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."