Author's Note

Might want to get out your Norse Textbooks now...

1: Island

Twilight, craning her neck inspected her surroundings. She was in a forest, and that probably meant food. Groaning out in pain as she picked herself up, she suddenly realized she couldn’t feel her left hind leg.

“Broken, great. As if I didn’t have enough troubles to add to my collection,” the dragoness mused to herself. “Welp, guess hunting something’s out of the equation.”

She sighed, as much as she hated it, she’d have to forego the crunchy sound of flesh tearing and warm blood in her mouth for the time being. For right now, assuming this island provided it she’d have to eat fruits or something or that ilk. Twilight nearly gagged. She was a proud dragoness, and they didn’t just go herbivore at the drop of a hat.

“Welp…” she sighed. “As needs must I suppose. Probably going to sacrifice more than my dignity and pride as a dragon before this is all over.”

She had no idea how right she was at that moment really.

“Still,” Twilight thought to herself as she limped forwards through the woodland undergrowth. “How in the Dragon Mother’s name did I even end up on this island, in this situation, anyways? Missing over half of my memory, and with a bad wing?”

That was a question she probably would receive no good answer to in any short period of time. Though she did have another question. Last she checked, she shouldn’t have been able to glide for any small amount of time, and yet somehow just a few short minutes ago she did.

“Healing factor?” Twilight asked herself, before shaking her head. “No, that’s just outright ridiculous. It’s impossible to heal yourself via your own power. The… The idea alone is ridicule incarnate!” she thought in an exasperated tone.

She calculated her odds of survival, and sighed. Twilight didn’t like them, not one bit.

“Sure. Ninety-nine percent sure. Really? Ninety-nine percent? That's quite high. Is that the figure you're sticking with? Ok, ok, seventy-five. Well, that's jumped quite a bit. You've just lost twenty-four percent.” she thought to herself in a brief moment of panic before regaining her composure. No, a dragoness must never fall to panic. Panic got you killed.

“So, instead of panic Twilight,” the young dragoness told herself. “You resort to finding a way to survive. Welp Twilight, looks like you’ve got a lot of work to do and some things to figure out.”

Young possibly could have been a lie or a mistake on Twilight’s part, she honestly wasn’t sure how old she was exactly. Not that she probably would have cared, age was nothing but a number to a dragon. And she felt spritely, at least she did before she crashed and broke her leg.

But in all honesty, Twilight for all she knew could have been thousands of years old and she could have been none the wiser. Memory loss was funny that way, Twilight mused as she headbutted a tree and knocked down this strange red spiny fruit. Breaking it open with her claws, she then sucked out the juicy parts inside. Mulling over the taste in her mouth, she decided whatever this fruit was, it’d do… for now.

“But I’m going to get myself some meat soon, and that’s the end of it,” Twilight decided. She was so not becoming a vegan, the other dragons she knew lay back home would be laughing at her. By the Dragon Mother, she wouldn’t be surprised if they were at this very moment for either crashing and burning or deciding to even touch a fruit!

“Give me a good mongoose to snack on any day,” Twilight thought licking her lips. “Yummy!”

Twilight padded forwards, tossing the remains of the fruit behind her eventually stumbling across the bones of some massive sheep. Might have been a yak, Twilight didn’t particularly care to know. Nevertheless, grabbing two of the bones she tied them together with a piece of mossy vine around her broken leg to serve as a makeshift splint. She next grabbed a rib bone and tied it to her right foreleg able to be grabbed at a moment’s notice to be used as some sort of weapon.

“A lady always comes prepared, after all.” Twilight thought with a small smirk. Stepping out of the woodland and into a clearing with a small lake, a waterfall pouring down from the cliffs above for the briefest of times she found herself at peace as she looked at the sparkling waters. Walking up to the mirror-like pool, Twilight gazed at herself. Far from being a narcissist, she did admit however under the circumstances she did look rather good. But what drew her attention the most was this strange star on her hindquarters, seemingly glowing with an ethereal flame. Why? Why was it there, and what did it mean?

Twilight, shaking her head and deciding to think on these thoughts more at a later date before she got herself a headache gently stepped into the pool, the blood in her scales cleaning itself off almost as soon as she stepped into the cool waters. Twilight froze for just a second, wondering if the now bloodied waters would attract any sort of attention. She then smacked herself back to her senses, if that was the case her blood would have attracted predators long before! ...For all she knew, they could have been coming after her. Twilight quickly bathed herself, and would have stepped out of the pool ready to fight whatever came from the timberlands surrounding her before she spied what looked like a small cave opening at the bottom of the pool. Sucking in a breath, she dived into the waters and followed the cave to its end, soon finding herself in a cavern of some sort. This would make a good hiding place, an escape should anyone of the unwanted sort come to call she decided. And also, right now a good place to take a nap. Curling up next to the bloodred crystal that illuminated the cavern, she drifted off into dreamland once more…

Twilight’s dreams were a mire of confusion for the most part. She found herself walking through a foggy otherworld, seemingly without end. Images flashed by her head in a blur.

Villages scoured, as blazing storms rained down from above as small figures ran for cover or tried futilely to fight back against those who brought Hell from the skies.

“You see this?” a feminine voice asked the question seemingly directed at Twilight. “This is what we are, what we could have become. The terrors of the sky, and forever feared by those who walked the land.”

A bolo was fired from a catapult cutting through the air and the chaos of the dragonfire, and one dragon was knocked from the sky and sent crashing to the ground before figures in metal armor took axes to it. Twilight turned her head away, unable to watch as echoes of triumph and a drying roar bellowed in her mindscape. The little ones, she didn’t know their name just yet, but she knew now they could find ways to kill her kind.

“We needed someone to lend us a guiding hand, show us a better way of living then just terrorizing the meatsacks. Or we would have been eventually led to extinction.”

A pure white dragon soaring through the sky, and although she was unable to tell just how large it was, she could tell this dragoness was probably larger than most and bore spines on her back and tail that looked as if they could be launched at a whim like missiles. Oddly however, Twilight didn’t get a feeling of menace from this elegantly shaped dragoness, and when she seemingly turned to look at Twilight, the mare found herself at peace all at ease in her world.

“Remember Twilight,” the dragoness spoke to her, the voice now finding its source as on the dragoness’ hindquarters a sun blazed. For just a brief moment, Twilight saw something else in the white dragon’s place. A blazing sword, seemingly coming from the stars above cutting through forces beyond comprehension. “Remember what you are, and who you need to become.”

“R-Remember?” Twilight whispered out, her ears flattened. “I… I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do right now, other than find a way off these islands and get home!”

“So, let that be your quest for the time being. Find a way home,” the dragoness suggested. “But remember, the great blue one, he’s always hunting. Hunting you. You’ll need allies to survive your quest. Find them, before he finds you.”

“A-Allies?” Twilight stuttered out. “And who’s he? Who’s he?”

“I cannot say anymore, my dear Lady of the Steel Wing,” the dragoness replied. “My time is limited as is. I required a great strength beyond my own just to reach you now. Hold fast Twilight, and remember cruelness and cowardice are not the dragon way. Nor has it ever been yours. Neither is holding onto your pride. Now GO!” the voice shouted before the whole world faded to black.

Waking up with a start, Twilight found a new strength filling her. Jumping into the water, she swam out of the cave and climbed out of the pool even as storm clouds rumbled on the horizon, warning of an oncoming torrent. Lightning flashed in the sky above in jagged streaks, as Twilight wandered to a beach far from the woodlands. Ruins of stone houses dotted this cragged beach, and black sand got up between her claws, and around her ruins of longboats had been smashed up against rocky faces as if some giant had thrown a temper tantrum and used them to satisfy his childish rages. Clambering upon the ruins of one such longboat, Twilight peered out over the horizon. In the distance, as far as her eyes could see -and believe you me, that was quite far indeed- there was nothing but a sea of gray. Rain could be seen in the distance, and it was coming closer by every passing moment.

“Can’t stay out here forever, have to make it back to my cave. Wait the storm out.” Twilight though, leaping off the wooden figurehead and then out of pure force of habit combined with a natural curiosity she looked towards the ruined homes, stone walls having crumbled down long before her arrival.

For a brief moment, Twilight wondered who lived here, and how they did so. What their day to day lives was like, and just what exactly caused them to abandon this place for… well, wherever really.

Then a horrific thought hit her. This village… it looked frighteningly like the other village in her dream. The one the dragons attacked. Her breath caught in her throat. What if… What if she was one of the dragons in that vision, one of the ones attacking the village?

“No… No, I can’t… I would never…” Twilight panted out, leather wings drooping to the ground in mourning even as the skies opened up and the pain began to pour. “I’d never… By the Mother, what if I forgot about that dragon, the one that was killed! I’m.. I’m a monster!”

Twilight swiftly regained her composure even as the cold battering rain pounded upon and soaked her scales to the bone. No, it was highly unlikely. There were probably hundreds, if not more villages that could resemble this one. It might have been just a coincidence this village bore a strong yet frightful resemblance to the one she saw in her vision.

“But whatever the case, something happened here,” Twilight thought to herself and as she walked past a ruined church, she saw a name carved into the stonework.

It read: “Hróðvitnir”, whatever that meant. Twilight felt a shudder go through her even as she recited the name, and a loud howl cut through the island. Twilight’s eyes widened. She wasn’t alone.

Instincts telling her to run, run like the wind, Twilight broke off into a sprint and then she realized something as she found herself above the waters. “I’m… flying?”