressively short stature would lead you to believe, he had an impressive set of lungs on him.
“Ah, hello, Jack,” Valka greeted him, her smile fraying at the edges with the sound of her family arguing in the background. A particularly loud yell from Hiccup had her fingers tightening around the doorknob.
Jack slowly peered around her shoulder, wincing as a thunderous boom shook the house as Stoick let out another cry in response. What were they even arguing about this time?
“Is, uh… now a bad time?” he asked Valka.
“On the contrary.” She glanced back, letting out a sigh as she did so. “Hiccup might bite his father’s head off at this rate.”
“Yeah, sounds like it. I’ll just-” Jack squeezed past her and entered their house. He was about to ask what the fight was about, but then figured he’d ask Hiccup later and just get him out of there as soon as possible.
When Jack entered the foyer, Valka not far behind him, Jack winced as he spotted the father and son duo shouting at each other. Stoick towered over Hiccup, a snarl etched on his face, but Hiccup attempted to rise to his height. On his tiptoes.
… If he was trying to be intimidating, it wasn’t working very well.
“I don’t think this is an unreasonable request!” Stoick bellowed, hands on his hips. “I’m not pushing you to do sports, or putting you on a curfew. I just want you to put a little more effort into your schooling.”
“That’s the problem! Have you even been listening to me?!” Hiccup cried. “It’s what you want, what you think is best for me. What if I don’t want to go to a university on the other side of the country!?”
Stoick balked, reeling backward. “Why wouldn’t you?” he said with an appalled scoff. “Going to a prestigious school will give you whatever opportunity you could ask for.”
Jack cleared his throat and let out an, “Uhh…” in an attempt to announce his presence.
Stoick shook his head. “Even if you wanted to pursue your… art or something like that, it would still give you a better opportunity. Only if you put in more effort at school.”
“I’m putting in plenty of effort!” Hiccup shouted, rolling his eyes and throwing his hands in the air. “I’m on the honor roll, Dad! What more could you want from me!?”
Valka attempted to cough and cut into the conversation this time, but they ignored her, too.
“Maybe more extracurriculars to start! That little game club of yours isn’t going to look good on any entrance letters.”
“I’m in freshman year!”
“All the more reason to start thinking ahead!”
Valka coughed louder, and the two of them whirled around to face her, barking out a simultaneous, “What?” Jack could clearly see the resemblance, though he was smart enough to never point it out.
“We have company,” Valka said with a sickly sweet smile as Hiccup and Stoick finally noticed Jack’s presence. “Would you please act like civilized people for two seconds?”
Giving a little wave and an awkward grin, Jack tried not to fidget under Stoick’s stare. Oh, he was plenty aware Stoick wasn’t fond of him, even if Stoick tried to hide it.
“Oh, gods, uhh,” Hiccup sputtered, head turning from both Stoick to Jack with wide eyes. “Sorry, Jack. Uhh. Forgot you were coming.”
“It’s fine,” Jack promised quickly, hoping to get this entire interaction done as quickly as possible. “No harm done. So… Ready to go?”
Hiccup nodded and quickly grabbed his discarded backpack. When he ran past Stoick, his father laid a hand on Hiccup’s shoulder.
“I don’t want to part on bad terms,” Stoick pleaded.
Jack felt like he shouldn’t be witnessing this. He sidestepped closer to the door, awkwardly looking at his shoes and how marvellously polished the floor was.
Hiccup’s face tensed before he let out a sigh. All the anger in his stance dissipated. “I’m staying the night at Jack’s,” he said, which was news to Jack. “I’ll… see you later, dad.”
Stoick nodded, before his hand fell away. Hiccup murmured a goodbye to his mother as he basically ran out the door, Jack hot on his heels.
As they walked down the streets further from the neighbourhood and away from town, Jack pursed his lips. Hiccup’s face was tense and his nose scrunched, the way it always did when he had a lot on his mind.
“So… Sleepover, huh?” he said in an effort to break the silence.
Red bloomed on Hiccup’s face. “Sorry, I just… really needed to get out of that house before I got grounded.”
“Well, you know I’ll never say no to you staying over.” Jack smirked despite himself. “Emily loves it when you visit.”
“Oh, not you?” Hiccup joked, raising a brow.
Jack’s stomach did a strange jolt and he quickly turned his focus on sidewalk, kicking a rock away with his foot. If he focussed, then he could ignore the nausea rising up his throat.
“Pssh, nah, I loath every single time we enter each other’s presence. I would rather drive a steak into my heart than bother putting up with you,” he boasted with a drawl, laying a hand over his chest. A moment later he realized that he’d definitely been spending too much time with Hiccup if his dry sense of humor was rubbing off on him.
“Oh, so you’re a vampire?” Hiccup snorted, turning the corner that led towards the coastline. Jack was glad Hiccup was leading; In his effort to focus on literally anything else other than the fluttery feeling in his stomach, he hadn’t exactly been paying attention to where they’d been going. “No wonder you’re so pale.”
Jack laughed. Hiccup shared his laugh with him, before his eyes dropped to the ground, kicking a stone closer to the cliff face they were walking towards. “Sorry about springing the sleepover on you. Wasn’t really thinking.”
“I just said I don’t mind.”
Hiccup pursed his lips, before asking hesitantly, “It it cool if we go to the coast? I know your feelings on the water, but I just… need to think.”
“Aren’t we practically there already?” Jack joked.
“I mean— You know, like, actually go down there,” Hiccup elaborated, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt.
“It’s fine, I don’t mind,” he promised. Y’know, as long as he stayed as far away from the water as possible. But Hiccup knew that.
Hiccup smiled halfheartedly, heading for the steps that led down to the beach.
Jack frowned, eyeing Hiccup and the way he held himself. His gaze didn’t leave the ground, his shoulders held high and tight, as if ready to defend himself if need be. “I know you don’t really get along with your dad…” Jack started hesitantly. “But I didn’t know it was getting this bad.”
With a sigh, Hiccup rubbed a hand along his temple. “He’s… Ugh. He’s been grilling me about applying myself and doing better in school so I can get into some… Ivy League university or something.”
Jack’s frown deepened in confusion as Hiccup started walking down the stairs, following behind him. “Aren’t you like… top of our grade?”
Hiccup made a gesture like he was strangling the air. “That’s what I keep telling him, but it’s never good enough! Hiccup, join the trivia team. Hiccup, you should go to summer school. Hiccup, you should drop all your friends and take tutoring classes over the weekend. Hiccup, stop thinking for yourself and just blindly listen to— AAH!”
Jack’s hand instinctively shot out and caught Hiccup’s arm, jerking him back towards himself before he could tumble and crack his skull open. It wasn’t the first time he’d reacted so quickly, and it wouldn’t be the last. Not when Hiccup was as klutzy as a newborn foal.
Both of them were breathing heavily, and Jack’s heart thundered fiercely. It was a steady, drumming beat, pounding against his ribcage.
… Was that his heart?
Hiccup’s eyebrows furrowed, and his hand tightened around Jack’s. “Do you… hear that?”
“Oh, so it wasn’t just me. Thought it was my heart for a second,” Jack chuckled weakly. “You really need to be careful where you walk. Might not always be around to catch you.”
Hiccup’s eyes darted up to him nervously, letting out a sheepish laugh. Then his eyes travelled downwards and he pursed his lips. When Jack looked where Hiccup was, he saw their hands still tightly clasped.
Jack let go like he just grabbed the hot handle of a pot on the stove, feeling blood rush to his face. “So, weird drumming noise?”
Hiccup turned his head, looking down to where the small beach along the cliff face was. “I think… It’s coming from down there.”
The both of them listened for a few moments. Other than the sound of waves laving at the sand, and seagulls cawing in the distance, there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
Then came the drums again.
It echoed strangely, reverberating through the ground and up Jack’s legs until it echoed in his head. It was almost like there was a giant buried below their feet, banging on the roof of its cave.
“Do you think it's a band using the caves as acoustics?” he wondered. When Hiccup shot him an unamused look, Jack laughed and said, “What? What else could it be?”
“I dunno…” Hiccup turned his head again, staring down at the beach. “It doesn’t sound natural, whatever it is.”
“Creepy.”
“Yup.”
“Would probably be best to ignore it, right?”
“Probably.”
“Wanna check it out anyway?”
“What kind of question is that?”
They took off down the rest of the steps without a moment’s hesitation, their curiosity burning bright.
That was one more thing Jack had in common with Hiccup. They were both insanely curious people; sure, in different ways, and sure maybe Jack could be a bad influence sometimes encouraging Hiccup to poke his nose into things or places he shouldn’t, but never once had they explored something they later regretted.
Jack wrinkled his nose when his feet hit the sand, but he followed Hiccup down the beach to where the drumming sound was getting louder. Not many people came down here; the sand was kind of dirty, and kids got lost in the caves pretty often. But Jack and Hiccup enjoyed looking out toward the horizon on days when they wanted to forget about homework assignments or family troubles.
They stepped in front of one of those aforementioned caves, watching the seawater enter and slosh against stone. The drumming was even louder, echoing through the cave’s opening and reverberating through their bones, now.
Jack grimaced. “I really wished my guess about the caves wasn’t right.”
“Hey, maybe it’s like you said and it’s just some guys using them for acoustics,” Hiccup shrugged, jumping over the jagged rocks and into the shin-high water without a second thought.
“Hiccup!” Jack hissed.
“It’s not that deep,” Hiccup reassured, looking up at Jack and holding out his hand.
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he said, taking his hand but eyeing the sea.
He took a deep breath, trying to mentally psyche himself up for this.
It’s not that deep, it’s not that deep, it’s not that deep—! He jumped off the rock and splashed into the water beside Hiccup.
It was cold. And now his shoes were sodden— Why hadn’t he taken off his shoes? That was dumb.
“There you go, you did it!” Hiccup beamed, giving his hand a tighter squeeze. “See? Not so bad!”
Jack shot him a withering look.
“Y’know, there’s that whole… tide thing. What if we get stuck in there? I don’t wanna end up in the newspaper.”
“We’re just gonna take a quick look, if it’s really deep in the cave we won’t go after it,” Hiccup said. “It’ll take, like, three minutes tops. Promise.”
He gave Jack’s hand another tight squeeze, before his face grew red from embarrassment and he quickly let go. “I mean— Yeah. Won’t take long.”
Jack hated how his stomach lurched again, but he did his best to not focus on how Hiccup had been embarrassed to hold hands with him. But then that just made him think about their current predicament, and that was somehow a far worse thing to dwell on.
In any other circumstance, Jack would be leaping at the chance for adventure. In fact, usually it would be Jack tugging along a slightly hesitant Hiccup.
Jack held his tongue, wanting to turn around and bolt the other way. His heart leapt to his throat, in a way that he couldn’t help but think was close to suffocating. He eyed the water apprehensively, hating how the tide tugged at his jeans.
“...Okay, do you want to stay out here while I go look?” Hiccup offered.
Well, now that just made Jack sound like a coward. And Jack really hated letting Hiccup down.
“No,” he huffed. “I’m fine. Let’s just… go before it gets any later.”
The sound of waves washing over stones echoed through the cave, amplifying the noise. Jack hated the sound, every fibre of his being on edge. The drums started up again, thrumming louder and louder as they drew deeper into the cave.
“Hello?” Hiccup called, his voice bouncing off the walls and reverberating endlessly alongside the drumming. Jack stepped closer to Hiccup and tried to ignore the cold water lapping around his calves. They were heading to the part of the cave where light had difficulty penetrating the darkness, now.
The water became shallower, until Hiccup and Jack were climbing up a small outcropping. The ‘floor’ was really just some rocks buried in sand, the wall curling in on itself back into the ceiling. It was a fairly shallow cave— as far as Jack could tell, it didn’t seem to go any deeper.
There certainly weren’t any signs of that band playing on their acoustic guitars, or giants banging on the ceiling. The drumming had stopped, too, leaving them in total silence save for the waves that rolled against the rocks.
“Probably don’t want to stay here too long,” Jack mumbled, unable to help thinking of the tide rising so much that it blocked the entrance.
“I second that,” Hiccup whispered. “It’s also getting kinda dark… Hold on, I think I have a… Aha!”
A small flashlight clicked on as Hiccup pulled it out of his pocket, accidentally pointing the beam at Jack, who hissed when the light met his eyes.
“Jeez, Hic! Aim anywhere else!”
“Sorry, sorry,” Hiccup stuttered, aiming the flashlight away.
Jack blinked the spots out of his eyes, rubbing at them. He opened his mouth to suggest the sound had come from another cave, but it was drowned out as the eerie drumming in their ears started up again. They both whirled around, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound.
“Where is it coming from?” Hiccup cried, wandering to the back of the cave and placing his ear against the wall. Jack took a few steps to the left, turning his head as he tried to zone in on the source.
The drumming grew louder and louder. How did it not burst his eardrums? How were his bones not shattering at the mere sound of it?
Jack’s foot suddenly snagged on something in the ground, nearly sending him meeting the rocks face-to-face. He only barely managed to catch himself in time, letting out an undignified yelp.
The drums stopped.
“What happened?” Hiccup demanded, already running over as best he could, aiming his flashlight towards Jack again. “You okay? You yelped like you were hurt.”
“Fine, just— tripped on something,” Jack grumbled. He was cold and wet and could have broken his nose. With the light coming from Hiccup’s flashlight, Jack knelt down to inspect what he tripped on. It hadn’t felt like a rock… It had felt oddly hollow and came loose when he kicked it. He rapped his knuckles against it, and sure enough a hollow sound came from it.
“Huh,” Jack tilted his head. “Hiccup, aim your flashlight here.”
Hiccup directed the beam to where Jack pointed. They both paused, though, when they saw what Jack had tripped over.
“...Is that… Hold on, that looks like a box,” Jack said, some enthusiasm returning as he started to dig around the box in the sand. “Hey, are we finally finding that pirate treasure we’ve been looking for since we were six?” he joked up at Hiccup.
Hiccup snorted, but leaned down with bright eyes. “Shoulda’ known not to search in the forest,” he said as Jack brushed away the sand on the top of the box.
Jack frowned in confusion, looking at the carved words with a furrowed brow. “I have no idea what that says.”
“Uhh…” Hiccup muttered, leaning closer as he squinted his eyes. “That says, ‘Beware and do not open. Great danger,’ in French.”
Jack gave him a shrewd look. “...You know French?”
Now it was Hiccup’s turn to stare at Jack, though he was slightly more sheepish. “I told you my dad has been bothering me about extracurriculars. Thought he’d get off my back if I learned a bunch of different languages.”
“A bunch of different languages?! Not just the one? Geez, I barely know English,” Jack snorted.
“Just the two— Hey, hey, what’re you doing?!”
Jack had yanked at the chest, slowly hefting it out of the sand with a grunt.
“Opening it,” he said. “What’s it look like I’m doing?”
“I just said not to open it. It literally says great danger!”
“What harm ever came out of opening a box?”
“Maybe the kind of harm that comes out of a box with the words ‘great danger’ written on them?” Hiccup protested.
Jack ignored him and fiddled with the padlocks, frowning when he realized the key must be somewhere else in the ocean, probably on the other side of the planet.
“We don’t know what’s in there!” Hiccup protested. “Maybe it’s dynamite or something!”
“This whole place is wet; if it’s dynamite it’s not gonna hurt us,” Jack countered, grabbing a nearby rock and bringing it down with a hefty swing. The old rusted padlock broke open and fell to the sand. Jack dropped the rock and fiddled with the latch, before finally swinging open the lid of the chest.
At first glance, there seemed to be nothing inside of it but sand. Jack stuck his hand into it without a second thought, earning a look of complete exasperation from Hiccup. Jack grinned back at him playfully, digging his hand around in the sand. His fingers caught on something and he slowly pulled it out.
Hiccup deadpanned as Jack pulled the object out. “Another box, great. That’s so much more interesting than buried treasure.”
“Wait, what does that say?” Jack wiped off the top of the box, revealing some intricate carvings and lettering. Hiccup shone his flashlight on it and both of their eyebrows raised.
On the lid of the thin wooden box, which seemed to be made out of sturdy, polished mahogany, there were intricate carvings of Vikings and dragons, and other such creatures delicately painted though the color was worn and faded with age. In the middle of the box were carved letters that both of them could clearly read.
“Maces and Talons,” they both read aloud.
“That’s disappointing,” Jack pouted. “And really not worth getting my pants and shoes wet for.”
“Disappointing?! This is incredible!” Hiccup cried, picking it up and delicately turning it over in his hands. “This could be an archaeological find!”
Jack couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Of course you would be more excited about finding an ancient wooden box instead of buried treasure.”
“You do realize things like this could sell for millions of dollars,” Hiccup pointed out. Jack quickly shut up.
“...Why did the box say to not open it?” Jack wondered instead, confused. “What’s so dangerous about it?”
Now that Hiccup was excited with the find, he shrugged. “Who knows? Wanna check it out?”
Jack pointed a finger at him. “Not here, and not until I get into some dry clothes.”
“Obviously not here, I don’t want to get the potential discovery of the century wet!” Hiccup cried, horrified, turning to the cave entrance. “C’mon! Let’s get back. There’s nothing else in the chest, right?”
“Uhhh—” Jack stuck his hand into the sand again, digging around, before deciding to upend the chest instead. Only a bunch more sand fell out. “Nope,” he shook his head.
“Weird.” Hiccup frowned as he gingerly set the box down and unzipped his backpack.
Once Hiccup had carefully placed the box into his backpack, having wrapped it in an extra sweater so it didn’t get damaged, they quickly tread out of the cave. Sand stuck to their shoes and wet pants once they climbed over the rocks and onto the beach, but they were so excited over their discovery that they didn’t really care.
“What do you think it is?” Jack asked.
“Maybe a box to hold certain special items?” Hiccup shrugged. He frowned, keeping an eye on where he was walking this time as they climbed up the steps. “Weird that someone would bury this like that,” he muttered to himself.
“Yeah— Aaaguh,” Jack shivered hard as a particularly freezing wind blew through his hair and stung at his wet pants. The wind was awfully chilly so close to the sea. “Let’s go home before my feet freeze off,” he breathed, running up the last few steps.
They rushed through the streets to Jack’s house, ignoring a few questioning glances at their wet clothes covered in sand.
They eventually had to slow down, on account of Hiccup not being the most athletic of the kids their age. Jack couldn’t deny a part of him was excited to look into this (supposedly ancient) artifact, but Hiccup looked like he was going to pass out if they kept running any longer.
“Maybe you should join the track team,” he joked, bumping his hip into Hiccup’s.
“Oh, gods, I would literally die,” Hiccup groaned, doubling over to catch his breath.
“Don’t be so dramatic. There are much worse things than the track team.”
Hiccup took one deep breath, then two, then pointed at him with a stern glare. “Do not give my dad any ideas.”
Jack held his hands up in surrender, unable to stop the smirk that rose to his face. “I’m just saying, some exercise could do you some good.”
There was the buzz and clink of a chain growing louder behind them, before the slight screech of tires dragging along concrete.
“There you guys are!”
Hiccup and Jack turned to see Astrid on her bike, a little out of breath. “What’s up, Astrid?” Hiccup asked as he adjusted his backpack.
She glared, as if they had committed a personal slight. “I couldn’t find you guys at Hiccup’s house.”
Hiccup shifted under the might of her gaze. “We were down at the coast,” Jack answered before she could punch the answer out of them.
Astrid seemed taken aback by that as she stepped off her bike. “It’s high tide season,” she said. “You never go down there this time of year.”
Jack just shrugged feebly, giving a side glance to Hiccup. Astrid seemed to understand what he was implying, that he could never deny hanging out with Hiccup, and rolled her eyes.
Hiccup was completely oblivious to all this, of course.
“I needed to get out of the house for a while,” Hiccup explained as they began walking in a line.
Astrid let out a laugh. “I could tell you that. I heard the yelling from across the street.”
“Ahh… You heard, huh?” Hiccup winced, embarrassed. “Yeah, I just— I just needed to clear my head, that’s all. The sea helps me think,” he shrugged.
All the sea did for Jack was make him panic, but they had their differences.
Astrid seemed to decide to move away from this conversation, because she lightly tapped Jack with her foot. “Why the hell are your pants wet, then?”
“Oh, we found buried treasure,” he grinned.
Astrid hummed in skepticism. “Sure.”
“No, he’s right, actually,” Hiccup agreed. “We heard this weird noise, which was probably just the sound of waves crashing against the rocks or something. But it led us to this cave that had a chest.”
“I tripped over it,” Jack snorted.
“...And you opened the chest?” Astrid squinted.
“It was pretty old, considering how deeply it was buried. And we found—” Hiccup swung his backpack off his shoulders, unzipped it and yanked out the wooden box, “This!”
“... A box.” Astrid gave them the most unimpressed look ever.
“A probably ancient box,” Jack corrected her. “And probably worth a lot of money.”
She raised an eyebrow, her eyes wandering over the strange carvings. “Maces and Talons,” she read aloud. “Huh… Okay… What is it?”
“No idea,” Hiccup said brightly. “We’re heading to Jack’s to look it over some. Wanna come with?”
“Eh, sure,” Astrid shrugged, walking alongside her bike as she followed them. “I needed to ask Hiccup for a favor, anyway.”
“What favor?”
“Algebra.”
Jack held back a wince and tried to forget the half-done worksheets in his own backpack. “As long as you’re not doing homework the entire night, I don’t mind the extra company.”
“Eh, we have until Monday,” Astrid shrugged, unbothered.
The three of them continued on the path towards Jack’s house, talking about anything and nothing. It was easy to fall into a comfortable conversation with the two; they all bounced off each other in a way that Jack rarely did with anyone else.
Astrid let out a small scoff as they traversed the stone path up to Jack’s entryway, shaking her head. “I still can’t get over how stupidly huge this house is. Hiccup’s dad is the mayor and even his house is smaller.”
Jack’s lips tugged up in a grin as he unlocked the door. “Not my fault my grandpa is loaded.”
“More like he keeps adding onto your house the moment he gets a new idea.” Hiccup raised an eyebrow at the newly added balcony to one of the rooms.
“That, too,” Jack laughed, pushing open the door and they stepped inside the warm, brightly lit house. Jack kicked off his wet shoes and socks with a disgusted grimace, and Hiccup did the same. “Grandpa, Mom and Emily are gone for the weekend so make yourself comfortable.”
“Oh, where’d they go?” Astrid asked as she took off her own shoes, setting down her backpack.
“Some showcase of his new toy or something.” Jack let out a sigh. “Had a test today so I couldn’t go.” Jack had probably gotten a poor grade, considering he spent the entire time wishing he was in another province with his family.
“I’m just going to go get some dry clothes and we can look at that box,” Jack said, nodding towards the stairs. Then he paused. “Uhh… Do you need any, or…?”
Hiccup blinked, before sputtering, “No, I’m good!” He let out an awkward chuckle. “Brought some spares just in case, heh…”
Thank the gods. Jack wasn’t sure he could handle sharing his clothes without spontaneously combusting. Jack pointed Hiccup in the direction of the bathroom, before darting up the stairs. If he silently screamed into his pillow, no one needed to know.
Now blissfully in dry clothes, Jack wandered back downstairs to where Hiccup and Astrid were quietly conversing in the living room. The box lay on the table between two couches that faced each other, and Astrid looked at it with thinly disguised interest.
“Oh, hey, Jack.” Hiccup brightened when he came around the corner. “We opened the box — It’s a board game!”
“Oh.” Jack stared at the opened box in surprise.
The doors of the box had opened up to two small compartments, each containing some written words. In the middle of the box was a large emerald green plaque, decorated with ivory squares that trailed around and wound in loop-like pathways until they met in the circle; a large circular dark glass dome.
“That looks fancy.” Jack’s eyebrows raised as he drew closer.
“For a board game, yeah,” Astrid scoffed.
There were two containers on either door of the box, and when Jack peeked inside one, there were two normal dice. Jack grabbed them, weighing them in his hand. There didn’t seem to be anything fancy about these dice. They were pretty plain in comparison to the rest of the board.
“It doesn’t have a date,” Hiccup said. “I’ve looked over every square inch of this thing, so I have no idea when it was made. But this seems like a super well-made, hand crafted game. I bet we can try sending this in for carbon dating,” Hiccup mused thoughtfully, rubbing his chin.
“What’s in the other box thing?” Jack asked.
Hiccup opened the other compartment, where five little figurines lay in wait. They seemed to be made of some kind of stone or marble and had intricate little carvings on each of them.
“So… Those carvings are for the players?” Astrid guessed, picking up one of the figures from Hiccup’s open hand, a tiny man wearing a horned helmet.
“Nothing else in the boxes… What kind of game is this?” Hiccup frowned, poking around in the other box.
“What about the writing?” Jack asked, sitting down beside Astrid. “What’s it say?”
“Oh, I didn’t read it yet because I knew I’d have to translate for you again,” Hiccup shrugged.
Astrid turned to Jack. “Again?”
“Oh, there was a warning on the chest in French.”
Astrid blinked. Jack knew that look all too well. It was the look that said she was debating why she was friends with two of the biggest idiots in their grade. “And you… still opened it?”
“I mean, yeah? C’mon, it’s just a board game, obviously there’s nothing dangerous about it,” Jack snorted, gesturing to the game. “I bet that someone buried it because they lost a game, or something.”
He leaned in and peered at the words written on the inside of the box, squinting at them curiously. They were in fancy decorated script, like one would find in an older section in the library. But they were clearly legible.
“...These are in English, Hiccup,” he pointed out.
“What?” Hiccup paused, before looking closer, growing bewildered. “I could’ve sworn… Huh… Weird. Why was the warning in French, then?” he frowned. Astrid let out a huff at the mention of the warning again, but didn’t comment any further.
“Maybe it was someone who spoke French who happened to have an English version?” Jack shrugged. It didn’t matter much. They weren’t the archaeologists.
Now curious, Jack began to read the words aloud, “A game for those who seek to find a way to leave their world behind.”
… Pretty extravagant for a simple board game.
Astrid leaned against his shoulder, getting a closer look at the text. “Roll the dice to move your token. Doubles get another turn. The first player to reach the end wins.”
They all stared at the game. “That seems pretty straightforward, considering the summary,” Hiccup muttered.
“Are there any more instructions?” Jack wondered. That couldn’t be it.
“Uhh…” Hiccup squinted to read the words that faced him. “Adventurers beware: Do not begin unless you intend to finish. The exciting consequences of the game will only vanish when a player reaches the end and claims it's treasure.”
Jack rolled those words around in his head, and the eerie way it had given its warning. “Don’t start… unless you intend to finish?” he echoed, squinting.
“I wonder if there was more to this game,” Hiccup’s eyes brightened as he started hypothesizing. “Like, if you were supposed to play this game with a lot of people and had to act things out depending on where you landed?”
“What’s the ‘exciting consequences’?” Astrid questioned. She was getting steadily less enthused, and there was a pinch in her forehead from her frown. “It’s not like it comes with any cue cards or anything. What’s to stop us from just continuously rolling until we win?”
“No idea. Maybe the cue cards rotted away, or something,” Hiccup said, tapping his chin in thought. He looked closer at the board and let out a small, “Aha!” as he pointed to the ivory paths.
“Look, each of these has a tiny little symbol on it,” he said brightly. “I bet these indicated what you were supposed to do.”
“Okay, well.” Astrid rose to her feet with a sigh. “You guys have fun with your silly ancient board game, I’m going to do something that’s actually productive.”
Despite the boy’s giving their protests, Astrid dropped the figure she was holding and turned on her feet.
… Just to turn around when they all heard the scraping of stone.
The figurine had somehow up-righted itself onto the beginning of one of the five pathways, as still as if it had merely been placed there.
“...How the hell did it do that?” Jack stared at it, perturbed. “It just… snapped into place.”
“Magnets…?” Hiccup said slowly.
Jack gave him a deadpan look, because he clearly wasn’t very confident in his answer. “Didn’t you say this was ancient or something? How would this have used magnets, then?”
“Well, we don’t actually know how old this is,” Hiccup shot back, grabbing another piece to inspect it. It was a dragon, but that was all Jack could determine from where he was. “Hold on, I gotta test this out.”
He dropped it onto the board. Like Astrid’s piece had, it clattered towards one of the starting paths, sticking upright as if a string had been pulled from its bottom and sticking it fast to the board.
Astrid stared at the board in barely concealed bewilderment, before shaking her head. “We must have dropped it weird or something,” she said, lifting her arm to pick up her piece. It didn’t budge.
Her eye twitched as she frowned at the board, pinning her hand down to leverage the piece and tugging hard at the item. All of her efforts just made the entire board just slightly lift off the table.
“What the… Why isn’t it—?!” she hissed. She let go, staring at it in utter confusion. “How the hell is it stuck?”
Jack picked up another piece, inspecting the bottom of it. It was smooth and unbroken, with no disguised slots or any seams. “I don’t… see any magnets,” he frowned. “Or any place to put magnets.”
He experimentally put it upright on the middle of the board, and slowly let his hand go. The stone manticore started to slide across the board on its own and came to a stop, at yet another start to a path.
Now, Jack wasn’t superstitious per se, but this was definitely starting to creep him out.
“...Okay, the freakiest part is that they all go to their own starting paths and don’t get stuck on the same one,” Hiccup marvelled. His face was close to the board, eyes roaming over the pieces and ivory paths as if he could dissect how the board worked if he glared hard enough.
“You guys literally found a cursed board game,” Astrid said bluntly. “I’m not playing this.”
“Well, we’ve basically started already!” Jack half-joked. “We can’t stop a game after just starting!” Part of him said that this game should have stayed buried in that cave, but he was already too curious to back out now.
Besides, it wasn’t actually cursed. At least that's what he kept telling himself.
“C’mon, Astrid, I just want to see how this game works!” Hiccup pleaded. “One round?”
“That’s if we can actually get these things to move,” Jack muttered to himself, trying to wiggle his stone figure, but it remained stuck fast as if it had been glued.
Astrid’s eye twitched, before she sat back down and grabbed the dice. “We play one round, and then you’re doing all my math homework,” she growled at Hiccup.
“Hey, fair enough.” Hiccup raised his hands and grinned.
Jack inched slightly away from Astrid as she rolled the dice, because she seemed to be in a bad mood. The dice slid across the board, somehow avoiding the three game pieces, before rolling to a stop.
Astrid moved her hand to pick up her piece, when they watched the small Viking figurine move on its own.
“How did it do that…?” she whispered in horror, hand curling into a shaky fist.
“How did it know what you rolled?” Hiccup then questioned, torn between confusion and amazement.
Jack paid attention to the board, keeping an eye on the figurine as if it would reveal its secrets if he stared long enough, when he saw movement in the center glass.
“There’s something happening in the middle, there,” he said, pointing as some sort of… fog moved inside of the glass.
The other two looked down at the board. Hiccup’s eyebrows shot up as what looked like words began to form. “...Okay, I take it back, this isn’t ancient. That’s gotta be a computer screen… right?” he said hesitantly.
“Has to be,” Jack agreed vehemently, because any other possible answer was too terrifying and Jack desperately didn’t want that warning to be right. It just had to be a prank, right? An elaborate setup?
Astrid wasn’t paying attention. She eyed the jewel as words formed inside of it. “As fire burns hot and bright, this creature is a deadly sight…?” she murmured.
A sharp squeaking noise to their right made them all jump in alarm; thankfully, Jack wasn’t the only one to let out a shriek.
They all stared at the fireplace where the noise had come from, as if whatever had made the noise would pop out of the flames any second and attack them. As ten seconds passed without anything jumping out, they all relaxed slightly.
“...Probably just a rat,” Jack cleared his throat. “In the walls. Yeah.”
“Okay, hold on, I gotta… see how this works,” Hiccup grabbed the dice and shook them in his hands. He was staring very intently at the board now, concentrating hard.
The dice fell out of his hands, scattering on the board. The piece he had set down slowly moved three spaces forward. Words appeared out of the fog just as they had before, and they all slowly bent closer to read, almost hesitant to see what the glass would say next.
“In the forest you must wait, until the dice read five or eight,” Hiccup read aloud, eyes tense and frown deepening. “That’s… frighteningly cryptic.”
“In the forest… Is that like the equivalent to jail in Monopoly?” Jack wondered. “Maybe—”
He didn’t get to finish his thought as Astrid let out a horrible shriek, pointing to Hiccup with a look of pure and utter horror. The sound completely petrified him, making his skin crawl as he whirled his head to where she pointed.
Time came to a standstill, his ears clogged under the sound of ringing in his ears. As he watched the impossible bloom to life with his own eyes, Jack couldn’t even comprehend what he was witnessing.
There wasn’t any possibility of trying to explain in a rational way without sounding like a lunatic, but Hiccup’s body was breaking apart like sand.
“Hic?!” he finally had enough sense to scream, completely frozen in place as Hiccup looked down at his hands to let out a scream of his own.
“Wha—What?!” Hiccup stumbled back, but a force was pulling him back towards the table. Trying to suck him into the jewel in the center. “What’s happening to me?!” He looked to them in terror as his hands collapsed into dust, sucked away into the vortex.
Jack surged to his feet, nearly leaping around the table to tug at him as Hiccup kept trying to stumble backward. Yet his efforts were useless, as if fighting against a powerful wind that Jack couldn’t feel.
“I’ve got you!” Jack cried, pulling him back. Astrid had broken out of her stupor and was on Hiccup’s other side, tugging on his arms.
A horrible and eerie glow had started to emanate from the glass, and Jack could feel something pulling at Hiccup, like someone else was trying to rip him from his arms. He held on tighter, refusing to let go.
They were all screaming, something bone-deep and terrified. All their voices were mingling into Jack’s ears until he couldn’t be sure who was who as they tried desperately to fight against the force trying to rip Hiccup away from them.
It didn’t matter how hard they struggled. Every inch of Hiccup’s skin and body rapidly flecked away, until he completely broke apart.
“Hiccup!” he screamed, grabbing in vain at the cloud of dust that once had been Hiccup, every piece vanishing into the jewel without a trace. Hiccup’s last scream echoed in his ears.
“Hiccup!” he cried again, grabbing the board and staring into the jewel as if it were a window he could see through. “Where— Where did he go?! Where did he go?! What did it say?!” he cried, whirling around to Astrid.
Astrid tugged on her hair, something between a whimper and a sob coming up her throat. Tears ran down her face. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, but nothing came out.
Astrid had been shocked silent, and she was in no position to think coherently. Jack tried as hard as he could to remember, wincing as he closed his eyes to recall the words that had been Hiccup’s death warrant.
“In—In the forest you must wait, until the dice read uh, uh… Five or eight!” Jack remembered, grabbing the dice. “Okay, I just have to make the dice add up to five or eight!”
Astrid’s eyes shot open and she yelled, “Jack, no!”
He turned them over in his hands before slamming down two fours onto the board. “There’s your eight!” he cried, a snarl warping his words.
The figurine hadn’t moved a single square, yet the fog was forming again in the jewel. Astrid’s hands wrapped around his arm in a vice-grip, as if she could prevent the same fate from befalling Jack.
The words fully formed and something akin to a block of ice formed in Jack’s gut.
To cheat in life is to cheat in death, and now the game shall steal your breath. Until the dice add up to four, as a ghost live evermore.
“As a ghost…?” he echoed, before Astrid abruptly let out another scream.
Jack stumbled back, looking at his hands his limbs gradually became light and weightless from the might of his panic. Was this how Hiccup felt? But his hands weren’t turning to sand. Jack raised his head to meet Astrid’s gaze, but she was looking anywhere but him.
“Jack?! Jack!” Astrid screamed, stumbling around the room and looking wildly at every corner, a manic look in her eye. “Jack!”
“Ast— Astrid, I’m here, I’m okay,” Jack croaked, unable to speak above a whisper.
“Jack!”
“Astrid, I—!”
He reached out for her… and his hand passed right through her shoulder. He stumbled back, staring down at himself.
What?
A shriek, not from Astrid this time, suddenly filled the room again. Something had crawled out of the fireplace— something small, and glowing hot orange. Where its tiny claws landed, smoke and embers flew into the air out of the carpet. Tiny wings flapped and it let out another cry.
Another creature followed it. Then another. Then another. All were dropping down from the chimney, until practically a dozen of the strange fiery worms were crawling all about the room, lighting everything ablaze just by their touch.
Astrid screamed and ran in a panic, escaping the now-burning living room. Jack made to race after her but stopped, whirling around.
The board game. He couldn’t find a way to save Hiccup if the board game burned to ash!
He ran back into the burning living room, grabbing it in his hands just to almost buckle under its weight. Was it always so heavy?! It felt like it had gained fifty pounds somehow.
He struggled but managed to get it out of the burning room, stumbling out and coughing hard.
Damn it. The fire was going to spread to the rest of the house before help came. He had to stop it!
He dropped the game by the staircase and closed the living room doors, hoping to at least contain the fire and the strange creatures for now. He ran for the kitchen, hauling the closet door open and shooting out his hands to grab the fire extinguisher; but found he couldn’t lift it!
Why did it feel glued to the ground?! Why was it so heavy!?
“Come on!” he cried in a panic, tugging hard at it, his feet sliding across the floor.
A strange exhaustion was overcoming him, his head spinning. He felt like he had just run a marathon… Why was he so dizzy suddenly?
Jack’s hands became shaky and lost all strength. Stumbling back a few steps, his legs wobbled underneath him as if they couldn’t hold up his meagre weight. Though the sounds of shrieking and cackling fire grew behind him, it became a dull backdrop to the ringing that overtook him.
Jack blinked, trying to rid his vision of the black spots. Then he blinked again, suddenly staring at the ceiling. The floor was… cold. Against his back.
All his limbs refused to move. Jack tried and screamed at himself, but could barely twitch a finger.
The world… was fuzzy.
Despite his very best attempts, Jack’s eyes fluttered shut. Did the game zap all his energy? Was it sucking the life force out of him as it had promised? Jack didn’t even have the energy to care.
All he knew was that he had screwed up. Badly. And now he paid the price for it.
…Hiccup…