Winds of Change

Chapter Six

The library was just as Hiccup remembered it. Extremely large, the shelves reached higher than they did in the Library of Congress. The obsidian pillars with ivory trim accented the gorgeous space, and magical were-lights illuminated the vast library. Scores of scrolls were stacked on the shelves, and Hiccup could see no damage from when he burnt it down on the night that Julius Caesar attacked the Alexandrian port. He stepped out of the closet in a daze, Toothless shifting to his dragon form. Hiccup walked over to a shelf, and gingerly took a scroll off of it. He unrolled it, and started reading, a smile spreading across his face. 

Cupid cleared his throat. Hiccup turned around, putting the scroll back on the shelf. "You done?" Cupid asked. "This way."

Cupid lead the way through winding and twisting shelves, stopping in what Hiccup remembered as the center. A sinking feeling rose in his stomach. Cupid walked to one of the shelves, and pulled out a stack of large books. "The Encyclopedia of Spirits," he said. "This set has about thirty books, but the one that we're looking for is at the very end. The Book of Endless Pages."

"Why is it called that?" Jack asked.

"Hiccup? Would you do the honors?" asked Cupid.

"The Book of Endless Pages is called that because it's endless. It has the entire history of the Spirits, their life before they became Spirits, everything up to the present," explained Hiccup.

Merida looked at the top book. "It seems that it would be a lot thicker."

"Magic."

Cupid handed The Encyclopedia of Spirits to Hiccup, and took off the last book. "The reason that we need this one, is to find out anything that we can about Rapunzel and her life before she became a Spirit."

"Why do we need to know that?" asked Jack.

"To understand why she was taken in the first place. She must be important, right?" The three other Spirits agreed. "Then start looking."

* * * 

The last time Hiccup had done this much reading was when he worked as a scribe for some unknown king hundreds of years before. But this time it was interesting, and it wasn't the Bible over and over again. He was reading about Rapunzel's life in the tower, and how Gothel used her magic for her own means. Every word that he read made him hate Monegunda Gothel more and more. 

"Aye, that's odd," Merida said after a while. "It just stops here."

The three other Spirits crowded around Merida, looking at where she was pointing.

After Rapunzel, Jack, Merida, and Hiccup agreed to become neutral Spirits, the passage read, a black light filled the ring of stones... The rest was inked out until, Fighting their way out of the center of the earth, Pitch Black forced Jack, Merida, and Hiccup to leave Rapunzel behind, or she would fade away into nothingness. Realizing that his way to regain the strength needed, Pitch Black decided to move away from the center of the earth to... The rest of the passage was inked out.

"Ooh, now that is interesting," Cupid said. "Someone definitely doesn't want people to know what happened."

"So... I'm not the only one who found this?" Jack asked.

Cupid grinned. "Obviously." He stood up straight, and clapped his hands together. "Well, my part of the deal is over. I will see you again never. Or shall I say, you will never see me again." He held up Rapunzel's satchel. "It was great working with you guys, honest, but you've got to trust your guts more." He held out Rapunzel's satchel out of Jack's reach. 

"So yer just going to leave us here?" Merida fumed. 

"No, Highness, I won't. I daresay you can find your own way out of here in, oh, a hundred years or so. And by then, this whole thing won't matter."

"We trusted you."

Cupid shrugged. "Since when can you trust love? It leads to the craziest things." Cupid laughed. "Oh, the things I could tell you. But I won't ruin the surprise." He winked at Merida. "Good luck, Highness. With everything."

Cupid took a snow globe out of the satchel, whispered something into it, and threw it on the ground. Hiccup lunged forward, but Cupid snapped his fingers, and he staggered back like he was shot. Grinning, Cupid launched himself into the portal.

It disappeared in a wink. 

Hiccup looked over at his two friends. They were both on the ground, clutching their chests, panting. "What did he do," Merida wondered aloud.

Grimacing, Hiccup stood up, looking at the dark library, the were-lights long gone.

"He betrayed us," Jack spat. "He was planning this from the beginning."

"No," said Hiccup. "I don't think so."

"What do ye mean?" Merida asked. 

"He didn't plan on betraying us; I'm sure of it. He was just saving his own skin using the information we gave him."

"But didn't he tell us how to get in here?" Jack said. 

"But what reason would he have for coming here?" Hiccup asked. "You saw him back in Boston. He only agreed because... Because..."

Merida and Hiccup looked at Jack. He went slightly pink, and shifted his feet. "Yeah?" he asked. "Because what?"

Merida grinned. "We won't embarrass ye any further, Frosty. Whatever ye need, we're here for you."

Jack went bright red. Pulling his hood up, he turned away. "How are we going to get out of here?" he asked, changing the subject.

"We have a Night Fury, Jack," said Hiccup. "We might need to burn our way out."

"Aye," said Merida. "And we can regroup back at Scotland. Björn would be more than happy, and I fixed up the castle I used to live in."

"Ooo, a castle," Jack teased. "You really are a princess."

Merida whacked him upside the head. "Ye wish."

Toothless joined the threesome. "Climb on," Hiccup said. "It might be a bit tight, but we'll make it work."

"I'll live," Jack said.

Shrugging, Merida got on behind Hiccup and wrapped her arms around his waist. Hiccup noticed how heavy he was breathing, and her body heat behind him. 

Hiccup leaned forward, and patted Toothless right under his ears. "Ready, Bud?" he whispered to the dragon. Toothless spread his wings out, and beat them upwards. Merida held on tighter as Toothless rose, eventually flying vertically towards the ceiling. Jack flew beside them, and as Toothless roared and shot fire at the roof froze the avalanche of sand so they were no more than snowflakes. 

They rose to the rising sun, looking out at the city of Alexandria.

"Told you so," Jack said.

A/N: Nothing to really say here. The picture is from Caesar's burning of the port of Alexandria -- I think.

Vote, comment, and happy reading!

~Allie