Night Terrors Chapter 2
A/N
To the guest named The Skrillrider, who asked who Skuld is: I can't reply to you because the site doesn't let me send messages to guest accounts, so I had to put my answer here. The answer is: read the author's note at the bottom of Chapter 1. But since you didn't read that note, you might not read this one either, so I might be wasting my time here.
o
"It worked!" Skuld blurted out. "It actually worked, just like that old witch said it would! I can't believe it!"
The seven newly-transformed Terrible Terrors blinked at her, and the purple one let out a soft whimper, but otherwise they did not respond.
"Oh, don't worry," she said condescendingly. "The paralysis ought to wear off in a few minutes, and the transformation spell will cancel itself in two or three days. You're not stuck like this forever... although I admit, it would be fun to leave you this way, as payback for what you did to me last time! But I shouldn't be monologuing; I came here for something important." She pulled a heavy leather sack off of her belt. Then she deftly scooped up the unresisting black Terror and stuffed it into the sack, which she tied shut with a leather thong.
"The leather has some air holes punched in it," she said to the sack, "but if you try to use fire in there, you'll suffocate yourself, so don't try it. Oh, but I forget – you're a dragon and you can't understand me! How sad." She looked at the others and smirked. "As for the rest of you, don't get any ideas about rescuing your pet dragon! By the time you get your own bodies back, I'll be long gone. You can't chase me down from the air because you don't know how to fly, and you'll never learn that art in time to make any difference. Arngrim Dammen and I are leaving Berk now with the ultimate prize – the world's only Night Fury, shrunk down to travel size! Arngrim says he knows how to safely strap it down when the spell wears off and it turns back into a full-sized dragon. And then, Viggo Grimborn is going to pay! Oh, he'll gladly pay a chief's ransom for a prize like this one. We'll be rich! I'll never have to work again for the rest of my life!" She laughed. "Oh, and thank you for cooperating by clustering together, so I could enspell all of you at the same time. Just for once, a plan worked perfectly!" She put the gray wig back on, pulled her gray cape over herself, and hunched over to hide the sack. "Bye-bye, little dragons," she croaked in her old-woman voice, and hobbled back toward the docks.
The six remaining Terrible Terrors slowly regained the use of their unfamiliar bodies. The purple one was the first to speak. "Guys... this is... really, really bad."
The blue one didn't answer, but waved its foreleg back and forth and stared at it. The orange one experimentally fanned its wings, the green one waved its tail back and forth, the red one stuck its tongue out to see how far it would go, and the yellow one remained motionless, looking completely stunned.
"Can any of you talk?" the purple one asked.
Croak... grunt... hiss... and the blue one said, "I think so." It looked startled at the sound of its own voice. "I'm talking like a Terrible Terror!"
"I think you are a Terrible Terror," said the purple one. "We all are. But I can understand you. I'm Hiccup. Which one are you?"
"I'm Fishlegs, or at least, I used to be Fishlegs," the blue one answered. "Everything feels wrong now! I never had wings and a tail before. So this is how Meatlug feels."
"Ngh... ngh... I can talk, too!" announced the green one. "I'm Ruffnut. How come I look like a dragon now?"
"Be... be... because that sorceress-lady played a trick on us," said the red one. "Playing tricks on Berk's people is our racket, Ruff! She's moving in on our territory. We need to pay her back for this."
"I'm in," she answered, "but... how?"
"Duh!" her brother burst out. "We're dragons now! We can fly! We can shoot fire! We can burn that witch's britches so bad, she'll never go near Berk again!"
"Witch's britches!" the Ruffnut-dragon cackled. "My brother made a funny!"
"There's one small problem," Fishlegs interjected. "We don't know how to do any of those things."
"Well, how hard can it be?" Tuff retorted. "The stupid dragons can do it, so why can't we?"
"Don't look now," the yellow one cut in, "but you are a stupid dragon! We're all stupid dragons, even me. And I should have turned into a Monstrous Nightmare, not a wimpy little yellow Terrible Terror!" He tried to hide his head under his wing. "My father will never forgive me for this."
"That has to be Snotlout," Hiccup nodded, and glanced at the orange one. "So you must be Astrid, right? You haven't said anything yet. Are you okay?"
The orange one glared at him. "I am not Astrid," he said haughtily. "My name is Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night."
They all stared at him, dumbfounded. At last, Hiccup found his voice again. Something about that tone of voice reminded him of... "Toothless?"
"That is what you insist on calling me," the orange one replied.
"Oh, my gosh! Toothless, I can talk to you! And you can talk to me, and I can understand you! This is going to be amazing!"
Toothless grunted in disgust. "If you think being turned into a Small-insignificant-colorful-pain-in-the-neck is amazing, then I would hate to see your idea of bad news."
"But... I don't get it," Fishlegs stammered. "She took the black one, so that should have been Toothless, right?"
"Why are you assuming that our current colors have anything to do with our real coloration?" Toothless answered sharply. "You are blue now, but you were not blue in real life, am I correct?"
"Uhh, yeah, I guess you're right," Fishlegs admitted.
"Of course I am," the ex-Night Fury added smugly.
"And Skuld made the same assumption," Hiccup finished with a laugh. "She didn't keep track of who was standing where, she figured the black Terrible Terror had to be Toothless, and she took the wrong dragon!"
Tuffnut also laughed. "Boy, is she going to be mad when the spell wears off and she finds out she isn't getting a Night Fury!"
"Yes, she will be mad," Hiccup said, suddenly very serious, "and she's got Astrid. She and Arngrim are kidnapping Astrid! We have to save her!"
"Can't she take care of herself, like she usually does?" Snotlout asked. Ruffnut was chasing her own tail and wasn't paying attention.
Hiccup shook his head. "We know that Arngrim Dammen is a slave trader when he's not trading furs. If they can't get sell Astrid to Viggo for dragon money, then they'll sell her to some other tribe as a slave. We've got to get her back before they can do that!"
"But, like... how?" Fishlegs pleaded. "We don't even know how to fly! Just learning the basics could take days."
"And the spell-lady said the spell will wear off in a few days," Ruff added. "As soon as we learn to fly, we'll turn back into people and we'll have to walk."
"We'll never catch them!" Snotlout said sadly.
"No, you're all wrong," Hiccup corrected them, "and Skuld is the most wrong of all! Not only did she grab the wrong Terrible Terror; she also left one behind who already knows how to fly because he's been flying all his life. And he can probably show us how to fly and breathe fire in hours, not days. Isn't that right, Toothless?"
The orange Terror looked irritated. "I told you, my name is Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night. And I would appreciate it if you would call me by my chosen name."
"Uhh, that's kind of a mouthful," Fishlegs said. "Can we call you Swift?"
"Can I call you Fish?" Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night retorted.
"Lots of people call me Legs, so I guess it's okay," he replied. Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night looked even more irritated.
Hiccup tried to smooth over the situation. "Look, Toothless... I mean, Swift-invisible-whatever. We really need your help if we're going to save Astrid, and every minute could be precious because we don't know how long we're going to be dragons. Can we skip the fighting over names and get on with the flying lessons?"
Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night sighed. "For you, Hiccup, I'll do it. First, I'll show you how to take off. You have to combine a powerful down-flap with a spring from all four legs. Like this!" He bounded into the air, flapped twice, spun out of control, and crash-landed hard on his side.
"Just like that, huh?" Tuff grinned.
Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night glanced back at himself in dismay. "Losing one of my tail fins was not bad enough? Now I have lost both of them! How can I maintain control in the air without my tail fins?"
"Other dragons do it all the time," Ruff commented.
"Yeah!" Snotlout added. "And there are dragons in the ring right next to us! Why don't we ask them how they do it?"
"There is no use in trying that," Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night said. "The larger species do not speak the same language as the Small-insignificant-colorful-pains-in-the-neck. Or the Terrible Terrors, as you call them. We cannot talk to each other."
"But you can talk to us Terrors, now that you're a Terror too," Hiccup thought out loud, "and you must remember how to talk to the larger dragons. Can't you be an interpreter between us and them?"
"It might take a day or more just to get them to acknowledge my existence," Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night answered. "We do not call them Small-insignificant-colorful-pains-in-the-neck because we enjoy their company. For the most part, we ignore them, unless they try to steal our fish. I will try, but I doubt that I will succeed." He stuck his head over the edge of the training ring and made some reptilian sounds. Stormfly, Meatlug, and Barf and Belch paid him no attention; Hookfang breathed a small jet of flame in his general direction, then lowered his head and went to sleep.
Meanwhile, Snotlout was jerking his hind leg back and forth, trying and failing to reach a spot on his back. "Hiccup, we can't rescue your girlfriend!" he burst out. "We don't know anything about how to be dragons! We can't even scratch where it itches!"
Fishlegs looked thoughtful. "I've seen Meatlug rolling around on her back when I wasn't nearby. I think that might be how she scratches her back."
"Forget it, Fishlegs! I am not going to imitate your stupid Gronckle!"
"She's not stupid!" Fishlegs protested angrily.
"You would be wise to think it over, Muscular-dumb-boy-with-curly-horns," Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night advised him. "That is, in fact, the best way to scratch an itch that is out of reach. But I do not think that scratching itches should take priority over learning how to fly."
"Hey, did you hear that?" Tuff interrupted with a malevolent grin. "Muscular-dumb-boy-with-curly-horns! That's your name in dragon language, Fishlegs!"
"I don't think he was talking about me," Legs answered hesitantly.
"Yeah!" Lout chimed in. "I'm the one with the curly horns on my helmet, so I'm the... wait, what?"
"Excuse me, Mister Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night," Fishlegs went on, "but does everybody have a long, complicated name in dragon language?"
"We do not assign permanent labels to ourselves, or to others," the orange Terror replied. "I go by Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night because it is an accurate description of me, and it pleases me. Some other dragons use that name for me as well. The queen dragon called me He-who-never-steals-food-never-shows-himself-and-never-misses, but she is gone now, and no one else wants to use her name for me. I have also been called Black-death-who-flies-in-darkness, Blaster-from-the-hidden-moon, Stealthy-avenger-against-Vikings, Nocturnal-assassin-of-the-speedy-wing, and Bruce."
"Bruce?" Hiccup echoed, surprised.
"That was from a simple-minded Gronckle with no imagination," Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night snapped. "It wasn't just me; he called every dragon in the nest Bruce. He said it kept things clear."
"Was his name Bruce?" Fishlegs wondered.
"No, he called himself Barney," Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night answered. "He said he didn't want to confuse himself with anyone else. But the rest of us called him Bruce because that name reminded us of him."
"So if any dragon can call any other dragon any name they want," Hiccup thought out loud, "then why can't we call you Toothless?"
The former Night Fury sighed. "I suppose I will allow it... from you, my friend." He glared at the others. "But the rest of you may call me Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night if you want me to teach you how to be dragons! Is that clear?"
"Perfectly, sir." That was Fishlegs.
"Yeah, I get it." That was Tuffnut.
"Fine, whatever." That was Ruffnut.
Snotlout didn't answer. He was rolling around on his back.
