Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hiccup stared at the still-warm wall of the shop supply room blankly.

He was the only sophomore in at the moment, early on the Midwinter Cleansing. All the other sophomores were groggily making their way to breakfast, preparing for class-changes, and cleaning their teeth. Even the juniors hadn't started down to the shops- only seniors, giving up their one safe breakfast left this year for the opportunity to really round out their final projects in the Scholomance. Oh, sure, the lot of them were done with schoolwork permanently- they had six months of training ahead of them- but these were for artifice to get them home.

But the reason Hiccup was staring wasn't out of disinterest, nor lack of direction. He had a project in mind, and the one thing he couldn't easily obtain for that was iron; the entire reason he'd come straight down.

No, the reason he stared was because there was an egg, anchored to the wall by a stem of melted metal.

The thing was the size of Hiccup's torso, with a perfectly round shell. It was smooth, with something like scales over the shiny, jet-black shell. Certainly no chicken had laid it. Hiccup clutched his iron rods and good knife, frowning intently at it.

A blonde senior girl looked over at him, a forging apron thrown over her shoulder and an arm full of screw boxes. Hiccup recognized her- Mala, an incantations-track enclaver who sometimes traded him mal corpses, in passing. He knew of her more than he actually knew her. She was from near his home island.

"What's that?" she asked.

"I... Can't tell," Hiccup admitted, stepping closer to it. He whispered something in Ancient Norse, then shook his head. "Bestial class, maybe. Something big. Don't want it to hatch here."

Mala tensed, then glanced to her fellow seniors. "Do you have a scrying spell?"

"No," Hiccup answered, reaching to touch the egg. It wasn't entirely accurate. He had one. It just wasn't one that worked in this situation. It was a fair question, though- his affinity would have made using one on this thing a piece of cake. "I don't even know what to do with a mal egg."

"Hey, Lala," one of the other seniors called, "are you going to keep chatting with the kid, or are we going to get back upstairs for notes?"

Mala hesitated. Not good for seniors to get in the habit of, but...

"Throk, give me a hand," she ordered, setting down the forging apron on the ground and grabbing a hammer from her belt.

Throk, a strapping Valedictorian-hopeful who'd been 12th in the running, stepped forward. She held out her hands, and the senior boy sprayed her hands with a thinly orange concoction. Whatever it was, it wasn't pleasant for Mala.She shuddered and went vaguely pale. Still, Mala was a Scholomance senior, and she moved even as she worked through whatever Throk had done for her. She grabbed the stem of metal, twisting it into thin putty as it heated up. Once it was barely a thread, she made a scissoring gesture with her finger, and the egg fell from the wall.

It landed with a soft thud on the forging apron, and Mala held her hands back to Throk, who spritzed her with a different spray. This one, blue. The full-body relief from this one was obvious. Hiccup shuddered to think what long-term alchemical serums like this would do to a person. Two of his fellow Berkian students were alchemists.

Throk looked at Mala, then at Hiccup. He was from the same archipelago as Berk, and as Mala's enclave, but he wasn't from an enclave himself, nor even a circle of wizards who would have already heard about strange talents.

But he was a Scholomance senior, so he could pawn off work occasionally.

"Freshman, take care of this egg," he ordered.

Another sophomore may have done it. A freshman would have. And maybe, had it been Mala, Hiccup would've taken the egg as payment. She certainly knew he used pieces of mals for his assignments. She even knew his affinity.

"I'm a sophomore," Hiccup said tensely, and "you're a senior with an enclave seat. You can pay me or do it yourself."

Throk looked at him incredulously. "Excuse me?"

"Right, right. I forgot all about my infinite store of mana and spellbook full of ways to eat mal eggs." Hiccup rolled his eyes, then gestured to the forging apron. "I'll use this to carry it upstairs."

Without waiting for an answer, Hiccup crouched down to begin wrapping the apron around the egg. Mala pulled Throk away from Hiccup, up toward the cafeteria. Hiccup just let them, tucking his iron and the two hammers he'd gotten hold of in alongside the egg. He was ready to head upstairs himself, summon a book to figure out what was inside his newest piece of mal-debris.

So, as per usual in the Scholomance, something had to happen.

As Hiccup hoisted the egg up- having found a clever way to twist the forging apron into a backpack- he felt that typical instinctive mana pull everyone could sense after someone was frightened, usually due to a mal. But it was mid-winter cleansing, and there were no mals big enough to warrant the seniors acting like this. Hel, most of the mals available now wouldn't even spook a freshman at this point. His egg had been an anomaly.

He could have run away, but that would be stupid. Certain spells attack noncombatant witnesses, too- Hiccup's cousin Snotlout had a nasty one for exactly that purpose. Seniors would have more. If he tried to run, he'd never know what hit him.

He turned to watch, to wait for an opening- just in time to watch a senior from Vinland cast a spell to make water rise. It was clearly a defensive spell. There was blood on his ear, a wound oozing pale blue pus just above it. Hiccup jumped on the workbench nearest him, hearing an awful gurgling from the drains as the senior's spell dragged all the water they could possibly have below them upward into the shop.

The seniors weren't stupid. This spell was bringing sewer water and small, oozy mals if it was working. The one Hiccup assumed had started the fight- she had some weird artifice piece in her hand that was suspiciously red- looked wistfully at the wire coil the Vinland senior had abandoned, and turned to run out to the landing.

The way out was somewhat crowded. Hiccup was a small boy, easily crushed under a wave of kids his own age, much less the seniors. So, he hopped from his bench to another one, then another. His path was calculated to keep him dry and circumvent the other students, and he would be able to hop out the door. The Vinland senior realized, abruptly, that he was flooding the shop, and turned to follow everyone else outside.

Hiccup stopped, then squatted to grab the coil. It was heavy, and he grunted with the effort of hoisting it away from the wall, but he kept it close. He cast a small spell to help him with the combined weight of the egg and coil. Still, it wasn't a light load. With that weighing him down, he almost tripped back into the shop as he leapt onto the foundation of the stairs. Twisting his ankle didn't stop him from getting back to his room. He promptly dropped the wire- and the artifice hoverboard he'd inherited from an enclaver friend that'd been eaten- onto his massive desk, shoved the backpack onto his storage chest, and crawled into his bed.

After a while, Hiccup heard a knock at the door. He hadn't moved since he'd laid down, and honestly, he'd rather not move at all. So, logically, he stood up and limped his way to the door. Holding his mana as he produced it, he grabbed the door knob.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"Snotlout," came Ruffnut's voice, "and the rest of us."

Hiccup opened the door, pushing his mana back into the glass mana storage around his wrist. Ruffnut barged into the room, casting a wary look around the cell. She noticed the egg, but said nothing about it. She was followed by Tuffnut and the rest of the Berkians. Hiccup leaned against his door as they shuffled into the crowded room, brows furrowed. He watched Snotlout pat the wire on the desk in mild awe.

"You missed breakfast," Fishlegs said, obviously, and then looked at Hiccup for the first time that day. He offered his arm to him, allowing Hiccup to steady himself.

"Went down to the shop," Hiccup explained, letting Fishlegs lead him back to the bed. He sat down and rubbed his side. "Got a good haul, but that wire was a bit too heavy. Stitch in my side."

"You're limping, too," commented Snotlout- Hiccup's cousin, and the cockiest boy he knew.

"Twisted it on my way up," he gave as answer, shifting back on the bed to make more room. Scholomance dorms are not made for six students to fit inside of. Fishlegs sat on the side facing the void; Astrid sat closer to the foot of the bed.

Snotlout pushed the wire over to the edge of Hiccup's desk, giving himself space to work. He grabbed an onion from the pot on Hiccup's desk- built with wards on Berk, sent in with him to grow scraps of vegetables Hiccup's father had enchanted- and pulled a knife from his own pack.

"Did you have the sense to make a snackbar run?" Astrid asked, poking the forging apron.

"No, I thought I'd just let the next mal the school sends after me eat me, and then be of no use to anyone," Hiccup sniped. Then he pointed to one of the drawers on the desk Snotlout had commandeered.

Tuffnut stepped forward, opened the doors, and set out the food Hiccup had stored away. It wasn't much. The cafeteria fare came on open trays where mals could and would hover around, trying to suck up the mana. If a student tried to hoard it, mals would be attracted to the food. Still, there were machines in the cafeteria that brought food in from outside- sucked up to supplement the diets of the thousands of teenagers crammed in for school. This food was safe to hoard, because it was all packaged so mals couldn't smell or eat it. Hiccup had saved up a few weeks' worth of tokens and made a final run the day prior, having anticipated the fact that he would miss breakfast.

Tuffnut lined up the secured snacks on the desk- a small pack from Vinland of some dried meat called pemmican; an odd stacked metal flask with a jam made of strawberries, with an attached container of syrup; a sewn bag of dried apple slices; a tiny jar of pickled vegetables of some kind; hard ship biscuits that even most mals wouldn't bother with; a soft cheese wheel; cooked and cooled wild rice; a jar of bone broth Hiccup recognized as Fishlegs' mom's work; and a baked bread that smelled of honey and nuts. A verifiable feast in the Scholomance, and only possible due to the love and care their parents had put into the school.

Any place with a seat also had a box somewhere near the induction point, enchanted with a spell of forgetting and lined with the scales of a dragon Hiccup couldn't recall the name of. Every month or so, parents would put food in that box, and then once they forgot about what was inside, the School would open up wards to suck the food inside for kids who'd had bad luck with the cafeteria. Hiccup himself eagerly awaited to putting food in the box for the first time- the Berkians had a whole rite for the first time a graduate sent food in for the people on the inside.

And then Hiccup noticed what else Tuffnut had.

A small carton of milk, a spare bread roll, and some now-lukewarm sausage. Not much, but far more than most would ever bring out of the cafeteria. Even if one could get extra, typically it was traded or consumed before leaving. He stared at it.

"I didn't ask for you to feed me," Hiccup protested lightly.

"Astrid's idea," Snotlout answered, popping open the rice. "You can pay me back by standing watch when I do my maintenance shift."

"And you can give Ruff and me these jars," Tuffnut decided, pointing to the pickled veg Snotlout was scooping onto the ricebed.

"Fair enough." Hiccup winced at how dim his mana storage had gotten, then pushed himself off the bed. He limped to the only open floor space and got down to start doing push-ups. The smell of the food Snotlout was arranging for him made his stomach grumble. He started counting off. The stitch in his side helped the mana flow.

While Hiccup built mana, Astrid turned to the egg on the storage chest. She carefully unworked his knotting, peeling back the heavy fabric to investigate his haul. She grimaced.

"Hiccup? What exactly is this?" she questioned.

"Mal egg," he mumbled. "Mala got it off the shop wall."

"What mal is it?"

"Good question. Going to check out a book after I eat." Hiccup kept counting off.

Astrid sighed, then stood up and rounded around to the other side of the egg. She lifted it as carefully as she could setting it next to the chest. She lifted the lid, then, and began sorting through Hiccup's things. She put his two new hammers alongside his other ones, set his iron in among his various other belongings. Without saying anything, she plucked one of the mana crystals not currently on Hiccup's wrist and handed it to Fishlegs.

Ruff and Tuff, meanwhile, hovered over Snotlout. Occasionally, they set out various chemicals to create fires or mix in herbs with Snotlout's desktop kitchenry. Ruffnut even made a few suggestions, much to Hiccup's horror.

Hiccup finally pushed himself up off the ground. Snotlout got up out of the chair and gestured for him to sit.

"Let me guess, there's some horrible news for me I missed by picking home-cooked food over permanent shitty shop trips?" he asked, dusting off his hands and reaching for the hardtack. Snotlout had softened it with the strawberry syrup, and managed to turn the milk carton into a cream of some kind to pair with. He didn't object to Snotlout taking a biscuit for himself.

"Actually, we have good news," Astrid corrected. "One of the London enclavers got a bad artifice project. He needs help."

"And he specifically asked about you," Fishlegs added. "He's willing to give mana and some of the project notes he already got from older enclavers, if you'll help him. It's essentially an agglo farm, small-scale."

"Oh, that's easy enough," Hiccup reached for one of his other desk drawers where he kept all his artifice notebooks.

Astrid finally got done organizing Hiccup's things, and she approached the desk herself. She grabbed the rice tin. "Taking your carrots," she said plainly.

"That's fine. What about you?" What've you got for shop?"

"A basic shield holder," she offered in response. "I'd appreciate a couple feet of wire, if you can spare it."

Hiccup nodded. Nobody did anything for free in the Scholomance, and he knew that them checking in on the future chief of Berk had ended after the confirmation he was still alive. Snotlout's cooking the snackbar food was a steal at the price of one hardtack biscuit and a maintenance shift watch. Even then, it could be waved away as something cousins did for each other. Ruffnut and Tuffnut would take the warded jars and wrappings, use them for the really good, really rare alchemical ingredients they couldn't afford to let spoil or disappear. Astrid wanted the wire, and even before that had been an option she would have asked his opinion on which parts of the shield holder she should focus on. They're brutal shop projects for language-track kids, but she had a focus on combat- the Scholomance was bound to give it to her sooner or later. And Fishlegs...

They'd been best friends forever. Hiccup had always helped him with maintenance track when possible. Giving up a little of the mana he'd been paid in return, coming to sit on his bed to watch him eat what he was now sure were pickles with a healing enchantment on them, that was just payback for loans already given.

Hiccup buried the sausage from the cafeteria under the rest of the pickled vegetables, mixing it witht he rice to hide the taste. The roll, he scooped up the soft cheese with, and handed out as equal  measures as he could on dried apple plates. He himself drank the broth eagerly, watching Ruffnut pour her enchanted waterskin into Astrid's mouth. He then handed out chunks of the sweetened nut bread for dessert. The pemmican, while admittedly one of his favorite things to get here, had come in only four small pieces, and he wouldn't eat that in front of anyone, so he kept it.

After everyone finally left- the girls to shower, Tuffnut to wait for his sister outside the showers, Fishlegs for yet another long day of doing enclaver's maintenance shifts, and Snotlout to go sew some poor indie kid's clothes back together for mana- Hiccup stood to reach out to the void outside his room.

"I need a spell to figure out what kind of mal is in the egg."

Nothing happened. He waited for his school book to float out at him, like they always had- each time he'd called exactly as instructed in the freshman pamphlet. He frowned, then turned his head away from the open wall, holding his hand out.

"I need more information about the egg I found in the shop today," he tried. Again, nothing happened.

He frowned again. That wasn't a good sign. If you asked for a spell, and it existed in a language you knew, the Scholomance gave it to you. It didn't even have to be a language you knew well. It was more than happy to let you suffer. Either the creature in that egg was brand-new, or the only sources were from the place this thing's mom was from- and the language, the whole knowledge base, was from a place Berk had never traded with.

Even worse, Hiccup had an affinity for maleficaria. The Scholomance loved to hand out dangerous spells to wizards with 'evil' affinities. If there was nothing the languages you knew, there were at least hints on what to do.

"Fuck."

Chapter Text

Hiccup wandered through the library stacks, holding up a torch lit by a glowing, angry black gem. He'd taken the gem from an agglo that had tried eating the gym artifice on field day the year prior. He'd noticed it because it was an unusual item for the little critters to incorporate into their shells. It had probably been part of some magnificent piece of artifice designed to wrench hope from masses- the only times he noticed something unusual on agglos, that was the type of thing he noticed- and made for a very efficient focus on a spell holder. Most artificers in the Scholomance only managed single-spell holders- this one could hold three.

This particular day, it was a combined light-and-search spell. The Scholomance was much happier to give an important book if the student burned mana on it. Especially if they didn't bother with the school's lights first, and just provided their own.

He carefully held it over the titles of the books, reading anything in a familiar script and following the torch when it brightened.

Hiccup, occasionally, repeated his little spell, giving his torch a touch more mana. "Fading fire light, dimming coals, blow back alive, lead me to night-mare foals," on repeat, like a twisted nursery rhyme.

At one point, the torch glowed omniously, but dimmed either way he moved it. He tried raising it higher, and the red began to soothe into a much calmer- but brighter- blue.

He paused, then set his foot on the shelf. He carefully pulled himself up, stretching muscles that he'd not used this way in ages. He couldn't remember the last time he'd needed to climb on the stacks, and he only ever climbed a tree at home. There were no trees in the Scholomance. He climbed higher.

His father- Stoick the Vast, chief of Berk, eventual Dominus if they bought the enclave-building spells during the time Gustav Larson- the oldest kid still in Berk, who would be inducted the day Hiccup became a senior, and was six years older than the next batch of children- was in the Scholomance, had attempted to convince Hiccup to go incantations-track. Stoick was a strong incanter, and he'd hoped Hiccup would have that connection to him while they were separated. It had been a point of contention since Hiccup was still a girl. In service to this goal, Stoick had given him a small list of song-spells that would be useful even in the Scholomance, with no instruments.

It had been years, but he remembered every word of the climbing-safety spell Stoick had written for the library.

"Look out, look out, watch where I cannot look," Hiccup sang softly, "we'll all fall down when the hold is gone. Your neighbor's tools made the handle I seek, place for a foot not a snake or a book. Work with me, I'll work with you, we've a peak to reach and it won't be long. Look out, and watch for me, watch where I cannot look."

Hiccup's legs strained. The rolled ankle had healed beautifully under Snotlout's care, but it still ached like a wound. His grip strength had improved vastly after a year and a half of forging, and practice with the swings before, but supporting his weight was not the focus of that training. Still, he held on, and he shoved every bit of mana he built back into his spell.  Just when he thought he'd have to give up, his torch blazed white. He stopped, reaching his fingers up slowly to grab the book it was still illuminating.  He rubbed over textured leather. It felt newly made- and well done, at that. He pulled it from the shelf and shoved it into his bag. Then he slowly made his way back down.

It was, as always, a gamble to grab a book without even looking at it, but a find that took this much effort and such a constant application of spellwork was bound to be good. As he lowered the torch, he noticed a familiarish title- the book he'd actually been searching for. The Viking's Guide to Maleficaria: Ship Oozes. He rolled his eyes and grabbed that one, too.

"Yeah, thanks Alfred. Didn't know I needed this one," he snarked at the school.

It wasn't the first- nor last- time the school had been called that. The first kids from the archipelago had had trouble understanding the explanation of the Scholomance. They had thought the founder's name was the school's name- Sir Alfred Cooper Browning. While they had eventually come to fully understand the language of the Saxons, it had become a cultural in-joke. Every student who came to the Scholomance from their small community had collectively nicknamed the place- a small bit of grudging affection for the worst prison in the world.

Hiccup began climbing down, carefully humming the climbing song again- it worked regardless of direction- and then turned.

There, laying on the library floor, was a quattria.

It could have eaten him. It was young, but not young enough to not be a threat. Two of its four heads glared hungrily at him. The other two were fighting sleep. Hiccup could recognize it as spelled slumber- quattria tended to be either thoroughly awake or thoroughly exhausted. Some senior- had to be, nobody else had spells powerful enough to make a quattria sleep- had probably caught it in the stacks, and decided the sleep spell was less expensive than killing it. They were probably right. It cost a lot of mana to kill a quattria- or anything else with multiple heads, for that matter.

Hiccup silenced himself. He pulled his mana back out of his torch, cutting off the spell-light completely. He counted beats. One, rest, two, draw, three, listen, four-

The quattria launched at him in the dark. The mana lights above were completely dark- Hiccup had expected that- and it was the quattria's own unmistakeable scent and claw-scratching that gave it away. Most quattria didn't attack one at a time- easier to chew with all four mouths than hunt with one full- but this one was just unlucky enough that a sophomore made a good snack.

Hiccup swung his torch, thrust it up into the maw of the snarling beast, and cast another of Stoick's song-spells.

"This one knot needs to come undone, come undone, the rope that binds will spare no one, so this one knot needs to come undone!"

The spell wasn't technically meant to kill maleficaria. It was meant to cut loose a sailor who'd gotten himself tangled in the artifice of an enchanted ship. However, Stoick used it for any magical malady with a physical shape. With Hiccup's affinity for maleficaria, he understood a quattria to be no different than the ropes or nets Stoick untangled regularly. With the mana he'd gotten from climbing, and the torch's focusing gem having the pwoer it did to amplify, well. It became easy.

The spell radiated through the quattria. The center point where the four animals had been fused together popped open with a sickening crack. The beast fell, cleanly carved along the scar line, into four piles witha  loud thump.

Grudgingly, the school turned the lights back on.

Hiccup looked at the fur, stained with previous meals and the putrescent purple of mal blood. He slipped his torch into his bag, along with The Guide to Ship Oozes, and the unknown leather tome. Then he drew his good knife.

When he was seven, Stoick had slain a Stormcutter. The dragon was a large, four-winged beast that had targetted the Thorston twins; it wasn't the one who'd killed his mother, but it was still a very dangerous dragon. Afterward, he had brought Hiccup out to the corpse.

Most wizards who had affinities showed signs of them young. Stoick had started turning songs into magic at five; his mother had invented a cheap salve at nine. Hiccup had snown a deep understanding of what made mals tick by six, and Stoick had assumed- rightfully so- that this understanding could be expanded and used to keep him alive.

Stoick had taught him how to butcher a mal that day; how to identify the weakest bits of skin that allowed for a good, usable harvest; how to test the bones for fractures. And all the while, he'd patiently explained what the mal did with each part, if it was something he knew.

It had been the first of many kills he'd demonstrated what to do with, but it was the memory that stood out to Hiccup each time he took his knife to task.

Most knives in the Scholomance were dull, cursed, brought in during Induction, or some combination of those options. Hiccup's was the same- hand-crafted by Gobber as a gift back home. He kept it sharp and the handle well-cared-for. He felt the love in it as it separated skin from malleable muscle, as it loosened meat and organs so he could pry out the bones.

Unlike with the shelf-climbing, he didn't feed the mana built by the labor back into a spell. He pocketed it, shoved it into the storage gems on his wrist. He stayed there as long as he would risk, harvesting the quattria's bones. He didn't get all of them, but he did get all the ribs, a couple good leg-bones, and the skull of the wolf head before he decided that scavenging mals would be along too soon.

He rolled the bones up in the quattria's pelt, then hoisted it up onto his hip. His lower back strained.

Hiccup cast a quick glance around himself, reorienting himself. He began the walk toward the reading room, where he knew Dagur from Berserker Island had fixed a chair in the English enclavers' section. Fixing a chair meant you owned that chair until term-end- and Dagur had fixed a new chair each term.

One of the London seniors glared at Hiccup as he approached.

"What's that?" she asked in a way that said she expected an answer. A more calloused sophomore would have been angry about giving it.

"I killed a quattria in the Norse section of the stack," he said instead. "Dagur, I'll give you some of the marrow for your rats if you'll take lookout for me."

Dagur considered for a moment, then nodded. Hiccup could see why. His hair looked great, but he'd gone pale. There were bruises under his nails, and the protective ink in his eye tattoo looked like it was leeching mana. Dagur needed a shower just as bad as he did. Hiccup waited patiently as Dagur put his things away and stood up, allowing one of the kids on the floor to shuffle up into the chair.

"I'll need to grab clothes," Dagur warned Hiccup. They started down toward the stairs.

"What? No, I thought you'd carry all your spares with you to the stacks!" Hiccup dramatically clutched at his chest, then straightened back up. "It's fine, I wasn't planning on butchering a quattria."

Dagur nodded, glancing at the pelt again. "So, what are you going to do with it?"

"Honestly? Not sure." He stroked the fur absentmindedly. "I'm definitely tanning the hide. Hybrid leather makes really powerful spellbooks. I think I could trade that well with older incanters."

"I'd trade a lot for that," Dagur confirmed. Dagur was an incations-track loser. A good spellbook blank was just about the most valuable thing he could get in here- Hiccup made a note.

"I'll keep you in mind when I auction," Hiccup offered. "Or if I get another hybrid."

"I bet the bones will make good tools?" Dagur suggested.

"I might turn one of the shins into a leather burnisher," Hiccup mused. "The bones should be good if I start a project with too many moving parts."

"Let me know if you need help auctioning," Dagur offered as they neared their dorms. "I can sweeten the pot, for a cut."

"I'll keep that in mind, too."

They parted ways when they reached Dagur's room. Hiccup got into his own room- a few doors away from Dagur's- and set his things down. He quickly stretched out the pelt and ran one of his rattier towels over it. He'd salt it when he got back from the showers. He did take the time to scoop out the marrow from the femur he'd collected. He shoved it into a little paper twist, then rinsed his hands with the remains of his personal water jug.

He grabbed the thin tunic he used for pajamas, picked up the marrow and now-empty jug, and headed back out to Dagur's room. Dagur had grabbed his own sleep tunic, and was writing with his tooth brush.

"Do you have toothpaste?" Dagur asked. "I ran out of baking soda. And I don't have anything to trade, so if you say no it's fine-"

"Ruff and Tuff just made all the Berk kids a refill. I'll give you the last of this tube on an IOU."

Dagur grinned, then started walking. "Thanks, brother!"

Hiccup followed. An IOU was a privilege in the Scholomance, but Hiccup felt comfortable giving it to Dagur.

Stoick was a fantastically talented spellwriter. His songspells were relatively easy to cast, and he knew plenty of useful languages. Several enclaves would kill to induct them into their ranks. He could have bought enclave seats for half of Berk, easily- but he never found an enclave he liked. Many of them felt hungry, Stoick had said, or would use maleficaria to guard entrances. toick refused to abandon half his people just for that.

But, like any other wizard, he knew the Scholomance was the best bet for young wizards. So, he traded with the enclaves for spare seats. He couldn't get everyone in, but he could buy ten seats without breaking Berk's bank.

So, every year, he did.

Ten Scholomance seats fit all the kids of Berk, plus a few more. Stoick used the extras as gifts for other indie settlements in the archipelago, or to trade extras for expensive artifice or even just extra mana.

On Berk, the parents all tried to coordinate the births of their children so that they had someone to lean on during school- safety in numbers. On Berserker Island, all the studetn-age kids had competed for the spot. Oswald the Agreeable, chief of the Berserkers, had been gifted a seat after his son had shown early magical talent. His daughter had been born with apparently zero anima, and hadn't shown any magical ability until Stoick had already sold off the last three seats, so she hadn't had a seat.

Oswald had, then, decided to offer the seat to whichever student-aged wizard on the island could handle several challenges he'd knocked up in less than a day. An essay on Tidal-class dragons- the only dragons that were of any danger to Berserkers, as all other dragon classes avoided their island- graded by their gothi; an obstacle coarse designed to fuck with the body as they ran it, an empty mana crystal to fill as best they could, and a random assortment of whatever small mals the Berserkers could capture and dump into the arena. He reasoned that the kid who could handle all that would be able to handle whatever the Scholomance threw at him. It'd been a reasonable plan, for someone who'd never been himself, and the kid who had initially been in possession of the seat had won it back.

Dagur.

And Dagur was a genius, by all measures the Berkians could tell. The obstacle course had been cleared in ten minutes. Some of the kids had ended up needing rescued three hours later. Dagur's essay had been three pages longer than the next-longest, with more information that was all accurate and included a theoretical explanation for why the dragons avoided it. He'd killed all thre mals easily. They weren't that dangerous- nothing small enough to qualify could hurt the kids- but too many would overwhlem anyone, and timing was important.

The only thing anyone had done better on was the mana, and even then, he hadn't done too horribly. In an entire day, Dagur had filled the crystal about a third of the way. At the age of twelve, most kids couldn't get it a quarter. His childhood bully Anssen had managed to get it up just past Dagur, likely out of spite. And access to the fishing boats.

Dagur, for his part, hadn't wanted it when he found out Heather- his sister- couldn't go. He knew the Scholomance was safety- most indie kids didn't survive. One in seven on the outside survived to eighteen. One in four on the inside survived. Of course, those numbers were wizard kids in general, not just indies, but it still mattered when kids outside the Scholomance were usually indie kids. He had tried to give the seat to Heather, or the runner-up, just so that she wouldn't be trapped alone on the outside. He'd even written to Stoick to try to convince him. Hiccup still remembered the day Stoick had taken him to meet with him in-person.

He'd asked Dagur how full the mana crystal Heather had made was- only half of what Dagur had. He'd asked about her essay- full of mistakes, except the one small paragraph about Scauldron venom. He'd asked about her obstacle course run- the only thing she'd done well, as it had taken her half an hour and she'd come out hungry. He'd asked about the mals- the three she'd gotten had escaped and been eaten by a larger mal.

Hiccup had always respected his father, but Stoick's approach had almost doubled that respect.

Stoick had explained the experience he'd had in the Scholomance. He had spoken of the need for friends on the inside, the mal attacks by creatures that would be bad enough to kill even a seventeen year old, the constant starvation, the stale air. All of the pain the Scholomance put you through.

He had told Dagur that only the best could survive, and that he knew Dagur would- but Heather wouldn't. But if Dagur came out, then he could take that much stress off of the Berserkers, and they could protect Heather. In addition, Stoick offered to loan them some protective artifice from Gobber's shop, until Dagur graduated and could come home to Berserker Island. Then Dagur could look after Heather, and help any younger kids.

Dagur had only relented when Stoick reminded him that the Scholomance expected you to do all the cleaning, some of the cooking, the maintenance, and all three magic disciplines; all with no sunlight. Dagur hadn't been willing to inflict four years of no sunlight on his sister.

But still, Dagur wanted to go home. He wanted to see his sister again. And he couldn't do that if he had no resources. He couldn't get resources if he had a reputation for ripping people off.

So Hiccup didn't mind giving him enough toothpaste to last until he had resources.

When they reached the showers, Hiccup went first. It wasn't that he was selfish- it was just practical. He was covered in mal blood. That was bound to attract mals. Dagur watched over the vents as Hiccup scrubbed quattria gore out of his hair and rinsed out the stains from his shirt. Then he refilled his jug and stood watch while Dagur took his turn. They both brushed their teeth, and Hiccup brushed his fingers against his bag. He sighed.

"You're doing Ancient Norse, right?" he asked, tucking the tooth brush back into his bag.

"Uh, yeah," Dagur answered, frowning at the mirror.

"Meet me back in mine after you get your clothes put away, and maybe bring your personal dictionary. I need confirmation on something."

"Alright."

When Dagur got to Hiccup's dorm, Hiccup had already spread salt on the quattria hide and began the tanning spell. It was an Italian song-spell that Stoick had learned on the inside; the cheapest, manawise, that anyone in Berk had, but it was a ten-minute casting. Still, he sang it, and once he had the leather made, he opened the door. As Dagur stepped inside, glancing warily, Hiccup began to spread out the skin of an ooze he'd killed. This very ooze was the reason he'd been in the library that day- he wanted to look up the properties of the thing.

Dagur's eyes settled on the large egg sitting near Hiccup's wall. Hiccup had kept the egg there after all the scrying spells had failed- if it was going to hatch, he assumed it already would've gotten around to it.

"What did you want to ask me?" Dagur asked. He sat down on Hiccup's bed.

Hiccup took a moment to rinse his hands. After drying them on his shirt, he picked up his bag and opened it. "Got this in the library, I think it wanted to distract me so it could feed me to the quattria. Feels powerful, but I'm afraid to look at the language."

That wasn't childish hesitation. If a student looked too hard at an unfamiliar language, the school would decide they were studying that language. If they got too many assignments or spells in that language, without understanding, they could fail out or get killed. If someone with no skills in learning or understanding languages outside the ones they knew coming in got a book in a language they couldn't immediately place, they looked away and hoped that the school didn't notice. If it were a book this important, they asked a linguistic-track student to identify it.

And Dagur had the right to walk away. He owed Hiccup toothpaste, not the rest of his life. He didn't even have to offer up a different classmate.

"Let me see it."

Hiccup slid the book out of the bag, holding it out to Dagur. Dagur ran his fingers reverently over the cover- decorated, as Hiccup now had time to notice, with a Timberjack curled up and surrounded by intertwined vines. There was no title, at least not on the leather cover.

"Looks Norse," Dagur commented absently, "so it's probably not the worst thing to happen to you. Linguistically speaking. And it doesn't feel like malia."

Apprehensively, the Berserker opened the cover. He squinted at the first page, then made an awkward, astonished sound.

"What is it?" Hiccup reached to take Dagur's arm, glanced at the runes, and looked back to Dagur's wide-open green eyes.

"This is The Book of Dragons!"

Hiccup froze.

"Are you sure?"

"One hundred percent."

Most people of the archipelago dreamed of The Book of Dragons. It was a highly niche collection of knowledge, but it was still a large part of collective wizarding history.

The Book of Dragons was the first record of maleficaria being studied. It was written by Bork the Bold, a Berkian who had been rather unlucky in life. He'd been exposed to nearly every species of dragon in the archipelago at some point or another. He had also been terribly intelligent, a trait that Hiccup knew firsthand had been passed down to each of his descendants in turn. He'd written down every piece of knowledge he had in this manual- habitats, abilities, the rare spawning method. The knowledge had kept the people of Berk safe for almost seventy years, and the knowledge had been preserved as best they could. At some point in time, he had taken the Book to an enclave. This was around the time that the first talks of the increasing mal populations were being started, and the knowledge Bork had collected was so valuable to hte enclavers that they'd purchased a copy from him in exchange for an enclave seat for him and his wife. It was finally safe enough that he felt comfortable having a child shortly after he moved in.

This had not been the end of Bork's famed misfortune, though. The enclave in question- one from the Saxon world- had offered to help him publish The Book of Dragons, translate it and spread the life-saving knowledge. No enclave invited you to live with them permanently unless you had something valuable, and that was the benefit they wanted- and they bribed him with a council seat in the enclave, a position over the soon-to-be-created Journal of Maleficaria Studies.

He had gladly accepted.

That kind of power would be for life, as all council seats were. He could use it to protect his then-fourteen-year-old son, and even help the archipelago found new, safer, closer enclaves. It would make abandoning Berk worth it, for Berk.

Naturally, after all was said and done, Bork had destroyed the copies of the book he had, then fled the enclave with his wife and son.

He never told anyone what they had said or done to scare him so much he had to remove the ripest, most delicious snack from the enclave lock-box to offer up to any mal in the world. How his son forgave him for not waiting just four more years- how his wife forgave him- nobody knew.

The book that had made him famous was lost forever.

His son had grown up, married, had his own kids, and passed the knowledge that Bork was a good man down, and that legacy rested now on Gobber, back at Berk.

And now, the book was in Hiccup's hands.

Well, Dagur's.

Gingerly, Dagur settled the book in Hiccup's arms.

"You need to be extremely careful with that book," he cautioned. "Treat it well."

"I will," Hiccup breathed lightly, caressing the book's spine. "Tell you what. Help me learn the language, and I'll reserve a book's worth of quattria leather for you. Even just a dictionary and some speech practice."

"Absolutely." Dagur set his dictionary on the desk. "I can get a new copy of that dictionary. Uh, next work period?"

"Absolutely. Thank you."

Dagur left the room, and Hiccup shut the door behind him, just as the first curfew warning bell rang. He leaned on the cool steel, mind racing. Berk could use this opportunity for great things. They could design dragon wards. They could sell dragon-based artifice.

All Hiccup had to do was learn it.

Chapter Text

Hiccup approached the London table in the cafeteria. He waited for the students sat there to notice, somewhat impatient. Like most Berkians, Hiccup didn't like London all that much. They were the enclave that had made Bork so unwelcome that he had abandoned it rather than keep his son there in safety. But, also like most Berkians, he understood they hadn't been involved centuries ago.

Still, he was annoyed when someone finally did look over.

"Can we help you?" snarked one of the tagalongs who had firmly attached herself to London in hopes of a seat in their enclave. Stupidly, in Hiccup's opinion- girls on the minion track rarely got enclave alliances, much less the guaranteed seats. It was so bad most people sent in boys rather than girls- though the archipelago had never bothered with gender separation. It didn't matter if the island culture stated that women were better off as wives- they wouldn't be wives, good or otherwise, if they didn't survive. If you had a seat, you picked the person you thought might survive. His own mother had been the first person picked when Berk had secured a few seats in their youth.

"Actually, I'm here to help you," he responded dryly. "Hiccup Haddock."

"Oh, you're here for me," piped up a relatively small sophomore. He held out his hand politely. "Smith."

"I'm free for work period tonight. I'll help you research in the shop, and then you can make up your design." He'd initially planned to have Dagur help him with his Old Norse, but Dagur had bailed. He'd said it was a trade thing- Hiccup understood. Dagur had sunk a substantial portion of his induction weight on rats, a valuable but expensive choice for familiars in such a cramped environment. Even seniors had been interested.

Smith frowned at Hiccup. Clearly, that wasn't what he'd hoped for.

"Only one day? Do you think that's enough for research? It's a mal habitat," Smith reminded him. As if Hiccup didn't know.

"I have sources on agglos," Hiccup told him. "It's hardly a mal. Even then, your farm'll only last, what? A week? Long enough to grade."

Smith slowly reddened. Still, he couldn't say anything. If he was too rude in front of the tagalongs, and made a habit of it, even they wouldn't be comfortable around him. And Hiccup had a once-in-a-generation talent that everyone wanted to cash in on. That's the only real reason that he'd asked Hiccup for help. Nobody else here understood mals.

Without waiting for a response, Hiccup returned to his table with his fellow Berkians.

Fortunately, Hiccup didn't have any trouble with his classes. Like everyone else, his classes were all in English, the language of the enclave who had made the place. That, and the fact that he'd yet to try to read the text in The Book of Dragons, saved him any additional strife. Still, he was worried- if the Scholomance knew he was planning this, it could throw him a challenge. The fact that it had yet to get its wards dirty only had him on edge.

Still, he wasn't expecting the sirenspider lulling Smith to sleep.

Easily, Hiccup could have left it to its meal when he got to the shop. The good thing about being raised by Stoick was that you grew used to magical music. Mal-made music, like that of sirenspiders, didn't take control of Hiccup as easily as it might someone else.

Enclave kids didn't go anywhere alone. Likely, some tagalong had balked, and Smith had learned a valuable lesson about going with too few guards, but been too trapped by the fact that Hiccup had better things to do than Smith's shop assignment to go back for a new loser. Alternatively, his tagalong had been attacked by a failed project of their own- now two weeks in remedial- and Smith had just barely escaped, only to be grabbed by the sirenspider. Hiccup had a rare opportunity. He could just leave Smith there. He could even loot Smith and then leave him there.

It wasn't very big. It must have come upstairs after going hungry in the graduation hall- too large to be a sling. They got plenty of those, but this wasn't one. Or maybe, since it had been the midwinter cleansing that only ran certain halls, it was simply lucky to have chosen one of the halls skipped this scouring.

Hiccup matched the tune of the spider with a low whistle.

Most sirenspiders had unique songs, but they were hardly sophisticated songs, and Hiccup could easily copy this one's. Once he harmonized with it, he switched to humming, drawing its attention. He added mana, then switched again to words, reaching into his bag for his forging hammer.

"Breathe the scent of the flowing sap, drink sweet nectar by the springs; this is not my house, it's yours," he raised his hammer, as the thing crawled toward him, intrigued by the song Stoick sang to new graduates each year, "you belong this side of the doors. My wife will mend your cup, my son minds all traveler's things. You're stood here on solid ground, in the haven that we found."

He brought the hammer down on its ugly, silvery body.

Hiccup's forging hammer was a gift from Gobber. It was a family heirloom, first made by the son of Bork the Bold. Every blacksmith who'd used it since had imbued it with mana; every repair came with a new ward to prevent the same break from happening again.

That was the only reason killing a corporeal mal with it worked.

The hammer cracked the spider's body in two. Its spell came to a discordant end, and Smith woke back up with a start. He frantically drew mana for a casting, then stared at the corpse. Hiccup put his hammer away.

"Can... Can you do anything with it?" Smith asked. Hiccup took it to mean 'Do I owe you something now?'

"Not big enough for that," Hiccup responded sweetly, by which he meant 'Yes, you do owe me.'

Smith looked at Hiccup's mana crystals, then held up his still-crackling hands. Hiccup let him repay the mana lost, then filled up another crystal, and then Hiccup set his bag on a work bench.

"Why didn't you want to meet in the library?" Smith tried.

"I have all the sources you need, and shop is closer." Hiccup opened his bag and began pulling out papers. They were all his own work, or at least translations, all in high marks. "And you can make smaller proof-of-concept. Help play with your ideas."

"I don't want to be down here. I can still... Feel it." He looked at the sirenspider again.

"I understand. That's why my dad's picking me up before dinner." Hiccup handed Smith one of the papers marked with 'A.'

"There is no way," Smith protested. Still, he relented and sat down at the bench. "Our sentence isn't over yet."

"Agglos aren't after mana. You've got nothing to worry about." Hiccup picked up the sirenspider. After a moment of consideration, he tossed it into the fires of the forges. "Feed it bits of artifice you don't need. Like one of those fancy bracelets you all wear."

Smith slapped his opposite hand over the power-sharer- a beautiful but somewhat crudely woven silver piece of jewelry with an onyx face. He let out a distressed squeak. Hiccup understood that. Nobody wanted to be cut off from their mana store- especially if it wasn't their own labor that had filled it. All the enclavers acted that way when you implied they would ever give it up.

"Kidding, kidding!" HIccup picked up an inkwell. "But if you have a broken one, it'll go crazy for it. Gobber said one of the enclaves he traded with made small tops that never fall, and set them to work in the farms."

"Gobber?"

"My tribe's artificer. He used to work for the Defenders of the Wing Island. Their enclave is one of the hardest to get work at, but they have brilliant artificers from all around the world. One of the projects he worked on was an agglo farm. One of them was a set of gates made from solid gold, for a new enclae-entrance. Something like the doors of the Scholomance.

"That where Mala's from?" Smith wondered aloud.

"The senior? Yeah. She's the Domina, I think."

"How would she be the Domina?" He looked scandalized. "She's still a student!"

"She's the old one's granddaughter. One of her subjects had a vision of her in the future, being a leader that fixed some of the enclave's problems. It was big news in the archipelago. I was only four," Hiccup explained. "They gave her the title in the interrim and did their best to raise her into expectations."

He paused, then opened his personal notebook. "They're going to give her the proper title when she gets home."

"Do you believe in divination? My mum says that's devil worship."

"You've got to believe in something to survive that island, even in an enclave. And if I recall correctly, they have a higher Scholomance survival rate than London, and your lot built the place."

That was a sore spot, he knew, but he didn't care.

Smith silently began reading Hiccup's writings. Hiccup neatly set another small stack on his desk. After he was satisfied Smith had the resources he needed, Hiccup began looking through the shop stores. His own shop project was due on the same timeline as Smith's. Aside from his personal projects, which the school would certainly give him credit for, he'd been assigned a fireproof shield. The shield would come in handy- there were plenty of mals that used fire, and he spent so much time down in the shop that he just knew it was only a matter of time before the forges spit fire at him.

Or larval fireworms.

He already had ideas for it.

Scored by the sounds of pages ruffling, Hiccup searched for the tungsten. It was always easier to start with materials that kind of had the properties you wanted. Tungsten had the highest melting point. Most artificers in the school didn't bother- you needed either mortal flame or an alchemical recipe the school almost never handed out. Outside, there was artifice that could manage it easily enough, but that had all been left... Well, outside. Fortunately, Hiccup had the alchemical recipe.

Hiccup hadn't known when he came in, but you could have an affinity for literally anything- and your affinity could be summed up as 'useful,' 'useful outside,' or 'maleficer.' Dispite being in that third affinity group, Hiccup had never known wizards could be naturally gifted in something so evil. He'd learned that when one of the seniors had tried to convince his classmates to kill a girl from Vinland in his year. She had a natural ability to just... Take. For her part, she didn't use the affinity. She was strict mana- something Hiccup had never known was a deliberate choice for some people.

She'd been the poor soul who had died and gave him his double-wide room. With no mana left after her schoolwork, and no malia, she'd been killed in freshman year.

Before she'd died, she had traded a few times with Hiccup. She had explained that the school gave you spells it thought you could use. Artifice you could operate, alchemy you could master. It wanted you to live, even if you had to be a maleficer to do it.

And the school gave Hiccup plenty of assignments only a maleficer would need in here.

Hiccup knew how to melt tungsten in here, with just a few ingredients. All he needed was the tungsten.

He found a whole bin full.

Which was heavy.

That wasn't much of a problem. He didn't need much, and part of his project would be incorporating a spell to make the shield lighter. He debated for a moment.

"How much is a fireproof shield worth to London enclave?" Hiccup asked.

"Uh, probably a lilm. Why?" Smith looked up at him.

"Not outside. Inside." Hiccup gestured to the notes Smith was reading. "That's my project. And I can make it better than fireproof."

"There's no way. Nobody our year is doing shields. Not fireproof!" Smith stared at Hiccup, clearly distressed at the thought. Hiccup said nothing. Defeated, Smith muttered, "That's absolutely brutal."

"I'm a Viking," Hiccup said plainly. "Occupational hazard."

"There has got to be more to it than that."

"Will you lot buy them or not?"

"Absolutely." Smith thought for a moment. "What would you like for them?"

"Not sure yet. I just want to make sure I can... Y'know. Sell. I might auction." Hiccup grabbed a couple cubes of the dark metal.

Smith nodded, then looked down at the agglo journal. "How do you do it?"

"How do I do what?" Hiccup asked, digging through a second box.

"Getting projects like this. Maleficer projects." Smith looked at the tungsten, tearing up.

"They're not maleficer projects!" Hiccup snapped. "They're expensive. A maleficer isn't someone with a lot of mana. It's someone who chooses to take. They don't have any mana."

"Then why did they start after I overcast?"

Oh. That's why Smith was alone.

Overcasting was the only form of malia anyone back home ever did, unless they were an awful person. Worse than Spitelout, worse than Mildew. It wasn't technically malefice, but it counted culturally. When you didn't have the mana, sometimes the spell would take from within the body. It was a good way to rot one's self from the inside out. It was also the only forgiveable form of malia. Most people didn't overcast on purpose, and many ached to right whatever wrong had been done. Hiccup wasn't the first person on berk with his affinity- Gobber insisted Bork had the same one. But that didn't mean they were the only ones who noticed that overcasting seemed to always precede a boost in population of Terrible Terrors or assorted oozes.

"Because you showed the school you were willing to push yourself. Why didn't you pull from your enclave storage?"

"Graduation. It wipes out mana storage from every enclave. The new seniors always put a cap on how much we pull, until the pool grows again." Smith sighed. "I didn't ward my room properly. It got swarmed with scorpions- the ones that paralyze you and siphon off all your mana. I overcast trying to get them out. I've been getting bad assignment offers all year. This is the first one I couldn't find a way out of."

Hiccup understood that pretty well. He'd had a year and a half of bad assignments himself. Unlike with his affinity, though, something could be done about overcasting remediation.

"I'll tell you your way out. My cousin Snotlout has a great overcast tonic. Our Gothi invented it." Hiccup set down the cubes, then approached. He wrote something down in Norse, then folded it up. "He charges a lot for it, but I can talk him back down. Get me about a half-pound of diamond dust, give him this, and I'll handle paying him."

"Does it need to be mana-infused?" Smith pocketed the paper anyway.

"I prefer doing that part myself. It makes the artifice easier to put together." Hiccup returned to the last box he'd been digging in.

"Hiccup Horrendous Haddock!"

Hiccup flinched. It was never good to hear Snotlout use that tone of voice. Still, he turned toward the still-open door of the alchemy lab.

"Why would you tell a London enclaver that they chould just have the worst potion I know without even asking me?" Snotlout demanded, shoving Hiccup backward into the wall. Hiccup rolled his eyes.

"Did you even read the note I gave him?" Hiccup lifted a hand to push Snotlout's arm back. He could hear the other students hastily packing up. Not a good thing- they were all meant to be focusing on work. If they left, it wouldn't be safe here- and this was an assigned class.

"Did you think I'd risk another language? I already have fifteen!" Snotlout gave him a final shove, then let go. Hiccup relaxed, and Snotlout turned to everyone else. "Chill out, you guys. Hiccup and I just need to have a little talk."

Hiccup raised a thumb, to signal the same, and pulled himself up. Snotlout turned back to him.

"You've made it before," Hiccup countered. "Smith was getting the kinds of assignments I get. He overcast and the school thinks he wants to use malia."

"He has to have his own look out. I don't like making that potion. You know exactly why!"

"I'm making fireproof shields. If you make him that tonic, you get the shield, free of charge."

Snotlout paused. Then he pulled back. "Fine. I'll make it. But you are so dead if you don't deliver."

Hiccup rolled his eyes again. Snotlout went to his seat, and Hiccup went to his own.

Truth was, Hiccup did know why Snotlout hated to make that potion. Worse yet, he understood every bit of it.

Snotlout's father was Hiccup's uncle Spitelout. And Spitelout, brilliant alchemist he may have been, was an awful father. He'd left Snotlout to fend for himself as a toddler once- not for long, but long enough that he shouldn't have done it. Every year, the village had a mana-building competition- well, the mana wasn't scored, but the actions were- and whoever impressed the judges the most was given a medal. For as long as Snotlout had been old enough to compete, Spitelout had pushed Snotlout. Any time he faltered, Snotlout was forced to feel the rage of the man. He was terrified of him.

The Overcast Tonic...

Spitelout had learned the tonic from Gothi, yes, but he'd been the one to teach it to Snotlout. It hadn't been one of the usual abuses. Spitelout had overcast while trying to reinforce the induction point when Snotlout was nine. He had walked him through the process, step-by-step, and taken a sip once Snotlout had gotten it right. It was the only tender memory Snotlout had of him. It made him furious to make it. He'd do it, no questions asked, if anyone from the archipelago needed to take it. It would cost, of course- all materials plus at least one week of snackbar tokens, sometimes more- but he'd do it for them.

He might even willingly make it for an indie kid. It would cost them everything they could spare.

But they all knew Snotlout would only make it for an enclaver with a guaranteed spot.

Hiccup had known all of that- but he also knew that Snotlout's dream since they were little was a fireproof shield. There was only one at home. It belonged to Stoick, who had used it to save Snotlout from a fireworm when they were little. Snotlout had wanted one ever since. He couldn't take Stoick's- that would belong to Hiccup someday- and Gobber didn't have the materials to make another. He'd never had this assignment. He probably never would- fireproof shields required an affinity, at least in school.

There were only two things Snotlout wanted more. The Valedictorian position, and a father like Stoick. Neither of these were things Hiccup could provide- the shield would have to be enough.

And it was. Snotlout, begrudgingly, slid a carton of iron shavings over.

Hiccup smiled, and slid a bowl of pearls back to him.

Chapter Text

Hiccup walked to Dagur's room, carrying The Book of Dragons and a spare notebook. He had his dictionary, too, but he didn't know how much work he'd do in it. Right now, Dagur only planned to help him get used to the changed rhythms so he didn't kill himself with a miscast spell. Still, he knew he'd rather get the most out of the work period.

Dagur opened the door excitedly, pulling Hiccup inside.

"Brother! You made it!" he crowed, then shoved the door closed.

"Of course I made it, I had to," Hiccup smiled back. The Bersker had always called him that. He didn't know why. He looked around Dagur's cell. The room was... Mostly normal.

Like everyone, Dagur had a large storage chest, a wooden bed made up with a single wool blanket (Dagur's had been dyed green), and a massive wooden desk with a matching chair. His small, gas desklight sat on the far corner of the desk, sitting right next to the void. The standard-issue wall cubby had been stripped of its door- also relatively standard. Dagur's clothes hung from the bottom, with a couple outfits folded up on the inner shelf, alongside a few personal items. On top of the shelf was a small arrangement of books, with hand-made bookends. Next to those were dim mana crystals.

What really caught his eye, though, was the enormous tank that Dagur had built along the wall the door was on. It contained several long tunnels, a feew hanging ropes with shiny things and treats, a wheel of some kind, and a water dish. It also contained a lot of rats.

"Do you like it?" Dagur asked. "Father helped me design it. It's warded, too."

"You built all this? On incantations track?"

"Got shop credit for it, too." Dagur beamed. "If you want, I can train one for you."

"No, thanks. I doubt I could handle one right now. Maybe I'll revisit that later."

"Alright." Dagur moved a box off his desk and sat on the space he'd cleared. "Let's start with understanding the differences in Futhark."

Hiccup sat down and spread out the books.

As they worked, Dagur stayed perched on his desk, like some deranged hulking gargoyle. Hiccup felt slightly cramped. Still, he let himself relax into the work. Toward the end of the work period, Dagur even had Hiccup trying to read out the first few lines of the book.

Dagur made a slightly strangled noise as he watched.

"Am I doing that badly?" Hiccup asked.

"No, you're reading beautifully for someone who only just started. It's just... You're holding the book uncomfortably."

Hiccup blinked. He looked up at him. "What?"

Dagur reached up to grab one of the spellbooks from his shelf. He pulled it down in front of himself and opened it.

"Spellbooks are sentient. So are other books that mostly stay hidden. They don't like to be handled roughly. It's how the books in the library enforce the rules about respecting communal property. Really powerful ones, like The Book of Dragons, get extra picky. You have to hold them carefully, hands near the seams. And most people have to— almost use magic, to turn pages, so they don't rip."

Hiccup looked at his hands— Dagur had grabbed an English book, so he wasn't worried about another surprise language— and then mimicked the positioning. Somehow, he felt the difference it made.

"What other tips can you give me?"

"Leather oil. Keeps them pliant and helps them relax."

"Oh, I have some of that!" He paused, then glanced at the rats. "My dad made me bring in a bottle."

"Why would he do that?" Dagur asked, straightening his back and staring at him in wonder. "Aren't you an artificer?"

Hiccup laughed nervously and nodded. "Yes, I am."

Dagur frowned, closed his spell book, and stepped over to the rat enclosure. He opened a hidden drawer, which contained... Dirt. Dirt and mushrooms.

Dagur lifted one of the larger fungi fom the drawer. He held it up like a prize.

"This was the most expensive thing my dad gave me," he explained, startlingly soft. "A fifteenth of my weight allowance, and I can't even use it for myself. And I have to feed them. But by doing that, he made my rats possible. And I've already sold a few rats, enough to make it worth it. You... Can't even hold a spellbook. Why would he... Why would a man like your father force that on you?"

Hiccup understood the betrayal. Stoick had been instrumental in convincing Dagur to take the seat. In making sure that Dagur felt safe coming in.

"He was an incanter," he explained. "He was hoping I'd turn out something like him. I can even cast his song-spells. But I've never needed the oil."

"And you didn't trade it away?"

"Didn't need to. And I guess I liked having it."

"But you only have so much weight allowance," Dagur mused. "Did he at least buy you extra storage?"

"No. But Snotlout— the guy who fixes all the indie kids' clothes— takes my mal hides and turns them into clothes for us. That had to have freed up at least seven kilos. We didn't bring any clothes in."

Dagur closed his mushroom drawer. He walked back to the desk, grabbed a knife from the big desk drawer. Hiccup watched him cut the mushroom up silently.

"What spells did your dad do to get you that much fertile dirt?" Hiccup asked. The only people with functional gardens in here had spelled pots and dirt. Hiccup himself barely had enough dirt to grow onions— which he only grew because he needed his dad's refreshment spell. The spell amplified any light near the pot to the point of sunlight.

"None. This is just ordinary Berserker dirt. I grow the mushrooms with food scraps, and compost any spare herbs I get to make more dirt."

So, Hiccup knew one person who didn't have magic dirt.

"So, what else do I need to do for my book?" Hiccup asked, which startled Dagur back into his own mind.

After several hours of work, in which Hiccup was able to translate a full page of The Book of Dragons, Hiccup found himself looking at Dagur's rats again. He had so many. The mushroom had gone to feed them.

"Why did you bring in rats?" he asked, finally.

"My affinity. I'm really good with animals, and my dad figured... The handbook said not to bring animals in because they're too heavy, so a small familiar that can watch over you in the dark- that'd be like smuggling in the treasure of Odin. And selling them really has helped! Some of the upperclassmen love having a rat to take care of, just to remind themselves there's something out there. Did you... Did you bring things in for your affinity?"

In truth? Not really. He had a lantern that redirected mal attention, but that didn't mean anything for his affinity. He was supposed to attract the damn things anyway. He had an anima brace, to help him heal his casting, but it didn't help him with any affinity— it helped him due to an injury. He had his forging hammer, but it wasn't any more useful in his hands than any other artificer's.

But it wasn't like he had come in unprepared.

Hiccup had come in fully prepared to butcher mals. He had spells to help manage the mals he encountered. Stoick had given him all the tools he needed for success.

"My knife," he said, slowly. "Because I can use mal corpses for artifice. And I'm great with mal harvesting, so I have a lot to trade. Mostly alchemy kids, but every so often I have stuff for everyone."

Dagur mulled it over, then nodded. "That makes sense."

Hiccup looked at the rats. "Is it true that their teeth never stop growing? I don't know much about animals."

"Yes. I give htem bones to chew on, and wood when I have it." Dagur placed a hand on the lid of the tank.

"I have a candy press. If you need to make them chews, you could probably find a serum to keep them healthy, and then I'd rent you the press."

"I don't like them getting sugar, usually. And doesn't that use a lot of sugar? Are you growing it?"

"I use digesters, actually. There are a lot of oozes that you can use, but I find digesters in the cafeteria all the time." It wasn't entirely a lie. Most of the alchemy students who rented the press couldn't afford sugar, but could find oozes so frequently they were practically free. Especially upperclassmen. But Hiccup had a flask full of liquid sugar that he could pour from, too. His father had given it to him after he proved the candy press was viable.

It had been his mother's, connected to a store on Berk that collected sugar from rotting fruit. She was an alchemist, before a Stormcutter had killed her, back when Hiccup was a baby. stoick had sworn every plant that rotted while he was in here would go to the pile. It also had a very clever ward that killed mals who tried to leave it, in either direction, and converted them to sugar as well. Hiccup charged a lot for a pour of this flask, because he was always worried it might wear down. It hadn't shown any signs of that, at least.

"Really? And that works?"

"Even some kids who do have sugar use ooze-goop!" Hiccup laughed, this time feeling more genuine. "Some reactions can be messed up with sugar. Most oozes, if you get rid of any organs that produced acid or poison, just hold the solution in place."

Dagur considered for a moment. "And you just put potions in candy form?"

"It preserves them. And it makes it easier to store them. Ruff and Tuff are my biggest renters. Then that lets them trade. Before we came in, the Ingermans used it to make Fishlegs at least a year's worth of potions."

"And what did they give you in return?"

"Outside? I let them do it for free. They're my people, and it's a pretty simple press. Inside, I charge based on whatever you're preserving, and how much."

"So, my rat chews. With digesters. If it was, say, a broth with my mushrooms..." He trailed off, clearly looking for Hiccup to make a suggestion.

"You'd need to provide the digesters you'd use, and I'd need something mildly useful. Maybe a vial of laundry potion. Or a few mushrooms for myself."

Dagur nodded, then gestured to the door. "Probably time to get going soon. I think it's close to the bell."

Hiccup agreed, so he packed his things up. "Thanks, Dagur. I'll come to you if I have any more news on the Book."

The next morning, Hiccup woke up far before his alarm. He tried to fall back asleep, but he found hismelf restless. Finally, he just got up and opened his notebooks instead. He had a few assignments that he still needed to work on. His shield, of course, but also his alchemy assignment— an elixer of decay, which he had a sneaking suspicion was going to be included in his next maintenance shift— and his essay on the songs of sirenspiders. That one had been good for research. He was pretty sure he'd identified the regions of their bodies that corresponded to specific sounds. He'd already written it, mostly, but it required editing.

Hiccup didn't go for any of those.

Nor did he start to work on the wings he'd designed, so ready to shield him.

Instead, like the useless sod he was turning into, he pulled out The Book of Dragons and the spelled leather oil Stoick had made for him. He'd have to find his recipe— he knew how to summon it, surely— so he didn't run out.

He carefully massaged some of the oil into the cover, humming a song Stoick sang to his own books softly. He wasn't sure he remembered the song properly— he barely had ever heard it, Stoick usually sang it in a different room— but he was sure, as soon as he started, that it was the song the book wanted to hear.

"I'll swim and sail on savage seas, with ne'er a fear of drowning.
And gladly ride the waves of life, if you will marry me. No scorching sun, nor freezing cold, will stop me on my journey." He didn't know why his father had sung a marriage song to the books, but he know this one had power to it. It probably hadn't been a spell before Stoick got to it, but it was now, and it was dragging Hiccup along like a cart along dirt ruts. "And love me for eternity, my dearest one, my darling dear, your mighty words astound me. But I've no use for mighty deeds, when I feel your arms around me."

Hiccup shifted so he could get more of the oil on his fingers.

"But I would bring you rings of gold, I'd even sing you poetry, and I would keep from all harm if you would stay beside me." He tapped his foot lightly against the floor. It felt appropriate. He had an older, deeper memory. One with another voice singing the next line.

"I have no use for rings of gold, I care not for your poetry. I only want your hand to hold— I only want you near me. To love, and kiss, to sweetly hold, for the dancing and the dreaming. Through all life's sorrows and delights, I'll keep your laugh inside me. I'll swim and sail o'er savage seas, with ne'er a fear of drowning, and gladly ride the waves of life, and you will marry me."

The song let him go, after that,  and he slumped back down. He hadn't expected the song to flow so freely— nor it to be a wedding song. For a brief, ridiculous moment, he wondered just how well his father treated those books. Then he shoved them away, deciding to ask him about it when he graduated.

He carefully rinsed the residue from his hands, and then opened the book to where he'd left off.

The first chapter of The Book of Dragons was all about how to understand the rest of the book. As he'd expected, it had information on the classes of dragons Berk used to describe threats in certain areas, and a section of the first page detailed the system Bork had used to mark spells and rituals. He'd saved golden ink for the spells. That was handy- he'd been able to tell at a glance whether the page was safe to read without impacting spell block.

Hiccup slowly flipped through the various chapters, skimming any safe pages for basic information he could glean. He spelled mostly bits of trivia at first— nothing immediately useful, but much that might help him in the future. One of the most common dragons on Berk had a magnesium flame, good for complex alchemical workings or transmuting into mortal flame. Hiccup briefly entertained the idea of catching the fire in his spell holder for usage in his shields. Another, the Zippleback, was first created during Bork's time on Berk, in hopes of guarding a specific cave for young Outcast children. Their gas had been so potent it had lead the whole mal to be kicked out. Gronckles had been used to destroy the brother settlement of an island beyond the archipelago, an entire enclave destroyed. They'd have to handle the infestations back home before Stoick bought the spells to properly build their enclave.

But the thing that truly stood out to him was a page on a mal he'd never seen before.

A Night Fury.

They were Strike-class, a dragon class able to build their own mana. They were dangerous because that meant they could refill their attacks on their own, without draining you. No dragon could use fire without mana.

Most people on Berk had never seen one. Some people didn't even believe they existed anymore. That kind of belief could definitely kill off a species of mal, if it were wide-spread enough, but the Defenders of the Wing were adamant that they knew at least one was still alive. Mala herself had had visions of one with a red tail attacking her enclave. She had come to rent the candy press to preserve foresight-dimming tonics in preparation for her last six months of study. You didn't want to be stuck having a vision when you were busy trying to learn senior-level spells.

Gobber insisted that one had visited during the raid his mother was killed in, that they had been too focused on that beast to help Stoick save his mother. Stoick disagreed, believed the worst they had were Stormcutters, but he agreed they were still around. 'You can't kill something filled with that much hate,' he always said.

But Hiccup believed, even without Stoick there to confirm.

Because the egg in his room belonged to a Night Fury.

Chapter Text

A smarter wizard probably would have sent the egg directly into the void before reading further. Hiccup was not a smarter wizard, fortunately, and he'd read the rest of the page. Bork had, apparently, discovered that furies couldn't hatch outside the Void. A Scholomance dorm may be a neighbor, but it wasn't quite in the Void. The Scholomance was an enclave, real space borrowed from outside and used for habitation and education. It didn't even count enough as the Void to make a student go insane. It couldn't hatch in the dorm. So, as far as Hiccup was concerned, that egg needed to stay right where it was.

But, before he had time to come up with a better plan, Hiccup's alarm went off, and he had to head upstairs for breakfast. He'd fashioned an odd book-sling out of a spare blanket Dagur had given him— Hiccup was going to preserve some of his rat chews for no additional charge in exchange— and he wore him in front of him now. He found Snotlout as they reached the line.

"I'm making your overcast tonic," Snotlout said, conversationally. "Do you have your press?"

Hiccup did, in fact, have his press.

"Are you making bulk?"

"I wasn't going to, but some dumbass freshman tried to kill a basic slime with a fungus-growing spell and now you're goiong to have an excess of potion preservative."

That was code for, 'You're going to clean out the labs.'

"Okay. I'll need storage."

"We'll cross that bridge later. What are you working on today?" Snotlout pulled him aside to allow a junior to squeeze past.

"Sprinkler fluid," Hiccup stepped forward, taking the spot before Snotlout— not first in line, but close— before continuing, "and I'll probably need all of it."

"Oh, really? You?" Snotlout frowned at him.

"It uses a hearty dose of amphisbaena scales. I had to raid the girls' shower." Amphisbaena infected both the boys' and girls' rooms equally, but Snotlout had tested a new potion in the heads the week prior, which saught to sterilize the amphisbaena there. It would wear off eventually, but for now had worked well enough that Hiccup physically couldn't catch enough.

"That makes more sense."

By then, the last few juniors had gone through, and it was the sophomores' turn in the cafeteria line. Hiccup picked up two milk cartons, then looked around. Fishlegs had found a decent seat for their group. Hiccup grabbed a third and continued.

"So I assume the reaction you were working on already is done?" Hiccup pondered. Snotlout picked up the ladel in front of the applesauce before dignifying him with a response.

 "Yes, actually. It was hot enough to burn the sugar you got me. I think Berk's kitchens will find it useful."

Hiccup reached forward and snapped the lids of the first two dishes open. That was risky, but when food underneath was edible, it earned points with anyone behind him. This day, one pot was full of steaming-hot beef stew, with nary a mal in sight. The pan beside it had roasted potatoes and two monstrous, tentacly masses readying themselves to launch at him. Apparently, some maleficaria mated for life, because in between the potatoes were small clusters of jelly-like eggs. Hiccup took it all in at a glance, then tossed the lid behind the pan. He hissed out a curse at the little freaks, paralyzing them rather efficiently, and then scooped both of them up into a spare cup. He looked at the eggs and leaned back a little.

"Ruffnut, do you have a spare jar I can borrow until class?"

It wasn't typically something the Berkians paid for, if he phrased it that way. Clearly, he had a plan to return it. So, she handed one up past Snotlout.

With his bare hand, Hiccup scooped up about seventy of the eggs, then picked out two sizeable potatoes. Nobody still alive by sophomore year scoffs at unpoisoned food just because there's a mal in the tray. That's why people still ate the rice.

"The eggs won't hurt you," he announced, "but they'd probably suck to eat, so try to go for the potatoes."

Snotlout did in fact go for the potatoes, plucking up one for himself. They took turns scooping the stew into their small mugs— Hiccup also scooped some into the girl in front of him's mug— and Hiccup selected two bowls of porridge. Snotlout grabbed two more scoops of the chunky applesauce.

"Do I want to know what you're doing with those?" the girl asked, glancing at the cursed caviar, and its parents. She kindly poured a small pink vial into the veggie tray, which smoked something fierce but destroyed the bronze poison-coating on the carrots, and then scooped herself a serving.

"Test subjects," he shrugged. He didn't like the aftertaste of the stuff she'd used— multiple alchemy kids learned it at some point— but he grabbed a serving anyway.

"Oh," she said.

By the time they came out of the line, Hiccup's tray was the fullest it had been in weeks. He sat next to Fishlegs and waited for Ruffnut to set her second tray down. It was the usual distribution of work— Fishlegs or Astrid secured the table, Ruffnut grabbed a tray for them, Hiccup checked mals, and then everyone got some spare food.

Fishlegs waited as a large potato, tewo servings of now-charred salad, a milk carton, a bowl of porridge topped with applesauce, beef stew, some form of dense cake, and a packet of salt appeared in front of him. The salt packets were never cursed. Hiccup handed Snotlout the spare milk.

"The sprinklers in the freshman dorm are broken," Fishlegs announced. He was always first to have news like that.

"I think they're empty," Hiccup countered. "I got a lab assignment that promises to do what the sprinklers do."

"What'll you take for it?" Fishlegs asked, starting to eat his porridge.

"Not sure yet. Depends on who gets the job of fixing it." Hiccup glanced at Tuffnut, who had barely done his shift the week prior. "Hey Tuff! What's your lab today? Anything I could help with?"

"I need thirty oak leaves. What do you need?" Tuffnut asked.

"Oh, good, I have extra. I need about six grams of alcohol." Ruffnut and Tuffnut had brought some still-fermenting mead with them, and fermented more in the spare time for their assignments. You could get alcohol, but not enough of it, and organic material was likewise usually hard to come by. Thirty oak leaves was worth at least three hundred grams, and Tuffnut knew that.

"I'll get you some."

For that morning, Fishlegs had shop, and Astrid had a seminar in Greek. Hiccup, Snotlout, Ruffnut, and Tuffnut shared a lab period, though the twins had a different lab assignment than either Snotlout or Hiccup. Because of this, it was easiest for the twins to hold onto Snotlout and Hiccup's things while they took care of the infesting slimes in the stockroom.

Normally, nobody would deliberately spend time killing mals. Hiccup was not normal by Scholomance standards. Still, he got plenty of strange looks as he pulled slimes from the shelves.

Snotlout carried a large bucket, pointed out any slimes Hiccup missed, and sustained a shield over him as he worked. This meant that, even though the greyish-pink blob attempted to climb into the future chief of Berk's eyeballs, it didn't really touch him. After Hiccup had gotten ahold of most of the slimes— some still splitting off from an ambitious parent slime— he pulled out his knife.

Hiccup had a fantastic spell in Inuktitut, the language of Vinland, that effectively turned his knife into a wand of death. It had been used to help young hunters make clean kills, which respected the animal they were hunting and kept stress hormones from flooding the body and meat. With just a quick slice through the skins, he gutted all of the damn things into the bucket they were still contained in.

Snotlout then turned to everyone they'd been blocking.

"You owe the man," Snotlout announced. He grabbed a small sack Hiccup hadn't even noticed he'd brought and held it out. "You'd have no supplies if he didn't clear the store. If you have nothing to spare, mana is fine."

The students all glared, but for most of them, Snotlout was right. They didn't have the resources to kill fast-growing maleficaria, and the shop would have been eaten clean. So, eery one of them dug around in their personal supplies. Snotlout didn't make them fork over much. A few scoops of casting powder, a cartridge of ink, some pressed plants— not much particularly useful to Hiccup, but great for trade. Some forked over mana. Someone gave him extra storage jars. Someone else gave up a sheet of silver.

"How exactly are we going to divide that?" Hiccup stared at Snotlout as he picked up the bucket. Tuffnut handed him back his schoolbag.

Snotlout accepted his own bag from Ruffnut, then peeked in the bag. "I take all the mana I spent on the shield spell, and the vial of Threadtail venom. Let the twins take whatever they need for today, and you get the rest."

That sounded reasonable. Hiccup let Ruffnut sift through the bag, then dug in his personal bag for the promised oak leaves. True to Tuffnut's word, he was handed a large bottle of some kind of beer. THen they split off into their respective rooms.

Snotlout took the safer cauldron— obviously— and set to work, as did Hiccup with the less-safe cauldron. At first, they worked in complete silence.

Then Snotlout sighed.

"You're going to get yourself killed someday. Your father wouldn't forgive himself."

Hiccup stilled. His cousin never used that soft tone of voice. Their mothers had been sisters; Snotlout's mother had moved the two of them into the Chief's home to nurse Hiccup after his mother had died. They had been close, once, before Spitelout had taught him to cry in secret. Now, in the Scholomance, they all had to be rude and standoffish to survive. If you let yourself get attached, you only got hurt.

Hiccup debated countering that this particular expedition had been Snotlout's idea, but he knew he would've done it without Snotlout's suggestion. He also knew that this wasn't about these mals.

"I don't know how to stop."

Hiccup didn't like the vulnerability.

Snotlout just continued.

"My mother would lose both the little boys she made clothes for. I'm not going back. I can't. But you have everything to look forward to. You have a father who would be proud to have a maintenance kid."

"I can't go back without knowing, 'Lout."

"You could go back without feeding everyone else." Snotlout glanced at the bucket, and then, more pointedly, the jar.

"How would you do it?" Whatever spell had come over him eased, and he returned to work. "How would you stop your affinity?"

"I'll tell you when I figure that out."

Hiccup finished the step he was on, then pulled out the candy press. Snotlout would get done before him anyway. Then he began counting out the amphisbaena scales.

After Snotlout finished the tonic, Hiccup spoke again.

"What was your actual assignment?"

"A dye that burns away into psychic smoke. I need to get some wax, make a candle out of it." Snotlout scooped out a beakerful of the potion. Then he handed the glowing purple liquid to Hiccup.

"What's this for?" He looked at Snotlout, confused.

Snotlout didn't answer. Not right away. Instead, he looked at Hiccup's arm, clad in worn leather and sparkling green gems. His anima-brace.

Hiccup had, when he was eight, been attacked by a baby kraken. Kraken were enormous squid-like things that ate whole magical ships— but babies were barely large enough to eat a ten-year-old. Hiccup had already been scrawny, and the hell-quid had wanted a snack on its way back into the ocean.

He'd had two spells— neither songs— at that age. Well, two he wanted to cast. The first was a simple survival spell. Spitelout had taught all the kids the spell. It took a whole crystal to hold it up, but it was easy— a shield that formed a point you could kill a mal with. Kids were told to only go for the kill if there were no adults around, and even then, only if they couldn't find one. It was useless in the Scholomance— it had to be your only focus. It wouldn't even help in the graduation hall. The wish to go home would cause a miscast.

The second, he'd written himself.

It helped him figure out where to look on a mal to learn how it ticked.

And he had wanted to know more about the coiling mass of a mal that had attacked him. So, he'd tried to cast both— not entirely intending to do so. The spells crossed, and obviously neither quite worked as they were meant to. The shield warped into a point and dived into the belly of the squid, but the point had attached itself to a shaft of his mana— which had been driven into his own anima and damaged it.

He'd been lucky. It hadn't taken his whole anima, only a large portion of it. With kids, even a completely broken anima could be repaired. That's why they were able to bring kids in from Outcast Island, and even send a few into the Scholomance. Still, it wasn't good. They had to plan his whole life.

Gothi had made the brace to force him not to overcast in the Scholomance. He took it off in the evenings to build mana on his own. Building without the brace encouraged the his anima to grow back faster. The onions with Stoick's refreshment spell, he cut up weekly and stewed into a broth, which he ate with dinner on Fridays. That gave his anima a boost, at the cost that he never felt the same refreshment as everyone else who got a swallow.

Snotlout finally peeled his eyes away from the brace and looked Hiccup in the eye.

"I did some extra credit work. An essay on how wounded anima heals. Refreshment, euphoria, and calming all give a significant boost— and most overcast spells do too. They work better, it's what they're for."

Hiccup looked at the potion again, then at Snotlout.

"Just drink it, man!" the boy snapped. "It works better in liquid form."

Hiccup lifted the tonic up to the gas light— Gothi had always warned them never to drink anything with sediment in it— and downed the full beaker.

It tasted like it were made of fine ale, smooth cream, and the memory of a fire. It went down as smoothly. He clamped a hand over his motuh as tears welled in his eyes. Pain shot through him like arrows. He'd expected this. It didn't make it easier. The gems on his brace glowed angrily. He steadied himself against the lab counter as he waited it out. It took a minute before he was able to return to his recipe, and he added the remaining components between flashes of pain.

At the end of it, Hiccup was left with an obnoxiously white liquid.

Hiccup carefully cast his Inuktitut spell and stabbed one of the octopus-things in the jar. Then, he laid the rapidly-paling corpse on his table, before applying a few drops of the fluid to the mal's head. It quickly began to bubble and froth, slowly eating away at the mal corpse. Snotlout nodded appreciatively.

The students were, mostly, on their own when it came to keeping the school clean. In fact, there were awful consequences to any student who neglected that duty. If you left food on a tray in the cafeteria, mals would swarm your table in between meals. That meant fewer places to sit and less of a chance to eat your own fill— not something a growing wizard wanted. If you killed something in your room, and you didn't properly scrub it out, mals would come to scavenge. If you simply didn't keep a tidy dorm, then your supplies could go missing. Or turn on you. If you tore a book in the library, that book would never show up again. Many other books would avoid you as well. Woe be unto your grades, your spell list, and your chances at Graduation. Leaving supplies out in the workshops meant someone else could grab them, and if someone's assignment attacked them, you'd struggle to leave. Ditto in alchemy. Failure to properly do your maintenance shift— including cleanup after— locked you out of the cafeteria.

But the school wasn't cruel. Not intentionally.

Sometimes, a mal was too big to clean up on your own. Mals would pop through the wards while you were still trying to butcher it. Alternatively, a mal was simply too messy. There was an exploding one that particularly liked freshman. Its guts would cover the area in gore and some strange alchemical powder that the twins loved so dearly they'd help random freshman kill one if they would already be on the same section of floor. Still, the other innards sucked.

So, the Scholomance had drains, spaced evenly along the halls and centered in dorm rooms and patterned in classrooms. Everywhere except the individual dorms had sprinkler systems, which opened up in worst-case scenereos. The substance they used would destroy mal remains and wash them toward drains.

With this recipe, Hiccup could afford to get out of a maintenance shift. It would be enough for a maintenance-track kid to bid on all the best enclaves, and he could use the spare time to install a sprinkler in his own dorm. Not only that, but it would be fantastically useful back home. Amphisbaena scales were easy to come by in the caves near Berk.

Hiccup slid one of the eggs onto the table, and the still-living mal. Carefully, he tested the potion on them as well. The school gave better scores to students who properly tested their alchemy, artifice, and spells. It also tended to give Hiccup better spells hwen he'd been particularly ruthless. Surely, dissolving a still-living mal would count for something. It was a no-go. The solvent bubbled a little on the egg, biut it didn't do anything productive to either the egg or the still-living ma;. He killed the octopus and began cleaning up again.

Snotlout, meanwhile, was packaging the overcast tonic with Hiccup's press.

"So. What are you going to do with the eggs?" Snotlout asked conversationally.

"Test subjects for some of my assignments. They won't hatch if I douse them in this stuff." He nodded toward the slime bucket. "Think you'll be using all of that?"

Chapter Text

Hiccup loved the smell of mortal flames.

Most wizards didn't particularly agree. Mortal flame was spelled fire. It consumed anything in its wake that had mana or malia, or anyone that got too close bussin g trays in the cafeteria. On cleansing days, everyone was busy trying to guard their rooms from running maleficaria to enjoy the smoke. The flame was dangerous, the way anything in the Scholomance was dangerous, designed to save you and doomed to kill you.

But down in the shop, Hiccup had a unique position.

He was an artificer through-and-through, and that meant he spent a significant amount of time in the shop. He'd grown up around the flames, with a hammer in his hand. It felt like home.

The flames of the forge lit the room. He was just about the only indie kid who did work down here that didn't need the heat of the furnaces, but he had a sizeable crowd of kids there to help shield him. They all preferred to have one of the top mal killers about while they worked on things that didn't fit in the dorms.

He carefully laid out the wood that would be the base of his shields.

Hiccup had heard of trees that didn't grow on the islands he knew. They were called 'walnut,; hard to carve, and gave beautiful wood. He was sure that's what he was carving into large, shallow domes, the better to curve around the arm as a shield. He had strips of real leather— from a mundane animal— he planned to turn into the holds. The tungsten would be added later, with hammered-in runes and mana he couldn't afford to spend.

As he scooped shavings into a small basket that may or may not have been purchased from a dead boy, he leaned in and sniffed it. Sawdust was valuable in the Scholomance. Easy carbon, the woody smell of a carpenter's house, kindling. The cheaters among the students could suck mana from it. He intended to use it for starting the reaction for the tungsten. He had a couple of his empties on hand to shove the carved mana into.

A boy on the other side of the room had inherited a magical harp from an older sister. Harps were hard to transport, so they rarely got made, and they never left the school. The older sister had been forced into it, probably, but there were upsides. For example, he'd been hired by one of the enclaves to play that harp down here.

The spell was one Hiccup did not personally know, but he knew the type. It felt similar to the winters that he'd spent back home, living in Berk. Often, it was too cold in many parts of the village for people to stay in. Many parents brought their children to the Great Hall, cooking, knitting, and swapping stories. Alternatively, kids who were outgrowing their tools and adults who needed more weapons would crowd into Gobber's smithy. The heat of the artificer's forge warmed everyone; there was work to be done, and because Hiccup was an apprentice, Stoick often chose that group to shelter with. He had several spells, some with words, some without, which he played for the benefit of those trapped inside. Like in the Great Hall, they'd use one of the fires for cooking. There would be storytelling and rest.

Ordinarily, you would have to pay to benefit from this type of help during a work period. Hiccup only had it for free because he was one of the best mal-fighters— ideal for the forges. Still, it was payment, and the work went faster for it.

Another indie kid worked far closer to Hiccup. He was never quite sure whether they were a boy or girl, but that didn't matter. What did matter was that the enclavers clearly hadn't been told they would have to share the space with them. It was the late work period, a block of time dangerous to be alone during no matter where you were.

They looked stressed, too. They were working on some small thing of gears and glass, and they were finding it hard to use it even with the help of the harpist.

Hiccup glanced at his shields. He'd blocked more time than he needed for this step. Even factoring in the boost, which he wouldn't have in the future, he was over halfway through the lot of them, and it had only been one large work block. He'd estimated he'd need four more to get it done.

Hiccup remembered, again, the ship ride home from Berserker Island. How he'd questioned Stoick's actions.

"Kindness, for the sake of kindness, is the purest defense we have, Hiccup," he'd said, in the rare way he did when he dropped the brave Viking facade.

"From what?" Hiccup had asked, innocent but already being pulled toward malia in a way he still didn't understand.

"Everything," had been the answer, and it was true.

Kindness was what kept Hiccup from needing to resort to malia. It was what protected the Defenders of the Wing. It was what killed maleficaria when they attacked your neighbor's children.

Hiccup set his basket of sawdust down and approached them.

"What are you working on?" he asked.

They looked up at him, squinting suspiciously.

"What's it to you?" they snapped.

"It looks like Adib's work spell isn't helping you the way you need," he explained softly. "Maybe I can fill in the gap."

THe kid mulled it over or a moment, then nodded.

"I have to make an alarm clock that cuts through spelled sleep," they offered.

That was hard. It was worse if this wasn't an assignment. Either someone had sent in a kid with insomnia, who had to meditate to rest, or mals that hunted the resting had got in their dorm and they needed to keep themselves off the menu.

"Let me take a look."

Hiccup looked over the basic sketch the kid had come up with. It was a little more simple than what was ideal. He glanced at the enclavers, who had returned to their projects— presumably, they thought the kid was with Hiccup and payment extended to them as well— and Hiccup could still feel the notes of the harp sharpening his mind.

"I can make you a panel of glass with agglo ash," Hiccup offered. "it would help hold in a spell of alertness. Only problem is that you would need to put mana in every night."

"How much mana?'

"Oh, not much. Use a simple shop-sink as the setting, and you'll be able to do with half per night."

The kid considered, then reached into their bag. "I don't have much to trade. Um. I have a few extra snackbar tokens?"

He shook his head. He was fed enough, and the kid could use the calories. "What track are you?"

"Alchemy. Do you need any potions brewing?"

That really was rough. Spelled sleep was not pleased to end, regardless of why you encountered it. If a student was the least bit specialized away from artifice, an alarm capable of handling spelled sleep would be very difficult. Nearly impossible. Fortunately, agglo ash wass hardly enough of a mal bit to hinder most artificers.

"Do you have anything for physical strength?"

Most students stayed away from strength potions. They made mana harder to build, because you put less effort into whatever you were doing. Still, they had their uses. A swallow of that kind of magic could get you through the first few runs at graduation rehearsal. It could get you through to the doors. Outside, when mana was no longer so much of a concern, it could get a home built in under a few weeks, and that freed up more time to build mana and use shield spells. So, if everything else offered was equally useless in the Scholokance, strength tonics would be the most attractive choice.

And Hiccup needed a strength boost.

Night fury eggs were huge and heavy. If Hiccup wanted the mal to incubate in the Void, and he did, he had to get it out there. Nobody would help him. Walking into the Void was stupid. It could kill you. So, he needed to lift it himself.

He was sure it could be done with a bit of leverage, but strength could only help.

"Oh! Yes I do! I wondered why the school would give me that assignment..." They glanced down at the mess of gears.

"Tell you what. Make all the components you need today, and I'll get the frame you need made next free period. I have some leftover ash in my room. Make the potion by lunch on Saturday and bring it to me or the other Berk kids there, we'll give you the frame, and we'll be good."

"How much potion do you need?"

"One— actually, two doses." That way he had wiggle room.

Hiccup left the conversation and returned to his shield.

The Scholomance gymnasium— a Saxon concept, as Hiccup understood it, which consisted of a room meant to contain all sporting activities— was one of the most dangerous places in the school. Mals liked to hide there, waiting for exhausted seniors to stumble out of the half used for graduation practice or inexperienced freshmen trying to find some place to carelessly build mana. Some of them came to wait for the day of year that all the students were forced to spend there or else starve upstairs. It was low, taking up half the shop floor and one of the places serving as 'first stop' for maleficaria that burst through. It also had a very weak psychic foundation, meaning mals could ease out a hiding place to kill from.

Naturally, the Berkians spent a lot of time down there.

It was an ideal mana-building spot. Nobody could interrupt them— the noise of a confrontation would get the attention of anything patient enough— and it had unique equipment for exactly that purpose. The kids who did come down here came in groups that had their own appeal to a hungry mal.

Astrid and Snotlout were competative. They liked to start with an empty and race to fill theirs first. Ruff and Tuff, similarly, were competative, taking on daring challenges that did not bode wll for them if they failed. Hiccup just used the Saxons' equipment. Bars that connected to heavy plates, clanky mats that could be rearranged into obstacles, rope ladders to be climbed. All of them were difficult to use for him. He got plenty of mana from it. Fishlegs usually sat to the side, too exhausted by maintenance shifts to do the physical labor, but here to be with them all. He built mana by painstakingly maintaining all the tools the group needed.

Every Thursday morning, they got together, ate Ruffnut's disgusting thrice-pickled herring, and set to work. Ruffnut was the worst cook on Berk. Her food was edible, but unpleasant, the way any food in the Scholomance was. Exercising on her cooking provided a substantial boost to the amount of mana earned per session.

Of course, even that wasn't a high enough price to secure this.

Thursday mornings were class time. The Scholomance assigned classes from eight in the morning to four-thirty in the evening. If you didn't spend that time learning, chances were, you wouldn't get some key piece of credit. The school let the Berkians do it, but only because they agreed to do the really bad classes in exchange. Classes that had fewer students, more gruelling assignments, and loads more extra homework.

All kids had a baseline of two seminars per semester in sophomore year, which were the same ones in specific subjects. Astrid took three extra seminars, each in a different language, one of which had only four students. She was looking at an independant study by junior year. Fishlegs had a mathematics class that only Valedictorian-track sophomores took, as a maintenance kid. That one also usually met on Thursdays, after their mana-building session. Ruffnut and Tuffnut had two seminars themselves, one history and one Maleficaria studies, which Hiccup only knew about because he was the only other non-maleficer in their block. Snotlout... It was hard to say which classes Snotlout got in order to pay for Thursdays off. It could entirely be that the school didn't give him anything to make up for it, and thus tanked his chances at becoming Valedictorian. Hiccup had actually wanted the seminar he shared with the twins— it gave him more options for his artifice— and his particularly gruelling makeup class was alchemy.

It also was still technically its own class: Physical education. Like all classes, it came with coursework and due dates. Just fewer.

Today, Hiccup cmae into the gym first, and came face-to-face with the one thing that was never at the gym: Desks.

"What the fuck," Tuffnut said plainly.

"Are they mimics?" Fishlegs asked.

Hiccup approached carefully, wondering just that. He cast a simple revlatory light— used to turn up secrets, hidden mals, and lost things— but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. They were six chairs with small, attached desks, each one with a folded case filled with papers. No mals lurked in or on them; they were each made of the same material as all the other desks on the clasroom floors. One peek into the folder on the closest desk revealed it contined Snotlout's homework for the class.

"I think it's just today's assignment," Hiccup told them, glancing around. He located his own desk and sat down, flipping the case open. On the right was the first piece of homework he'd turned in for the class, a relatively simple description of how different types of labor affected the anima. He'd gotten the best grade with that. At least, the best grade for a non-Valedictorian.

On the left was an exam packet.

Apparently, they weren't excempt from pop quizzes in this class.

Each of the other Berkians located their own desks and sat down as well. The exam pakcets each contained a small instruction section, detailing the process of writing the answers, and how to identify the units of learning material; it claimed to be an 'open notebook' exam that should take 'no more than half an hour.' Slogging through over a year's worth of answers would surely take longer than that, even ignoring how much time it would take to write full answers on the correct rhythm of stretches to build enough mana for levitation.

Which meant that their beautiful guaranteed mana-building spot for the week was gone.

Fortunately, it did seem they would continue to have success here in the furutre. Several of the questions hinted at a scheduling of activities to ensure maximum physical health. Not that it solved the problem.

After they left the gym, having slid the whole stack of essays into a nook that was meant to be a gazebo in the initial blueprints, Tuffnut offered his solution to their sudden lack of reserves.

"We could go to the Saturday casino," he had suggested while rounding the platform to the stairs.

"Who puts a casino in a school?" Snotlout demanded, turning to glare at him.

"It's not actually a casino," Ruffnut assured him. "Alchemists tend to spend a lot of time and mana trying to numb the fear. The casino is a weekly meeting where kids try to make it feel less serious."

"Admission is a good recipe or a few vials of euphoric, and then you get to make bets with people. It's a good way to get a discount on mana, if you're lucky."

Hiccup didn't like the sound of that.

"What kind of games?" Astrid asked.

"Any kind," Ruff began counting on her fingers, "dice, cards, chess—"

"—artifice races, marbles, drinking—"

Together, the twins added, "agglo racing!"

In short, it was a casino.

"Are only alchemists allowed?" Astrid asked.

"Nope. Anyone with something to bet comes in. It's mostly seniors and enclavers, though."

Hiccup took a moment to consider. With luck, you could probably win something worth it. At least something that would help in one of their classes, something he knew he could strike a deal for— or something worth the real mana. Probably, these kids bet real items, and then sold winnings back for mana. Hiccup held that thought ofr a moment. That wouldn't be a good idea to do— too close to malia— he could easily get information there. Information he could turn into mal parts, which he coud then sell, and that would make up for any bad handds or class time lost to, well. Class.

"Saturday at lunch, someone'll come to the Berk table with a potion of strength. If I give you the frame I'm making for them, will you go-between?" he asked Snotlout.

"Yes," Snotlout answered immeidately. He probably assumed it was for the shield.

"I'll go to the casino, then. I have a hunch about who'll be there and that can get me an in for trades later. Ruff, where is the casino at?"

"Room 293 in the alchemy level."

Great.

On Saturday, Hiccup made the long trek down to the alchemy lab after breakfast. He'd had a full breakfast, and he'd leave before dinner. For buy-in, he'd brought the refreshment tonic he made with Stoick's onions. He'd gotten hold of some real honey, too. That would help him sell it. It would serve as a way to save a life if they overdosed on one of their potions, without completely taking the high. He'd also brought enough to bet with, and a couple small bits of artifice. Nothing inconsequential, just enough to make it through a semester. Life or death in here. Convenience outside.

He knocked on the door, trying to be nonchalant. The door swung open, and Hiccup had to force himself not to flinch.

Heavy-duty maleficers had a certain smell to them, like a wildfire reaching a trash heap. It was subtler than that, but it was present, and Hiccup was great at detecting it. He didn't need to smell to identify Grimmel as a maleficer, though. He was undeadly pale, with hooded eyes that were too dark for his hair to be the result of albinism. He was tall and lanky; his bones stretched in uncomfortable ways. Malia did that to someone who liked it. Hiccup mentally put up a block to keep Grimmel out of his mana.

"Welcome," Grimmel opened the door, "to the casino. Here for the love of the game?"

Hiccup hated those types. Grimmel was trying to sound cooler, to sound like someone you found interesting. He said it in a way that sounded forced, and Hiccup didn't want to give him that much of an in. That was how your mana got siphoned.

He held up his vials.

"Three vials of refreshment from the Chief of Berk. More for those who invite me to their tables."

Grimmel eyed the vials, then opened the door. He snatched all three, then placed them on a small pile labelled 'jackpot.'

"It's dice night. Any game is valid. Never bet anything you aren't willing to lose."

Hiccup glanced around the tables with as discerning an eye as he could. Almost all the tables had at least one maleficer; they all also seemed made up of mostly seniors or juniors. No freshman, but there were a few sophs here and there. Hiccup didn't recognize most of the people here. He also caught a bunch of other kids hovering around, seemingly unwilling to sit down at bad bet tables.

Hiccup claimed an empty table, reaching for the dice on the table. He had a game in mind, an old sailor's game: Ship, captain, crew. It was point-based, and you could cash out at any time, if you sensed your luck coming or going. They only needed five dice.

It didn't take long for two girls to sit down, both juniors who looked down on their luck. One of them was betting small, round mana sinks, every one of them full. He eyed her warily, but then noticed a burn on her left arm. It was bad, and the mana alone wouldn't buy her the proper supplies to heal one tha tsevere. They'd charge a major premium to heal that. Hiccup had exactly the kind of medicine she would need. If her luck turned sour, he'd sell her the stuff cheap, he decided.

The second girl sat down a small sheaf of spelled papers. Hiccup could easily sell that to a senior in need of pre-casting components, or save it for Astrid to practive copying spells. They were the first step in single-use sheets that skipped a lot of time and mana in a pinch. He decided he actually wanted that stuff. He'd have to ask her for a price range.

"What's your game?" the burned girl asked him.

"Ship, captain, crew. It's a points game. You roll five dice up to three times. You need a six, a five, and a four, in that order, and then you score points on the remaining dice. We bet based on the points."

"I've got spell sheets," the second girl said, tapping her sheaf. "You?"

"Refreshment tonics, form the chief of Berk, Stoick the Vast." He wasn't revealing himself as the future chief, only someone from around there— information everyone really had a right to if they were thinking alliances or trades. Stoick gave his tribe's kids plenty of resources to come in and build strategies on. "My name is Hiccup. Yours?"

"Sara," said the burned girl, "and she's Tiffany."

Tiffany slid over a small notebook.

"For scorekeeping," she explained. "Show us how?"

Hiccup nodded. He wrote their names on top. Then he rolled the dice.

Six. Five. Four. Four. One.

"Do you roll three times still?" Tiffany asked.

"I can," Hiccup said. He slid the six, five, and four over. Or I could score, total. I like the ofur, not the one. So I'll retry the one."

He rolled the one, and got a five.

"That, I like. I won't roll again. Four plus five is nine points."

Hiccup wrote it down, then slid the dice to Tiffany, who scooped them up with ease.

"Six, six, five, four, one."

"Oh, that's a good roll," Hiccup said gently. "Remove the first six, the five, and four."

"Oh, I get it now," Tifffany rerolled the one, "four. I'll keep that. Ten total."

Hiccup double checked, then scored it, and Sara took the dice.

"Five, five, two, one, one," she announced. "Can I save a five?"

"No. You need six first."

Sara pressed her lips tight, then rerolled. "Six, six, three, one, one."

She scooped up the four dice that weren't the first six, then tried again. "Four, four, one, one."

"Bad luck..." Hiccup reached for them. "How about we play five rounds, winner takeall?"

It didn't come off rocky. He was still losing.

"Okay," Sara said. She glanced at Tiffany. "Works for me."

Hiccup rolled again. Nothing usable. He tried a second, then third.

They played a full round, which Sara undoubtedly won, and most of the next, when a boy from Vinland sat down. Hiccup wasn't sure who he was or how he got his seat, but he knew he was a maleficer. Not a good one. He had back-casting scars on his protective tattoos. Hiccup wasn't even worried about him.

"Eret, son of Eret," the boy said, and offered a hand. "May I join?"

"At what price?" Tiffany asked.

"I have a harvester," he offered casually, setting it down.

Harvesters were crawlers designed to seek out and retrieve items or mana. They were tiny spelled constructs, and prone to turning mal, but could be used to get supplies easily. Hiccup didn't exactly trust it, but he could fix it easily if it was bad.

"Did you hear the rules?" Hiccup asked.

"I did." Eret cast the dice.

At the end, Hiccup had 26 points. Eret had a grand total of seven. Sara had 23, and Tiffany had 20. Hiccup accepted the small pile of goods, and he slipped everything except the refreshment potions into his small bag, not bothering to count it. Not at the table.

"I'm good to go for company," Hiccup said casually.

Sara eyed the little bottle enviously.Even that would help with the burn. She dug in her bag and pulled out a rolled-up bundle of fabric.

"It's a dress," she started, "never worn. You hang out with that girl in advanced Greek, right?"

Hiccup knew exactly who she was talking about. Astrid would freak over a new dress. She wasn't exactly fashion-forward, even by Scholomance standards, but a dress that could be sent into the Scholomance would be loose around the legs, meaning it could have the lower section divided into pants, and that would be fantastic for sleepwear. Astrid's own mother had made her current only set of real clothes, and they were too valuable to sleep in.

"Good enough for admission. Eret?"

Eret glanced at the girls. "I have some burn cream. Made with dragon bone marrow."

Those types of salves were incredibly rare and potent. It would be enough for Sara's arm to heal.

"And I have a set of printing blocks," Tiffany offered. Valuable as well— plenty of sigils could be turned into stamps.

"Both of those are great," Hiccup acknowledged. "First to fifty? Starting over, of course."

"Oh, wait." Eret turned and waved to a senior maleficer leaning up against the door in Grimmel's stead. "Krogan! Over here!"

Krogan rolled his eyes and stalked over. Krogan, unlike Eret, was an open maleficer. Officially, he was an alchemist, but he'd barely had anything useful since sophomore year. It influenced how dark his eyes were, the constantly shedding skin that no moisturizer would clear up; the comfort wearing long, billowy cloaks any mal could grab.

Hiccup did have concerns about whatever he had to offer, but the girls both seemed excited to see what he had for betting.

"A tin of poison-catcher," Krogan announced magnanimously, setting exactly that on the table. That would be life-changing too. Hiccup could easily use that to make up for any and all physical education exam days.

"I'm under-paying," Hiccup mused, and doubled the number of vials he'd set out. He nodded to allow Krogan in, unwilling to pass up the opportunity or anger Eret and Krogan. He turned to a new page, writing out names, and shook the dice. "So. How's class been?"

"It's been fantastic," Tiffany answered, giving a genuine smile. "I've got top marks in Sanskrit."

Krogan made a low growl. Seniors only had one class after Midwinter, and it was so brutal that it had no midterms, no exams, no lectures, and only met twice a week, but still killed around half the seniors in the school in the final. Graduation practice. Krogan in particular was having a rough time of it. His alliance was maleficers, and the only kids in the room weren't accessable for malia. They hadn't stored enough mana to last them, and it was clear the casino was their best bet for willing, desparate targets. Hiccup knew because Krogan's second practice run every week was on Thursdays.

But Krogan couldn't exactly do anything about it. Hiccup was allowed to ask, even by Scholomance standards.

"I've finished my schooling," he said instead. "My gym runs are going well."

Eret nodded, then reached for the dice for his turn. "I recently got a good spell for incarnate flame."

Sara winced. "I got attacked by one in the workshop," she admitted quietly. Hiccup immediately knew those two things were related. Eret could have gotten a spell to fight one, but the way he said it implied otherwise.

"Bad luck," Hiccup commented, then continued, "those're really nasty. I've got a spell that controls ten of them."

He was comfortable admitting it. It was better than anything Eret could have gotten— Eret wasn't powerful enough for the School to give up anything that good— and people knew, generally, that Hiccup studied mals. It was common for people who did advanced projects on specific maleficaria, like incarnate flames, to come across spells that summoned or created them. Using these spells was a different matter, and Hiccup was too smart to have snet any mals that destructive to the part of the school he needed the most.

"Are the burns fixable?" Sara asked him, proving he was right to say it out loud.

He nodded. "Walk with me after?"

The conversation continued, and Hiccup kept score. At around five rounds, he paused to add up totals. He frowned. They were on track to lose. He had five points. Eret had thirteen; Krogan had twenty. Tiffany had three, and Sara had nine.

That wouldn't be so unusual if it weren't for the fact that everyone under double digits had only earned points one round, and Eret and Krogan had both gotten points in three rounds. It was possible, but synced numbers were very rare, and he was starting to feel dizzy. He lifted his pen, then dropped it.

"Oops," he said, then leaned over to grab the pen.

Hiccup glanced around under the table. He noticed a familiar sigil under his shoe as he did: Good luck, and he hadn't put it there. Then he spied a small blue inkpot on Eret's hip, and a blue sigil under Krogan's place on the table. A swap sigil, with Hiccup's seat targeted.

Immediately, he knew what had happened.

Eret had, while he was chatting with the girls, slipped a luck spell under him; he'd stepped on the ink, and in doing so, accepted the sigil. He'd won the first game, and that had gone to encourage him to stay. Eret had to stay in, to keep mana flowing through into anything from the pot, and Krogan had used that same pot to reverse it.

That would hook him in, when he lost and wanted to get his winnings back.

He sat up and crossed his legs as he shook the dice, thinking what to do. He mimed double-checking the score. He didn't want to accuse anyone of cheating when they were most certainly maleficers. He wasn't an incanter, so he had very few silent spells. But he knew he had something.

He had a spare napkin.

As he threw the dice half-heartedly, he slipped the napkin out of his pocket. All ones. He let his face betray his distaste as he carefully wiped away some of the sigils on his shoe, just enough to be bad for the spell. In fact, it would now make his luck extraordinarily bad— and Krogan would tank it, because he was stealing that circle.

Hiccup rolled again.

Six, six, five, four, four.

He passed the dice along, trying not to feel too smug about his little trick.

"Well," Sara said as Eret took his turn, "Hiccup, how has your seminar been?"

"Which one?" Hiccup was taking multiple, like all sophomores, so that didn't really narrow down the class she was curious about.

"The Maleficaria Studies one?"

"Oh, right." That made sense. "It's going well. I recently gto a paper on dragon classes, with primary sources for credits in Italian. But I also got a few Old Norse spells for countering class-specific attacks."

"Oh, wonderful. I take it you're specializing in dragons?"

Was she flirting with him? Probably not. She was a junior, and he'd never see her again after graduation, even if he was interested in flirting back.

"Well, I'm not totally specializing, but they're pretty important in the Archipelago," he explained. "Dragons are the main mals that attack. One got my mother."

She nodded, then reached to take her dice.

Krogan's luck noticeably turned. He'd ended round five at twenty points; at the end of round ten, he still had twenty. So did Eret. Sara had sixteen, Tiffany twenty-eight. With forty-one points, Hiccup was back in the lead, and he would likely win. He spared a glance at the jackpot table. That stuff looked so good... But not good enough to stay. Not when they were already ready to use malia to win.

Grimmel came to check on the game and, frowning, looked at Krogan with disappointment.

"Having fun?"

"Not as much as I expected," Hiccup told him. "I think I'll go after this."

"Oh, but the game looks quite fun." Grimmel leaned in.

"it's better with friends. Eret can teach you." Hiccup then turned to the game, purposefully turning Grimmel away.

Tiffany gave him an odd look, but she said nothing about his sudden attitude shift. "Would you ever think about selling those counter-spells? I have an infestation of Stokers back home."

"Sure! I'll make a copy for you tonight, they're very short. What's on offer?"

She paused. "Mana, and some more of the spellpaper. I can grab you a sheaf from my room on the way up."

"That works for me."

It only took three more rounds for Hiccup to win at fifty-five points, and then he handed the notebook back to Tiffany. When he stood, he purposefully stepped on his napkin, wiping the sigil away entirely. He had an easy spell upstairs that would shake off any hold they'd latched onto him. Then, he picked up the napkin and discarded it.

Sara took the hint quicker than Tiffany did. She scooped up the dress and Tiffany's printing blocks, watched while Hiccup goto Krogan's tin and Eret's burn cream, and they swiftly left the room.

Hiccup silently lead them both up to the junior dorm level, eyes set forward and walking briskly. He paused on the landing to allow the girls time to grab the promised sheet of paper, then lead them back to his room. He turned to them and spoke, deadly serious.

"Do not go back down there," he told them.

"Why not?"

"I saw a spell circle under Krogan's seat," he explained. "It's used by maleficaria and maleficers to get an 'in' to your mana. You two should be fine for now, you lost. They used symbols going after the winner, probably because you can't easily take from someone super far away. If mals are hitting the casino, they aren't putting good enough wards."

"How do you know?" Sara asked, setting Hiccup's winnings on his desk. She glanced at the large egg.

"Bad assignment," he explained, opening the drawer. He lifted up a small dagger and opened the tin of burn cream.

The burn cream was ordinary burn cream, but there was a beautifully laid pattern he didn't like on the top. He whispered a revelatory light over it, and finding nothing, scraped the cream in that layer off. Carefully, he broke it down and tamped it back flat. Circles didn't work if you edited them, and the cream was real. It probably would have siphoned some of the mana used in healing, and it was deep enough to work for a good few inches of burn. Once he was sure it was fine, he scooped up a helping and turned to Sara.

"Give me your arm."

Sara blinked at him. "Why?"

"The burn cream's real," he answered, as if that explained it.

"But why would you give me any for free?'

"I need practice applying it," he told her. His herbs that he'd originally wanted to sell, he'd keep for later. "And I won't feed you to a maleficer group just because you couldn't find any other way to survive. You can pay me back in mana, or help me check the harvester."

Sara was smart, the way you had to be if you wanted to survive in the Scholomance. She carefully removed her sweater, peeling the left sleeve off quicker than advisable. Hiccup set it off to the side of the desk. He grabbed the small water jug off his shelf. Tiffany braced her hands under Sara's injured forearm, watching as Hiccup poured it, softly humming a spell Stoick had written when Hiccup was being cared for by Gothi after the fire. It worked better on water that had been infused with willow bark and aged honey, but plain water still sent blood and pus streaking down Hiccup's floor drain.

"Tiffany, grab one of the gauze pads from the shelf above my tool chest. No, two." He poured a little more water to clean Tiffany's hands, then pulled out some of the medical glue he'd learned to make at the beginning of the year. The glue didn't do much, but it was safe to apply around any wound, and it helped keep bandages on. He set that down on the desk too.

Aided by Tiffany, Sara and Hiccup carefully patted the area dry with one of the gauze pads, and Hiccup used the other to gently rub the cream into the wound. It looked better already as Hiccup glued the pad in place.

"That will fall off once you're healed. Try to keep it dry." Because it felt like the right thing to do, he handed Sara a vial of onion water and turned to his other things.

He carefully inspected the poison-catcher— also one hundred percent real, and a rather bang-up job of a balm— and the spell blocks. Those were safe, as were the paper and the dress. He then pulled out the harvester.

It was the real prize, which meant it was most likely to have a hidden mana siphon. He turned it over as Tiffany held a light and Sara shielded the lot of them. He pulled apart panels, tugged on joints, and then cast one of his shortest spells. Nothing, not even the enchantments required to make it a real harvester. Whatever this had been intended as, it wasn't done well enough to be of use to anyone. Hiccup tied it into a small mesh bag— he could scrap it for parts later— and hung it up.

Finally, he opened his chest and pulled out a small string of jade and hematite beads. He'd made the string in freshman year after learning that people could have affinities for malia, because it was a spell Snotlout's mom used to shake off maleficers' siphons. He'd need to make a new one after, because it was single-use artifice, but that was fine. He was just glad that he'd remembered it.

He turned back toward the girls, who were looking awkwardly around the room.

"Hey, uh. Hiccup?" TIffany asked.

"Yes?"

"If... If we go refill your water, and we pay you in mana, will you give us more of that little tonic for us?"

Getting more mana as easily as that was a steal. Replacing missing mana time was the entire reason he'd gone to check the casino out. And once the girls started their senior year prep, he'd get dibs on hand-me-downs they couldn't sell, which was a huge boon for him.

"Absolutely. I make it in batches every few weeks. See me in the cafeteria about payment?"

After a few more rushed minutes of negotiation, Tiffany filled up two of Hiccup's mana crystals for three vials, and Sara gave him five crystals' plus a promise to bring him more clothes in exchange ofr another vial, a small jar of the poison-catcher and the days' worth of healing. They filled his jug in the sophomore girls', then offered to walk with him to dinner.

Hiccup decided that when he was chief, gambling would be illegal.

Chapter Text

"Who were they?" Astrid asked Hiccup when he joined them.

"Juniors. None of you are ever to go to the casino." He looked pointedly at the twins. "Full of maleficers. Those girls aren't. They'll be paying me for dad's refreshment spell."

"Oh, alright." Astrid glanced at his beads, then frowned. "Did you get hit?"

Hiccup grabbed a tray and glanced around. None of the maleficers from the casino were there, which didn't surprise him. One thing maleficers weren't was underfed. Hiccup knew five rituals that involved consuming victims, human or otherwise, to gain access to their mana. It was one of the only ways to become a maleficer when you didn't have access to something small like mice or rats.

Still, he didn't like to talk about malefice in the lunchline.

"Tell you at the table."

Hiccup tried to distract himself with the line. There were strange spots on the beef that day, but the vegetable soup was good, as were the fish fillets. Hiccup slipped two fillets into his soup and a third on the side of his tray. He frowned at the strawberry-covered cake ramekins skeptically, but grabbed one anyway. It was mushy, but not poisoned. A tentacle sneaked out of him, and he dismissed it with an acid spell that sent it coiling back into the pot of glutinous maggots. The maggots quickly consumed it.

He didn't bother with the milk cartons. That wasn't something he could keep down that day.

At the table, he accepted a drink from Tuffnut before telling them about the seething malia. As the others digested it, he wolfed down his food and lay his head down. He wasn't exactly eager to start breaking the malia hold. It required a full day's fast, and the recitation of the Havamal before launching into the actual incantation.

The Havamal, the Words of the High One, was an extremely long poem full of advice and stories from Odin. Much of the advice centered around proper conduct, including sections relevant to everyday life and to travel. His aunt was a wonderful incanter, but almost all of her spells were rituals, which increased power but made them worse in the Scholomance than doing nothing.

Except it wasn't worse than doing nothing, because if he did nothing, every spell he cast would boost a maleficer's spell.

And it was Saturday evening. He'd finished all his homework the night prior, and the next day he could eat dinner. While still hungry, he could even build mana. He still had work to do, sure, but he could finish that in the upcoming week.

So, he sat up. Around him were his friends, friends who loved him and wanted to bring him home, who would shield him if he needed. He cleared his throat and began to sing.

It took an hour to sing the whole poem, ending long after dinner ended. Fishlegs bussed his tray, and Astrid helped guide Hiccup back down to their rooms. She sat with him while he continued to sing, tracing his fingers over the beads of the artifice. He put the mana he built back into the tiny hematite beads, moving over the jade to the next one each stanza. All one-hundred-sixty-five.

At the end of it, he wound the string into a ball, held it in one hand, and whispered the remaining incantation.

The hematite beads shattered, coming off the string. He opened his fist and carefully brushed the hematite down into his tiny waste basket. They couldn't afford waste here, but affording and having were two separate things. He'd find more hematite beads later, in the alchemy supply store. The jade and string could be reused infinitely.

Astrid watched as Hiccup brushed his hands clean and put the beads away, then walked over to the desk.

"I brought your book back," she said awkwardly.

"Thank you for watching it for me," he told her, turning to accept the tome. He carefully tucked the book against his chest, then looked into Astrid's eyes. He saw something there, concern. He didn't want to think about it. "I got you something."

The concern was immediately replaced with interest. She was a fifteen year old girl in a place where nobody would ever give you anything for free. "Really? What?"

Hiccup opened his storage chest, from which he fetched the dress and one of the sheets of paper. He handed them over with a bright smile. "These are spell scroll blanks, so you can prepare for a rainy day. And a dress, Snotlout can alter it for usable clothes, I know you don't like wearing malhide."

Understatement of the year, of course, but Astrid looked at the dark blue dress appreciatively anyway. It wasn't something you gave away even if you were in the habit of that. Even Hiccup could wear that without much eye-raising, in the right circumstances. The flowy skirt could keep acid away from the skin in the lab; the longer billowy sleeves could easily keep a mal off of the arms long enough to cast. With Snotlout ready and willing to transform it into good working clothes or sleepwear to hide bare skin, it was like holding gold.

"Thank you, Hiccup." She hugged him tightly, then pulled back to punch his arm.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"I was worried! You stayed knowing there were maleficers!"

"There's always maleficers, Astrid!" He rubbed his arm angrily, then sighed. "Won't do it again."

She folded the dress back up and set it on the bed.

"I've got to do a translation for French. I brought my notebook. Mind if I stay here while I work?"

Hiccup shook his head. "By all means."

The next week moved smoothly. Sunday served to build Hiccup a crystal's worth of mana. All of Hiccup's classes were relatively easy throughout the week, and he got the shield done on Tuesday, plus the spares for auction. He'd translated more of the Book of Dragons, copied neatly in his notes.

So, naturally, Thursday morning gym was ready and waiting to kick the lot of them in the teeth.

When they walked into the gym together, passing a small bucket of sprout-filled tuna between them. krogan was sitting outside the gym artifice. He looked like shit, with dark circles under his eyes and hundreds of tiny cuts on his arm. His casting arm. Clearly, he'd latched onto Hiccup, and the mana-filled malachite had broken the hold. Not that he could openly blame the boy. No senior, even a maleficer, is bested by a sophomore.

Still, he looked murderous, and his alliance members were fighting their way out of a nasty-looling trap in the seniors part of the gym. Krogan couldn't help them. He could no more enter it now than Hiccup could hop on the top of one of the desks lined up on the all-year half and fly out of the school.

Hiccup averted his eyes. If they didn't provoke Krogan, he wouldn't attack them. That wasn't a responsible decision, even by maleficer standards— six freshmen would produce enough malia to severely fuck over the anima, and as sophomores, their mana capacity was double. That wasn't soemthing you wanted after you'd started graduation runs. It would weaken him. Hiccup checked the desk for any signs of mals or spell circles. There was nothing. The desks themselves were the same ones as the week prior. On each desk was a (thankfully short) handbook about, of all things, horseback riding, a packet for guided notes (which was Scholomance speak for 'proof you read the book cover-to-cover), and a booklet that Snotlout recognized was an old guide to the gym equipment that had actually been written by the Saxons for the students they would be bringing in. The horse book had the same author.

"Why do we have to learn it? We're not enclavers," Ruffnut protested.

"Probably they didn't change the curriculum to accomodate indie kids when they let us in," Hiccup realized. "They just post-poned physical education credits to senior grad practice, and survival was enough to pass. Nobody else in here was going to take the classes in a place all the mals would hunt in, not if seniors would be the ones using the gym, that's a good way to get killed. So we're getting enclave education, pulled back into rotation."

As soon as he'd said it, the rest of them believed him— Snotlout may have easily been the smartest among them, but Hiccup was the most honest.

"Great," Fishlegs muttered indignantly, not that he should be complaining. Snotlout would do Fishlegs' homework for him. Valedictorians who never did anyone else's homework probably existed, but they weren't exactly common, and Fishlegs was one of the names on the increasingly growing pile of work Snotlout had in others' names. Still, his sentiment was largely shared.

Hiccup opened the handbook. It was all in the standard language of the Scholomance, thankfully, and he understood it well. He carefully copied out the sections the notes asked about, then flipped to the very back page of the packet. It specified a set of pages in the provided equipment guide.

He flipped open the guide, and immediately found the silver lining: Using this particular set of instructions would provide a nice hunk of mana.

Hiccup stood up and walked to the edge of the gym, where a stack of mats provided the perfect spawning nook for the otherwise hidden beasts. He pulled out six, one after another, stuffing the mana away into his own storage crystals. He wasn't sure they'd even function, the artifice was so old. Normally agglos would have gotten to them by now. He could surely find the blueprints, and fix them up on his own, but not during class time. He dragged them over to the open space nearest the desks— the gym had kindly put the desks in the safest spot near the door and far from vents— and looked at the guide again, finally able to process what it was.

The equipment in question was clearly meant for this unit, which was why Hiccup had never seen it before even on Field Day when the school pulled out everything it had. It was a beautifully designed machine, with four strong legs and a replica horse-head. On the forehead, like a symmetrical star to be hidden behind a forelock that no longer existed, was a small mana crystal that provided an hour of function if fulled. The school wouldn't make them fill it themselves, not if they paid attention to it, that's not what the Scholomance did. Even if they did, Hiccup already knew he'd get more mana than it cost to fill just by staying balanced and dealing with impact. It had a built-in saddle, which was adjustable manually.

Fo now, they didn't need it full anyway. Just enough to push it into function. He pulled himself up onto the saddle, relishing in the resulting ache of his abdomen. His core strength wasn't the best when it came to balance, not without a hammer in one hand. The horse walked slowly, and he felt the warmth underneath him. The entire gym had been full of beautiful sensory illusions, tricking the student into believing they were outside in meadows and orchards with real wind and sun on their skin. The sunlamps still worked even now. The heat generated by the fake horse was real. They were already so close to real that the gym artifice would have made them real, and Hiccup fully believed that the enclave kids had loved these horses before the maleficaria loved them too.

Hiccup looked over at the other Berkians. Snotlout had already begun reading the how-to on the horses. Astrid was finishing her notes— he knew the look on her face was satisfaction— and Tuffnut was eyeing him enviously, as though there wasn't a horse waiting for him too. Ruffnut had leaned over to help Fishlegs find the page of the second booklet.

Hiccup walked the horse awkwardly around the open area. The horse ran surprisingly smoothly, but Hiccup was so unused the action that he fucked it up enough for both of them. Once he was sure he actually knew what he was doing at speed one, he walked it back to the wall, where he dismounted and got started on his most annoying stretching routines.

The next week marked assignment refresh.

The Scholomance gave out projects and assignments for all classes on a set schedule. For some classes, these projects were shorted; for others, longer. For phys ed, the project would last the them the remaining three months of the year. It included a section of research, a written self-evaluation on flexibility and endurance, a series of routines that assured them they would be used by jockeys outside, and a list of common health problems they would want to guard against. Snotlout was very pleased that some of the texts suggested were full of other, useful tidbits. The project was also what passed for a group project: it set aside a space to list all collaborators and included credits for all three core academic tracks. Likely, that would be used to evaluate if some enclaver would be poachable by a larger enclave. The only way most kids survived cross-disciplinary assignments was with help, even enclavers. Woe to a Valedictorian-track kid whose alchemist mismeasured the moth wings.

Still, it wasn't the worst it could have been. Hiccup was certain that the lot of them would have plenty of mana by the end of it.

Hiccup sat doen in his room, singing to The Book of Dragons and carefully cleaning the leather. He already had his dictionary out, and all his pens. After his song ended, he gently patted the spine and set it on the desk.

"I'm sorry I've had to do more of all that silly work," he cooed. "My classes have been brutal and you don't deserve the crossfire if I fail out. But I got a new project that I might be able to trade with, and I'll buy all the things I need to make you a special box, a safe little case all to yourself. And once I've freed up some more time after all my work is done, I can spend even more time with you."

The Book seemed to settle at that type of promise. Many spellbooks outside wanted you to be constantly focused on them and what you could do for them. Only the ones that really wanted someone to use them would come to a student inside, and often, those students didn't offer enough attention inside to convince them to stay. Many a book sling had gone empty in the Graduation Hall.

There was one book that many people had tried to find in here, The Golden Stone Sutras.

The Sutras were the first enclave-building spells, and had widely been lost to time. Hiccup himself had imagined it, Astrid coming across the book and bringing it home to Berk, building an enclave with no need to buy from other enclaves. Nobody had found them, though.

The Book of Dragons, that was more special. It had come to Hiccup, an artificer, and it had already helped him with the egg. More than that. It seemed to like the egg, and any plans Hiccup had for the thing. It wanted Hiccup to dissect everything about the mal, and if that's what it ook to carry on the work of Gobber's family, to keep this miracle for the next two-and-a-quarter years, for five years, for ever, he'd study the creature.

He opened the book, the pages turning with almost no effort on his part, and the book stopped beforethe bookmarked section, to a section he'd not even skimmed yet because it had a golden spell he didn't want to start on yet. But he had promised to make up for the lack of attention, and as pressing as his new projects were, so too was this.

Hiccup read the spell slowly, turning over each word in his head. He knew the feeling of it, a request made, spells that he had known all his life on some level or another.

In the archipelago, most of the islands were rather isolated from one another. This was by both accident and design. Only islands with any real use were settled, but trade was slowed and endangered by the kinds of maleficaria that attacked whole ships. Only adults went, mostly, and only warriors then. But there was a trade guild, full of fantastically enchanted ships and men who could fight mals bigger than a house.

One of the ships belonged to a man named Trader Johann, who told grand stories and gave real, hard-to-find supplies, in exchange for ship repairs or mana or Gobber's own miracles. Johann's ship had a figurehead like a dragon, that Johann persuaded to sustain spells in its mouth. On the seas, it held a powerful ward that hid the goods on board from mals. When docked, Johann gave it a spell that asked you to board it. To trust the ship to keep you safe as you wandered its cargo-hold, curious about all its contents. It begged your curiousity, your attention for the day, and most of Berk had accepted its calls, Hiccup among them. He had brought with him a horn lantern that bent the light so mals thought you were somewhere else, and he'd gotten it on Johann's ship.

This spell was almost like that one. Maybe they had even been built on similar base enchantments.

The key difference was that this spell was an invitation for something you were wary of to stay, to form a truce, to be allies for a while. It was an offer of respect, in exchange for respect, if one could get such a thing from a mal.

And The Book of Dragons wanted him to learn it.

So Hiccup sat there, reading it over, sounding it out, translating it through all the possible and contextual definitions. He wrote it over and over again, until he was sure he'd gotten it, and he read Bork's notes on it just in case. He read and reread and wrote and rewrote until there was no way to miscast.

And the book gently rustled its pages to a part of the Night Fury chapter he'd not noticed before.

That was a lie.

He'd noticed the large, spreading wings, illustrated in his mind every time he'd looked at the egg. The power in its drawn muscles, the tail fin that no doubt balanced the beast in the air. It was a dangerous threat, certainly— and large as a small horse, large enough to eat him.

With that startling realization, the Book closed itself, ready to tuck in for the night. Dagur had warned him— so had Astrid, for that matter— that some spellbooks got moody, and would set a boundary with you. It usually meant they actually did like you, if their response for your offense was to set a boundary instead of leaving. So, Hiccup began his nightly ritual of scooping the book up and wrapping it in its current sling.

"Thank you for the spell," he told it seriously. "I will use it responsibly. You've done so much for me already. I will continue work on your case soon, I promise, once I get the materials."

Nobody had told him to thank it, but it felt right, and the book went quietly into its sling.

Hiccup didn't go to sleep yet, though. The bell for curfew hadn't rung yet, and he hadn't lied when he'd told the book that his class had assigned him things he could trade with. Everything he had could, in the right circumstance, even the mana siphon the school had suggested for his project the next six weeks. He had gone with the safer, less malia-intensive witchstone. Witchstones were awful to make because they had to be weathered down in a natural process, but Hiccup had a spell that could guide magical wind along a desired path, and access to the largest reservoir of magic wind in the universe: the Void.

The Void wouldn't even be a problem to harness. He'd hold out the stone with his hands, cast the spell, and pull out when it was done. Most students wouldn't bother, but Hiccup knew of a maleficer from Japan who had done the same thing, and the witchstone had turned out strong enough to detect psychic mals, which made that kind of stone worth fortunes in trade. He could even trade with seniors during the end-of-year trading session, though not for mana; they'd hand over things only enclavers ever got and use a tiny bit of magic to attach the stone to their eyes. Bonus: You didn't need malia to access the Void in an enclave, which the Scholomance was.

His lab assignment was also relatively easy, just a simple light-enhancer. It was also worth a fortune in trade, but only with the maintenance kids, and Hiccup was just going to give it to Fishlegs. He'd gotten that one because it required blood of a creature that had never hurt you. Commonly, mice or rabbits. For Hiccup, agglos. Easy.

Even his current language assignments were fine. He'd worked on all his languages so long that they were all translations or small library spells, worth nothing in trade but everything in time, even for Old Norse.

But the Saxons had a full, comprehensive study on how horse riding impacted the body. There were a whole slew of diagrams describing how the femur shifted in shapeto accommodate the strain and the muscles that needed the highest endurance to keep you in place. It warned that, over the course of the project, the students could expect to see these same changes. It had provided supplementary material on how to manage that strain if you needed it. This included several alchemical recipes designed to make bone restructuring easy, or to coax your muscles into truly healing overnight. Aside from the obvious use they'd get in this class, any senior with a bad break would want in on this secret resource, and the Berkians would have it for themselves while still inside. Nobody in other classes would have even gotten these books. Nothing else in them were relevant to real classwork.

On top of the alchemy, there were complex spells used to steady your steed in the event you got attacked while riding (a real concern outside even when they thought no maleficaria would ever get into the school). One, Hiccup already after reading only once knew would sync the horses in one group to the same pace, good for travel or trick-riding. It could also be repurposed to mals like swarms or manifestations, opening up for someone with a suitable area-of-effect spell to kill them.

And artifice wasn't spared either. There were a good few projects suggested for extra credit or to help maintain horses until the next maintenance team came in (laughable after the school had been up as long as it did). Saddle modification to keep you shielded, horse leg bracers to make up for the brittle anatomy, a psychic bridle that promised to turn the horse with no resistance (discarded for hopefully obvious reasons). Eye guards that helped your horse detect maleficaria for you.

All of them would have to learn the spells. Astrid was working on breaking them down so they could learn them according to their strengths, but all the spells were so useful it was a guarantee they'd all learn a majority of them, especially ones they'd already skimmed. Hiccup had already started with the one for syncing groups of animals. Ruffnut and Tuffnut were both working on all the alchemy, but they'd already decided Hiccup and his candy press would need to learn all the medical recipes. At least he'd have a good case for getting let out of lab senior year and taking classes more relevant to his strategy. Snotlout was learning all of it, too, but starting with the artifice— the hardest to learn with help— and Fishlegs was going to learn the basics on how to maintain the horses. Hiccup was going to do the saddle, Snotlout the leg braces.

Hiccup decided to start drafting.

He rolled out his grid paper, smoothed it carefully, and behan to sketch out ideas. He did it half-comprehending, not really thinking about what project he was working on. He usually did his best work like that, focusing more on the rhythm of the work than on the blankness of the page. Especially when he already knew what he wanted out of the saddle, an impact shield that could protect all in contact with it. He thought of the wind in his hair as he rode through the trees back on Berk, horse dodging mals and a full pot of mana at his side. His hands moved, graphite scratching quietly in his ears as he drew.

He imagined the horses back on Berserker Island, the only time he'd ever seen a real horse. It wasn't that Berk had never had horses, but the dragons had eaten all of them when Stoick was a boy. They had good goes at chickens and yaks, too, which was why every four years, Berk sent five calves and twelve chicks riding waves with Johann. In exchange, they got five calves and twelve chicks back who were completely unrelated to their own, to renew biodiversity in the herds and flocks. A few lambs, too. He could almost feel the leather of the saddle under his hands, see the runes stitched in to hide both horse and rider from prying eyes.

When he looked down, that's not what he'd designed.

But it was beautiful. It was beautiful the way that well-made, efficient tools always were.

Two detailed blueprints sat before him. One, a simple sketch of a long pole, with a wide balancing hook on the near side of it, to hang off into space and never fall no matter what weight was pressed upon it. The other was a simple basket, with wide holes and just enough support to allow a small enough animal to crawl out of it under its own power.

The longer he looked at it, the more he realized he had in fact drawn one blueprint, to hatch the Night Fury.

Chapter Text

In between consciously designing the saddle upgrade for the horse artifice and dodging assignments, Hiccup built himself the long basket. The Book stopped being moody after the basket was half-made, allowing Hiccup to reread the section on Night Furies and set to work on translating future segments. Still, Hiccup dedicated an hour every day until Sunday to his basket. It went smoothly, aided by the lack of rare materials and the anxiety about what he'd find on the other side. Not that it would have stopped him anyway.

On Saturday, Hiccup got his snackbar tokens out and knocked on the wall next to Dagur's cell. Dagur opened the door, looking paler than usual and nearly half asleep. Hiccup held up the tokens.

"Snackbar run? We can ask Fishlegs too," he offered. Anyone this tired on the inside would go for the extra calories at any opportunity.

"Oh, thank you," Dagur said gratefully, taking Hiccup's hand in both of his before turning to grab his own little pouch. His was fuller than Hiccup's, likely due to a bout of illness. There was a lot of it, mutating among all the children in the world.

Hiccup glanced inside at the rats crawling around in their cage. Dagur must have sold a few recently, there were fewer than when he'd come in last. Dagur closed the door, then took point on the way to Fishlegs'. The answer from him was an enthusiastic yes, and Hiccup fell in line alongside both of them.

"I've got a shift to fix one of the machines," FIshlegs told them. "I can get that done first, and then it should give us all decent luck?"

Hiccup nodded. Artifice was usually in a good mood directly after a repair. "And that gives me a chance to ask Dagur more about familiars."

Dagur made a slightly pained sound, then nodded. "Oh, absolutely. Anything specific you want to know?"

"Well, a lot," Hiccup told him honestly. Dagur was a good business man, as good as you could be in the school, but he was fair, so Hiccup trusted him to price fairly. "Like, is there any test to see if an animal would be a good familiar?"

"It depends on what you want it for," Dagur told him cheerily. "A rat's good in here. They'll watch you while you sleep, and they've got good noses to bring you gifts. But they're not very good outside unless that's all you want. A few generations ago, the Berserker circle had wolves that could patrol the perimeter and set shields."

"Is there any size limit to what you can make a familiar?"

"You have to be able to feed it. That's how you make it a familiar, you put mana in its food." Dagur looked at him. "Why the sudden interest?"

"Lousy assignment in Inuktitut," he explained, though he was lying. "I've got to write about what it would be like to hide a familiar in a mundane encampment, but I need to choose the animal and the method."

"Oh, that would be easier with a familiar! You get higher marks if you've ever had one. I'll give you a rat."

"I don't have enough to trade for a rat. I can give you the value of information." Hiccup opened the door to the cafeteria— the school had to be nice to Fishlegs if it was going to get fixed— and glanced around. There was a nightflyer on the ceiling, about five feet in area, and it would easily get one of them if allowed to drop. He cast a spell from his Inuktituk seminar used to peel the hide off a fresh kill, with a little more force than strictly necessary. It worked beautifully. The skin pulled itself off of the beast, easily enough skin to build the saddle for Phys Ed, and the rest of it fell off its perch with a distinctive plop. Hiccup rolled the skin up easily as Fishlegs poured the cleanup fluid onto the corpse. Hiccup then sat down at the table nearby, inviting Dagur closer.

"I'm sure you'll think of something," Dagur assured Hiccup. "Don't even worry about it. An IOU, you gave me one and I can give you one. I'll even throw one in for Fishlegs."

"I don't want one," Fishlegs told Dagur, going to the broken vending machine. They broke pretty often, every three or so months, so most of the maintenance kids could do these repairs in their sleep. It was too valuable to lose, and they'd only assign someone they trusted to them. "I'm too busy for a pet."

Dagur nodded, accepting that. He turned back to Hiccup. "You have to have mana, mana that's actually yours, to do it. You can't make one with malia. I read in history once that healers used to test if a maleficer had really changed by giving them rats. If the rat became a familiar, they would graduate the maleficer, and if it died, they'd arrange for judicial consequences."

"Does it have to be a lot?"

"Not really. In proportion to the size of the meal you're giving. It really won't be a problem for you. You just have to visit every day and give treats. When's your story due?"

"The end of term. It's my final." His actual Inuktituk final was a paper on how epithets prevented maleficaria from feeling spells meant to harm tem, which was right up Hiccup's alley and would be done just as soon as Hiccup had a little library tie to double check his epithets.

"Do all the sections about how to hide it. It could be a month for your mana to take, or more."

Hiccup pulled out his little emergency notepad— for when he had an idea or made plans on the fly— and began taking notes. "Exactly how big an enclosure do they need?"

'Well, a familiar doesn't need as big as a non-familiar. Just somewhere to sleep safely during the day. Most mals won't even come after a rat, but if you have warded artifice, that works well."

"That won't be a problem," Hiccup sketched a little desktop tank in the margins, "I can even probably get it some bedding."

"Rats don't need much food, but you should do your best to increase your dinner luck.  Snack tokens go to feeding the rats, and I can't give you two years of free mushrooms."

"Start coming to meals with the Berk kids." He answered instantly, as soon as Dagur finished talking. Hiccup hadn't even thought about it, but... It wasn't a bad idea.

Hiccup knew at a glance what food was safe, and everyone else their year knew he knew. It would be no more effort on his part to let Dagur follow the rest of the Berkians or walk behind him directly, or do a perimeter around a table with Astrid or Fishlegs. Dagur would benefit from safer trays, if not fuller, and only enclavers were stupid enough to complain when the Berkians cut in line as the only price for clearing the buffet. Still, at the end of two years, enough of those enclaves had lost hangers-on often enough to let Hiccup's friends be mealtime hangers-on.

Dagur would get a huge benefit, though, extra dinner for himself and the rats, safe food that woasn't just the never-poisoned sprouts he surely only fed to the mushrooms. And he got that benefit at no cost to himself. Maybe he'd give mana, or he'd help fill the plate of whoever held their table. More, the Berkians were strong enough in here to always get an actual table. Not overflow mezzzine seating. Not the bad seats. No more bad luck.

He'd be a fool to say no.

"I couldn't ask that of you," Dagur said foolishly. He looked at the back wall, the place that hid cleansing fires and refilling trays. "I don't have anything to give in return, and I won't beg for enclave seats."

"You're giving me a familiar for free. That's a lifetime of dinner company, easy, and we don't have an enclave."

Dagur looked at him, something like hope and grief in his eyes. He took a shaky breath, then nodded. "Okay. Alright, I'll do it. And I'll spot you some mana where I can."

Fishlegs took that moment to pull back from the vending machine. There were three, and the one Fishlegs had fixed was the safest one. It was the one furthest from the wall, lit well by the sunlamps and closer to the mortal flame that kept the smarter maleficaria away. It was also rather moody, so it tended to dole out older foods— foods that had gone mushy or oversalted, but that was fine becaus that was also usually the food that was heaviest, and thus required the most mana to move. Occasionally people put their food in warded pots, which was fantastic for in-school use and trade.

Today, it did not disappoint.

Dagur fed in five coins. He got a large bag of hardtack, a can of dried fruits, pickles with enough salt tucked under the bottom to reuse the vinegar, and two tiny boxes of nuts. Fishlegs got a thick sauce with spicy peppers, five sweet rolls with some form of cream inside them, some form of crunchy breaded vegetable, three thin fish cakes, a positively massive bowl of soup with a bindrune for heat on the bottom, and an extremely floral jam of some kind.

Hiccup, of his own accord, went last. Good old Alfred clearly wasn't pleased with the nightflyer murder, though. Hiccup's tokens got him a crumbly bag of oatcakes, a small jar of pickled fish (that was likely bait fish given as mandatory tribute), a wax-sealed package of three smoked haddock, another wax-sealed package of sliced trout, a woven basket of raw salmon on rice, a jar of some kind of fish paste, and a burnt catfish.

"I wish I'd gotten some fish," he told Fishlegs.

"Le'ts eat in my room," Dagur offered. "We can makes ome of this appetizing for all ov us, and anything else we don't want can go to the rats. I'll even trade you for some of the mushrooms."

"I don't have anywhere else to be," Fishlegs responded, and unlike Hiccup, he'd mean that any time he said it.

"And I can pick out my rat." Hiccup slid all of his fish into his bag and shouldered the nightflyer skin.

When they got to Dagur's dorm, Fishlegs sat on the floor, taking a moment to breathe as Hiccup began dividing their earnings. He bagan with the sweet rolls, which he slathered in in jam. That would be dessert, and Hiccup decided he'd allow Dagur and Fishlegs each an extra roll in exchange for double jam on on his own. They'd finish on that, though. He set that aside and examined the bowl of soup. It was, thankfully, already a vegetable stew, opening it up to almost everything you could get in here as an additional topping. He scooped out three portions into the small cups Dagur kept in his room for exactly this occasion. Into the bindrune bowl went all of Dagur's pickles, the fishpaste, pepper-sauce, fried vegetable (which he minced with his good knife first), and the pickled bait fish. Each of them would get one of the fish-cakes, no math there, and he divided up the salmon as well. He knew it would be edible on its own, he'd seen the kids from Japan enthuse about it. Each of them got two pieces, with one spare he gave to Fishlegs for repairing the machine.

He decided, after a moment, to add the smoked haddock into the soup bowl. That left him with trout and catfish for his own garden, and with the nuts, fruit, hardtack, and oats for Dagur's rats. He announced this, then passed the bowls to Dagur and Fishlegs.

"Hardtack is one of the best chews for them in here," Dagur told Hiccup approvingly, hangng the bag up by the cage. He sat on his bed, watching the rats play. "You should use it for yours."

Hiccup nodded, gazing into the cage himself. He ate his soup slowly, letting his eyes drift over the large cage. There were many to choose from, all with glossy fur and tiny but observant eyes. Browns and greys, speckles of white here or there. Hiccup had seen many rats before, on Berk and on Berserker Island and on the ships, and he'd never seen one here that wasn't firmly Dagur's. They were all so warm, so alive and real, and they did not belong to the Scholomance, not really.

By the time the lot of them had eaten their first bowlful of soup and refilled them with the second hot bowl, Hiccup already knew which rat he wanted. It was a startlingly black rat, very small and wandering the ropes Dagur had put up as enrichment. She seemed... Smart, unconcerned with the tussling below.

And before he knew it, Hiccup was holding her in his hand, pressing mana into a single biscuit for her to gnaw on. He had finished his second bowl of soup and his rice-and-salmon and his fishcakes, but the little rat was nibbling so slowly on the hardtack, so like she had never known hunger. Dagur handed him a small bin of highlighters to choose from. Hiccup gently drew a dot on the black rat's back in green, a mark that was only really necessary to make it feel real that he would get to keep this.

"I've never seen one this color," Dagur told him, glancing at all the rats. Fishlegs had finished his share and lay down on the cool floor, relaxing tot he chatter of the mischief. "Some animals, they just aren't the color you'd expect. It happens with mundanes too."

Hiccup cradled her in his arms, petting her soft fur. "She's perfect."

"You need to give her a name, to seal the deal on it." Dagur smiled again, and it was crooked and real, and for a moment they weren't in the Scholomance. They were on Berserker Island, standing in Dagur's room. Dagur was holding up the large Raven that he'd trained for Heather, to watch over her and call for help while she was the lame doe surrounded by hunters.

"Quiet," Hiccup decided after a moment, atrocious enough to conceal her from trolls but fitting enough to who she was. He loved her already.

Quiet lay on his lap, eating away at the hardtack she'd been given all to herself. Hiccup stroked her back, reaching to grab his cream bun. He ate it with the same satisfaction as a housewife eating a fresh pie all her own.

Hiccup stood, hand outside in the maelstrom of void. He had always rather liked it. Incomprehensible, ever-changing and dangerous— the exact kinds of things that piqued his interest. He always knew the Void amplified magic, especially in thin places like the library where there was no pretense of being inside a building.

Every week, Hiccup scraped up five or ten minutes of time to pretend he was home, to keep him sane. He stood, facing the dorm, back to his vent as it blew cool air, and arm-deep into the Void. There, hair flowing, he could pretend he was on Berk. That a storm was rapidly rolling in, the kind that he would stand and get drenched in while Stoick stood watch for all the things that saught to take him away. It was five or ten minutes of peace, and of longing.

Hiccup loved that he had an excuse now, turning the small hunk of marble over in the magical wind, to take his time and savor it. He felt the stone lighten in h his hand, the debris flying away as he smoothed it with his thumb. This was the fifth one today, the last. The others sat on his desk, waiting for him to offer them up to the school for grading. A small stack of wood and glass sat on his desk, just waiting to become Quiet's home. He pulled back, looking out at the Void.

The Void wasn't good for you. It was a great place for a house, because magic was easier and mals were easier to ward against, even if the tradeoff was that they were stronger once they got inside. A house still had to have walls, though, and a floor, and usually a roof, even in the Void. Nobody liked the swirling, howling mass of infinity to be inside their home. As far as Hiccup was aware of, throughout exensive research on enclave architecture, the Scholomance was the only enclave that didn't have four walls to every room and a ceiling to hide the Void from view. Each dorm had a floor, but most dorms had one wall open to the Void through which summoned books could fly; the few who didn't were attached to the bathrooms and had no ceilings. Great for a temporary home, but not so good for forever.

And Hiccup understood why that was. He understood the call to madness, the daily reminder that they were intruding on some place to which they had no claim, with a whole storm of magic that wanted your foot to slip. He'd seen people who lost it and ran into the Void and stopped understanding.

He couldn't imagine being born into that.

He forced himself to look away, to settle his eyes on the two pale vials set atop his desk. The Book of Dragons had flung itself out of his sling that morning, open to the wide spread of the Night Fury. He knew what it wanted, had left it there to wait, but there was no avoiding it now. He approached his desk, gently wiping away the dust from under the witchstones, and then traced his clean hand around the illustrated wings.

"Sorry it took me so long to listen," he told it. "I had to handle one last chore before I could. I don't know if I could stand there without dropping the egg if it was already out there."

The Book didn't anwser. Hiccup picked up the strength serum, ceremoniously uncorking the vial and sipping it slowly. It tasted quite bitter and salty.

When Hiccup was young, barely eight, he and Astrid had gone down to the beach to play. Astrid had worn one of her uncle's rings, too large for her finger but bright and shiny the way anything that caught a young child's eye was. She spoke of how, one day, she'd wear a ring that fit her just fine, and it would channel all of her mana for her, and then she had dropped it. The waves that day weren't strong, but the ring wasn't heavy, so the water had got to it before Astrid had. Hiccup, without thinking, had jumped into the water after it. The salt of the water had stung his eyes, and the waves had tugged on him hungrily, but he'd found the ring in a single breath and borne it back to Astrid. He'd placed it back upon her finger, and they'd laughed off the anxiety of it, and then Spitelout had come down to scold them for slipping past the safety spells.

Three nights before induction, Stoick had brought Hiccup down to the kitchen. He'd made mead, and Hiccup had always wanted to try it; he'd been too young. But Stoick had sat him down by the pot, hugged him tightly, and told him that he would never forgive himself if the only memories Hiccup had were stern-faced Stoick, too focused on seeing his son survive to see him live. He'd given Hiccup a small tanker of it. Hiccup held the memory fondly, though he'd coughed all of it back up; the sweetness hadn't done much to disguise the fact that it was alcohol and he wasn't good at drinking it. It had smelled better than it tasted, certainly.

The tastes of those memories mingled as Hiccup swallowed the potion. Once it was empty, he flexed his fingers, slowly, adjusting to the boost it gave. He'd seen more than one person crush important artifice under boosted strength. It was a suprisingly good way to curse someone you didn't like. Nobody warded against beneficial spells, but unwarned strength could kill an entire graduation alliance.

Once he was sure he had a good idea of how much effort he'd need, he grabbed the long pole. Carefully, he laid it out, using the hook to put the weight of it onto his floor. With one hand, he held it stable; with the other, he screwed the pole into the floor. Most people wouldn't do that, not unless they were expanding their enclave, and that wasn't something a student would do. But so long as Hiccup was connected here, he'd be able to walk the filled basket out as far as the pole would go into the Void. All he had to do was not slip off.

Actually, that wouldn't really be a problem either. One foot had to repeatedly come down on the pole. He could steady himself on the Void's catwalk. Plenty of Scholomance students had done it without the pole. The pole was to protect his mind, not his life.

He almost stood up, but then he thought better of trusting his screws.

Hiccup crouched back down, placing his hand flat against the screws. His mana was connected through his wrist, and he could cast any spell he truly needed right now. He'd already gotten his first payment from the juniors. The horseriding had strained his hips so that even now they ached enough to add more mana in, and he wasn't doing anything that required a focused shield. Not yet, anyway.

He selected one spell that everyone had.

"Make and mend, to my will bend, iron melt to secure this end," he told the screws, knocking lightly at the points just around the connection. The entire end and hook melted as he'd directed, forming itself back together as if the pole had always been there.

Satisfied, he actually got up to fetch the egg.

The basket was, simply put, massive, and he'd taken to storing it upside down on the egg so it used up less space and gave waiting mals fewer places to hide. His last work section, he'd fitted it with a wide metal lip, which he could tighten to prevent it from falling out as he carried it. He was tempted to just fasten it, but he didn't exactly want to shake the poor dragon up.

Instead, he lifted the basket, gracefully tilting it onto the floor next to the egg. He braced the lip of the basket to the base of the egg and, with ease possible only through the still-active position, he pulled the egg into the waiting space. He bent his knees, aiming to prevent strain, and pulled the basket up.

Hiccup's father had struck a deal with the Defenders of the Wing. Stoick and the other parents of their group would stay on the island during the week of induction. They'd help reinforce the wards that had to be opened for the Defenders' freshmen to leave through, and welcome back the returning seniors, who would bring back all of Berk's letters. This would give them a few hours to write small responses for their children and send them in with the Defenders' freshmen, since there were no Berkians to ferry the messages themselves.

At the end of last year, Hiccup had written home, talking about the Void and how the other kids went mad running in. Stoick had suggested he learn a spell, one of the spells he'd found while trying to research ways to build an enclave on his own. He believed that it could be used if someone Hiccup was with, to give Hiccup the time to drag them back out safely; it would form strong friendships and open up the possibility of an alliance later on.

The spell was a Latin song-spell, originally created by a clever enclaver in Rome who had sought to expand the enclave walls. It hadn't exactly worked, then, allowing the spell to be pulled away from the enclavers without being purchased, but it was far from useless in Scholomance times. It promised to gather up all the air and light within a defined space, just a few feet in diameter, and carry it along with the caster as they moved away into the Void; and to shield them from the winds. It also cost barely any mana, only just enough to tip the spell over. The rest would be gained from being forced to keep rhythm while surrounded by hungry, howling nothingness, and you had to put something into the Void you didn't mind never getting back. That would be the basket, which he'd tip off once he was sure the egg hatched. He set his pace to the rhythm of it, singing it out as he walked himself into oblivion. He started toward the Void, stepping in time to song.

And it did work wonders.

Breath pulled from his lungs like he'd been kicked in the gut, bursting forth from him into a whirlwind. Waves of mana radiated from his footsteps, pressing forward, backward, and upward, the rhythm setting the barrier. His hair rustled in the breeze as it turned to whistling wind of its own. By the time he passed the bed, the faintly soapy spell had taken root within him. When his first foot hit the pole, he knew there was more floor waiting for the other. Rhythm unbroken, he took another step, another, another, until he was standing on the last section of the pole.

Hiccup planted his feet and switched from the chorus of the song to the last verse, a call for the point to stay, to pause a moment to let him through.

No wizard could command the Void to do anything, but any wizard in the Scholomance knew it would take requests. The space was persuadable. The library stacks would fill up for a student looking for new references; the pipes would open up to allow some poor maintenance kid to reach a section of broken wards. A study group could widen a dorm room just long enough to fit whichever project they were working on, if they could tilt it to fit out the door.

And the point of contact, right here, for the egg to latch onto the pole? That could be convinced to stay, just long enough to do what needed done, as long as he kept to it.

Slowly, staying with the song, he lowered the basket, fixing it to the pole. He'd made a simple loop around the rim of the basket, which locked easily to the pole; he slid the pole into the holde, then spiraled the basket open. Satisfied it was secure, he turned back toward the light of his dorm.

This was where most people balked concentration spells.

They saw the end of the work, the end of the mana rushing out of them, they saw the waves still, and they let relief hit them hard enough to take them down. They stopped singing or chanting or walking or swinging, and the spell crashed over them.

Hiccup kept singing.

He kept walking.

Leg down, high note.

Leg up, low note.

Leg down, high note.

Leg up, low note.

Leg down, high note.

Leg up, low note.

Leg down, high note.

Leg up, low note.

Finally, his foot came down on the cold metal of his dorm floor.

Just to be safe, he kept walking, aiming right for his bed, and finally he let it go. He collapsed onto the soft mattress, holding his hand over the anima brace. He squeezed his eyes shut, listening to the rustling of papers as the space went back into the dorm. Part of him expected the Book of Dragons to be gone when he finally opened his eyes, or worse, destroyed by some sort of mal who snuck in past his defenses. He kept his eyes shut tightly for less time than he needed and more time than advisable, finally forcing them open to survey the damage the spell must have done to his room.

Nothing so predictable made itself known as he stood up. Hot tears rolled down his cheeks as he took stock. His notebooks were fine, all of his blueprints still neatly put away. The assorted pens were still laying mostly where he'd left them. All of them were still pens. The wood for Quiet's cage was slightly askew, and his storage chest was knocked open. The Book was still on his desk, open as if inviting Hiccup in to read more. On Odin, he wanted to.

Instead, Hiccup peeked underneath the lid of the storage chest. He cleared out the entire room, still blinking tears, still breathing heavily. He looked under the bed, under the desk, under and on all the shelves, in between his reference books, in each and every drawer. He found nothing. He sat down at his desk, pushing the Book back so he didn't cry on it.

The Book was open to a new section, a Mystery class dragon with two heads. Hiccup knew the name, had seen plenty, but he drew a blank as he looked at the curvature of the beast's neck. All he could think about was the spell he'd used, the one he'd gotten through his father's advice.

The spell he'd used to help hatch one of the few mals that could get through any ward to take down any enclave.

"What will Dad think?" he asked aloud, and promptly bent over to sob.

Chapter Text

The good thing about the Scholomance: Everything was a distraction. No matter how bad things got, no matter how badly you needed to cry, there was something else that you could focus on, and there was good reason to let it grab your focus.

The witchstones got top marks— all of Hiccup's artifice usually did— and the extra credit from learning all of the potions for phys ed had boosted him to a decent position in his lab section. All his finals were certainly brutal, but he'd managed them, and he was helping Snotlout and Fishlegs do the latter's shop final. Not to mention his other papers.

That was why Hiccup didn't tell any of the other Berkians about his minor mental break after dropping the egg of into the Void.

And that was why Hiccup was sat in the language lab, staring at the worksheet of Havamal excerpts blankly. His final paper for Old Norse was a five-page essay on the usage of rhythm in poetry and spells. He had enough knowledge to do it, and he'd already finished all the work that was due today. He should have been able to do this section. Frigg's sake, he had five spells that used excerpts from the Havamal alone.

But he couldn't focus on anything so useful today, he supposed.

Hiccup leaned down to pull his trade ledge out instead. He kept detailed records of the trades he made. If Berk managed to build an enclave in the near future, they'd need to have good relationships with any potential enclave allies, so it was important to keep tabs on extant relationships with enclave kids. They'd also want to be able to let in more indie kids during periods of growth, so it was important to keep tabs on who was more likely to stiff you. And, you wanted an idea of what you could get in your alliance for graduation. The earlier you got that settled, the better, but normally those weren't solidified until early senior year. The overachievers only got alliance settled early as late junior year.

It also helped to have written record of where all his work went, so he knew which repeat customers would be good to cater to.

Hiccup opened his book to the section for end-of-year auction. Hiccup had already demonstrated the witchstones for Mala, Throk, and the other seniors of their alliance; word spread quickly about the remaining three, in exchange for a discount on Throk and Mala's. Hiccup had secured a whole notebook full of Throk's alchemy projects, which he planned on giving to Ruffnut after the trades were over; she was doing Fishlegs' alchemy assignments in exchange for Hiccup looking out for a decent score for her trades. That was enough for a witchstone, definitely, but the second one had been a freebie for help advertising. There were also five fireproof shields, all of which would only be bought by seniors. They had slots for spellholders, so handing one over to whoever took point just made sense. The weight of it had been counter-acted as best he could, but he knew enough kids with strength potions that it was a sure thing there were seniors who already had them in their strategy.

His final project for shop was good for auction too. A cloak that could deflect attention— much cheaper than a cloak of invisibility, but functionally similar enough that most wizards would happily take one. It would be hard for anyone else to make, too, because it normally required hundreds of individual threads spun while chanting the incantations.

Not Hiccup, though.

Hiccup could work the incantation into threads made of mal fur and design sigils on the seams. He could sew, but not as well as Snotlout, so he'd keep it simple, and he'd start on the base of a mal's skin so he didn't have to weave the fabric himself. He'd already used almost the whole nightflyer leather for the saddle in PE, but he still had enough scraps for the hood, and he could just go do shifts with the maintenance kids who looked the most roadweary tonight. It was late enough in the year that most of them would be begging for shift company that could hold up a shield, and the idea of being used as bait wouldn't offend them, even if they weren't willing to let him do it. Not so long as he didn't let whatever attacked them get them for more than a scratch.

He added the cloak to the ledger. He'd get that done early enough, and anyone with something to spare would buy it. They may have to stick to their alliances, but they had to get there first, through all the waves of maleficaria that descended before they found their friends.

He paused, looking down the list again.

Astrid was a poor trader. She had an affinity for combat magic, but she was heavy into all of her languages in a way that made up for it. Her goal was to build up a small library of powerful spellbooks, to help attract potential librarians to the Berk enclave once it was built. Then they could help her study the only mal that had ever gotten a lone adult wizard on Berk: The Flightmare, a dragon that only appeared during Aurvandil's Fire. That way, she could kill it, and avenge her uncle, the aforementioned only lone grown wizard to be eaten.

He had two spellbook blanks he planned on selling to an enclaver. A blank made of quattria skin was extremely powerful, good enough that your librarian had to have an affinity to keep any number of them on the shelf. But they were also good enough to get any indie language kid's entire supply list, which included all kinds of inkpots and focus charms. There were even shelves being taken down, enscribed with glowing, blinking runes that spellbooks adored. Astrid would never be able to trade for something like that.

Hiccup wrote a note next to the first spellbook blank, 'something for Astrid.'

He paused, looking over the list. He was just about as rich as any indie kid could be, just from having so much to sell, and that was the privilege of those with affinities, but even all of this wasn't enough. Nothing ever was.

He had his candy press, which could be loaned out for a fee. One-fourth of the preserved goods— usually it cost a third, but end-of-year trade always had cheaper deals and he'd be getting more renters this way— plus the slime used to thicken and hold the potions. If not, an added fee for the sugar or slime he'd supply himself. Easy to rent out.

Hiccup also had his onions; the same dose he took every week to repair his anima would be good enough to steel the nerves of those terrified to go into the final gauntlet. Even those who were confident in their survival would all want something that could help wash away the horror when they were done; if he stored a few doses, he could pick up scraps at the end of the trade season, or even get a few good things from indie kids who didn't have magical healing waiting for them. He made a note of both these possibilities, then closed the ledger and returned to his worksheet.

The essay still mysteriously refused to write itself, but Hiccup still managed to write a decent rough draft. Well, it was less of a draft and more a list of points, but it was significantly better than what he'd had before taking inventory.

By the time the lunch bell rang, Hiccup had the entire essay ready to write, but not yet written; and he had a plan, and he had so much more to think about than disappointing Stoick.

Dagur came around the corner, still looking exhausted. Hiccup was beginning to suspect a mindworm infestation, or a severe lack of whatever the sunlamps were there to provide. He waved Hiccup over, smiling broadly.

"My turn to get Fishlegs' tray today, right?" he asked by way of greeting.

"And the milk," Hiccup responded with a look around, "and I have a favor to ask."

"Anything." Dagur looked around the corner of the staircase, then kept walking.

"I'm doing an auction for my spellbook blanks. They'll sell best to language seniors but I don't know what's good, and I want to get something good for Astrid. I'll give you a cut if you help me evaluate the bids."

"Yeah, let me know when. Oh! How's Quiet doing?" Dagur had let Hiccup take her a week prior.

"She's good. Starting to do things." Hiccup shoved Dagur to the side and flicked his wrist, hissing out an Italian spell for burning oozes that preyed on orchards; the digesters that had been attempting to spread out enough to eat Dagur were summarily immolated. Hiccup bent to help Dagur back up. "She's starting to glow green."

"Oh, that's great. I wasn't sure." Dagur accepted Hiccup's help. A friendship didn't end over a stair-shove by the cafeteria.

Fishlegs and Astrid joined them as they reached the doors. The Thorstons were already waiting in line with Snotlout. Fishlegs looked between the currently emptying tables, evaluating each one.

"There was a junior killed in the back at breakfast," Hiccup told him. "Do the one by the London seniors. Oh, and put out word to the maintenance kids that I'm free to guard shifts after dinner."

Normally, Hiccup would just go with Fishlegs, but Fishlegs had blocked this evening and the next to work on his own final projects. Just because he was maintenance track didn't mean he planned on failing. He'd taken a risk, the biggest risk any of them had, so that he could learn how to keep an enclave functioning and make friends whose bargains hadn't ended with a spot in an enclave. So that he could write them, when they got home, that they were building an enclave and they could come join.

Berk was going to build an enclave after Hiccup's graduation. They'd had bad luck with childbearing three years after Hiccup's birth, only one baby born. They had discussed it and decided to make the most of it; they'd waited five years to start trying again. The energy that would have gone to coordinating another group went instead to saving up for enclave-building spells again. The energy that would have gone to coordinating another group went instead to saving up for enclave building spells. Stoick had redoubled his spellwriting, storing up enough rare knowledge to cover most of the cost. Gobber's artifice was already valuable, but with more hands, they would be able to use his work to cover the rest of the cost. The six kids currently in the school were working triple-time to bring back usable knowledge and potions and artifice; they were building connections with other students, strings that could be pulled to help get more hands on the project. The boy being sent in alone, in their senior year, would bring with him the official announcement. All of his final graduation alliance would get guaranteed seats, real ones, at the price of remaining indie kids until graduation. Any of them with younger siblings in at the same time would pass down the same offer, the same guaranteed seats when they graduated, and hold the hand-me-downs for the next group of Berk kids. The group that came in five years after him would come in as enclavers, proper ones.

And all six of the Berkians inside were already paving the way. They had plans that would get everything settled even faster, with more attractive offers for various types of person.

Hiccup's artifice was good, worth something outside even as a sophomore because of his affinity. His shields were inelegant, but they would be enough for smaller enclaves to send their recent graduates for further apprenticeship under him and Gobber. The spellbook blanks would attract interest from incanters who wrote their own spells, and those incanters would kill to have the kind of access that gave them a powerful book in-house. The witchstones would be perfect for laborers, and Hiccup would just make them for free for anyone who joined up. His candy press would attract alchemists who needed to preserve their own work/ His trade practices, the free advice he gave, his honesty would be remembered; anyone with anything to buy or sell would be happy for his word.

Astrid's combat affinity meant her spells were all useful. Her focus on languages meant that she had a wide range of spells, that she could respect the work of anyone who had affinities for the subjects. She was making friends with indie translators, people whose work was worth something, people who would gladly move into a new enclave if they could help the library grow. She also had training in dancing her spells, which amplified them; she'd been taught the very basics by Stoick. He'd tried to teach all of them, but only Astrid had gotten it early enough to keep learning on her own. Inside, she was practicing it more and more, and any time she was caught in an overflow of maleficaria, she made a name for herself by doing it. She could teach others after they made it out, and so could the people who had spent the time to educate a girl in such a rare skill. That would get requests from indie kids all over, boys like Dagur who wanted their sisters to be safe and girls like the ones who had something to prove, the ones Snotlout was competing against for Valedictorian. That they deserved to be there.

Ruffnut had an affinity for alchemy. As awful as her cooking was, she was one of the top alchemists in their year. Hiccup didn't even need the grade displays to know that. Her assignments were already so complex that her research counted toward her languages. She was inventing new serums on the side, selling primarily to juniors and other sophomores, and she had painted protective murals in several dorms with paints she'd mixed up on his own. Not only that, but she was tutoring in work periods, bringing other alchemists up to speed so they could pass on their own power. Nobody did that, not her, not when one more dead kid meant you had more space and more food and more supplies and less competition, not for cheap. Not only was she building rapport with other alchemists, she was also putting her name out there among the other disciplines that could benefit from a dose of throat soother before graduation practice or a burn-proofing salve before working at the anvils. She was singlehandedly guaranteeing alchemists a safe lab, if they couldn't get into a better enclave, and the respect to be seen as colleagues. And she'd painted those murals for maintenance kids, too, who had nothing to trade but the bypassing of a repair request.

Tuffnut had no useful affinity in here. He was decent with animals, but not enough that he could have feasably brought in fifty rats for trade like Dagur. His affinity was closer to homesteading in general. He had enough overlap with Ruffnut that he wasn't totally useless in the alchemy lab, but his real talent inside was making friends. In the alchemy lab, he could turn a seed into a sprout, and the sprout into a fire that could be used for the entire brewing process. He did his work well, but he also handed out supplies when people realized belatedly that their blood-warming tonics wanted actual newt's eyes instead of mustard seed. He focused more on healing than Ruffnut did. By now, he could brew a UV potion in his sleep, and he borrowed the press every two weeks to keep a stack of antidotes and focus drops on hand for the kids in the cafeteria. He didn't do it for free, but he did do it for cheap, usually to get more supplies. He, eventually, wanted to apprentice to Gothi, learn how to take care of his family, and then retire to a quiet farm that could supply everything Berk needed. Inside, he was putting all his efforts into showing compassion and effort that would prove to anyone paying attention that the peopleof Berk would take care of you, if you would become their own. That would attract people who just wanted a family, and someplace safe to tuck their kids at night. People who would stabilize the renovations, just by spending time in the enclave. They would be the ones whose belief really mattered.

Snotlout, wasn't going to come back to Berk. He couldn't. That's why he was going to be Valedictorian. But he was still spinning that as a win for Berk. The simple fact that a small island could produce the Valedictorian would put eyes on Berk; if he moved into another enclave, that would open trade between Berk and that enclave. Trade contacts like the kids whose clothes he fixed could then be directed to Berk for a cheaper seat, or into his new enclave; maintenance workers could cash out a seat early if they were willing to go to the smaller enclave. On top of all that,he would be free to write home at any time. He could share any knowledge, look for copies of any spell, report any of Berk's advancement to the larger enclavee, boost reputations.

But none of them were taking as big a risk or role as Fishlegs.

It was Fishlegs whose practice taking care of the Scholomance wards would serve to keep the enclave up while it settled, while their expansions were built to allow more people. He'd know all the maintenance kids who didn't get a job with an enclave and would gladly come, share their expertise with all the Berkians who had gone through without the need to sell themselves. And for many, FIshlegs represented a much better option. Anyone he sent for would have the qualifications that all of the workers in every other enclave had, and they got to move in as soon as the offer was set. They would have to work, yes, work hard, but unlike anyone else in any other enclave, they would not be the only ones doing the work. They could sometimes relax, rest, sleep in a well-warded hall. It wouldn't be glamorous, but it would be home.

And unlike every single one of the other maintenance kids, Fishlegs intended on a job outside that wasn't just cleanup.

He didn't have any special affinity, but Fishlegs was good at planning and delegation. He was good at working out what risks were worth taking for which people, which wards would be tested soonest, how to best utilize a resource. When they got home, Fishlegs intended on doing all of that for the soon-to-be Berk enclave. He'd need his advanced mathematics and well-seasoned artifice credentials. If he needed those papers, the reciepts of proficiency, then he also needed to earn them, alongside the rapport with the other maintenance kids.

So he needed to do his finals, and he needed to let his contacts know he still had them covered.

"Alright!" Fishlegs gave Hiccup an affirmative nod and set off to the table.

Hiccup slipped in line ahead of Astrid, reaching for a tray of his own even as Dagur stepped behind the twins.

"Did you see what got the junior?" Astrid asked Tuffnut.

"Acid sprayer," he told her, sounding impressed. He had right to be— it had been killed too fast to claim any more lives, which meant that the juniors surrounding that one had been ready.

Hiccup surveyed the line. More of it was bad than normal, but he could still easily map out a decent tray for everyone.

"Roast lamb isn't, but the shepherd's pie is. Steer clear of the broth, I can see black spots," he picked up an orange, turning it over under the light before putting two on his tray, "the rice is only safe if Tuff brought the splicer antidote, and there's nothing wrong with anything green."

"I brought enough for all of us to have rice!" Tuff announced to Dagur, who was already scooping up a triple serving.

"I brought mushrooms from my room," Dagur offered up. It was a rare treat; when the rats had plenty to eat, Dagur could free up the oyster mushrooms or a suitably large puffball. With better lunch luck, and higher yields in the form of the Berkians sharing snack tokens with him, Dagur was pelased to share.

Hiccup nodded his acknowledgement, reaching for a larger scoop of the shepherd's pie. "Oh, Astrid? Is there anything you need for end-of-year trades?"

"I could use some new bedsheets, or maybe a bloodstain remover," she mused. "My monthly came early and now I'm pouring mana into hiding the scent. Alfred gave me a spell for battle armor."

Hiccup rolled his eyes. Of course the school wouldn't hand that over. "I'll keep a lookout for it. Anything you need getting rid of?"

"I can make five copies of the spell I'm using now. It's good for stealth and can keep blind mals off in the hall, and it's a rune so the seniors can just trace it on their hands instead of memorizing it."

Hiccup nodded. He could sell that. The runes would be temporary, but all you needed was half an hour in the Graduation Hall. That rune was lasting Astrid all night.

"Since you're offering," Astrid added.

"Since I'm offering, right!" Hiccup felt his ears turning red. He grabbed a milk carton and turned off the line.

Fishlegs was leaning back, face up, enjoying the sunlamp as Dagur slid him a tray. Hiccup sat the larger helping of shepherd's pie on Fishleg's tray before sitting across from him. There were already a few maintenance kids seated around the edges of the table, the ones who'd been crowded out from their host enclavers.

"Ingerman says you're willing to do shifts with us," one of them started, clearly hoping for the early bird special.

"This is Lilly Johanson," Fishlegs told Hiccup, finally looking down at his tray as Tuffnut poured out a steaming orange liquid onto each of their rice bowls. "Lilly, this is Hiccup."

Hiccup held out a hand to shake. "Nice to meet you, Lilly. And yes, I'm looking to do a shift with someone. Preferrably a shift in the lower levels."

Lilly paused at that, then shook his hand. "I have a gym repair due Saturday. It's not even someone else's, it was assigned to me."

Which meant she had no choice but to get it done. Either fix it, or starve.

"I'm going to be honest with all of you," Hiccup began, pulling his hand back and looking around at all of the maintenance kids. "I'm using whichever one of you I go with as bait. I need mal bits. I'm going in the hopes we are attacked. I won't spend my mana on a disguise. If we get attacked, either it kills us or I kill it, but I don't want to hide. That's my price. If you want me to go with you as a shield, that's okay. But if you're fine with being bait, I'll go with you, kill anything that attacks you, and I'll even help you run trades after."

Several of them blanched. Clearly, they didn't like being reminded that that was their real job. Hiccup knew that, but he also knew that nobody who didn't need this would stay in the pool for this; and he knew that he couldn't lie to them to get their help. That was as good as malia.

"That's still more than the Londoners would offer me," Lilly told him with an air of finality.

"And I'm out," announced one of the boys, turning to leave the table.

"Sit down," Fishlegs told him. "If you're interested in Hiccup's help, negotiate. If not, savor the table. If he was going to feed you to an eldritched gronckle, he would have waited to tell you until you couldn't back out."

Something like fear and admiration flashed through Snotlout's eyes as he choked on his spinach. Once his airways cleared, he spoke up.

"And if you need it, I'll schedule you each a time slot witih which to use Hiccup's help," he told them.

As it turned out, only three of Fishlegs' friends needed the help that bad. Lilly, who had been asigned to fix the gym's practice gates, which had stopped opening fully for the seniors; a quiet boy named Mack, who had been hired to replace one of the mortal flamethrower's nozzles in the workshop; and a girl named CC, who Hiccup was almost certain was a Valedictorian condidate and had been hired to fix one of the luxury language lab's cushioned booths. That last one wasn't exactly a dangerous thing to fix, except for the fact that it first had to be cleared of silkspinning mals of the swarming variety. Those would definitely get you.

"Oh, I know!" Snotlout pulled out a sheet of paper. He quicly wrote out his idea, chewing on his rice, and then pushed it forward. "Lilly can come to PE on Thursday morning. Hiccup will already be there for class, and seven sophomores is more tempting than two. Mack can go down to the shop after dinner tonight, and Hiccup will go with. He'll take my shield and then you can both work on your shop finals. And CC can have Hiccup before dinner, and I'll come with you to help collect the silk."

"And what do you want in return for that?" CC asked, looking at him with an eyebrow raised.

"If it's an infestation, then we'll get several spools of theread. If it's worth a damn, Hiccup will give me an appropriate number of spools."

Hiccup nodded. "And that way, you get the benefit of two shields," he added.

"Are you sweet on her?" Mack asked, staring. Fair question, in Hiccup's opinion, but apparently not in Astrid's.

"Are you stupid?" she snapped, not even looking up from her sprouts. "Hiccup won't shield you because anything smart enough to warrant killing so close to graduation will avoid a shield. The silk-things can't be cleared out if whoever goes up there isn't shielded and they're already there."

Mack shut up, leaving the table in tense silence until Tuffnut finished off his tray.

"I got this egg from breakfast," he announced cheerfully, holding up a chicken egg. Those sometimes appeared with shells on, always raw and rarely worth anything. "I'm going to hatch it."

"Why?" Dagur asked, looking over at the egg. He leaned over to squint at it.

"I've got a good feeling about this egg," he answered seriously. "Hiccup, it's not cursed, is it?"

Hiccup reached over wordlessly, taking the egg and lifting it up into the air. He turned it over, then whispered his identification spell. He handed it back, shaking his head.

"Not cursed, not a mal egg." He didn't add that he doubted it was viable for hatching. At worst, Ruffnut would have to step in to keep Tuffnut in line. Hiccup tried not to make decisions for anyone, and Tuffnut was smarter than he seemed. "Do with it what you will."

Tuffnut pulled the egg back close and looked at Dagur. "Hiccup said you have an affinity for animals. Your rat tank? You think you could pull off a chicken coop?"

Dagur gave a noncommittal shrug. "We don't have many chickens on Berserker Island, I'd have to look something up."

After a productive day (consisting of several last-minute study sessions and basic shopping-list making), Hiccup waited for Snotlout by the stairs. They were cutting it rather close, in Hiccup's opinion, if they were to get the repair done in time for dinner, but Snotlout had needed the time to gather up the shield he was testing, all his spare spools, and CC, who in turn had needed time to fetch her repair tools and a length of leather. Hiccup eyed it enviously. Only maintenance kids ever got any with any amount of ease, and all of it would go to CC's job. Still, Hiccup nodded to both of them in greeting.

"Ready?" he asked, smiling at CC.

"What exactly is that?" she asked instead, pointing at Hiccup's side.

Hiccup had also grabbed a few supplies of his own, taking the wait to maximum efficiency. He glanced down to where CC was looking, then lifted up a horn lantern. "Oh, this? It's a light-displacing lantern I brought from home. It bends the light around you so that mals can't see you. It should buy some time to study the silk worms, and then we can clear it out and you can fix the booth."

CC looked between the both of them, almost unwilling to believe that Snotlout would just let Hiccup do that, before shouldering her leather.

"Fine. Let's go."

The language lab was quiet, abandoned in favor of spending the precious few work hours practicing speech with other people in safer, less-infested rooms. That's largely how miantenance worked— people had to do their work, but not in a place with unknown mals.

Hiccup lit the lantern, holding it out to the single booth with the light off. It was the one closest to the vent, making it one of the worst booths, but it was still one of the best places in the whole school to work. Snotlout and Astrid were the only two Berk kids who had a chance to ever be assigned here, advanced incantation students in senior year always had one. Hiccup's only lesson here would be this one. With a glance at the vent, which seemed quite still, he knelt to hold his hand over the door to the booth. He snapped it open, already speaking his study spell.

The entire booth had been webbed, with hundreds of sandy-colored caterpillars, each one about the length of a finger. The silk had been formed in everything from lean-tos to cocoons, scattered across the flat desk, through the headphone wires, and halfway into the backrest. Hiccup's spell washed over them, a dim light that implied they were harmless in this state. Most things that needed cocoons were. Experimentally, he pulled one out on the tip of his knife; it turned over uselessly, and Hiccup had the vague impression that if left to incubate longer, they would be bad enough to kill early sophomores. He set the lantern asside and stabbed the worm; it let out a disgusting stench and died before he could even cast a killing spell.

"You can kill them barehanded," he told CC and Snotlout, "they're useless. The thread should be more than useful though. Help me kill them, it'll go faster if all three of us do."

Snotlout took his place at Hiccup's side, pulling out the worm closest to him and slicing it open efficiently in one slice. CC stared at them, like it was a joke, but she leaned over them to start clearing out the infestation at the top. They made short work of it, leaving a pile of goopy insects on the ground. Hiccup shook a bottle of solvent out on the pile as Snotlout wiped his hands clean.

"If you help us spool this, you'll get spare mana and we'll all make it to dinner," Snotlout told CC, handing her a spool.

"I hate bugs," CC groaned, but she joined in anyway. "What do you even need this stuff for?"

"It's silk. Real silk," Hiccup explained, tugging experimentally at one of the cocoons. "It's strong thread, you can fix clothes with it."

CC didn't answer.

"Do you think it would be worth it to use this stuff for runes in clothes?" Snotlout asked, having already filled the first spool. "Or is it just good as thread?"

"It's good for magic. Probably best for transformation or growth of some sort. It would actually be good for the repair, I think." Hiccup began peeling apart cocoons, opening up more strands to pull onto the spools. He'd learned the same spooling technique Snotlout had, though he wasn't as fast as him. Still, with three people working instead of one, and such a small area to work on, it was done within the hour. Hiccup stepped away once to kill a stray crawler, but still, they had all of it contained neatly on ten spools with half an hour to spare.

CC lay her leather over the seat, carefully tucking it around the chewed-out hole, and then grabbed a needle and spool of leather cord from her bag. She sewed the upholstry in place with long, loose stitches, then lay her hand on the hollow seam. She chanted out a spell in a language Hiccup didn't know, which sent a glowing orange thread of mana through the seams; it pulled tightly and smoothed itself over. Throwing the needle and leftover cord back into her bag, she stood up and started toward the door.

"Whoa, wait up!" Snotlout grabbed his shield, chasing after her as Hiccup scooped up the silk spools.

They merged in witht he rest of the students from the other labs and the library. Hiccup properly sealed the lanter, extinguishing the flames via oxygen starvation. Six spools of thread found their way to Hiccup's satchel; the remaining four were stashed in Snotlout's bag. CC stormed ahead of them, clearly in distress; Hiccup assumed she was still freaked over the silkworms. She'd process it soon enough, or she'd get eaten by something hungrier than her. She wasn't exactly their responsibility anymore.

They met up with the others, giving a recap in the lunch line. Astrid had gotten them seats at a prime senior's table, one of the few things she was good at bargaining for, and Dagur was passing out slices of some sort of cake made with sweet-smelling fruit; Tuffnut, likewise, handed out a thick drink made with some sort of bitter bean he'd found in the alchemy lab. It wasn't the most appetizing drink in the world, but Tuffnut insisted it helped focus, and he wasn't entirely wrong.

"Where's Mack?" Snotlout asked, looking around.

"He was last in line," Ruffnut told him, sipping on the drink. "He's almost always last."

"And how do you know that?"

"He hired us to make him a tonic to fix starvation," Tuffnut explained, slipping the peel of his orange into Dagur's pocket. "The same yeast we use to ferment our alcohol is good for baking and some of the other things we have to do in class. It's what we used for the cake, and it's what we use in the tonic for him."

"Oh." Snotlout glanced over at the line.

"What are you expecting for the shields, Snotlout?" one of the seniors asked, eyeing the shield with a wishful eye.

"Actually, Magnus, Hiccup built them," he corrected with a slightly offended glance, "and you can talk prices with him."

"What did Jorgenson give you for that one?" Magnus asked, turning to Hiccup.

"Nothing within your budget," Hiccup answered truthfully. "I have five up for auction, you can submit a bid for one and I'll let you know, but I can't give a price based on my cousin."

Magnus nodded, then glanced up at the line. "The shield, can it hold up to mortal flame?"

"Well, no, I'm only a sophomore, but it can resist it. You'd be fine glancing past it, but not if your strategy is to maintain a wall of mortal flame." Hiccup cleared his throat, then continued. "It'd be useful against any Stoker dragon, or an incarnate flame, but mortal flame doesn't work that way. Dragons burn your body to eat the meat. Incarnate flames burn your body to get at your mana. Mortal flame gets at your mana first, and then burns away the evidence. And the shield has slots for spell holders in the back, so if you know a ward you can add up to five."

Five was a lot for a shield like this, but a good, well-settled alliance could each cast one ward on it, and the ward would protect all of them. Hiccup had actually only been able to get that many because of his affinity, and the increased numbers of mals with attached artifice getting into the school properly leading up to graduation cleansing. He'd used quite a few mal bits on each shield.

Hiccup finished off his dinner— he'd eaten as quickly as he possibly could— and allowed Tuffnut to grab the apple core for composting later. He'd hoisted the shield onto his shoulder and followed the seniors to the tray return queue. The shortest line was the one lcosest to the cleansing flames, and also the most dangerous line. The first freshman deaths each year usually happened here, from overeager kids who wanted to ensure their trays went through properly. This meant that he could angle the shield in front of everyone, lean further than anyone normally would be. He bussed Astrid's tray as well as his own, then stepped back as Astrid approached.

Astrid had a beautiful iron bracelet, with a carefully crafted inlay with sparkling blue opal and crafted runes of power. It glowed now with the mana from Hiccup's store, mana which was loosened as she moved, stepping carefully through the walkways toward him. She began chanting as she turned, raising her arms in a motion evocative of flame. The spell was Stoick's, one of the songspells that Hiccup knew, a spell that Astrid had mastered in a way he never could.

The blue leapt out of the opal on her wrist, twisting and flaring around her hand. The flame danced with Astrid, blue and white and angry, before being flung directly at Hiccup.

Chapter Text

Hiccup ducked behind the shield, leaning back against the wall. It was too heavy for him to carry forward, the tungsten weighing down on him even in spite of being tempered in cauldrons full of a potion designed to induce weightlessness, but he could drop back on instinct before he could walk.

Blue flame licked hungrily over the surface of the shield. It curled slightly around the edge, enough for the heat to make Hiccup sweat, but not enough for the flame to reach him. He whispered an incantation of his own, an area-widening spell that he'd learned early into the process of building. The shield itself didn't grow, nor did the area that blocked the flame. That would have been far too expensive, mana-wise. What the spell actually did, instead, was force the flames to the point-of-center. Most seniors had better spells for this, more impressive shields that could be cast for half-cost on artifice like this, but Hiccup knew none of them. All he knew was that if the shield fell, Astrid would kill him, and he hated to die.

It only lasted two minutes, before Astrid dimmed the flame. Hiccup lowered the shield, smiling at her as he did so, and slung the still-hot shield over his back.

"I gave you enough mana, right?"

Astrid nodded, then straightened up and returned to the table. Hiccup glanced over at the seniors, trying to gauge which ones were interested, who was debating their bids. Anything worth it would find their way to him eventually, though, so he returned to the table as well. Snotlout nodded appreciatively, eyeing the shield.

"You did good. I think that's the best bargaining chip I have for an alliance," Snotlout told him. "Could you make more next year?"

"Maybe," Hiccup mused. "I'd need to get very lucky with supplies. But if I get the supplies, I can, why?"

"If you can make five more, and store them for senior year, then all of us can get good alliances. The shields alone will be a massive benefit for whoever runs in front."

Hiccup closed his eyes as Mack finally sat down. He tried to calculate various factors, then nodded. "I'll do my best. Mack, are  you ready for the workshop repair?"

"I will be," Mack wheezed, taking a moment to catch his breath as the freshmen began seeking tables. He must have been running to get there on time. Mack's tray was relatively sparse, primarily made up of vegetables, but he also had a duck leg. Hiccup glanced at Ruffnut, then reached to take the leg.

"You don't want to eat the duck today," Hiccup told him softly, slipping the leg onto Ruffnut's now-empty tray. Ruffnut handed over a piece of the fruitcake— she had been given control of the remaining chunk after the original division— and Tuffnut handed over a few of the anti-starvation candies he'd preserved the last time he'd had the press.

"What do you want in exchange?" Mack asked suspiciously.

"You to not die while we're in the shop." Hiccup turned toward the twins again. "You two can have the press for the first week of next term."

Not the best deal in the world, but if they wanted their utility potions, that was still an attractive payment. The first week of the school year was the safest, with the most plentiful supplies. They could easily stock up on things like focus enhancers and healing mints.

Tuffnut nodded a confirmation, then turned to Dagur. "You want me to bus your tray?"

Mack took that for what it was and began scarfing down the contents of his tray. Once he was done, he popped one of the candies into his mouth and rolled his neck as he stood up.

"Let's get this over with."

Hiccup lead the way down to the workship, smoothing his hand along the wall as he peeked around the corners. There was, ultimately, nothing in the path; surely by the next morning, they would hear of attacks in half the rooms they passed. When they reached the shop, Hiccup opened the door unguarded.

There was nothing inside.

The opposite wall was full of large smelting ovens, used primrily by artificers like Hiccup. Not all of the fires were mortal flame, but some were designed to call forth a mighty fire to serve as a break for the twice-yearly scouring of the halls. That way, they didn't have to make additional artifice to force the flame out. There were also fewer maleficaria spawning in the shops that had these nozzles. Still, Hiccup knew which fire was out.

Whatever essential sense Hiccup had been born with could largely extend to any magical entity around him. He could always tell mortal flame from normal, and right now, as the fires dwindled, Hiccup could smell the ash in four of the five ovens strongly, manaless. That was the indicator— mortal flame sucked all of the mana out of things it touched, unless it was specifically warded against it. The oven on the far left, however, lacked the sterile bite of its cohorts.

"I'll turn off the oven," Hiccup offered, "and hold the shield near you. If the fire comes back on, we'll have time to jump back out."

Mack nodded, leaning to inspect the internals of the oven. Hiccup had to step around the side to turn it off, and it was fortunate he was still so scrawny. The necessary button was accessable only through a tiny gap, warded so nothing could get to it but those seeking to repair. Intention-based artifice was very difficult to master. This, among other foundational pieces of the school's wards, would have been the reason workers from outside the Scholomance would have been sent in if it weren't for the broken graduation hall machinery.

Accomplishing the quicker of the tasks before Hiccup, he stepped back to watch Mack spray the oven with a thin mist of a grey liquid. The heat of the oven evaporated instantly as Mack stepped within.

Hiccup felt the hair on the back of his neck raise, but he didn't turn yet. No, he lifted the shield to angle between Mack and the unbroken fire sprayers.

Mack's repair went smoothly. Hiccup wasn't really paying attention to it; it was a repair he'd done with other works of artifice around the school, a simple replacement of a part practically everywhere. Location was the only factor that really made this one bad.

As soon as Mack was finished, Hiccup swung the shield around, raising it once more as a chimera leapt out at the pair of them.

Chimera was a bit of a misnomer. Typically, chimera were hybridized felines, with each head a completely different type of animal and fire in their mouths. This, was not quite that.

It attacked with long, hollow fangs dripping with venom. While its great bearlike heads were each a different species of bear, they were still bears, except the long, whiplike tail like a dragon's, tipped in a dead skull. Hiccup had a moment to wonder why it had even come up here, when it could have just eaten three seniors down in the hall.

Hiccup wasn't strong enough.

Mack had every right to abandon him.

Mack could leave, leave Hiccup dead to rights.

There was plenty of space. The bear's heads held great strength, but they were firmly attached to the same chest. With the tail dead, it couldn't get Mack, if he just ran.

So Mack cast a spell, into the shield, a barrier like any other shield, a barrier that grew out from the center spell-holder.

"Can you kill it?" Mack asked hopefully, reaching to take the shield from Hiccup's hands. Hiccup nodded, passing it over, before stepping side to free his hands.

Hiccup couldn't see the seams between each bear, nor even the snake tail. His knot-breaking spell would do nothing. He had a spell to cause fire to clog, sending it back into the dragon that breathed it, one from the section on Deadly Nadders in the Book. But this was not a dragon, nor a chimera, nor any other fire-breathing thing. There was no fire. No use using that one, either.

But he had one spell he could think to cast, if he could draw blood.

Hiccup crouched to grab a screwdriver from Mack's tool chest, his own knife too short for this. He turned it over in his hand, looking up to study the bear.

The bear-thing growled, snapping all of its heads at the shield.

Hiccup lunged, bringing the screwdriver up into the beast's left neck. Then he dripped back.

The bear howled angrily, and turned to swipe its great paw at the side of the shield. But Hiccup didn't care. It was already dead. It just didn't know it yet.

Hiccup sang out three lines of an old song of rest, originally meant to provide a suitable environment for relaxation, with his hand reached out as though to grab the blood and pull it. It flowed like a red-tinted river, gallons of blood pulling down into the drain below Hiccup. The blood that had gotten on his hand and tool flowed down too, pulling him clean as well. It didn't even cost as much mana as it should have. After a point, the blood wanted to follow.

The bear collapsed.

Hiccup let the magic go, jerking the mana back from his fingertips into his power supply.

"Can you use that thing?"

Hiccup stepped forward, running his fingers through its fur, listening as Mack lowered the shield and ended the spell. He nodded to Mack's question, drawing his knife. "Thank you," he whispered to the bear, sliding the blad into the thick skin.

Mack turned the fire back on, then took his screwdriver back.

"How can I help?"

"Uh. My bag, I have jars. I'll give you the mana you use, but can you get the... No, help me take the skin. Cut the heads off." Hiccup pulled the closest paw, slicing along the leg, creating seams he could use. "Set them on the desk, I want the venom."

Mack pulled out a small hatchet, carefully slicing through fur before hacking off the head, on the side opposite his line. Hiccup kept going, all the way around his kill's side until he reached the snake tail. He paused only momentarily before cutting that off himself. Mack lifted the snake in its entirety, looking upon its brilliant scales.

"Just throw that in the fire."

"Are you sure?"

Hiccup cast the skinning spell, pushing mana to shove the fur off. The furs flew into the air, floating gently back onto the workbench. Then, he glanced at the three heads.

"Take the meat out and shovel it into the fire, too. I want the ribs and the leg bones."

"Can't you use the snake skin for anything?"

Hiccup paused, looking at the tail, then shook his head.

"Not thick enough. Snakes a mundane wouldn't blink at don't usually have enough skin for anything. At best I could get some cord, but it's not relly worth skinning."

Mack nodded, setting to work tossing the meat into the fire, but spoke again. "Is there a reason you don't eat the mals?"

Hiccup laughed involuntarily, then stopped himself. Carefully, he began peeling away the fur and muscle of the nearest bear head— one called 'grizzly'— and tossed them into the fire as well.

"Honestly? I do when I can." He paused to mull over his thoughts on the matter. "On Berk, we believe in understanding the things around us. My mentor, Gobber, he's a descendant of Bork the Bold. That's the man who began the Journal for the Study of Maleficaria. We look for understanding where we can, because Bork saved lives with that book. And, the king of our gods is a god of literacy. The Havaml is His urging us to be as wise as we must. Sometimes that means learning from other people, and other creatures."

"Right..." Mack managed to pull the entire left half of the ribcage off, shocking himself back into silence.

"I don't know whether it was us, or Vinland, or someone else; but for as long as anyone back home remembers, we've held the belief that you don't kill for no reason. We kill if we're attacked, or if we're in need of food. We use as much of the animal as we can. If the crop rots, we use it for compost. And if your artificers can use a dragon's hide, or your alchemists can use the venom of a serpent, you take wht you can to them so it doesn't get wasted. We even extend that respect to maleficaria, because it isn't their fault that they exist, and they re prt of the ecosystem same as anything else."

Hiccup finally got to where the venom glands were, and he whispered a spell to protect his hands as he pulled them loose. He set them in the jars he'd brought, then set to work on loosening the large canines.

"So... The reason you aren't eating them in here is..."

"This one's poisonous. If I ate it, I'd die. I don't eat things that would kill me. And some things are too big to harvest edible meat from safely. I have to pick food or material, and if there's no mal around I can get food easier than materials. But most of the candies Ruff and Tuff sell are preserved with ooze innards."

Mack gagged. "Really?"

"Yeah," Hiccup set aside the tooth, "usually digesters. They've got mzing preservative qulities." He shrugged. "They'd et us. I think it's fair to offer the same treatment."

They fell into an uneasy silence after that.

The bearmera provided twelve fangs, each designed with hollow points to funnel venom into waiting prey; twelve venom glands' worth of a potent paralytic that promised to also be combustable; twenty-two rib bones that could be carved into any number of arrangements or ground into calcium and carbon; and an enormous pelt, easily twenty square feet of hide. He'd heard of white bears larger than any around Berk, but even they likely weren't this big. As much as he loathed to do it, Hiccup had needed to use the fires Mack had repaired and a decent chunk of the man from processing it to tan it right there in the shop, so he could use it to carry all of the creature's bones. By the time they were done, they had wordlessly hauled themselves up to the showers.

Once Hiccup had gotten into his room with his spoils, he'd started on the cloak. Snotlout had offered up Hiccup's time knowing that his cousin may need help later to mke up lost project time, but Hiccup could make up for it if he worked double-time.

Hiccup propped up his three-spell torch, casting a spell Snotlout had invented on the center gem. The spell was an evocation of space, creating a spectral shadow to use as a dress form or mannequin. Snotlout had the uncanny ability to know your exact measurements by just looking at you, but this cloak ws a general-ske cloak, so Hiccup didn't care much about specifics, but he still made the projection large and broad to keep it open for as many seniors as possible.

Hiccup began with the larger mass of the cloak, cut from the bear's hide. He draped it carefully around the dress-form, pinning it in place with overlap enough to close around the shoulders of even a girl Astrid's size. None of the seniors were that scrawny, not that Astrid was runty for a girl their year.

The remaining nightflyer skin, he fashioned into a cowl and a hood, placing it on top of the remainder of the cloak. Then he stepped back from it, eyeing the proportions. With a few quick slices, he opened up buttonholes tht would allow it to be tightened to the buyer's satisfaction. That's when he ran into a minor problem: He didn't have any buttons.

What he did have was n excess of mal rib.

Hiccup carefully folded  piece of note paper into a box, which he set on the desk before dismissing the dress form.

Rther than begin on the buttons, he opened up the Book of Dragons, ready to translate the next section.

Hiccup woke an hour before his alarm on Thursday. Most students would stay in bed, would wait for their neighbors, work on their assignments, study.

Not Hiccup.

Hiccup quickly changed into his most threadbare shirt, wrapped the Book into its sling, scooped up his bg nd the paper button box, and made his way down the stairs with his lantern. He'd stuffed some of his old bedding in with the buttons to keep them from rattling, and he walked at a pace that was brisk enough to make his thighs ache. He used the ache to his benefit, funnelling mana into his storage as he went, vaguely allowing himself to be aware of how stupid he was being.

But he hd n idea, and he didn't want to give up his chance at following through.

Nothing attacked him as he wove through the school, unaware of his intrusion until he was long gone. Before he knew it, he was at the iron gates to the gym, staring up at them as though he was seeking entry to a place he had no right to be. He spoke to them, not like they would chase him away, but like they were old friends.

"Lilly will be here soon to fix you," he reached out to touch one of them, "if you'll let me come in. I can help her."

No student needed to ask. Not to enter here, not to go into the gym. The gym was meant to be a safe haven within a safe haven. It had been built to replace all the beauty that the Scholomance made them forsake to enter its hallowed halls. It had been created to give them a place to build the mana it so desired.

But it still found kindness persuasive.

The doors swung open, only slightly resistant, revealing the massive coil of rusted spring dragging the broken door's pace down. The gym looked largely the same as it had the last time Hiccup was there, a long fence drawn through hlf of the room. On the right, several obstacles waited for the unlucky seniors who would be facing off against the very worst the Scholomance imagined for its darling children. On the left, the horse artifice paced in lazy circles, a sure sign that today would be full of trouble.

There was one desk, placed conspicuously outside the magical paddock. The only thing there was a set of basic warnings, preaching the importance of caution around a spooked horse. Hiccup suspected that entailed a lot of fractured ribs. He didn't concern himself with that, though.

Instead, he slid the page to the side of the desk and sat down, setting the box on the surface. His back to the door, he picked the buttons out one by one. With a sharpened knife, he carefully carved out holes on each and every button. The bone shavings, he brushed onto his hand and tossed into his lantern to supplement the wick of the candle.

He wasn't sure how much time passed before Lilly and the other Berkians arrived, but he'd finished turning an entire bear rib's worth of chunks into buttons, each absolutely primed for the thurs rune to be embroidered in. The one thing he still needed— well, wanted— to do before using them was take the ash from the lantern and dye the buttons. The ash would turn them a deep gray, and it would infuse them even more with the invisibility granted by the lantern.

The lantern didn't hide him from everyone, though.

"Hiccup, what the fuck?" Astrid demanded, whacking his arm. "We thought you'd been eaten by a roc or something!"

"That would be quite impressive, considering rocs aren't known for hanging out in the gym." He smiled up at her. Rocs hadn't really been in the gym since the artifice broke. "I figured I'd be here early in case a serpent crawled in through the vents."

"There was a real roc on the course during the last run yesterday," Fishlegs interrupted. "They fended it off but they didn't have enough mana to actually kill it."

Lilly nodded, glancing toward the doors. "It's spreading, isn't it? Last I heard it was only the practice gate that wouldn't open."

"Oh, that? Don't worry about it. It's just a rust-roost. I've got a spell that condenses the flock into one giant sparrow and then it's as simple as dissolving it. I've got something for that, too, you just need to repair the hinges."

Lilly didn't seem convinced. "Why do you have a spell to condense a rust-roost?"

"Do you remember the beginning of last year, when some of the enclavers' cell walls were destroyed and two of the Romans died?" Snotlout shuddered, and for good reason. Enclavers were about half of the students, but they only made up about twenty percent of deaths. It had been horrifying for everyone involved. "I was three cells down, and Hiccup looked up a way to stabilize the wall so I didn't get hit. The only way was to replace it, and to do that..."

"We had to wipe it out first." Hiccup had done it for the enclavers at-cost, just to save Snotlout. "The same text had both spells and I needed both of them to do it."

Lilly nodded, looking over at the doors again. It was awful. She knew the spell was going to be expensive. Nobody would cast it for free. She sniffled slightly.

"What can I do to help?"

"Just get the repair ready. There's an alliance that has plenty of mana, and they can't afford to lose more practice."

It's not that Krogan had mana. It's not even that Hiccup wanted his malia to be handed out. But part of the bargain to get in was ignoring it while here, ignoring it long enough to get out; and if the mana was freely given, even if it had been malia, it wouldn't scar the recipient. Hiccup could live with that, scrub his soul and anima clean when he got home. And Krogan may not even be the one to hand over the mana— they had a few strict-mana users in their alliance, scraped up out of the losers who hadn't even been given filler spots, and Hiccup was right. He could tell any senior right now that if all his mana storage got filled up he'd fix the gym, and they'd offer him spare storage to convince him. But Hiccup didn't need as much mana to cast the spells, not when he had a jar of mal stomach acid in his pack. They'd hand him as much as they could spare, and he'd supply the rest.

And that is exactly what happened when Krogan walked in. One of his minions handed over a large crystal, which Hiccup pulled from carefully before handing it back. He wouldn't pull while casting. That was a good way for Krogan to get a grip on his mana.

Hiccup traced his finger in the air around him, writing out the full categorical designation of the rust-roost across the field of vision. Not all maleficaria had a full designation, but species that were exceedingly stubborn needed them to properly communicate study. Once he ran out of words, he made a grabbing motion through what he'd written. Fragments of rust tore out of the doors violently. Hundreds of tiny starlings slammed against one another, pressed into one flock high above the fence.

Hiccup focused on the flock, clenched his fist as though squeezing water out of a wet rag, and called out the verbal portion of the spell. The rust peeled off of each of the birds, reforming into feathers or talons on a much larger bird. He knelt to grab the acid, which he opened with one hand, and then he threw the acid.

He let go of the rust-roost and changed to the next spell, a spell to turn a jar of water into a cloud. It didn't have to be water, only liquid. It worked just fine on the acid. Bubbles of putrid air formed along the surface of its wings. The rust dissolved quickly, going up in mere moments; the acid was neutralized in the process. It fell down firmly  on the senior's side of the fence.

Hiccup stepped back to look at Lilly.

Lilly stared at Hiccup, wide-eyed horror firmly lodged on her face. She stumbled backward, bumped into the wall, and screamed.

Hiccup was about to ask what she was screaming about. Honestly, he was. It just so happened that when a sun-starved dryad who'd been locked into the Scholomance for the past thirty years steps off the senior's practice course to hit you in the back with a dehydrated willow branch, you couldn't say much.

Hiccup's back was on fire— figuratively, thankfully. Unlike with CC, Lilly had good reason to be afraid. Maintenance kids didn't have the mana to fend that off, and it was suddenly between her and her work. Hiccup stumbled forward himself, using the sudden pain to boost the mana required to shove up a shield. Still, he turned to face it. If the dryad wanted to kill them, he could at least buy some time for the others.

Krogan glanced between the dryad and the sophomores, then called something to his alliance and ran out. They followed him. Hiccup couldn't even be mad at him— none of the seniors would waste mana on saving indie kids that weren't theirs.

Fishlegs, initially slow to react, jumped to raise a shield of his own. He had a good one, gotten from an older maintenance kid as a New Year's gift, that could be placed over a group. It was designed for maintenance kids who did shift work together, which was probably why Lilly didn't know it. Girls usually worked on their own.

The twins reacted on exact timing, crushing thin tubes of some minty green gel that smelled vaguely of mint. Tuffnut started an incantation, which Ruffnut copied; from what Hiccup could hear, it was an herbicide spell. It dawned on him later that it was meant to contain the dryad's range of action.

Snotlout was smart. Nobody doubted it, except sometimes Snotlout himself. That's why it surprised nobody that Snotlout was the first to remember how dryads worked. They sucked the life out of the rewards around them, starting with those of opposite sex, but they couldn't do it if a different magical influence was already acting on them. So, he cast a concentration spell of his own— not a mana amplification, exactly, but a perception spell that would allow them to read the situation better. Cast only spells that would do something.

Astrid drew her axe— a large battleaxe that she had brought the head of in before handling it in shop. She'd been training with it since she was six years old. She eyed the dryad's long whiplike branches. She was firmly under both Fishlegs and Snotlout's spells, allowing her a little extra time to act. She braced herself for motion, for jumping at the creature.

"Aim for the heart!" Hiccup called to Astrid, then dropped his shield. It wasn't necessarily the smartest chocie, but he needed his hands free to cast his own strategy. He cast a fire spell, similar to the one Astrid had used for the demonstration but not the same, and met the next whip-strike by grabbing at it. His hand, now on fire both literal and figurative, couldn't grip the the thing, but the fire caught like tinder anyway.

The dryad, now concerned with the fire rapidly approaching her core, shrieked and swung all its branches rapidly. Hiccup collapsed, not even bothering to put up another shield.

Astrid had heard him, though.

She leapt, aiming for the dark hollow behind the dryad's breast. As she swung, she cast one of her own spells. Hiccup didn't speak French, which that specific spell was, but he knew it came from a moderately rare spellbook she'd had to translate last term. The axe struck true, and with no effort from Astrid beyond the mana pressed into the blade, the spell pressed harder into the weak spot. The crack spread vertically through the dryad's entire torso, effectively bisecting it.

Once the dryad went down, Fishlegs dropped his shield. The twins each ran to one half ot the head, where young dryads sprouted in the form of seeds. They each began collecting the seeds to sterilize them and later use in alchemy. Astrid cast a wary look around the gym before putting her axe back in its holder.

"Are you okay? What do you need?" Fishlegs asked, appearing at Hiccup's side stunningly fast. "That welt looks bad..."

"Help Lilly fix the gates," Hiccup grunted out tensely. "It's only a flesh wound."

"Yak shit," Snotlut snapped, pushing Fishlegs toward Lilly. He crouched next to Hiccup, pulling the back of Hiccup's now-ruined shirt off of the skin. "It went bone-deep! You're lucky, this could have killed you!"

Hiccup felt it, honestly. He'd blocked out the pain when the cause was present, as any Viking and any Scholomance graduate would, but it hurt now. He looked at his hands, which had only sustained glancing wounds by comparison. Still, they were bloodiedup well, and he knew it would hurt to hold a pen for a while.

"Have the twins clean it, and use the silk we just got to stitch me up," HIccup instructed weakly.

Snotlout ignored him, but he'd gotten Tuffnut's water skin before coming anyway. Aided by Hiccup's good knife, Snotlout tore off Hiccup's shirt, then poured the water over the wound while whispering a spell to ease the pain.

"You can be such an idiot." Snotlout looked up at Tuffnut. The Throston had come over with a jar of some anti-bacterial cream, which they took turns rubbing into Hiccup's mangled back like sauce on a rib rack being prepared for a smoker. "You owe us, big time. I want something good from trade."

Hiccup nodded, then bit down on a charred willow stick as Snotlout began stitching his wound together. Make-and-mend wasn't a spell that applied to human flesh, but Tuffnut had a potion that infused healing back into blood, which he kept in flasks at all times. Normally, an ounce was good for anything. Tuff poured an entire flask into the stitches as Snotlout worked on sewing his cousin back together. 

"I'll get you something." Hiccup pulled hismelf up, sore but alive. He'd brought a spare shirt anyway— the horses liked to coat them in mud, and he still didn't know where they got it— so he took the one Snotlout had cut off him to throw into the seniors' side of the gym. It would attract mals from all over the place and the next seniors would get a good workout in. Then, he put on his spare shirt.

"Do we need to worry about the corpse?" Lilly asked, walking up to peer at it. With Fishlegs helping her, they'd fixed the door in no time at all— rust-roost wasn't all that bad when it came to enclave destruction— and she stared at it warily.

"No. It's indistingishable from a tree in this state." Hiccup frowned at it. "Do you have anywhere else to be now?"

"What?"

"Do you want to build mana? I can lend you tools. That thing's branches make good warded baskets, and the leg can be used for anything wood can be used for. You'd get all the mana and I'll make you a basket next term."

Lilly considered for a moment, but she didn't really have anywhere else to be, and at least the Berkians would include her in efforts to keep everyone safe enough to leave the room. She accepted his knife and set to work with Hiccup's lantern next to her.

Once that was settled, Snotlout and Hiccup stepped up to the paddock gates.

"Are you sure you can still do this?"

He wasn't. "Yes."

Hiccup opened the paddock gate before anyone else could psych him out.

The horses continued pacing, unbothered by any of the noise or commotion from the dryad fight. Unlike the gates to the senior's half, the paddock gate had been put up by the Berkians to help prevent maleficaria from getting to the horses; it wasn't magical beyond the wards they'd put up, and anyone could walk in without any real negative consequences. The horse with the nightflyer saddle, which he'd dubbed 'Jumper,' walked up to Hiccup as though it had been eager to see him again. He was able to easily mount it, regardless of how stiff he was, and guide the horse to the 'trail.' It wasn't a proper trail, not the way the gym set aside the practice hall for second-term seniors or the way it would have been back when the gym was built, but it was what they called the border wall of the gym, and the area directly around it.

Hiccup brought Jumper to the speed the book referred to as a trot. The pace was faster than he strictly wanted, butt he pain radiating up his back was building mana too fast to be concerned with it. He was also rewarded with the very best the school still had for illusions. As they crossed out of the paddock 'gate' and onto the trail, the sunlamps pushed light down on them like a late spring back on Berk, the kind of day he always forgot about when he was complaining. The wind on his face and in his hair smelled less stale, less recycled, less stiff. The smell of a campfire filled every inhale, the gym artifice incorporating the dryad's remains. Every exhale puffed out heat into a cool morning, condensing into fog in front of him. Hoofsteps crunched as if over leaves and stones and dew-softened dirt. He didn't care that the sound was fake. The burn in his thighs was real. The pull on his palms was real. The excitement bubbling up in his stomach was real.

The cruellest trick the Scholomance gymnasium had ever pulled was this; the feeling that Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III was exactly where he was meant to be, doing exactly what he was meant to be doing.

But Sir Alfred Cooper Browning had not built the school on a lie.

He had believed that he could save all of the students, by hiding them here, by setting them to work, by teaching them everything he and all others like him knew, by putting them through Hel so they could learn how to sense and avoid Her.

And that meant never indulging in lies like that.