Shadow of the Night
Prologue: Prisoner of the Mind
The unholy offspring of Lightning and Death itself glided above the human village of Berk on silent wings. Invisible, a black shadow against the midnight sky, she was fear given form, striking from the skies with deadly force, then vanishing into the darkness. Yet she was also a prisoner.
The northern catapult, destroy it.
She quickly located her target, and saw the humans manning it. Several nearby buildings were ablaze, there was no chance of her being spotted on approach. Not for the first time, she tried to will her tailfins to move, to carry her out to sea, away into the night. But her body not hers; it belonged to the Queen.
She felt herself spark a fireball in her throat, then her wings folded of their own accord and she dove. At the last moment, the humans heard her whistling approach and leapt for safety as her shot reduced the catapult to splinters. She circled around and fired another shot, collapsing the tower that it had stood on.
Good, she thought, that should cripple the human's defences on this side.
Wait, was that my thought, or hers? Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.
For nearly as long as she could remember, the last Night Fury had been an instrument of the Queen's will. Deep inside herself, she held on to a fuzzy memory of her and her parents flying over a vast ice sheet, emerald aurorae gleaming in the sky above them. It was almost all she had left of her kind, that and...
No, she told herself, can't think about that, not while she's paying attention. Quick, think about something else.
How did she know she was the last Night Fury? She had hunted them. The Night Furies had been the smartest and wisest of all dragons and had tried to fight the Queen. However, the slow-breeding Night Furies were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the Queen's flock and the survivors of her race were driven into hiding. They had possessed a strange ability to resist the Queen's power, so never suspected that one of their own was an agent of the enemy.
The pained screech of a Nadder shook her from her thoughts. A flying boulder had shattered all the bones in the dragon's left wing, sending the young dragon spiralling to the ground. She watched, helpless as the mauve dragon crashed to the ground, and the humans cheered and pounced on her.
She felt sick. The whole war was a pointless, senseless waste of life. The dragons only attacked the humans because the Queen commanded it, and the humans only fought back because the alternative was extinction.
Her eyes narrowed as she located the catapult that had thrown the offending boulder. She might not be able to stop the war, but the least she could do was avenge her fallen comrades. She didn't need the Queen's command as she readied her fires and rolled into a dive. A grim sense of catharsis filled her a moment later as she watched the catapult's fiery annihilation.
Distantly she heard a strange metallic twang followed by the sound of bolas rushing through the air.
She ignored the sounds, even if somehow she'd been seen, there was no way-
She cried out in pain and shock as something impacted her from the side, wrapping around her legs and tying up her wings. She struggled frantically against her bonds as she tumbled from the sky, but they held firm. A detached part of her mind observed it was fortunate that she carried most of her speed out of the dive, else she would have splashed down in the water and drowned.
Then the ground rushed up to meet her and everything went black.
The first sensation that returned was pain. Her head throbbed, and seemingly every scale along her back and right side ached from the impact. She focused on her flight surfaces, as far as she could tell, her wings were still tied up by the bolas, but thankfully her sub-wings and tail fins were still intact.
Her eyes opened. From her position on the ground, she could just make out that she was in a forest, lying in a crater formed by her impact. Pain lanced up her spine from her bruised muscles as her limbs suddenly thrashed and strained against her bonds. An involuntary cry escaped her throat before the Queen clamped her jaws shut.
It's no use. If the crash didn't dislodge the ropes, nothing we can do is going to shift them. She wasn't completely certain that the queen could actually hear her thoughts, but in her darker moments, she spoke to her anyway.
A wordless roar of fury filled her mind, and her limbs strained even harder against the restraints. The last Night Fury silently cried out in agony as the ropes began to cut into her scales and her wounded muscles protested the abuse. At last, when she thought she must pass out from the pain, the Queen released her, and she slumped to the ground, gasping for breath.
The Queen hadn't let her go completely, she could still feel her twisted presence on the edge of her consciousness, but for the moment, her body was almost her own.
I suppose you think this is some kind of cruel irony, she thought bitterly, giving me control when I'm tied up and too battered to move anyway.
As she lay there, contemplating whether she'd die of thirst before the humans found her, she noticed the sky between the leaves above her lightening. An irrational flare of hope bloomed in her chest. The raid would have ended hours ago and the humans would be too focused on rebuilding to watch the skies, a small group of dragons could...
Don't be a fool. She told herself. The Queen didn't care for her tools, even a useful one like herself. Is this what I've been reduced to? she wondered. The last Night Fury alive desperately hoping that the architect of her race's genocide will rescue her?
The sound of a human voice drifted through the forest, and she froze, clamping her eyes shut. She heard the whistle of a tree branch whipping through the air, and the human cried out in pain. For a moment she hoped that it had been been knocked unconscious by the blow, but a few seconds later she heard footsteps approaching her, and then the beast's scent washed over her. Judging by the muskiness of the smell, she thought that this one was a male.
He spoke again, and she took in a deep breath. Beneath the overpowering stink of the human, she could smell the furs and leathers that he wore, and a distinct odour of charcoal. She heard his clothing rustle and then scent of metal washed over her. The human continued speaking, and this time, she focused on his voice, it didn't sound like the other humans she'd heard. Then she realised what she'd been missing. This human absolutely reeked of fear.
She felt a pressure on her left foreleg, and she involuntarily flinched, a moan of pain and fear escaping her maw. The human recoiled.
Suddenly overcome with a desire to see the face of her executioner, she opened her eyes.
He was a boy.
At its widest point, his torso was barely wider than one of her forepaws, and his arms looked like spindly twigs. Rather than a powerful sword or vicious axe, he clutched a small dagger in both hands. Her gaze drifted up to his face and met his eyes. She saw the uncertainty that resided there.
So this is how the last Night Fury dies, shot down and helpless before a mere hatchling.
It's what you deserve, part of her whispered. You're weak, a slave and a traitor to your race.
The human appeared to make up his mind and raised the dagger. She closed her eyes and laid her head on the ground. It's over, she thought, waiting for the blow to come I'll finally be free.
The blade never fell.
She heard the human turn away from her, a depressed murmur escaping his lips.
Is that it!? She raged silently, Are you just going to leave me here to die!?
The human moved back towards her and she felt a slight tug on one of the ropes restraining her.
The Queen was back in control before she even realised what was happening.
As soon as enough of her bonds were severed, she was up on her feet and throwing him back against a nearby boulder, a low growl rising in her throat.
Time seemed to slow down as she met his gaze for the second time, the positions of power reversed. She knew that he'd almost killed her, and should be glad to take her revenge, but all she could think was he let me go.
He took pity on me, she realised, all these years of war, and this pathetic boy, this... talking fishbone was the first human to see us as more than mindless beasts.
She was so close that she could hear the human's frantic heartbeats, the fear-scent rolling off him was almost overpowering.
He could have done it, she thought, taught the humans that we're more than mindless beasts, discovered that we're being controlled, and ended the war...
No, not like this, he's too weak, too vulnerable...
Maybe he still could, not as a human, but as...
Her time was up. She felt her jaws part, and a fireball building in her chest.
It's now or never. With that thought, the last Night Fury reached deep inside herself and drew on the final legacy of her kind. She located her reserve of Auric power, the one part of her mind the Queen couldn't touch, and immersed herself in it, letting the light flood through her.
The Queen's control shattered immediately, and her aches and pains faded as the power suffused her body. Moments later, she heard a roar of fury in her mind and felt her power drain as the Queen battered against it. She turned back to the boy beneath her. She had precious few seconds to accomplish what she needed.
I'm sorry, she thought, I don't even know your name, and I'm going to tear you away from your tribe and place the last hopes of an entire race on your wings.
With that, she lowered her head and gently pressed her muzzle to his forehead. Closing her eyes, she drew on all of the power flowing through her and dumped it into him, willing his body to change, moulding it into the form he needed.
The boy let out a single gasp, his pupils widening to an unnatural size, then fell into unconsciousness.
She stayed long enough to see the first jet black scales break out on his skin, then leapt into the air, frantically beating her wings to get as far away from him as possible. With the last dregs of her power, she erased the memories of what she'd just done.
In her final moment of consciousness, she felt something she'd never experienced before; hope.
I'm not alone, she thought.
Then the light within her went out, and she snapped back into the Queen's control, powerless to resist her will.
Author's Notes:
Friendly Greetings!
Well, I finally gave into the plot bunnies, and here we are again.
Nearly every HTTYD fanfic writer does one of these 'Hiccup transforms into a Night Fury' stories at some point, and this is my own take on the genre. I don't want to give away too much at the moment, but I've read a fair few of the Dragon!Hiccup stories on this site and a lot of them tend to fall into the same patterns, so I'm trying to do something slightly different with this story. Hopefully you can see that in some of the hints I've dropped in this prologue.
I already have the first five chapters of this fic planned out in some detail, which takes us up to about the halfway point of the story, and I have a pretty good idea of where I want the plot to go from there. We'll be broadly following the plot of the first movie, but obviously deviating from it somewhat as we go along. For people who have read my previous HTTYD fanfic, "Winds of Change" I envisage the final length of this story to be roughly the same as that fic.
Continuing my tradition from the ANs of WoC, I'll try and give a fanfic recommendation for you readers in the notes on each chapter. I'll start with one of my inspirations for creating this story, another Dragon!Hiccup story by the name of 'I Hear Him Scream' from Rift-Raft.
As always, Thank you for reading, and please let me know what you think of the story so far in a review!
~Superbun
Next Time: Hiccup and Astrid POVs!