Chapter Text
The interior of the tent, crafted from the hide of a Monstrous Nightmare, glowed a dull blood red, illuminated only by the glow of writhing Fireworms that pressed against the glass of lanterns scattered about the tent.
It had taken Viggo almost an entire season to find the man he had come to meet. He’d had to near keelhaul his men into making the final sail to the meeting place. The ice was too close, and all were afraid of being frozen out.
They did not yet know how far to respect their new chief. No matter. They would soon learn.
While they protested him now, Viggo knew it would be worth it. The choice was to either stand as an equal or be swallowed whole by the hungering maw of the fast-growing operation. Viggo had no interest in allowing his tribe to become someone else’s dinner.
The man he’d come to meet stood braced over his desk — a beautifully carved wooden thing, Viggo noted, polished to a gleam — and raised a brow at Viggo and his brother.
“I hear you have been looking for me,” the man spoke, his accent rich and low. He was as the rumours had suggested: tall, with dark skin and a neat beard. The scar over his eye was fresh, though, the skin still pink and puckered with healing.
“I have indeed,” Viggo replied grandly. “I have come to offer an alliance.”
The man laughed aloud.
“And what on earth would I gain from an alliance with a clan as small as yours?” he mocked. “I have my army, my own dragon hunters. We have captured and killed more dragons that you even know exist.”
Beside Viggo, Ryker twitched, too easily provoked by the mocking words. But Viggo remained unruffled — pleasant even, as he slowly unwrapped the bindings that were wound about his left wrist at all times.
Stepping into the circle of light provided by the lantern on the dragon hunter’s desk, Viggo presented his arm, displaying the mark that curled over the beating pulse of his veins.
Even in the low glow of the Fireworms, he saw the man’s eyes widen and then darken with hunger.
“Why,” Viggo said lightly, knowing that the deal was done. “You’d get me.”
*
For the first ten summers of his life, Viggo’s soulmark remained an indistinct smear on the inner of his wrist. A faintly purple smudge, like a fresh bruise. It had intrigued him at first, and then irritated him the longer it remained undefined.
Ryker’s soulmark had manifested on his bicep as a Catestrophic Quaken by the time he could toddle, a dragon remarkably suited to him — which, Viggo supposed, was rather the point.
And yet Viggo’s had remained stubbornly formless.
His mother would try to soothe his impatience by telling him of the origins of the soulmarks: of how Freyja, ever-mourning her missing husband and unable to find him no matter which name she chased after, had desired to spare humans her pain, and so created soulmarks as a means of identifying each other. Of uniting with the one person she had destined to be yours forever.
Viggo’s mother had been the fanciful type despite her prowess as a Hunter, and had theorised that the soulmarks remained on the souls so that the pair could even reunite in Freyja’s halls after death, something that Viggo had privately considered to be a load of yak-dung, although he never said so. He liked the way her eyes sparkled as she told him that.
But he’d believed her on the next part though: Frejya had fashioned the soulmarks to foretell the greatest feat their soulmate would perform -- the dragon they would kill.
Everyone knew that.
Alas, such stories had only stoked Viggo’s impatience for his own mark to show itself proper. Growing up among the Dragon Hunter tribe, such a thing had quickly become something of a status symbol, providing bragging rights and esteem in the eyes of the Hunters. It had irked, seeing Ryker being lauded as a great warrior already due to his Quaken, while Viggo’s mark remained a shapeless smear.
Then, just as the ice of his tenth winter was fading and the sounds of birdsong was beginning to be heard, that had changed.
It had begun as a mild itch at first, something that Viggo had absently scratched at under his wristband as he’d practised his Maces & Talons. He was determined to defeat his grandfather someday. Then it had become more intense, like he had smeared it with nettle mulch. It wasn’t until it was burning as severely as the time Viggo’s father had made him pour a drop of Changewing acid on his arm to learn its effects that Viggo finally realised what was happening.
Tugging off the binding, he had holed himself away in one of the caves above the village for the entire day, watching intensely as a shape had slowly formed beneath his demanding gaze. The pain had been infuriating, but he had ignored it.
He had been rewarded by the sight of an image he had only seen in the tribe’s Book of Dragons.
A Night Fury.
Even now, the words made him secretly thrill. Whomever Frejya had marked for him would kill one of the most deadliest dragons known to Viking kind.
The unholy offspring of lighting and death itself.
Viggo’s soulbound was going to be remarkable.