#liung

Hi ! Thank you all for the recent influx of notes ! Pictured above is the head of the Liung type species L. tetranguis and a juvenile Liung sp.

Most government officials also go by names that other races can pronounce, e.g. Sage’s boss Senma Ri.

As Hiccup slept deeper than he ever had in a long time, he was blessed with silent and dreamless slumber, void of all but warmth. It was the first time he had slept in peace, the nightmares gone from within him forever. He had never felt such silence. Very suddenly, his sleep was broken. His eyes shot open and he gasped loudly. It was dark. He had no idea where he was. A warm blanket covered him where he lay, but he shivered bitterly. His guts twisted in crippling nausea. His skull throbbed painfully and his hands stung. And everywhere was sore. But somehow, as if fate itself had spoken to him, he knew he was somewhere safe. "Hiccup?" a voice soothed from behind a door. He knew that voice. The sound of a sliding door could be heard, and there were soft footsteps coming closer and closer to him. When he opened his eyes after realizing they had closed, he looked at the person before him and a lump quickly formed in his throat. "Astrid..." "Shhh." She gently ran her fingers through his hair, then let her palm rest on his cheek. Her eyes were sad. "Oh, Astrid..." He could barely find the strength to speak. "You found me..." Astrid suddenly let out a soft sob. "I miss you so much, Hiccup. Please come home." He was taken aback. "...What?" "Berk needs you. Your mother needs you. Toothless needs you." Another sob was released from her throat, and she stroked his cheek with her thumb. "I need you. Please, if there's only one thing I want you to do, then come home to us. I miss you." "But, Astrid... I'm right here..." Then, suddenly, her entire body disappeared into thin air right before his eyes. He no longer heard her voice or felt her hand on his cheek. It had only been a shade of his memory, and she was gone. "Astrid...!" A sad purr came from the door behind him. He heard scratching and whining and the sliding of a tail against a wooden floor. "Toothless...?" The scratching on the door turned more intense. The dragon whined louder, desperate to return to his rider. Wincing and gathering all the strength he had left, he pulled himself from beneath the warmth of the blanket to the hard, cold floor, crawling on his knees and stinging hands to where he thought the door was. His palms dragged along the wood and made his flesh burn all the more. But he ignored it. "It's... okay, bud... I'm right... here..." He pawed at the door, but his energy had diminished; used up in his last efforts to reunite with his best friend. Falling onto the floor, his eyes closed once more, and he lost all sense of consciousness as his mind slipped back into the darkness. When his eyes opened again, the room was still dimly lit, but not as much due to the sun beginning to rise. His senses told him that he had been moved back to his rightful place on the floor mat beneath the blanket. Someone was sitting beside him; someone small, but the fog in his mind was so thick he couldn't make it out. There was a hand behind his head. Something was raised to his lips. He quickly realized that it was water and opened his mouth to let the water relieve the sore, dry sensation in his throat. The someone that was helping him did most of the work for him. He knew it wasn't Astrid. With great effort, his eyes creaked open. He looked at the figure beside him; a small, raven-haired girl with fair skin and pale, almond-shaped eyes that looked straight ahead. She couldn't have been more than 9 or 10 years old, and she was dressed in a strange outfit of several colors, laid out in elaborate patterns and designs. Her hair was pinned up in three different ways on her head. Despite her strange appearance, her smile was gentle. "Wh..." he mouthed silently, unable to use his voice, "...where am I?" The little girl said nothing. "Where am I?" he said again, a little stronger this time. She suddenly spoke. "Far from your home, no doubt," she said softly and slowly in a strange accent. "You must rest now, or your fever will only grow worse." With that, she gently laid a cold, damp cloth over his forehead and rested her hand on his shoulder. He wanted to ask who she was, but sleep had taken him long before he could say a word. Just like before, his sleep was dreamless. He was grateful, however, that there were no more nightmares. At least for now. [author's note: I'm gonna be busy for a few days so don't be surprised if the next chapter isn't posted for a while]

They walked for hours. Strongly wary of the mysterious Dreamscape surrounding him, Hiccup followed the fox quietly over massive hills made of sand and down rivers of anything from lava to blood. Pictures of his past would flicker here and there, showing him the things he barely remembered or only dared to remember and reminding him of both happy and sad moments. All of his memories were there, twisted or not. "You must listen to me carefully, child," said the fox, stopping to look at Hiccup with cold yellow-green eyes. "A great darkness approaches the world. I have seen it. If not stopped, it will devastate and destroy all in its path." Hiccup's eyebrows knit together in deep thought. "Is that why you brought me here?" "Not entirely. I will give you the strength you need to save your people. But it is a long journey across this land and we must be quick. The Dreamscape is not kind to uninvited visitors." They approached a tall dirt mound, and the fox began to climb it, gesturing for Hiccup to follow. He clambered up the crumbly earth uneasily. As he reached the summit that revealed the land beyond, he hadn't realized he stopped breathing. On the other side of the mound were corpses. Thousands of them. Piled onto one another like mountains and mangled as if from a massive battle. He saw people from every island he knew of and from lands he did not know. He could see that some were from Berserker island, and some were from the Outcast island. But some... Some were from Berk. They were his people. And they were all dead. "This," the fox announced, "is what will happen should you fail to answer the third call." A thick lump formed in his throat. He held his hand over his mouth to keep from vomiting from the stench. His teary eyes scanned over the open graveyard and he caught sight of a blonde braid and a fur hood covered with blood. He paled. "Astrid!" he screamed, bolting from his spot to where he saw her body. The fox leapt in front of him to keep him from running any further. "No! Do not go to them! You do not understand." He stopped, gasped, and collapsed to the ground in dark dismay. Tears had already begun rolling down his face, but he didn't notice. "What you see is only a shadow of that which has not yet come to pass." Sniffing, he looked up at the creature. Its eyes were icy, far too cold to have a heart. Why did the fox take him to this place? Why is it showing him the future? He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "What do I have to do to stop this?" "When I sing the Call of the Sword, you must answer. Only then will you be strong enough to prevent darkness and ruin from destroying your people." When Hiccup looked back up at the thousands of corpses, they had all disappeared. All that was left was barren, cracking earth, stretching over a huge field with a massive black wall of nothingness on the other side. He tried to breathe deeply, but the fear and hopelessness seemed to overwhelm him. Why was it so painful? How could he keep going? "Hurry now," the fox called from halfway down the other side of the hill. "We must be swift here. Visions of the future can be severely damaging to those who take their time here." Once he reached the bottom of the mound, they began to run. The cracks in the earth began to glow fiery red, threatening to unleash some sort of demonic force on the two travelers. He tried not to look at them as they ran over the field, but the deafening explosions in the cracks behind them made him glance there. An enormous monster made of disembodied limbs and dragon skin rose from beneath the field, roaring with all its might to signal its arrival. What was visible of the sky turned pitch black, and hot ashes began to fall from the blood-red clouds. The fox ran behind Hiccup, who was running with all the strength he had left. "Faster, child!" shouted the fox. He was gasping, panting, his legs and ribs screaming for rest, but he had to keep going. More terrible monsters looking as if Hel herself had sent them had risen from the cracks, and they were starting to give chase. The fox urged him on as they approached the end of the field, where there was only pure blackness. He didn't think he could make it without collapsing. "If you value your life, you must ignore the pain!" He stumbled on. Something caught on his metal prosthetic, but he ignored it and still tried to run. The fox had already reached the edge of the dark void, and the massive creatures behind them had begun to destroy the field, hills, and mountains around them, leaving everything behind Hiccup in a state of collapsing explosion and everything ahead of him dark and empty. With one final leap as time itself seemed to slow down, Hiccup jumped from the imploding ground and fell into the void. "No, no no no no!!" roared the fox's faraway voice. "The little fool!!" But he did not hear the fox's cries. He floated aimlessly in the dark, gravity not holding him down, for what seemed like hours. There was no sound, no warmth, no cold, no memory, no light. It truly was the void; deprived of everything. Hundreds of unclear images of intense brightness flickered maddeningly behind his eyelids, silently chaotic in their place. Hiccup felt gravity begin to pull him down again and light begin to illuminate the darkness. He wondered where he was going... ...And his senses returned, one by one. Cold. His eyes did not open. Sand. He suddenly felt a wave of ocean water crash over his body, and his eyes shot open. Everything came back to him all too quickly but somehow not fast enough; it was as if he had been asleep for a hundred years. Nausea plagued his stomach and he was sore or stinging everywhere. His hands were bleeding. Blood dripped from his forehead. There was no strength left in his body. But he was alive. As he tried to sit up, he realized just how weak he really was. All he could manage was turning over from his stomach to his back and look up at the flat gray sky, which showered a little drizzle of rain onto his limp form on the sand. The rain felt good to him, despite it being so cold. It was a long time before he found the strength to stand up and find out where he was. There was nothing but a long beach that stretched from one horizon to the other, and a tall cliff bordering the other side. The ocean was clear; no other land could be seen. He could not see past the looming rock coast, nor could he see anything on either side of the beach. It appeared that he was completely alone. "Wh... "Where am I?" He stumbled more than he thought he would as he walked very slowly along the beach. When he looked down at his wood and iron prosthetic, he saw that there was a huge crack in the wood, and the iron was twisted and bent in several places. It was not too far gone to be repaired, but at the moment he could do nothing for it. He exhaled deeply in dismay and kept walking, not even caring if one leg felt a little shorter than the other. All of his armor had gone, too. Last he remembered, he fell asleep at the camp with his complex flight suit on and had gone through the entire Dreamscape with it. After he awoke on the beach, he discovered that all that was left were his boot, pants, and two shirts, all of which were battered and torn. He might as well have been wearing rags. This left him far colder and vulnerable than any person should experience, and did not make his nausea, dizziness, or tiredness any better. It only got worse. Twice he vomited into the ocean. It hurt badly to do so, because there was hardly anything in his stomach in the first place. All that came up was some pale green saliva. Although he still felt sick afterwards, he began to feel hungry. After all, his stomach had forcibly emptied itself and he hadn't eaten for at least a whole day, if not longer. But still, like his broken prosthetic, he could do nothing about it. All he could do was keep walking and try to find something, anything, that would help him. After over an hour of seeing nothing but clear ocean, gray skies, cliffsides, and the endless beach, he finally saw something grow sharper through the mist. It was something big and white. In curiosity and anticipation, he walked faster. The ocean mist cleared. He stopped as he got close. It was a dragon. But it wasn't just any dragon, it was a species he had never seen before. He had never even seen anything closely resembling this species. It was very long and white, and almost had the form of a serpent with four little legs. Unlike the other breeds with a rustic and deeply textured appearance, this dragon's scales were very smooth and organized, laid in rows one on top of the other. A line of flowing white fur ran from its head to its tail. Its head was long, with small, petite teeth and cord-like tails hanging from above its nostrils and ears. But what was most striking about the dragon to him were its eyes. A dragon back home would have looked at him with yellow-green or orange eyes, the pupil large and eyebrow muscles raised. This white serpent before him looked at him with deep blue eyes, sleek and gentle, yet so wise and calm. He had never seen anything like this dragon. Cautiously, he stepped closer and raised his hand to show he meant no harm. When the dragon only blinked in response, he took another step. The dragon showed no signs of hostility or disapproval as he got close enough to lay his hand in the center of its snout. He gasped, the scales smooth and velvety beneath his palm. The dragon began to purr softly, and its eyes closed as it swooped its long neck around him to draw him closer to its coils. The remnants of his strength faltering for the last time, he let go of the dragon's snout and fell onto the dragon's back. The fur was soft against his cheek, but he hardly felt it because of his exhaustion. The dragon very gently rubbed the edge of its snout on Hiccup's head, then laid its head around him quietly. A voice crept into the air. Small. Feminine. Alarmed. His eyes creaked open just slightly, for he had enough strength to reveal his surroundings. His gaze followed the sound of the voice. All he saw before he slipped deeply into unconsciousness was a tiny figure dressed in black approaching him on the beach as it began to rain harder...

HMPH.

Without anywhere else to go, Hiccup staggered up and began walking.