In Touch With Your Feminine Side

Part 3

The announcement had been strange to say the least; most of the villagers accepted it as a product of magic and moved on with little more than a shrug, assured that the transformation was temporary. Suda was noticeably absent. The others, rallied around Heather and the dragon riders- there for a diplomatic meeting along with many other powerful people- asked several questions that only Dagur would know how to answer before being satisfied with the weird situation.

Sleuther was much the same; he whined and growled when Dagur entered his pen, but as soon as he smelled the berserker's scent he greeted him as normal, unfazed by the physical differences. Dagur decided that he wanted to cruise over the island and climbed onto his triple strike, frowning when he had to change position to compensate for a diminished height.

His newly long hair flapped and twisted in the wind, blowing into his eyes and mouth several times before Mala gave him a length of leather to tie it back with. "Thank you. How do women deal with hair like this? It's absolutely awful." Mala shrugged and reached out to run a hand through Dagur's curls. "I prefer my hair short like a man, but many women enjoy long hair for its softness and beauty. To be honest, yours is quite lovely."

Dagur grinned and guided his dragon into a loop, gasping a little at how easily he began to fall away before grasping Sleuther's saddle horn, his weight no longer enough to keep him relatively grounded. "Wow, I'm so light! I feel like I could almost fly on my own!" Just as he shouted, his voice startlingly high and excited, a fireball exploded over the island.

Hiccup and the other riders were already in the air, meeting Dagur and Mala mid-flight. Mala peeled away to summon her troops while Dagur readied an axe- not his own, but a lighter one more suited to his changed physique. He growled when he saw that it was Suda's ships attacking, realizing that the strange viking could be responsible for his current predicament.

Dagur yelled and urged Sleuther into a steep dive, spinning once he got close to a ship's deck and rolling off across the wood planks, slamming into the legs of one of Suda's vikings. Dagur swung his axe up to meet the viking's sword: if they were surprised to fight a woman they didn't show it, gritting their teeth and using their greater weight to keep Dagur's back pressed to the wood. "Surrender now and I'll ensure better treatment for you in the brig. If you behave, maybe you could even share my quarters."

He laughed and Dagur spit in his face. The grin vanished and he growled, suddenly grabbing Dagur's head and slamming it against the deck, hard enough that Dagur saw stars. He pulled Dagur's head up and slammed it twice more.

Dagur could feel hot, sticky blood in his hair but ignored it, blinking to clear his vision and pushing the axe upward, trying to keep his opponent's sword from digging into his skin. Despite his best efforts, his arms began to shake under the other viking's weight, and the sharp metal pressed lower and lower until the edge was resting against Dagur's cheek, stinginging as the skin was split little by little.

"Come now sweetie, I don't want to ruin such a pretty little face. Stop now and it likely won't even scar." Dagur pretended to surrender, letting his arms relax and the axe drop from his hand. "Ah, smart lass. Now just come with me-" The man fell with an angry scream as Dagur kicked his legs, scrambling away but lurching backwards when the angry viking grabbed his hair and yanked hard.

Stunned, Dagur could only attempt to turn away as the man kicked and punched him countless times. He stopped and Dagur tried to stand, only for the man to step on his hand. "Gah!" Dagur yelped, surprised at the level of pain as the thin bones in his fingers snapped. The man laughed and pulled Dagur up by the hair, dragging him and scraping his skin along the tough wood planks below.

"That should teach you. I'm going to put you in the brig now, and you're going to be good and stay there nice and quiet, alright?" He threw Dagur into a large cell in the bowels of the ship, where he saw several other terrified girls were cowering. "What's your name anyways?" Dagur hesitated for a moment; he didn't know why he has captured instead of simply being killed, but it would be idiotic to give his own name. "Uh... Kari." The viking nodded, scribbling the name on a sheet of paper tacked up outside, and left Dagur to sulk over his broken fingers- and now that he could look at it, quite possibly a broken wrist as well.

Embarrassed that he had been caught so easily, Dagur tried to think; what could he do now?