The Mysterious Frozen Fire - Chapter 9: Capture and Rescue
Since I now average longer chapters (word count wise) this will be a longer chapter for this story. Books do have longer chapters than others. I was going to split the chapter up into two parts, but I decided it would make it not smooth and maybe choppy in certain cases. It also would be too short (in my opinion) for a two parter.
So this will be the longest complete chapter I have done in either fan-fiction I have written.
Note: In the last chapter when I said to split up into groups of six, six, and five; it should have said seven, seven, and eight.
The Mysterious Frozen Fire
Chapter 9
Capture and Rescue
I looked around the blood stains to see if there were any other splotches. Hiccup swung the torch slowly across the floor to see if there were any more fresh blood stains. There were not. So in this case I had to pick which of the three additional tunnels to enter and see if there was any trace of my sister Asvord. I took the team that I picked out down the one that was directly to your right if you had just walked in through the tunnel we took to get to this war room. I told the other two groups to take the other two tunnels. If either group had not found my sister, the agreed time was to regroup back in this war room in one hour. We split off into our groups and took off down the tunnels.
“And be careful guys,” I said right before we left. “We don’t know what is down these tunnels. For all we know there may be traps in the tunnels that would try and keep intruders out. Even though we are not intruders, the traps don’t know that. Be careful.”
In my group were the following people: my little sister Elsa, then Cazi, Annabeth, Hattori, Ashley, Meen, and Hiccup.
As we progressively went through the tunnel, the pathway’s width was increasing. At the start it was only wide enough for a two people side-by-side; now we could all stand next to each other and there still be enough room. We all stopped when we came to a small pool of water that was level with the ground we were standing on. There were also a few holes in the ground that were letting in a lot of cold air from the outside. The holes ranged from a foot to a yard in diameter. The light in the tunnel, at this point, was considerably lighter than from the start. There was light coming in from the holes that reflected on the water with additional water coming from what I am guessing, the end of the tunnel; which was about fifty yards ahead of us with a bend in the tunnel to the left. The ceiling was also taller than before. Before it was only about six feet tall, now it was a little less than two times as much.
One other thing, the light in here made the feel of the tunnel rather eerie and spooky because of the light blue or gray reflection of the water pool bouncing of the sides and ceiling of the tunnel. It was still relatively dark in the tunnel, but the reflections from the pool of water made not as dark as it actually was. We could also hear the wind howling from outside. Hiccup did not need his torch anymore, so he looked around for a holder for it on one of the walls. Once he did that, he returned to the group.
Elsa was about ready to just walk across the pool, but I grabbed her from doing so.
“Remember what I said before we split up into our groups?” I told Elsa.
“Yeah,” she replied. “About there being…” she trailed off as she looked at the pool of water in understanding.
Cazi knelt down, picked up a pebble, and threw it into the center of the pool. There was a loud, “Ker-sploosh” made by the pebble.
“Good thing you didn’t walk across the pool,” Cazi stated. “The pool is a lot deeper than it lets on to be.”
Hattori had gone to check the sides of the tunnels and came back to report, “There is no way in walking on the edges of the pool. There would be absolutely no room to have any footing to walk across there.”
We all started thinking of a way to get across when Annabeth pointed out, “Look at the walls of the tunnel next to the sides of the pool. They are wet.”
I walked over to the edge of the pool and wiped my hand across the wall. When I examined my hand, I found it to be wet.
Hiccup then responded when he saw my hand, “It is still wet. In these temperatures, water splashes should freeze in only a few minutes.”
Ashley then suggested, “Then that would mean someone has gone through here and somehow splashed some of the water on the sides of the walls.”
“Agreed,” responded Hattori. “Not only that but whomever it was, was just here not more than a few minutes ago.”
Meen then questioned, “But who could it be?”
My friends were debating who it was for a couple of minutes, in the mean time I was quickly trying to figure out a way to get across the pool. By the time my friends were done talking after only three minutes, I had figured a couple of ways that could work.
To test my theories, I requested the help of Hattori.
“Could you hold out your hands so I can step on them and you boost me up?” I asked Hatt.
“Sure,” he replied. “Where do you want the boost?”
I stated, “Over here.”
“What are you trying to do, Jarl?” asked Cazi as she looked quite puzzled. It would be too far to run and jump to the circle in the center, so why not just walk across the sections of rock that are sticking up out of the water and get to that circle stone section in the center of the pool?”
“Go and put a large rock on them and see what will happen,” I said as I walked over to the middle of the tunnel floor, right in front of the pool.
Cazi did so. When she saw what happened, she knew right of the bat that walking across the “steps” on the pool of water, was not the right choice. When Cazi put the large rock on one of the nearest rock “steps”, the “step” tipped over and splashed into the pool.
“As you can see, that would not be a very good option,” I stated as I was figuring out the exact place where I wanted to be boosted up. “One person may get across before they would fall in, what if there were more than one in our case.”
“That would make sense,” Cazi agreed. “So the only other way to get across…”
“Is to go across the ceiling,” I said at the same time I pushed off Hattori’s hands to jump up and grab on to a rock that was sticking out from another that was hanging down from the ceiling. This rock looked like one of the cross supporting beams in The Great Hall.
My grip on the rock could not be any larger because the edge of the rock had a lip only my finger tips could rest on. While studying this rock-beam before I had jumped on it, the rock-beam that stretched the length of the pool, the width of it was only two feet. Taking this into consideration, I moved my grip one hand at a time to both sides of the rock-beam in as far as I could.
I looked down and saw that I was about a third of the way there to the center platform. To actually get across, I kept my arms in an “L” shape and started a small, gentle swing back and forth to get some momentum going. After that, every time I swung forward I would “hop” with my upper body so my hands would move ahead on the lip. I did this six more times, before I felt my grip starting to give out. I looked down and saw that I was about three-fourths the way there, but still there was about a three yard gap to clear. I swung back and forth three times building up my swing each time and then let go on the third time swing forward. I barely landed on the center platform.
“Okay great Jarl,” Cazi stated. “Now how are we supposed to get over?”
“I was hoping I would figure that out once I got over here,” I said.
Just then there was a rumbling noise from below. From the depths of the pool of water came to the top the path that was to allow someone to cross. And that we did.
When we all got a cross I decided to look down one of the holes in the ground. I saw that we were directly above our dragons.
Annabeth then suggested, “Maybe this tunnel will lead to our dragons below.”
“Hey look,” Meen said. She pointed down near one of the holes in the ground. “Blood.”
“We must be on the right track,” Hiccup said. “Come on let see where this tunnel takes us.”
We all started running ahead, while jumping over holes as they came up and at the same time dodging stalagmites and stalactites that were scattered throughout the tunnel floor and ceiling. We took the left bend we came to it to find the tunnel suddenly stopped and dropped off below. I nearly slipped off the edge if Annabeth had not have caught my arm.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Your welcome,” Annabeth replied. “So where did the person go that those blood stains come from?”
“I don’t know and I hope it’s not…”
I was cut off by a muffled scream above.
Meen quickly questioned, “Where did the scream come from?”
“Above, but how do we get up there?” asked Elsa.
Hattori stated, “Use our dragons from below.”
I immediately put my pointer finger and thumb of my left hand in my mouth; and whistled. I taught this to my dragon, Fredrick, to come to the whistle as fast as he could. I saw below my thunderdrum’s head bolt up and quickly figure out where it came from. Everyone else followed suit in calling there dragons. I was the first to get on my dragon and fly out the tavern area, where the dragons were going to spend the night, and get above topside above ground.
It was still snowing and blowing. The rate at which the wind was blowing was faster than the snowflakes could reach the ground. The snowflakes seemed falling horizontal, not vertical. Visibility was not great at all, but I was able to see enough of The Great Hall to see that I was about ten to twenty yards away or so from it.
Since I did not have my winter gear on, I was getting cold very fast. I landed nearby and tried to figure out where the scream came from. My other friends joined me thereafter.
I motioned to my friends to stay quiet as I thought I heard something. Sure enough it was a loud grunt coming from the forest. This part of the forest was thick, so flying through it would not be the best option.
My friends, Elsa, and I ran through the forest in the direction I heard the grunt. Just then we heard another scream, this time it was not as loud, but sounded much clearer than the muffled one as before. We ran into the forest with our dragons close behind. We ran just a few minutes before we were then halted because the ground cut off and went straight down into a small cove. Even with the blizzard, we could see two dragons and two vikings down in the cove fighting each other.
“Hey guys this cove is the same one where I started training Toothless for the first time,” exclaimed Hiccup to be heard over the loud wind.
“That nadder,” I spoke loudly too, to be heard over the gusting, howling wind. “That’s Spiker, Asvord’s dragon! We’ll have to do this the old fashioned way because we have now weapons to defend ourselves!”
Now we could all use are dragon as there was plenty of room for that now. Fredrick saw that Asvord and Spiker were in trouble so he immediately started flying off. Even though Fredrick did not have his saddle on, that did not stop me from mounting him as he flew by. The blizzard suddenly picked up intensity and made visual contact with the mysterious dragon and other viking very difficult. However, I could still see the color markings of Spiker.
Without me even giving a signal to do so, Fredrick fired a more-than-normal sonic blast at the other dragon. This knocked it back far enough that I lost sight of it from the gusting snowfall. I jumped off my dragon in mid-flight while he was about ten feet off the ground to go help my sister. I landed in some soft snow. The other viking was still fighting Asvord, but did not pay any heed to me. So I ran and tackled this viking. We rolled several times in the snow; and when we stopped I was on top of the viking and saw that it was a woman.
The woman I saw in the closet in the Hall.
My hesitation in recognizing the woman cost me as she kicked me off of her and I went flying back several feet landing on some larger rocks, sticking up out of the snow. When I tried to stand, I grabbed my left side as I must have injured it when I landed just now. I looked back to where my friends were and Hiccup, Meen, Hattori, and Ashley took off on their dragons to go chase the other mysterious dragon down. Annabeth and Cazi came down on their dragons to help out with the woman.
Fredrick came over to help me up, while Cazi and Annabeth fought with the woman. This gave Asvord the chance to escape and get out of harm’s way. I mounted Fredrick and flew over to Asvord and Spiker’s position. As I flew over I saw that Cazi and Annabeth worked well together with each other as well as their dragons. Looked to me as if this was not the first skirmish they had been in. The other woman viking was very nimble and dodged every shot that Cazi’s Skrill or Annabeth’s Stormcutter shot at her. When that did not work, I saw Star Scream purposefully miss the woman with a blast that knocked up a smoke screen of snow. Following this, Cazi jumped off Electic and did a somersault dive in mid-air to land on top of the other woman; capturing her in the process.
While that was going on I had flown over to Asvord, still holding my left side, and checked on her.
“Are you alright Asvord?” I asked quickly.
“Yes,” she replied, but weakly. “Who is that woman? Where did she-e c-come...,” Asvord started to faint as she tried standing up from her lying position.
Asvord fell forward into my arms and I set her down on the ground. I checked her chest. She was still breathing, but very faintly. I quickly examined her for injuries. I did not find any until I saw on her back near the bottom of her right shoulder blade that she had a very bad sword wound. This must have been the blood trail that my friends and I saw before.
I quickly took her over my shoulder and put her on Fredrick. Using hand signals, I motioned to my dragon to fly to The Great Hall on his own while I held my sister on the dragon.
We arrived at the front doors in less than three minutes. There was quite a bit of snow in front of the door, but I fire stream was shot over me by Spiker to melt the snow. Fredrick landed on the top step to allow easier access to the doors.
I quickly dismounted and picked up my sister and entered The Great Hall.
“Help, someone get Gothi, my sister has been wounded!” I ordered.
There came over right was Stoick and Gobber. Stoick took my sister and carried her over into a room to the right. Right after that did Gothi come over and enter the room.
I was going to go in there with her, but Gobber stopped me, “It will be best if you wait and let Gothi do her work. I’ll tell you the very moment I hear of some news.”
My mother came over and asked what was wrong. I broke the news to her daughter was injured fighting a woman that suspected of stealing the gold locket-necklace. Mother wanted to go over, same as I did, but I stopped her, “Gobber said that he’ll tell us the exact moment he hears some news.”
Mother than sat down and fought back some tears, “How did this happen?”
I then retold the account of the past hour.
You never cease to not impress me. ;)
Edit: OH YEAH! PATY 8 IS OUT! :D IN SIG!
The way to get across the cave pool was really creative! & I didn't think this chapter was overly long.
(all 3 pics by goldenfury360 (aka Hyrith))
by SoulStereo
(free lineart base found 
by me
Sefarva blinkie by DuskDaybreak
I think I remember seeing that on TV... I love the ninja moves :)
You never cease to amaze me
The awesomeness will continue as there will be twists a surprising developments in the coming chapters.
Here is the link to my next chapter: http://forum.schoolofdragons.com/content/mysterious-frozen-fire-chapter-10-startling-thoughts
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The way in which Jarl got across the beam was just like a contestant in American Ninja Warrior. There is an obstical on Stage 2 in the finals that the contestant has to use his arms to hold on to a board above and work his way across. Here is a Video of where I got the Idea from: Click Here for it. The specific place is a minute into the video.
There will be more things like this in this story to come.