Ice Fury
by Piero217 is an AU crossover bringing together How to Train Your Dragon and Frozen, starting during the second season of Dragons: Riders of Berk and shortly after the events of the original Frozen film. When Arendelle is visited by a group of warriors looking for an unnamed beast that has caused snow to settle across the kingdom, Elsa is initially suspicious, but even she could never have anticipated that the creature would be a dragon, the last of the Ice Furies (the female counterpart to Night Furies, capable of generating ice rather than firing plasma shots).
This story has become the first in the author's planned "Legends Live On" series, which will include crossovers with Rise of the Guardians, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and Dragonheart.
Ice Fury contains examples of:
- An Arm and a Leg: Sigurd basically blows up his own hand to trigger an explosion that will let him escape from Elsa's ice.
- Artistic Licence – Biology:
- Valka explains that the Night Furies and Ice Furies are males and females of the Fury species, the idea being that the Ice Furies used to guard their home mountain during the day and Night Furies did it at night, before Drago Bludvist's tribe slaughtered the females and drove the males away.
- Elsa’s powers are able to bring Stoick back to life after he is killed by Toothless, based on her ability to infuse her snowmen with life, but at the cost that he must avoid prolonged contact with significant heat sources or the ice energy keeping him alive would ‘melt’.
- Ascended Extra: Reflecting the idea of Furies as Alphas, Wintergale soon becomes a leader in Valka's nest despite being a new arrival, to the point that she is the only dragon to escape the control of Drago's Bewilderbeast (it's speculated that Toothless only succumbed despite his own Alpha status because the Bewilderbeast was concentrating directly on him and he was briefly emotionally shaken by Hiccup's own rejection).
- Babies Ever After: Elsa returns to Arendelle to learn that Anna's pregnant.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Wintergale is typically smart, playful, and serene, but push her too far and she will turn nasty, as most keenly demonstrated when Sigurd's attempts to kill Elsa drive Wintergale to strike his limbs with ice and then throw him around like a rag doll before breaking his neck.
- Big Damn Heroes: Elsa and Wintergale have their moments during the confrontation with Drago, with Elsa just managing to save Stoick's life while Wintergale later saves Elsa from Sigurd.
- Birds of a Feather: Elsa and Wintergale bond due to their shared control of ice (even if Elsa’s is more detailed than Wintergale's)
- Broken Pedestal: A comparatively minor example; while Elsa misses her parents, she later muses that they never truly realised what she needed to properly control her powers
- The Bus Came Back:
- A few years after Elsa sends Wintergale away to live in Valka’s dragon sanctuary, the dragon returns to Elsa for safety, setting in motion Elsa's involvement in the war against Drago Bludvist
- Not explicitly shown so far, but strongly implied; when Stoick’s resurrection requires him to stay away from heat sources, he decides that he will set out to find Thornado again, as Thunderdrums don’t generate heat.
- Canon Welding: It is specifically stated that the events of this crossover were set in motion when Elsa's eternal winter caused the events of the Defenders of Berk episode "Frozen" (when Berk experienced such an intense winter that the ocean froze and they were attacked by the grounded Speed Stingers). When Elsa meets Valka, it is explained that the archipelago where Berk and the other depicted islands exist is isolated from the wider world, justifying the continued existence of Vikings during Elsa's reign of Arendelle when Frozen was implied to be set in the 1800s (the author later states that the fic is set around 1785).
- Crossover Relatives: It's mentioned that Rapunzel is Elsa and Anna's cousin.
- Dismantled MacGuffin: Basically applies to the Dragon Eyes; to keep the Eyes safe, Hiccup gives them to Elsa, as he trusts her ability to protect them but she doesn't have a dragon who could use the Eyes as Wintergale doesn't generate fire, essentially depriving the Eyes of their power source.
- Dumbass Has a Point: Tuffnut correctly deduces why Wintergale would have pretended to go along with the Bewilderbeast’s control of the other dragons when her natural Alpha status made her immune.
- Dying Race: The Furies, although Toothless and Wintergale’s mutual existence offers hope that they will not be the last of their kind.
- Evil Counterpart: Eret and Sigurd; where Eret was a dragon trapper who reformed to join the riders, Sigurd is the hunter who came to Arendelle looking for Wintergale who proves to be a particularly ruthless member of Drago’s army, nearly killing Elsa in the final battle before Wintergale returns and bites his head off.
- Faking the Dead: Some time after Sigurd leaves Arendelle, Elsa sends her guards to track him down; they follow a trail to a corpse that matches Sigurd's appearance. As it later turns out, Sigurd staged this before returning to his master, Drago Bludvist, and later comes back during the battle at Valka's Mountain to fight Elsa once again.
- Foil: When analysed in depth, Hiccup and Elsa's dynamics with Toothless and Wintergale respectively contrast with each other for more reasons than the obvious factor that Toothless breaths fire while Wintergale generates ice;
- Hiccup and Elsa were each isolated heirs to their respective 'kingdoms', but Hiccup's isolation was due to him simply not fitting in while Elsa's was the result of her parents' own flawed attempts to 'protect' her.
- Hiccup knew about dragons for years and ended up taming Toothless by relative chance when he had originally intended to kill the Night Fury, where Elsa was unaware that dragons were real and is inspired to hunt for Wintergale based on the idea that she can tame the 'monster'.
- Where Toothless was a semi-'loyal' servant of the Red Death and part of a wider dragon community, Wintergale was isolated and alone, essentially denying her status as a dragon.
- Foreshadowing: Fishlegs mentions a poem written by 'B. Blake' (The Sorcerer's Apprentice) that appears to describe the mating dance of the Night Furies. Later, Toothless and Wintergale perform one together.
- "I Am Becoming" Song: Elsa sings a new version of Let It Go to encourage Wintergale to overcome her fear of flying
- In Spite of a Nail: Elsa’s presence doesn’t significantly affect the events of the battle against Drago Bludvist, save for the fact that Stoick survives and decides to retire as Chief rather than dying.
- Last of Their Kind: Toothless and Wintergale are stated to be the last Night Fury and Ice Fury respectively, with Elsa and Hiccup believing that their dragons were the last Fury until Hiccup arrives at Valka’s dragon sanctuary.
- Like Brother and Sister: They don't explicitly refer to each other as such for a while, but Hiccup and Elsa form this dynamic due to Valka's mentoring role in Elsa's life, to the point that Anna half-jokingly calls Hiccup "big bro".
- Likes Older Women: May be more due to a lack of alternatives, but Toothless is obviously attracted to Wintergale despite the fact that she’s implied to be older (the dragons are stated to be of a similar age to their riders, so Wintergale and Elsa are a few years older than Toothless and Hiccup).
- Magic Versus Science: It may be science aided by material taken from dragons, but Sigurd is able to match Elsa's ice powers using a specially designed suit of armour that uses Monstrous Nightmare saliva to keep itself heated.
- Mating Dance: In chapter 28, Toothless and Wintergale go off for the flying equivalent of this, with Hiccup restoring Toothless' artificial tail-fin to let the dragon fly on his own.
- Noodle Incident:
- Wintergale was afraid of flying before she met Elsa; how this happened is not explicitly revealed, but Elsa speculates that this is due to Wintergale seeing other Furies being shot down when she was being carried to safety as a hatchling.
- Eret visited Arendelle a few years past, before Elsa officially became Queen or Wintergale appeared.
- Parental Substitute: Valka basically takes this role for Elsa as she teaches Elsa about dragons, and Stoick adopts a similar role after Elsa saves his life, reinforcing the subsequent sibling-esque dynamic formed between Hiccup and Elsa.
- Passing the Torch: As Stoick survived the confrontation with Drago, rather than Hiccup being appointed chief after his death, he explicitly hands the position to Hiccup in a ceremony after the Bewilderbeast is driven off.
- Racial Remnant: The Vikings of the Archipelago where Berk exists are stated to be this, as Valka notes that the Viking tribes have died out outside the Archipelago even as her civilisation essentially remains in ‘stasis’.
- Rule of Symbolism: Nobody has explicitly drawn attention to it, but Toothless and Wintergale's relationship could be interpreted as representing the new alliance between Berk and Arendell, particularly when they are each the personal dragons of the rulers of those respective kingdoms.
- Shipper on Deck:
- Elsa, Valka, and Hiccup all demonstrate their support for a relationship between Toothless and Wintergale, with the rest of Berk expressing their own support for the idea of Toothless finding someone.
- Elsa assures Astrid that she has no need to be jealous of Hiccup's relationship with Elsa as Elsa sees him as more of a brother and fully supports their bond.
- Shipping Torpedo:
Word of God explicitly states that this is not be a Hiccelsa story, the two forming a more sibling-esque dynamic, although Elsa has to explicitly assure Astrid of this during the Riders' diplomatic trip to Arendelle. - Shout-Out: As well as the events of Frozen (2013) being tied in to the Defenders of Berk episode of the same name, chapter 28 has Hiccup restore Toothless' artificial tail-fin from Gift of the Night Fury so that he can go on a mating flight with Wintergale.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Stoick’s life is saved by Elsa, although at the cost that he must avoid prolonged contact with heat sources. Chapter 29 also reveals that Hiccup didn't destroy the Dragon Eyes in this version of events, instead trusting them to Elsa's custody to keep their knowledge safe.
- Take Up My Sword: There are echoes of this when Stoick grants Eret permission to become Skullcrusher's rider, as the nature of his resurrection means that Stoick must avoid prolonged contact with heat sources or risk 'melting' the ice magic keeping him alive.
- There Is Another: Elsa and Wintergale experience this when Valka meets Hiccup and Toothless, and obviously Hiccup and Toothless have the same moment, the riders having long believed that their dragon was the last Fury left.
- Took a Level in Badass: While Elsa doesn't exactly start off a slouch to begin with, through training with Valka and Wintergale she learns how to use her powers more offensively, and even creates a staff like Valka's that allows her to engage in battle without just using her powers to overwhelm everything.
